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What It's Like Being The Oldest BuzzFeed Employee

I am so, so lost, every workday.

1. My official corporate BuzzFeed ID Photo.

My name is Mark Duffy. I am a 53-year-old married New Yorker.

Before coming to BuzzFeed, I worked as an advertising copywriter for 25 years.

Before that, I was a pre-computer age journalist for 8 years (including college).

I carried around one of these (that exact model, actually).

Now, I am the resident cranky advertising reviewer/ranter, and have been for a year and a half. I write under the name "copyranter."

WTF is a cranky ad critic doing working at OMG LOL BuzzFeed?

It's still pretty much an ongoing unsolved mystery as to what the Hell I am doing here.

I am old enough to be the father of nearly every other editorial employee.

And, these whiz-kids completely baffle me, daily.

I am in a constant state of bafflement at BF HQ.

IN fact, I've never been more confused, day-in and day-out, in my life.

I am not being hyperbolic, for once.

This place is quite "high tech." We have the best IT, DEV, and OPS (Is that how you write it?) people around.

I, on the very far away other hand, am very afraid of technology.

I didn't start, fully, using a computer for work until I was about 40 years old.

Example:

I was told by my bosses to download Chrome 17 months ago.

I still haven't done it.

I am going to do it. Really soon.

2. I often send inappropriate, angry emails without thinking to 100+ people in my department.

3. And this is me every time IT emails an update to our CMS (Imagine there's a funny GIF here — which I have no idea how to make)

4. BuzzFeed is of course your home for the best GIFs. I, on the other hand, don't know how to make a GIF, I don't want to know how to make a GIF. I fucking hate GIFs (except cat GIFs — they rule).

5. I've never taken an "Instagram"...I never will take an "Instagram"....I don't know what the Hell an "Instagram" is. I know what a telegram is. I have sent a couple of those.

6.

7. Me.

8. I still think this was the high point of the Internet.

9. Almost every conversation I overhear here at BF HQ goes in one ear and out the other.

10. This is me when somebody else in Editorial does an ad post without asking me first.

11. What I think I look like to my co-workers/What I actually look like to my co-workers.

12. I do try to keep up with this "social media" and "sharing" that these kids talk about so much. This is my Twitter avatar, below — follow me! hastag#oversharing hashtag#OldMenWithiPhones.

13. Like most senior citizens, I eat my lunch at 11 am, alone. (Getty search: "senior man eating lunch alone")

14. I don't understand the word "Twerk" Have never "Twerked" Will never "Twerk"

15. I have, however, "grinded" — which is seemingly the same thing? Except we didn't make a big fucking deal about it? (Not me in photo).

16. My co-workers favorite pin-up star/My favorite pin-up star.

17. These kids love their video games. This is the last "video game" I played (Solitaire doesn't count), which I played in a student lounge, because there was no such thing as a "PC" when I was in college.

The BuzzFeed youngins and I do have a few things in common...

18. They talk about liking "Old School" stuff. I AM Old School (rocking a powder blue leisure suit, one of my dad's ties, and a $5 bowl cut for my senior pic, yo).

19. They love the 70s. I AM the 70s (This "Happiness Is A Tight Pussy" T-shirt was big at my hillbilly high school.)

20. They love the 60s. I AM the 60s.

21. And all these kids are now wearing the fashions I wore when I was a teenager.

22. But I have to say, these kids do make me feel younger than my age, every day.

23. Yet there is one unqualified truth that they are incapable of getting just yet. Testify Abe, TESTIFY.