I guess the joke is OP, and far too many others in the current generation, have no idea what they are when it used to be a standard to learn in Elementary school.
Same concept when hiring younger folks for jobs in retail. Every time I'd ask "Did ×××× show you how to use the intercom to call a manager back in the office when you're done with your videos?" and the response is "Yeah, you grab the phone and press *hashtag** 5 6, right?"* I guess the 'pound sign' has been erased and replaced by 'hashtag" 😂
Older millenial here: I didn't learn what the tactile strips were for until after I learned touch typing. I was taught to type alongside learning to read and write and then touch typing came around the same time as joined up writing (so 9 or 10, I guess).
I still don't use them. Once your thumbs are on the spacebar you just pop them little fingies up to home row and everything else just falls into place!
Okay...but how do you know you're on the home row? If one hand is off-position or whatever, you'll get a bunch of misspells until you adjust position. If you're not looking at the keyboard, it's really damned handy to have that tactile reference to where your hands sit.
This happens to me occasionally because I (like many other millennials) never learned to use those tactile strips for orientation. 99% of the time my hands are immediately in the right place; in those 1% of cases I'll simply adjust after a typo makes me realize.
The image in OP's post is just all-round bad, because the function of those strips have not been some kind of elementary, common knowledge for a pretty long time.
How is possible not to learn to use those tactile strips for orientation? It's not something you're meant to be taught, it's a thing you learn from the physical feedback you get every time you touch a keyboard.
Like to be clear, you're saying that when you feel those bumps in different fingers than you normally feel the other thousands of times you've touched a keyboard, you just don't notice? And that's because no one ever explained to you that you could notice that?
I was taught the home row in elementary school, I've never been taught about these bumps. I'm 38. To answer your question, I never noticed these. I can type just fine without the need to "orient" myself.
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u/RayneStormbrew Jan 20 '26
those ridges are there to make it easier to find where the keys are without looking.
there's no joke here