I would argue the Boomer thing happened specifically because of all the attacks on Millennials. The first I heard of “ok boomer” was when the older person was talking about how stupid old people were. It was intentionally ageist to show how bad it feels to be dismissed in that way. It’s retaliatory ageism.
I’ve since seen “boomer” divorced from the meme. Sometimes it’s generic, like a shortening for older person. Other times it’s still derogatory. But it still seems to largely be in the context of when young people are being attacked.
I do say young people and old people, as both Boomer and Millennial seem to have transcended to be generic terms for young and old. Most of people called Millennials are GenZ. And most of the people called Boomers are Generation X or actually Millennials (or a middle group called Xenials).
Hold onto that thought, it’ll be a real bitch of irony in 25 years when the Gen Zs start agitating for the Snowboarder Collective to be mandatorily pensioned off, for equivalent crimes against humanity.
Yes, the war between the old and the young has been going on for some time. It was the sixties kids who coined “Don’t trust anyone over thirty” so I can’t get too sorry when that comes to bite them in the ass.
But reasonable people of any age can still find the whole thing stupid.
I think it may well still be people lashing out in a way they feel is retaliatory against the group that contained the individuals who first attacked them, but lashing out at random members of that group, rather than the attackers.
I think you misunderstand the direction I’m walking it back. It really isn’t quite as stupid as racism since people born in the same year will have similar experiences with politics, economics and technology, so I won’t be walking that back, but damn some of the ageists in this thread sound as stupid as racists.
Judging people by something immutable is dumb. One immutable thing is birth year.
My point is that I’ve not really seen it used against individuals who weren’t currently engaging in some level ageism, or at least were perceived as such. At least, not outside of obvious trolling.
I’m not saying it’s necessarily the correct response. I’ve seen it when people were talking about how young progressives need to vote, and the young person’s response was to act like calling someone a “boomer” was a valid refutation, rather than making it obvious they didn’t have a good counterargument.
But I still understood why they would perceive all the talk about how young people don’t vote as attacking them, given how often “young people don’t X” is used as an attack. They’re incorrect in this case, but I get why they think so.
If anything, I’ve seen a decline in younger people blaming ALL older people. The divide is more political now. Older progressives (e.g. Bernie Sanders) are thought of being decent folk.
It’s definitely one of those terms that is being used by younger people as a general disparaging term for older people without any regard for any form of precise definition. I see it used on reddit that way regularly.
And it is also used to mean “a racist/sexist etc older person”. I had an amusing exchange with one kid on reddit who said that if an older person wasn’t racist/sexist etc then they weren’t a boomer by definition.
I suppose that seems more reasonable, at the same time as being a very poor choice of terminology, since we already have words for racists and sexists, etc.
in addition, Chris Rock would like to have a word with people who say “you know, when I say this disparaging word for all the people in this group, I really mean only the bad people who typify everything wrong with it.”
Every President from Eisenhower to Bush Senior served in uniform during World War II. That’s 40 consecutive years. It wasn’t until 1825 that the President hadn’t been a part of the Revolutionary War. Civil War veterans served in the Presidency until 1901. When you think about it, 24 years is actually a short span for generational politics.
I saw an amusing exchange (between Australians) recently where some kids were generalising wildly about boomers and how they were all *-ist of one sort or another. Then a boomer chipped in to point out that all Australia’s anti-discrimination legislation making all the various *-isms illegal was proposed and passed when boomers were at the peak of their power. The conversation ended at that point.
Well I was actually toying with the kid and boxed him into a corner where he had to either admit he was being grossly bigoted by accusing all people born 1946-64 of being racist or that all boomers weren’t racist. He chose the way out of saying that such people aren’t boomers if not racist. And presumably they aren’t True Scotsmen either. Or to put it another way, I think the term is used loosely by people who aren’t necessarily the world’s greatest thinkers.
And what is the gap between generations? One year? Two? If the Boomer Generation ended in 1964 when did the next one start? And what is so different between someone born in 1964 and someone born in 1965 or 1966?
Most of the “generation” stuff is - insofar as it involves differences in mentality - AFAICT - a mix of beatup and confusion of age vs cohort effects.
Business consultants are forever earning speaking fees by telling business leaders “OMG the new generation of young people are totally different and have to be treated differently! Ask Me How!” but if you look at the actual data the differences they blather on about are barely statistically significant and certainly not significant enough to cause a need to change your hiring practices, or whatever, in themselves.
And the rest is just the usual old people vs young people shit that people lacking knowledge of history and self awareness bang on about. The words change (not “hip”, not “cool”, not “woke”) but the principle stays the same.
I wouldn’t classify Gough Whitlam as a boomer but Noel Pearson’s soaring eulogy (Nov 2014) rattles off a list of anti-isms which he achieved, before these roosters grew out of short pants/nappies. While it’s long (18:34) and the specifics unfamiliar to the bulk of the SDMB I can only recommend highly it to fellow dopers as oratory at it’s best.
Mal Fraser and Paul Keating (also no boomers) also laid down some significant planks of civilisation which the “OK boomers” should be more than passingly familiar with.