Is "is a choice" something the kids are saying these days? Never heard that expression.
At any rate, at first I was worried that this was a sexist-agist reference, but in fact it's not at all. "Mom" is just used to represent someone who doesn't want to hurt your feelings.
Yep. I thought the same thing originally, and then realized it's nothing of the sort. That I so quickly jumped to that assumption says more about me than the author :(
The idea that mom (but not dad?) will lie to you in order not to hurt your feelings surely reflects biases about gender (aka sexism, albeit a mild form).
The non biased version would use "parent" not "mom".
"Centering yourself at the expense of the many others who contributed to the production and distribution of the book. Many of whom are PoC, you racist pig."
Seriously, intelligent people who want to find fault with something can usually do it, given a flexible-enough fault-finding toolset. Which we have.
Why? It is still true. Maybe in the future it won't be, but currently 99.99% of moms in this planet are not tech savvy, whether we like it or not. Remember that moms being born in the 1930s are still out there - not everything written has some hidden political intention. As we move forward, if more women happen to get interested into technology, this might change. But until then, jumping on someone for the sake of political correctness - because there may be a tech-savvy mom somewhere out there that you decided to defend, or because it shouldn't be true in your ideal world - is toxic. And as you see people are downvoting you for being this kind of person.
1. Someone hasn't read the book and only glanced at the title.
2. That someone assumes the book says "test things on your mom, because there's nobody less tech-savvy than an older woman, yo momma so dumb she thinks a hamburger menu is something you get at McDonalds"
3. That someone, hoping to be an ally in the fight against gender and age discrimination in tech, takes offence at what they imagine the book says.
4. A mob of people who also haven't read the book destroy your career.
Of course, we've got like 4 levels of hypothetical here - you're reading me, putting words into hbeckpdx's mouth, who is imagining an easily offended third party, who is imagining the contents of the book, which they imagine is offensive to a hypothetical mom. Whether you agree with hbeckpdx that this is a reasonable thing to fear is another question....
