[dictum]

>I'm 24, and 'cloud' to me is 'a vps somewhere'

It is a VPS somewhere, ultimately. It's a VPS somewhere but it may be two of them or more. It may not be exactly where you think "somewhere" is, but it is somewhere. You don't know exactly what is running the VPS (or the bunch of them, somewhere), and what it runs, but it's running, it's a VPS, and it's somewhere.

We'll charge you 50% more to enjoy this uncertainty and to be able to use the word "cloud" alongside "synergy", "blue-sky thinking", "out of the box" and a few others when you describe your stack.

(On a less cynical note: with the "cloud" you're essentially paying to replace the known, common possible points of failure with unknown, usually rare points of failure, and some redundancy. Uncertainty can be a feature.)