Idiom of the week: a silver surfer

What is a silver surfer? Or rather, who is a silver surfer?

This idiom is relatively new and informal, and it comes from the also oh-so-fun idiom 'surf the internet'. How this concept was born is unclear, but I get the feeling there's a metaphorical connection between the fact that surfing through waves in the ocean is similar to browsing through websites.

This said, by now you've probably guessed that a silver surfer is someone who does something on the internet. And you're right: a silver surfer is an older, especially retired, person who uses the internet. Why silver? The pun is an allusion to the typical grey colour of an older person's hair -unless he or she has had it dyed, of course.

I've been trying to find an equivalent idiom, but I only found lousy literal translations: "estela plateada" por Peninsular Spanish and "surfista de plata" or "deslizador plateado" for American Spanish. I seriously doubt the average speaker knows what these expressions refer to.

Perhaps we don't have enough silver surfers around here yet... However, you'd be amazed at the increasing amount of silver surfers in English-speaking countries nowadays. More power to them!