OK, Boomer

[ErrolTheDragon]

Explained for us in The Times today.
I'll put the link in second post for clickiness.

Enjoy.

That people who use 'OK Boomer' are coasting on Boomer activism.

Yes!

RedToothBrush Thanks for the link, I never knew I was a Xennial but it fits. I never felt I fitted the Gen X or Millennial description.
""both a healthy portion of Gen X grunge cynicism, and a dash of the unbridled optimism of Millennials", and discusses their relationship with both analog and digital technology."
I actually love the fact that for the whole of my school years there was no use of computers. We never had one at home because of a lack of money, and I completed my entire degree without ever using one and hand writing all my essays! I'm so glad I didn't grow up in the age of the internet, I really feel it's a blessing and that it meant I had more of a childhood.

@Qcng

There's satisfaction in that in the future, that same boomer, who thinks they're so right on right now, will be subject to similar conversation with someone on whatever platform has replaced Twitter by that point and are met with the same response. They'll wrongthink about something that happens and attempt to explain themselves and the next generation will dismiss and block them with nothing more than an "OK/Fuck off Gen Z"

I suppose history will record them as the abusive generation if they keep it up.
Considering that media has been publishing these divisive generation hit pieces since the first news sheet in 59 BC you would think the woke generation wouldn't fall for it. Zombie lies never die, but srsly, does every generation really hate their children, parents, and grandparents? Nope.

Okay Boomers

My favourite ok, boomer comment was to the admin of a group who'd asked male members not to harass female members.

How woke!

@QuantumEntanglement

Yikes.

I think it’s like the psychopath test. If you worry you are one you’re probably not. Likewise if you worry you are a boomer worthy of the insult than you’re probably not.

If you take offence and start throwing your teddies out the pram then... sorry but there’s a lot of animosity from the young who think your generation had it easy and have screwed the planet up and refuse to take responsibility and think the kids should sort it all out. I’m sure many of you were right on, but unfortunately the privileges that the baby boomer generation enjoyed like social security, job security, home ownership and the ability to start a family under 35 have not been maintained for the younger generation, who see you as greedy landlords cutting public services that you benefited from when you were young.

Obviously not all boomers though 😂

and please don’t @ me, I’m just a messenger and personally don’t agree with divide and conquer rubbish. I will actually try to do the best I can for my own children and their whole generation though, I promise you that.

To hell with the lot of them. I take people as I find them and there are good bad and indifferent of every age.

Me too. Anyone who says "ok boomer" or "snowflake millennial" or "Karen" has lost the debate as far as I'm concerned.

The article is quite funny and helps make the point regarding the ways in which society is polarising with one generation blaming another. To some extent it was ever thus as those of us around in the 60s will remember. Flower power...give peace a chance ...ban the bomb ...moving swiftly on to Thatcherism and there is no such thing as society followed by Blair's wars. Arhh!!! Wish there was a bit less point scoring at the moment though. Onwards and upwards...things can only get better ...I hope

The oldest millennials are 38 - can’t they start taking ownership of their own shit or are they constantly going to blame baby boomers for everything? (I’m generation x so apparently I’m invisible).

No thought process. No engagement.It's fascinating to see how this retort "OK boomer" has spread so quickly, and has become so prolific. It's another thought terminating cliche.

It's a perfect embodiment of a type of approach that has become more and more common. On many questions even if you broadly agree but point out some type of nuance, or try to see what the best arguments of the other viewpoint are and see what's behind them, people won't engage.

I find it very odd. I didn't go to great schools by any means, but we had debating, and model Parliament, and class discussions, where that sort of thing was encouraged. I've talked to parents now who complain when their kids are asked to defend a POV they object to in a school exercise.

I'm not sure what has happened but I would really like to know.

I really do not understand blaming the boomers for environmental destruction. I haven't noticed masses of millennials or Zs giving up their cheap airfares or the tech that depends on huge server farms. It's clearly not a generational thing.

@Goosefoot
It's a perfect embodiment of a type of approach that has become more and more common. On many questions even if you broadly agree but point out some type of nuance, or try to see what the best arguments of the other viewpoint are and see what's behind them, people won't engage.
I find it very odd. I didn't go to great schools by any means, but we had debating, and model Parliament, and class discussions, where that sort of thing was encouraged. I've talked to parents now who complain when their kids are asked to defend a POV they object to in a school exercise.

I'm not sure what has happened but I would really like to know.

TWITTER!!!

People laugh or look confused when I rant say this but I honestly believe it's the main culprit why we're seeing this type of decline. It marks the spike in divisive and defensive behaviour, especially in politics, and it completely defines the echo chamber mentality, perhaps even created it, in my opinion. Don't like what people are saying? Block. Don't agree with a different opinion to yours? Block. Was someone 'nasty' to you? Block. But meanwhile, do you agree with me? Then follow, and get followed back. It has given people (mainly young people, but plenty of stupid older ones too) a disproportionate skewered look at the world around them. Then the media complicity is also to blame and it is quite worrying, framing things like "public is outraged/offended/shocked by xxxx" and then using four or five tweets from people as 'proof' causing a frenzy of comments from both sides under articles, further entrenching 'them or us': If you're not with Labour, you must be Tory. If you don't believe TWAW, then you must be transphobic etc. I've lost count of the amount of comments on here along the lines of "I went to look at the tweet you linked to but they've blocked me on Twitter but I've never even spoken to them or looked at their Twitter before". It's dangerous. Blocking people you've never met or spoken to on the basis that they might agree with things you don't agree with? I'm sure Black Mirror did an episode on this and in the end people ended up being blocked and unable to see a single other person because they didn't share the same viewpoint. (I'm aware BM is not the greatest platform to base an argument upon...or, perhaps it's the greatest one?) I've been accused of hyperbole and hysteria and maybe it is, but it's not looking far off from what I think, imo.

and, BREATHE! (and sleep)

I agree that social media plays a huge part in this polarization. Facebook, too. Set up a group, don't like someone's opinion, remove them from the group. (Or ask the admin of the group to remove someone you don't agree with, usually they will)

The ludicrous thing about booting people out of, say, eg feminist groups it will always be done in that faux-righteous way

"We're an inclusive group, so we're going to exclude you".

"Or, we're too inclusive and tolerant to include or tolerate anyone in favour of Brexit, bye"

This trend on Twitter for "blocking and reporting" anyone with a different view point is really unhealthy.

I’m sure many of you were right on, but unfortunately the privileges that the baby boomer generation enjoyed like social security, job security, home ownership and the ability to start a family under 35 have not been maintained for the younger generation, who see you as greedy landlords cutting public services that you benefited from when you were young.

When Margaret Thatcher was elected in 1979 one million people in the UK were unemployed and the oldest of us Generation Xers was 14.

By the early 80s unemployment had risen to 3 million. Many of those people never found secure employment again.

I have to ask who exactly these unemployed people were is not Baby Boomers? They weren't us Generation X types as for the most part we were at school at the time.

Baby Boomers also had to deal with high inflation, the collapse of heavy industry, substandard housing and a whole host of other issues as any generation does. They had their issues as any generation does.

Two minutes hate.

Other expressions I hate on Twitter are 'that's not a good look' (another Americanism) and 'the wrong side of history', which fit in with 'OK Boomer' mentality. It's all about how you look to other people, how 'fashionable' your opinions are, rather than the content of what you're saying. 'Y'all' and the use of 'folk' (more Americanisms) I also find incredibly sinister, aping an oldy worldy (or maybe AAVE?) type of speech as though to make whatever political point is being made seem wholesome. Can we just get rid of Twitter? I honestly think the world would be a better place. It's partly the word limits, it leads to soundbite arguing and tribalism.

I really do not understand blaming the boomers for environmental destruction. I haven't noticed masses of millennials or Zs giving up their cheap airfares or the tech that depends on huge server farms. It's clearly not a generational thing.

Yes, the blaming them for the environment is an odd one.

I could understand being pissed off about brexit or failing to address the demographic issue, while baby boomers can't be blamed for being an unusually large generation it does present real problems which have been ignored, ostrich style, for decades and are now starting to hit home, but the environment? Surely younger generations fly more, own more cars, more mobile phones, have always had central heating, play x-boxes etc? That one always has me scratching my head.

Not only that. We of that generation were I believe the first young people who tried to go "back to nature" in a big way. Heck, I remember living in communes where we tried to grow our own food and live as simply as possible back in 1972. I lived on a farm where we had no running water, bathed in a stream, no electricity, no proper toilet. I moved out after a few months but my friends, a couple with a baby, lived with some other people for a couple of years there. One of the rules was no plastic. I remember my friend rejecting a hairbrush her mother had given her for the baby because it was synthetic. This was in 1973! The main "doctrine" we upheld was the complete rejection on materialism and erosion of nature.
I also remember in my teens reading and loving the books of Packard Vance: The Throwaway Society, The Waste Makers, etc. Those books were way before their time but even then they were valid and they were bestsellers! My generation cared. I was 16 when I read those books. Here's a description of The Waste Makers:
A pioneering work from the 1960s about how the rapid growth of disposable consumer goods degraded the environmental, financial and spiritual character of western society. It exposed the increasing commercialisation of American life, when people bought things they didn't need or want. It also highlighted the concept of planned obsolescence, the 'death date' built into products. This prescient study predicted the rise of consumer culture and features an introduction by bestselling author Bill McKibben.

So that was one of my bibles, and of my generation. No, we were no Gretas and we didn't go on school strikes or lambaste governments (who would have listened to us?) but we bloody well tried to change the world by living that way! No, it didn't work, but we certainly weren't responsible for the planet's destruction.

*sorry, Vance Packard not Packard Vance.
Another thing about the OK, Boomer article is that it consists entirely of their own words, not the journalists. That's the beauty of it. And why the satire escapes so many.

This trend on Twitter for "blocking and reporting" anyone with a different view point is really unhealthy.

I can’t remember the exact words but there is a passage near the beginning of 1984 about adults being weary around the younger generation because the party has indoctrinated them into watching elders and reporting them when they say things that are ‘wrong’.

I've had one on here already. I only thought fucking childish snowflake. I didn't actually say it😂😂😂

I've never mocked Millennials as a generation: I have mocked the woke, however, and the people who are so super offended and their hurty feelz and, often, their sheer ignorance of what went before. Never the whole generation.

My two kids are Millennials, after all, and I know the problems they have with jobs and affording rent or mortgage. Both GC. My son recently moved back with me for that very reason. But both my kids are mature and responsible. My son does ALL the housework and cooking please stay as long as you like, DS! and a lot of babysitting for his sister. She on the hand annoys me because she is not on FB and hardly ever uses her phone so is hard to reach. She has banned phones in her home (because of the baby) and upbraids me if I sneak a peak at MN when baby is around.

It's an attitude/behaviour problem rather than a generational one and the OK, Boomer "slur" is pathetic and does nothing more than cause a huge eye-roll.

This has just been used against Andy Lewis on Twitter (because he told someone their DEFINITIVE LIST OF PAPERS THAT SHOW SEX IS A SPECTRUM wasn't definitive and didn't show that sex is a spectrum) and I was like, what? He's not a boomer. He's Gen X like me. How dare they!

So basically it's "anyone older than me".

Both my DPs were born during the war (OK, my dad was born about 2 months before it started) and now I know what they are called.

We of that generation were I believe the first young people who tried to go "back to nature" in a big way.

No kidding, I suppose some of the Back To the Land movement seems naive now to people, but it was huge. I live in an area where many people came and tried to set up those kinds of communities, there is a surfeit of members of that generation here, many still trying to live that way in principle, even if they found communes didn't work as well as hoped.

One of my favourite books remains Small Is Beautiful, which comes out of that period and I think addresses some of the underlying structural problems that lead to overconsumption on a mass level. It's substantial in a way that little Greta haranguing members of the government is not.