[gjm11]

I too find the "My" stuff patronizing and annoying but I'm not convinced by your string of "my"s as showing that it's childlike. I mean, you could equally say: my files on my computer on my desk in my work-room next to my bedroom where I sleep with my wife. Or: my files on my computer in my house that my savings plus my mortgage with my bank paid for. There are as many distinctively-adult things you can put "my" in front of as distinctively-childish ones.

I do in fact talk about my computer[1] and my files on it. The problem isn't that I wouldn't call them "my". It's that (1) when the computer labels them that way it feels like it's putting words in my mouth and I don't like that even if I'd have chosen similar words, and (2) it's unnecessary because if something's already in my home directory then calling it "My Whatever" rather than just "Whatever" is unnecessary. Of course, Windows rather wants to cover up all the evidence that you have a home directory, which for me is also part of the problem.

[1] Well, I'd be more specific, because like many people on HN I have more than one computer. But that isn't really the point here.

[dspillett]

> I'm not convinced by your string of "my"s as showing that it's childlike

While I often use “my” like that (“has anyone seen where I put my phone?” etc), the thing with Windows95 was that it was applied to everything and coupled with the crayola-like UI friendlyfication. On its own, or used less judiciously, it might have not felt a bit infantilising like it did.

Also, there are a few things in your list that I would use more passive language for. I always referred to the mortgage on my flat as “the mortgage” unless in a situation where that might be ambiguous, and the bank is definitely the bank not my bank. The distinction generally falls along personal/other lines: within my flat (which I sometimes call the flat) I have my bedroom but also the bathroom, the spare room (or guest room, lodger's room, craft room, junk room, workout room - it has had many names over the years all usually prefaced with “the” rather than “my”), the kitchen, and the living room. For work, when I'm not working from home, I go to the office. If your every day use of the language doesn't have this distinction (this could easily be a regional or generational variation, most others around me follow a pattern similar to mine, for reference I'm a late-40s anal-retentive from northern England) then the Win95 UI's use of that language wouldn't give you the same feeling.

> because like many people on HN I have more than one computer

This may be a time based difference too. Around the time of Win95's first arrival I did have a computer of my own, and it wasn't the only one in the house, though this was unusual: many people did not have a computer at home at all (even if counting game systems or general purpose micros like a C64 that they used exclusively for playing games) and the only computers that they used were at school, at work, or in the library, so were not there's except when they were using them, and I probably spent at least as much time on computers that I didn't consider to be mine than I did on the one that was.

[gjm11]

(tl;dr on reflection I mostly agree with you)

Interesting. I would sometimes say "the mortgage", "the bank", "the car", etc., but I don't think "my" is wrong for any of those except in so far as the thing in question isn't just mine (e.g., it's my wife's -- excuse me, the wife's -- car as well as mine).

Thinking about this some more, I think the pattern is as follows. I would say "my" to refer to something that (1) is specifically mine rather than anyone else's and (2) might be thought to be someone else's, or otherwise be ambiguous, if I didn't say "my". For something that's in some sense mine but for which #1 and #2 don't both hold, I would more often say "the".

So, e.g., "the mortgage" or "my mortgage"? If I'm living on my own, "the" because there's no one else. If I'm living with a partner, "the" because it's joint with them, or because we both know that they don't have one. If I'm living with a minor child, "the" because they can't have one. But if I'm talking to another adult, typically "my" or "our" for disambiguation.

"The office" or "my office"? "The" if it's the office I go to with all my colleagues. "The" if it's a room in my house and it's the only such room. "My" if two of us living in the same house have rooms they use in the same way.

(In my actual house there's a room that we originally called "the study" which we envisaged being used by whoever needed it, but in practice it's basically always me. My wife calls it "your study". I feel kinda bad about having usurped it -- there's another room my wife uses for similar purposes but it's substantially smaller and I've clearly got the better end of this deal -- and I often call it "the study" but when I do I know I'm being a bit dishonest.)

If you're a child then probably there are lots of things that are specifically yours. You might refer to "the teddy bear" because there's no one else it's likely to belong to, but your parents won't because it's not (in the relevant sense) theirs so "the" isn't appropriate for them. And if you're a child and you regard something as yours, you're probably painfully aware that (1) any siblings might try to lay claim to it and (2) in some sense your parents could lay claim to it, so you're going to use "my" whenever you can.

So I think I agree that "my" is proportionally used more by children than by adults. I don't think I personally find that that makes it feel infantilizing in the way it sounds like you do. But I do find the Windows "My X" stuff patronizing and maybe unconsciously I'm associating it with childishness.