Never Build a PC for Family

I am a structural engineer and a trained carpenter. Family and friends ask me to do drawings and work on their house. They never pay me for my time and always without fail complain about something. It got to the point I refused to help them unless something had become a safety problem. Then I would get it to where it would no longer be a safety issue and tell them to hire someone. I once completely renovated my sisters house. Took it to the exterior walls and rebuilt it, for free. I heard nothing but complaints for years after. I fixed a friend of mines rotted floor and designed an extension to their house for them. Got it though all of the permit process up to the construction phase. His now ex wife complained to me for years about everything that she never asked for. I did that for free to. I will never do it again. I live in a condo now and I won't even work on joint area anymore because I would hear someone complain that they could see where I brushed around the window. Long story short never do favors as they are never one offs.

I’m glad I learned this lesson when I was in high school. Was never popular until people found out I new how to build pcs and fix tech. I started getting calls from random numbers from classmates that have never spoken to me before, asking for troubleshooting tips or favors. The last straw was when a friends brother, who has asked for favors for months now, texted me to ask me to install a Wi-Fi adapter. That’s right, a usb Wi-Fi adapter that you just plug into your mobo, that’s it. I was so dumbfounded , that I decided to tell him yes but I have to charge him due for my time. He asked how much, I said 200$ thinking he would say no and leave me alone. He agreed. Showed up, asked him for the money upfront. Grabbed the usb Wi-Fi stick, plugged it in right in front of him and said there ya go. Needless to say he was mad, didn’t give him the money back, nor did I ever receive a text from him again. Do the same thing to anyone who asks me for a favor, or a stupid question.

My 12yp nephew got a gaming PC for Christmas, similar situation where he was hounding me for help with small topics. I suggested politely to look into the issue and chat with his friends. This one step has now given him the confidence to do it all himself, and is now modding games and slaying steam content.

It's not the fact that they DONT'T KNOW about computers that is annoying, it's annoying the fact that they don't WANT to know about anything because "they are never going to understand it anyways". That's what pisses me off, people who don't want to commit to take care of their OWN things.

Yep. My mother-in-law asked me to see if I could fix her laptop by saying "the guy the worked on it last time just screwed it up more" and I backed away quickly, saying I didn't know anything about her brand of computer. I could see what was coming.

The worst is when they ask you to fix something for them, you go and fix it and then they later call you and complain that you broke their computer, all because their icons are no longer where they left them or the UI slightly changed (for example you updated their million year old browser.)

Younger PC users are often much less competent, I attribute this to the rise of devices that hide all their inner workings from you and either just work or get returned to the store. When was the last time you needed to update a driver on an iPad? Never, thats why people don't learn to do these things.

Your point about the younger user’s having low technology skills is bang on. I’m a music production lecturer (ages 16-20ish) and I’m always shocked at how little the students know about using a computer. To the where they still struggle with zipping files even months into the course.

As a teenager who’s been trying to troubleshoot a micro stutter issue on my PC for a couple months now I’ve learned a lot about PCs and honestly I agree with your statement, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with asking for some help with an issue but there comes a point where you just become a burden to the person your trying to get help fix the issue, I would be lying if I said I didn’t ask help from a family member for troubleshooting tips but I’ve tried to fix my issue myself as much as possible, and honestly even though I haven’t 100% eliminated the issue at least if I have an issue with something else I should be able to quickly understand the steps I need to take to fix it.

Yes! This is exactly what I've been saying for so long. People love to say "I'm not tech savvy", but that's because you choose not to be. Most of us who are "tech savvy" just learned by playing around and Googling; we aren't special. It just comes off as "I can't be bothered" when you say "I'm not tech savvy."

My grandma occasionally needs help with tech support. But it's nice how much she's learning. There's lots of edge cases with printer connectivity but she's learning some of the common solutions. Also taught her how to transfer pictures over to the PC and delete pictures on her phone.

It's been a mixed bag for me. On one hand, I've built systems for people that insist on monopolizing my time because they don't want to Google something. I've worked in tech support in the past, so I have a stomach for this... to a point, but it's still super frustrating when someone just sees you as free tech support. On the other hand, I've built two of my nephews gaming PCs. I taught them how to do it and they rarely ever bother me with problems. One of them had been dealing with an issue for months before the finally bothered me with it, and it was bad enough that I had to bring another system to diagnose the problem since it was so odd. I commend him for doing his best to try and figure it out.

I charge $120 an hour for tech support/building. My friends and family discount is $150 an hour.

I used to help my family alot with tech problems. It only leads to more work, and you get blamed in the end for things not working or for not wanting to help. I started saying no, they got mad for a while but now they never ask again. I only help my parents and a few close relatives I know wont be bothering me unless its absolutely necessary.

This is one thing I've actually been so thankful for over the past 10ish years of being my family and friend's tech support person. Out of the people who I semi regularly provide tech support for, all but one of them were always very attentive during the troubleshooting process, asked lots of questions, and haven't had to contact me for the same issues. I am more than happy to spec out, purchase, and/or build computers for these people for this reason and have done so about 15 times so far.
Funnily enough, the only one who has asked the same questions twice (actually many, many times) is my little brother. The age gap between us is only five years, but his general unwillingness to try to figure things out on his own in all of our overlapping hobbies is astonishing (Computers, 3D printers, RC cars, full size cars, etc). He has purchased incompatible hardware multiple times despite me telling him over and over to either plug his choices into PC part picker to check for compatibility issues or run the part by me first so I can check it manually. I still point out issues I see if I see them, but I no longer volunteer my time to his problems.

I used to do this for my family, but then I realized that they don't even try to read what's actually in front of them. Now every time they asked I just tell them to read what's in front of them carefully to get the answer. They either get frustrated and leave it or they figure it out by themselves. No more quick and easy answers from me. Not my mom though, she gets all the support she wants.

I've built 5 PCs for friends and and have never had this issue. The key is that I build it *with* them, not for them. That way they know how it all went together in case they need to troubleshoot.

The problem is their inability and refusal to google or lookup their problems on PLclip to find the VERY easily solution. I deal with this constantly at best buy, it's incredible.
Literally had a family in a couple weeks ago that thought they needed a usb to hdmi cable because they didnt know the back came off the switch dock and didn't know how to connect it to the TV.
Literally would take 30 seconds on youtube...

I'm tech support for a close non tekkie friend. Over the years, they've learnt and improved their own trouble shooting skill. Every time they reach out, it's more complex because they've tried fixing it but failed.
Wen't from "program won't download" -> out of storage, clear up some files.
To more recent "this mod was more complicated to install, you know what they mean in the .readme"
It's a joy to help others when they try and learn on their own. But that is not often the case.

10:05 yes! As IT/tech support for the last decade, I love the people that try to learn and ask what you did. I hate when I go to help someone and they walk away and go "I don't know computers, I'll just call you again if I need help!"
Great talk as usual folks, can't wait for the next WAN show!

As a mechanic I can tell you, I got dragged into helping many of friends and then stuff that's nowhere near what we did magically became my problem. I had a friend literally look into tell me I was wrong and needed to do the solution they found, I was like okay but that's gonna cost you money, magically it fixed itself

So true. I owe my entire career and lifestyle to the simple fact that 13 year old me wanted to play cool video games so I built a PC to do so. Had to figure out drivers, troubleshoot, learn what BIOS is, how to format and install windows, etc. Without that drive I would have been very computer illiterate.

I had issues with my family trying to teach them how to solve issues for themselves. My mother sometimes has problems and I ask retorical questions that I answer, like, "Have I checked the cables on this thing? Well, looks like it is connected. Have you checked whether its the default device?" And while helping or telling her to click certain things so she could learn it for herself while helping. And yet, she got mad I was somewhat telling her to at the very least click the buttons herself so she could learn how to do it. She didn't want to learn how to fix it, only to have the issue fixed

If you ever decide to help older relatives / grandparents with tech problems, be ready for it to be a lot worse than you expect. I once decided to help a family member with onedrive, only to find the absolute worst labyrinth of directories I have found. Data spanning decades was duplicates multiple times, and by some miracle, there were directory links that literally looped through the multiple copies of the same folder until I ended up where I started. I personally don't mind helping family with tech problems, especially older people, but I am constantly blown away at how much they can screw up their computers.

This is like what my family calls being "The Golden Boy": you do troubleshooting / tech support REALLY well, and all of a sudden they rely 100% on you to solve 100% of their tech problems. And then they wonder why you either tell them to figure it out themselves, find someone else, or ghost them, because at that point you just feel used because they offer no compensation and will blame YOU for THEIR tech problems, as though YOU control every aspect of their machines. It's infuriating.

Of everyone in my family, my grandparents are the best when it comes to computer questions. On my mom's side, my grandpa used to work on mainframes for ups and has always been technically savvy. He's been able to keep up 90% and will only sometimes call regarding modern nuance.
My grandma on my dad's side is not as savvy but always tries to look into her problems, and she always takes notes on what we talk about for the future.
I always find it funny they're the best to work with in contrast to my aunt to called me to ask how to change the default page on Chrome... (Granted apparently she accidently installed an extention which overrode the home page which I haven't seen before so I guess she gets a pass)

the way I went about this problem was to try and teach my family as much as possible while we're together, I'll go trough basic troubleshooting with them and show them basic things to do and now they'll fix most problems on their own and figure it out without issues so I only get bothered with the very rare major issues or things that require fiddling with hardware

I have no problem being the tech support guy in the family/friend circle, but when someone asks a question in the same realm as he said, so "What is HDMI", about 3x in a row, without trying to solve anything on their own, that's when I stop helping. It becomes clear to me, that I'm just getting used as a first step to any problem they might have. If the questions evolve to more and more complex, with clear evidence that they tried to do something on their own, then I actually enjoy helping, even if they ask 10x the amount. So give them all the necessary info to figure it out on their own, let's say basics of googling for true beginners and go from there.

I encounter this all the time, my siblings will ask me how to do something very simple and when I say you should at least google it they just give up, if I give them the 2 sentence answer they do it immediately. It's crazy to me that at the very least they cannot attempt to seek the information, even the manual for the product, they need. This extends to older generation as well, my parents and grandparents will just live with issues on their technology until I fix it or tell them how to (because it's usually restart or sign out/in).

This makes me SO grateful that I've never had to put up with this from any family members

Tech support for older people pain is an understatement

I learned a lot about computers by doing almost everything myself and fixing my own problems. And watching LTT videos helped me build my first pc a long time ago. :)

I've found for some people it's best to give a little guidance but don't take over for them. Like some of my friends/family I will research a parts list or pick out the best racing steering wheel at a price range but I let them do the rest. I don't have enough time to take over the responsibility for them but helping each other out every now and then is nice

The part about the younger generation is absolutely true. Working as a teacher I find it much more efficient time wise to just do everything on each student's computer myself rather than trying to go through extremely easy steps with them and have them doing it themselves in a classroom setting. Even if i have to do it 25-30 times, it saves a LOT of time if I just do it for them myself. I once spent over two hours helping a class of students install a very basic piece of software, and I had to physically stop one of the students from entering their credit card details on a sketchy site because they clicked an ad. If it doesn't come pre-installed, or if it can't be installed by an appstore or similar you may as well just give up.

I had a policy with relatives: I'll fix your computer, but you have to log all the things you try when trying to fix it yourself. It turned out there was an escalation where it started a little broken, then got real bad before they called me, and I had no idea what they'd done to it. Anyway, the log meant they were more careful and methodical, and I never seem to get bugged despite their computers continuing to work perfectly. Either they got good or roped someone else into fixing it. Either way, no longer my problem.

I've built my fiancée a PC and my older brother too. I also occasionally help my younger brother with problems with his PC, although he built it himself and almost never asks me for anything. My older brother only asked me when his PC died, likely my fault, so I did a quick and dirty replacement. My fiancée's PC hasn't had any problems I wasn't around for yet, and I'll always help because it's a heavily modded ITX chassis that isn't the easiest to work in - although I try my best to explain my thought process too. I got it for them so we could game together, so I'm just as motivated to fix it as my own system should it ever break.

I'm 23, but I know a lot of people my age or a bit younger who don't even know what task manager is lol. So, it doesn't surprise me to hear computer proficiency isn't a strong point for us. We had a family PC that my dad used for Photoshop, and I wanted to play games as a kid, so I learned through that and became proficient with computers over the years naturally. I am the tech support for my friends and family now. I love to be useful but I gotta make them solve the problem themselves sometimes otherwise they'll just forget what I show them, I'm not a good teacher.

I feel like this just extends out into any field of work. I know when I started working in veterinary medicine, suddenly everyone in my family wanted to contact me any time their dog had an issue. Obviously had to shut that one down real quick, but yeah. Always be careful who you give your help to and _always_ make sure you set boundaries.

reminds me of when i installed a camera onto a monitor and it worked, but my sister didnt know how to turn it on. so she came up and asked me "do you know why it's broken?". and i was immediately annoyed because she made absolutely zero troubleshooting or googling attempts and decided that something that didn't automatically turn on the moment she thought it should meant it was too complex to figure out.

I learned to use my computer by installing random viruses and breaking Windows when I was 8 and now I am like "super tech savy"
But at least my family is not like what you're describing at all

It never fails to amaze me just how many people from my generation (Gen Z) are completely helpless when it comes to technology. Maybe its because im on the older end of gen z but usually a simple google search will fix your issues. Being the "Tech guy" for my friends and family sucks, I never understood why my dad would refuse to be tech support but now I do. Im happy he got me into all the tech stuff though, its a gift that keeps on giving!

Im happy to help my relatives (I have really small family, mum, dad, 2 sisters, 1 godson, 2 uncle, 1 aunt so its not that often). They all have helped me when i needed something. Plus as im a ICT student still in school, they usually pay for me to fix their stuff or help them to buy technicall stuff (PCs, phones, speaker systems ect). Just did 4 hour troubleshoot + repair to my aunts laptop and she gave me 40€ of cash + food & alchohol worth of another 40€ :D 80€ for few hours job while chatting about usuall relative stuff, ill call it a good sunday for student lol

I heard of a university professor who holds a two-hour lecture every semester to explain to new students how folders on PCs work. Many young people are so used to apps magically storing files "somewhere" that they just throw all their files in one folder on their laptop and can't figure out how to navigate to a file in some lab software.

Remember back in the day trying to build a PC and troubleshoot BEFORE the internet was a thing and knowing that if I couldn't fix the issue for free I would not be able to game at all. Desperation is a great motivator - I remember spending hours on a random Saturday just taking out sticks of ram and putting them back in again desperately hoping my PC would boot.

I may be an outlier but I actually enjoy helping with tech issues. I'm no mastermind by any means but if I can help my friends and family to be computer literate then I can. In my experience they've all been extremely appreciative, and willing to learn, so I rarely have to fix the same problem twice.
I love computers and it saddens me that a lot of people simply can't use them to their full potential. It's sort of like teaching someone to read. If you only ever read the book to them they will never learn, but if you do a bit of reading and a bit of teaching they will become literate.

I made the fatal mistake of building a machine for a very close family member when I was 16. I took no profit, and invested a LOT of hours into the build. Like LTT experienced, some trivial issue popped up once they started dicking with it. The situation escalated and escalated till they demanded their money back (an adult to a 16 year old kid). I broke off my relationship with that person from that point forward.
Today I'll just point people at a suitable off the shelf product. Fuck if I'm ever building something for someone, don't mind offering advice but it's very much a "you build it, you broke it" situation.
I just say, sorry, not my area of expertise. You'll have to google it. People can be real entitled assholes

Sucks when you do something nice for people and they never appreciate it or leave you alone.

As a younger “Tech Savvy” PC user, it’s really irritating to me as well being asked how to do basic googleable things by my friends. I’ve learned so far using google, youtube and a lot of LTT.
(also I will now be using let me gpt that for you)

my grandparents went about it the right way in my mind. any issue they have, they call me and i remote in via team viewer, then once the problem is fixed (i've never had anything take longer than maybe 20 minutes) they slide a little $$ my way, and its always helped. so i dont mind helping them. its not about the money, i've never asked for it, but they do it to say thanks.

This is my biggest pet peeve! I'd understand if they have been working on an issue for a while but many people don't want to even try troubleshooting themselves.

It gets worse once they take you for granted, even for stuff you're not good at. My mom's family is basically treating me like a walking encyclopedia now ever since I troubleshoot random stuff on their house.

I've been through almost the exact same thing before: I gave some stranger a (really) good deal on old hardware that I had no use for and even set it up for them. What a mistake, because it turns out if you help someone out once, you become their designated tech support until you block their number.
I did you a favor, so the way I see it I owe you less than nothing. So please don't double down by asking me more favours

A few months ago I helped my brother installing Linux. At the beginning it basically was a Linux crash course a had to give him, later it turned into tech-support (or rather the let-me-google-that-for-you-guy) and nowadays he only asks me for help if he is really stuck.

I think the problem isn't the people asking for help. It's that it's the first thing they do. They don't even try to figure it out. Personally I see it especially with older people. My parents so often show me a screen with text clearly stating what it is, and they ask me what it means. I'm at the point that I've given up on my parents and when they ask me how to do something I usually just do it for them if it's something that doesn't come up all the time. It saves me both time and frustration

Like "Never loan money, cosign a loan, or rent a home to family".

This extends to my whole family, no exceptions. I've gotten tired of people coming to me for basic problems or non-problems, refusal to work on it or look it up themselves , people acting like I'm a savant at everything including stuff I've never dealt with, and, last but not least, just ignoring my advice. (Either not listening or just engaging in the exact same things that gave them issues despite warning.) It's strained relationships, but I've been doing it for 20 years, since I was in elementary, with all of the above happening.

Your channel and a couple others are the reason why I was more confident in trying to pry into how my PC works. It's helped me troubleshoot problems myself and fix them.
Maybe recommend using PLclip to the person you helped build the computer for. It's surprising how easy it is to figure things out yourself after finding videos that show similar issues.

Personally, building PCs for friends and family is how I scratch my itch to build without spending an ungodly amount of money on unnecessary systems for myself. Or dismantling and rebuilding the same machines over and over. I usually don't end up doing too much tech support for my family most of the time -- usually only when something new gets thrown into the mix.
I do work IT full time -- it can be a little annoying when users have silly issues like "not pressing the power button long enough" a lot... but it is what it is. Whatever happens, happens.

I have done that a lot of times like you mentioned you did, Linus, and for me the problem is when you don't let the person know the favor you are doing to them, some people recognise it straight away, some others you have to let them know, otherwise they would be like "where's the punk who did this to my pc?" 😂

As someone who works in product support for grainger and is highly involved with building computers i get rather frequent requests from friends and family for all sorts of random stuff like HVAC, sound systems, and just whatever they come up with but always get the feeling if i don't help I'm the bad guy. I am sure painting linus get it from that side too.

I helped my wife's grandmother fix her printer once.
A week later her monitor stopped working. She insisted it had to be something I did. (To be fair, reinstalling printer drivers is a leading cause of monitor death...)
I've completely stopped helping people with technology.

My family has been great in this regard, but a lot of my family kind of enjoys building stuff and troubleshooting stuff. So they usually only ask after they’ve done all the normal troubleshooting.

I learned how PCs worked because my stepfather's son was a really cool dude. He was into Portal and such (Steam when it was first coming out, showed me Minecraft when it was in alpha) and I was just getting into PCs, trying to figure them out. He did his best to give me a base line of what RAM did, what a CPU and GPU were, the motherboard, etc. I walked away with half an understanding of what he told me that day, he left me with the recommendation to buy PC gaming magazines. I never bought any magazines, but time and the vast wells of information scattered across the web is what taught me the rest. Now, over a decade later, I am now fulfilling the same role he did all those years ago.

My grandma learnt coral draw and MS word at 60, who hasn't used a computer for anything else before or after, to help my grandfather write his dental books and make diagrams, By herself, since No one in the family even understood what she wanted to do. If you give people enough time and if they have the grit, not just kids, ANYONE can figure tech out.

This goes back to a video by Louis Rossman made a while back about being 'invest-able'; the idea that you nudge them in the right direction but THEY themselves eventually get to the solutions they need. When you can tell the person you are trying to help isn't putting the legwork in, it just becomes apparent that they don't want actual "help", they really just want their problem solved for them. Which really is just laziness hiding in plain sight. I think that's really the most disappointing part.

6:00
Same here. I remember learning DOS just to play DOOM, Duke Nukem, Quake, and Mame.
It blew my mind when I didn't have to use commands to launch games.
I honestly feel like Linux would be hard to learn if I didn't learn how to use the command prompt.
Also installing my Sound Blaster, and other upgrades makes the new way to install hardware a breeze.

When I was in my mid teens my family would come to me for tech support bc I was the savvy one in the family and I kinda liked it since it made me feel validated in my expertise. Nowadays it just annoys me

The second problem isn't even complicated. A Google search would just tell you or at least direct you in the right direction and I quote "Check your sound settings through the Control Panel"
Easiest troubleshooting step from there is just disabling all mics and enabling them one by one until you know which is the one you wanna use, now you can use it for everything.
I had to figure that out myself at some point, other people had to figure it out themselves. Just look around a little bit

Back in my day we figured out our computer problems ourselves and we liked it! The first time my computer died when I was in highschool, I figured it out myself. This led to me working at a computer repair store for almost 10 years.

Yeah I think Luke is right regarding the "they know less about trouble shooting because stuff always works". Many people I know only have a Macbook and an iPhone which seem to cause even less problems than Windows and Android devices. Most don't even bother installing drivers and put up with the small annoyances that might come with that. I got my first own PC in 2012 and I can't remember ever having to fix anything, it just worked. Same with the one I built myself in 2018. Ironically my laptop from 2019 is a hot mess, so I've had a lot of trouble shooting practice with that lol

Sometimes it helps to not do something for them, but only nudge them in the right direction so they can solve the problem themselves. In the best case they feel empowered by that and try fixing their problems on their own in the future

This is actually kinda shocking. I feel like we live in a society where we want to be spoon-fed the answers for things we want. I feel the same as Linus tbh, if I wanted to do something, I sought out to learn how to do it or sought out proper teaching for me to study from. I wanted to play games with my friends on PC, so I learnt how to build my first PC literally by watching LTT and other PC building channels. I then started crypto mining with my first PC, then I wanted to learn how to properly crypto mine and then built my first mining rig. The funny thing is, the more I got involved with PC and crypto, the more I realized that I didn't know, so then I want to learn more 😆

Laughing my head off because I've been there. Thankfully with my expierence they were appreciative and not pushy and I was happy and able to help but still, once you are seen as tech support, you will always be tech support.

I love building PC's for my family and friends. I know them very well and they know me. I love to help within reason, and they know how far I'm willing to help.

I have found that the way to keep family from asking me for computer help is be incredibly flaky. If I am bored, and it is convenient, I will help. Otherwise I just don't respond. It might be a bit rude, but it's the best way to keep the requests down.
I have explained to my mom how to connect her digital camera or phone, and get the images off of it, no less than once a year (usually several times a year) for the last 10 years. For the last 6 years I have literally refused to do it myself, and instead stand behind her, and told her step by step what to do, and then made her do it again without my instruction, just to make sure she can show me that she can do it herself. I have done this so many times now, and I know that I will have to do it again later this year. And I WILL do it, because she is my mom, but it is annoying to teach her the same thing over and over and over again. Occasionally she has other issues. Those aren't so bad, because they are far less frequent, and the majority of the time they are one off problems that don't come up again.

I have a different approach to building a PC for friends and family... I will get some basic info about the persons needs and then spec out a build with everything they will need using tools like PC part picker, we will then talk over the build and budget and ill explain the reasoning and value in the parts selected. Once everything is settled I will give them a list of tools that we will need and send them some helpful guides for building a pc (thanks LTT and JTC for making it soooo easy to find great quality build guides.) On build day ill meet at their house and then ill will provide guidence and assistance while THEY BUILD THE PC. I try to make the process as educational as I can so they develope the experience of working on their own system and hopefully are less afraid of working on it on their own in the future.

Every time I help family or friends I make sure to teach them every step and whatever I know. When I'm troubleshooting, I'll teach them how to go about it. It's worked so far. I also only build things for younger people and they've gotta buy me dinner.

It's especially the worst to troubleshoot over texts or voice conversations. Like often times the issue is so vague and they don't know enough to actually describe their problem that you end up having to do so much more work then it should require to fix a basic problem.

It depends. I’ve always been tech support for my family, but they always help me in other areas of my life, so it never bothered me. All relationships should have give and take, it’s only if the relationship is give give five where it becomes a pain.

I think it's a good idea when doing favours like this to set expectations as part of the favour process - so as you hand it over you say "look, I do this thousands of times and if I do tech support for someone, I have to do it for everyone and there's not enough time in the day for that... so here, it's done, it doesn't come with tech support."

Having worked in IT my whole life I have built, purchased and supported PCs for my family and friends. Barely a week would pass without calls about things not working, how do I?, etc. Eventually I started telling people to buy Apple products. I still get support calls but at least I can now tell them to call the Apple freephone number! 😆

I found that after forcing family members and friends to "look it up" before contacting me and forcing them to tell me what they tried before I went out there, this single strat reduced the requests for help by 95%. Most people are able to figure things out, they're just unwilling. Every "tech bro" went through the phase of not knowing how to fix something, and just so happened to figure it out. How do you think we became tech bros in the first place? Born with the ability?

Learning to put boundaries in place and tell people they'll have to figure it out for themselves is a important skill for someone whose job or expertise includes fixing things. There are friends I've had to tell to google things because I just don't know, despite knowing exactly what the issue is and how to troubleshoot it, because they would come to me for tech things despite being very capable of researching and troubleshooting it themselves.
On the whole family building pc's for people thing - I helped some family recently complete a PC build after they couldn't get it going. They had no cpu cooler and couldn't figure out how to build the thing properly. I absolutely didn't mind helping them out and getting it up and running. After the first phone call that was about how to get the sound working, I just stopped troubleshooting it for them. It's not my job, I'm not getting paid, and I'm not obligated to provide tech support. They know that, and stopped calling me about it when I didn't fix it for free for them.
Boundaries, people. They're hella important.

Oh man, we all know this feeling. There was one time where I sold a PC to an acquaintance, and he messaged me like 2 years later because after upgrading the CPU and stuff, the boot wouldn't work.
I was amazed he thought I would help him with issues caused by changes he made years after I sold it to him for like half price.

"Where is the exit?" "There, let me show you, come with me." "But how?" "Oh, just walk after me." "Walk? You are walking right now, why can't you just carry me?" "Oh come on, do your part, and I will do mine!" "You are rude, you don't want to help me after all!"
This is how many of those conversations look. You never want to invest effort in people who don't even try.

sometimes it felt like we went to family meet-ups, just to fix whatever tech problems my family had. that's after driving almost an hour to a family member's house so we can all hang out again. we all live some time apart from each other
i don't mind obviously. and will always help mom and dad :-)

AMEN, linus. That's how i learned how to do things on my computer since grade school! I was HIGHLY motivated to get X done. Or would just look through the settings to see what can even be fking done! Often times going through the keybinds on a program is the most useful thing I do... Why? Because the programmers usually put what THEY think are the most important tools/functions on there...

What i have learned building PCs for family is to agree to what support for said PC looks like after its built. Clearly define when you are done and what state the computer is in when you give it to them and what they should do if they need help with things. Building for older people is generally impossible so I try to go super simple or even suggest they get on a chromebook or something like that. Other thing i do is search their issue on youtube and send them a troubleshooting video rather than fix it myself. That way they learn that they can just search for things. Even if I know the fix I do that.

my dad gave me a computer when i was 2 and as a kid he allowed me to learn whatever i wanted to do on my computer because he always knew how to wipe and reset it. By the time I was 12 I knew more than him, already watching linus on ncix tech tips lmao XD Now I'm 27.

This can be a problem even if someone just knows you built a pc. I’ve been lucky since it’s only been my closest friend asking me for part suggestions, but I’ve known people to make pretty ridiculous asks if other people I knew who are more experienced than I am.

First PC I built (back in early 2020) was my brother's, I did it for free in exchange for being allowed to use it occasionally. Then I built my own PC, and most recently I built my dad one, which he paid me for. They've all been great learning experiences for me.

Had similar result with family as well. Never again. Now I just pretend "I moved on from this and don't work on computer anymore, wouldn't be able to help with anything newer"

I work in a tech support role. I have to help people do a massive amount of stuff that should be basic know how. Like the older ones don't bother me I walk them through it and do my best to make sure they understand it. It's the new hire 17 year old kid who doesn't know where the documents folder is that I don't like.

I spent most of my childhood with my parents often at work (I'm currently 17) and I never had to ask anyone how to fix anything since I would just google it or watch tutorials on PLclip. I taught myself how to install mods for videogames, an entire language (English isn't my native tongue) and other stuff simply by watching PLclip or reading forum posts

Maybe it was because learning to fix things when we were kids (90s era) was much more difficult (basically either experiment with it, or find friends who had found a solution), that we were more keen on learning. Kids these days have answers so easy, they don't even want to look it up. Which seems counterintuitive, but somehow the easier something is to do, the more people want someone else to do it for them with the logic of "if it's so easy, why are you making a big deal of it? Just do it for me okay!" What are the odds that kids these days could handle a cartridge system like the NES? Those things were so problematic we all learned the tricks, like blowing it out and pushing it in gently so it barely made contact (which was also weird, you would think going in all the way would seat it better, but it seems the people who made the game cartridges didn't do the pins well so just a light contact was best). That's all stuff most of us learned through trial and error, and somehow we all came to the same conclusions so we would laugh when we heard someone else doing it like "you figured it out too?!?"

I am dealing with this situation currently. Built a baller gaming/ streaming PC for a friend, and now am constantly texted questions, most of which are very niche (codecs, specific bugs in games) that I know little about.
ON THE FLIP SIDE: it can also be bad if you build/ buy a computer for someone, and they don't want to bother you any more, so end up having easily fixed problems that they never tell you about.

I actually loved Vista
cuz the pain of going through a reinstall about once a month was how I learned about computers
Id assume these days its rare to accedentaly set default program for .exe files to be opened with notepad
and yes that includes ALL and ANYTHING youd use to try and change it back, any links to settings, policies or cmd, everything, quite funny

I kinda agree with not building stuff for family and friends, however, I have for a few very close friends and I also took the time to try and teach them to do stuff themselves, I'm lucky none of my friends expect me to drop what I'm doing to fix there issues.

I completely agree with the younger gen thing, my niece is the same way. There so many times when I literally told her you know you and your generation have Google right? And this with general stuff like school or life questions. But for the PC I built her so far I get Tech support questions every once in the blue when its really bad which is fine. I personally don't mind building a PC for friends and family and luckily for my case everyone I had for so far are not tech-illiterate.