I’m guessing no matter what anyone says here or what evidence they present the reaction from some will be: “OK boomer.” Or some version of it. It’s just easier to blame everything on someone else.
At first glance, I had zero control over anything to do with US economics, policy, or anything else to do with political power. I was raising kids, struggling to feed them, and taking care of dying parents. It seems though, that my carefully kept secret diabolical plan to name and shame the next generation has been exposed. Curses. It was me all along folks. I did it.
I mean, I was born in 1996 - youngest of Millennials or oldest of Gen Z/postmillennials - and I remember both when we installed dial-up (so noisy!) and 9/11. We always had a computer, though I didn’t really use it until I was in first grade. (Mickey Mouse games for Windows 98.)
I’m probably one of a few youngsters of the 80s who was exposed to early computing. My great uncle worked in tech and he sent my grandmother the latest in state of the art computing, so I had access to a Commodore 64 and an Amiga. My Aunt and I played so many games together.
Then I bought myself my own word processor when I was 12. Basically a glorified typewriter you could save to a floppy. I wrote my first novel on it.
Then my Mom bought a computer somewhere in my teens. I used it for Word processing and then I discovered AOL chat with my friends. But I could only use it for ten minutes at a time because it tied up the phone lines.
My God I think I fell in love with my husband over AOL.
I know I won’t get any sympathy here, but…I feel old.
Meh. Some Boomers wrote a book and some Boomers have made some claims about their population cohort.
Recognizing that some events may have a general affect on a generational category is hardly a novel insight and was certainly not invented by Boomers. (It was hardly Boomer late teen stringers at Time Magazine who decided to name an entire age group “Man of the Year” and recognizing that elementary and high schools were undergoing massive building spurts for a post-war economy was recognized by every school board in the country–all of whom were older than the children for whom they were building those schools.) Attacking “Boomers” as a monolithic group of villains or braggarts when “they” have not been powerful enough to create all the evil or make all the claims you ascribe to them just makes you appear petulant. Are there Boomers among the evil industrialists and madly fanciful braggarts? Certainly, just as there are among every generation.
As long as you use an extra wide paint roller to delineate Persian miniatures, I am simply going to laugh at your anger.
I see it as being akin to blaming your parents for undesirable features that you inherited from them.
Our socio-economic system and culture wasn’t designed by any person or group of people, it’s a complex evolved system that developed over many generations. While there have been a relatively small number of individuals that were/are able to apply pressure and exert influence that had an outsized effect on the end results, most of us (both young and old) are guilty of nothing more than living the lives we were born into.
A fundamental concept that racists, anti-racists, sexists, generationalists and others making judgements on entire groups should understand: In all the major groups we are talking about, within-group variation is much higher than between-group variation.
This means that while looking at differences between groups may be interesting and useful at a societal level, such differences mean nothing when applied to individuals in a group, who must be judged by their own actions and not those of some cohort they happen to fall under through no choice of theirs.
Using a group affiliation by immutable characteristic to define an individual or react to them is a form of discrimination, and that’s true whether the response is, “Ok Boomer”, “you shut up because you have white privilege”, or “get to the back of the bus”.
They all share the same flaw of evaluating an individual by a group association not freely chosen. It’s a form of tribalism, or ‘othering’ people who come from groups not like yours.
Who suggested otherwise? We are talking about general sociological trends and I think that is very obvious to anyone paying attention.
No, I think your latter example is very much worse given hundreds of years of violent systemic oppression. You really want to compare white supremacy to a goofy Gen Z meme?
As I explained upthread, if you are not an older person verbally attacking younger generations you screwed over without provocation, “Ok Boomer” has nothing to do with you. Do you really not see the irony in young people responding to a blanket denigration of themselves with a remark that gives such jerks a taste of their own medicine? That is objectively hilarious.
Only in the limited way I mentioned, which is that both are examples of punishing individuals for their association with a group they had no choice in being part of. In terms of their actual consequences in society, of course they are not the same.
And the people critizing a member of Gen-Z simply because of their generational affiliation is just as bad as people who respond to a point an older person makes with ‘ok Boomer’ when they disagree.
My son has told me to him, “Boomer is state of mind.” In essence to him people from the Baby Boomer generation display a group of negative states of mind. When someone uses what he feels is that state of mind, he thinks it’s fine to say,“Ok Boomer.” I’ve explained to him that I actually run across many Millenials, and GenZ who seem to display his preconceived negative states. So why does he associate it with, “Boomers?” It’s an on going discussion. He doesn’t say it to me even jokingly because it’s a slur. A very mild one to be sure, but pretty irritating.
Of course I’m just being a, “Boomer” so what do I know? It just irritates me that no matter what is said in this thread to argue against judging people by, basically their age, it’s tossed off as, “Boomerism” with no further rational argument. Bleh!
Because the people who created the difficult economic conditions in which he now lives were Baby Boomers and other generations that came before him.
Some Millennials might have shitty politics but we are not actually the people in power, for the most part. Give it a decade or two and someone’s gonna be pissed at us.
Well, I would think that there are Millenials that are in power and they are a bunch of turds. Kevin McCarthy, 65, not a Boomer, Greene, 74, not a Boomer, Bobert, 86, not a Boomer, Gaetz 82, not a Boomer, Ron DeSantis, 78, not a Boomer. These people are bigger more dangerous assholes than many Boomers who came before them. So now you tell me all the Boomers who are assholes. Big fucking deal. They. Are. All. Assholes. It doesn’t matter when they were born.
I had no control of what people in power did other than vote and I always have. Should I blame you and every other poor schlep who is a Millenial because those shits, rolled in bread crumbs, and griddle fried brown wiggled their way into power? No, I should certainly not, because it’s not your or your cohorts fault that some of you are assholes.
The millennial cohort in the US is usually defined as birth years early 80s to mid 90s. Most of the leaders you listed would be considered “X” (fka the MTV generation). DeSantis, for example, born in 76, gen X. Boebert and Gaetz would be Millennials (fka Gen Y).
