How to be a terrible daughter.

My Mum is lovely. She’s called Dallas and she is a retired social worker and she’s very smart and loves doing crosswords and reading thrillers. I love my Mum. A lot.

Unfortunately, my Mum also has a laptop. I hate this laptop.

I hate the laptop because it means my Mum gets to ring me (as the designated family computer expert) to ask me questions.

Today, she wanted to know how to ‘like’ a Facebook page, because her friend Mike (“The one who married Jane. Jane. Curly hair Jane. You remember Jane. She worked at the opticians. Went to Cyprus.”) has a Facebook page for his new hotel, and wants to her like it.

Now you might think liking a page is simple. Log into Facebook. Open the page. Click ‘like’.

Don’t be so naïve.

Instead we have this conversation:

Me: I’ve liked the page and suggested you like it, so you just need to log-in to Facebook and accept my suggestion. Okay?

Mum: Right, I logged in. I can see where it says ‘Facebook’

Me: Okay, to the right of there…

Mum: The profile?

Me: No, not there

Mum: News feed?

Me: No, not there – just to the right of where it says Facebook

Mum: I don’t have that. I have a capital G?

Me: What?? Hang on. See where your profile picture is? Above that, in white letters, it says Facebook?

Mum: Oh, right! Yes.

Me: Cool. To the right of that, you have an envelope, and a little globe icon, and 2 little heads

Mum: I don’t have that.

Me: No, keep looking. It’s there. I promise.

Mum: Oh, so it is! It’s very faint isn’t it?

Me: Great. Right, click on the globe and select ‘view all notifications’

Mum: Right click?

Me: No, not right click, just click

Mum: Oh hang on, I’ve lost it now, it’s gone. What did I do?

Me: Never mind, I’ve sent you a message on Facebook with the link. Open your messages and click on the link.

Mum: Oh there’s a red number 1 at the top now!

Me: I know, that’s to tell you you’ve got a message from me. Click on the subject line to open it.

Mum: It doesn’t have a subject. It says ‘no subject’

Me: Where it says no subject just click on it.

Mum: Hang on, I can’t click on it.

Me: Okay. Try this. In the address bar, can you type facebook.com/janeshotel?

Mum: Are you getting stressed?

Me: (lying) No. I’m not stressed. Just type facebook dot com then a slash then janeshotel. OK?

Mum: Okay. I’ve typed it..nothing’s happened.

Me: Did you click enter?

Mum: You didn’t say to do that.

Me: Sorry, click enter.

Mum: Right, it’s come up – Jane’s hotel, Jane’s hotel on Twitter…

Me: Did you type it in the Google search box?

Mum: Is that different to the address bar?

Me: You know what? Give me your Facebook log-in and I’ll do it for you.

Mum: Well, there’s no need to be like that.

 

Tell me it’s not just me, is it?

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