Boomers and Facebook

So, since long before I actually met him, my FIL has sent me random posts on Facebook over messenger. Half of these are in closed groups so I can’t actually see them. I have mentioned this to him but of course it changes nothing. He does this for everyone in the family it appears.

Lately my FIL has been getting into the AI pictures, and his wife, my MIL, has explicitly asked him not to send them to her because she doesn’t like that they’re reaction farming. He does so anyways, but it’s genuinely unclear if he can tell they’re not real despite it being obvious for the rest of us.

We assumed, since this was the only way he ever initiated contact with anyone, this was his preferred way to contact us, so we set up our family group chat on Facebook messenger for him over Covid.

It’s been 5 years, and talking to my MIL this weekend, she admitted he’s always struggled to use Facebook messenger and wasn’t seeing most of our messages this entire time despite constantly sending us random things on the group chat.

I just assumed he was using fb more like my own gen X father (who also sends random stuff to me over messenger as the main way to reach out), however my own dad doesn’t fall for AI and actually checks to see if I can see what he’s sending. We have like conversations about the memes and articles.

Apparently that is too high a bar for a Boomer Father though. So once again I find myself needing to lower my already low bar for my FIL. This man is going to struggle so much with even just communication when my terminally ill MIL passes away and I am dreading it already.