mono
6051
As someone firmly in Gen X, I’ve explained the distinction to my tween/teen kids MANY times.
Their reply: “Well, that’s not what it means anymore, BOOMER”
At that point you call them a Millennial.
Alstein
6053
Calling someone a boomer can be a huge insult, and unwarranted. You really shouldn’t use the term unless it’s 100% deserved or everyone knows you’re joking.
It’s called PRESCRIPTIVE LINGUISTICS, BOOMERS
It is NOT a huge insult, and the people who invented the term are long dead. It refers specifically to the large growth in births that coincided with the end of World War 2, and subsequent returning soldiers. Having it used as a pejorative is relatively recent.
If you’re a certain type of Gen Xer getting called a Boomer is a pretty big insult
Millennial’s don’t care if you call them that.
Matt_W
6060
Millennials are in their 30’s, not teens.
KevinC
6061
Boomer isn’t an insult, it’s just a categorization of a group of people that ruined the country, squandered everything they were given, and have deprived future generations of the opportunities they had!
My greater point is that if a teenager calls you a boomer and it hurts your feelings, calling them a millennial back isn’t going to make them stop and re-think their behavior or understanding of how the various generational naming schemes actually work.
I probably did use the term too loosely, and god knows there are plenty of boomers who are nothing like that.
But there is something going on as people age, their critical faculties or god knows what. I swear to God, these channels get into their heads and down the rabbit hole they go.
Rward
6064
What are you, a math genius?!
I have no idea what that is supposed to mean.
Rward
6066
Amongst all this"boomer trash talk”, your reply is what I agree with most.
Ah, gotcha. I guess the problem is I am definitely not a math genius. :)
“OK boomer,” when used seriously, is one of those hugely useful phrases, like “white knighting” or “virtue signaling” that immediately tells me I can write off the speaker as an irrelevant moron.
My favorite reply:
Honestly, I think what’s happening for a lot of these people is what we all went through in the early days of the Internet. It’s information overload. Learning how to separate fact from fiction from opinion back then was not easy for many, but because most of us who arrived on the Internet in the 90’s were already techy folks, we adapted quickly to a firehose of info.
For many people, this is too much to handle, especially low educated folks in the States and portions of States where these people tend to come from. Certainly there are city folks who are lost too, but really, part of the reason there is this alternate reality is because a lot of these people can’t separate fact from fiction well unless they see it happening in front of them. The Internet requires a little bit of that stuff that makes it hard for some people to be able to think in 3D space in videogames, as another parallel to what we do that’s easy that others just simply struggle with.
The hope for me is that as all these older folks who currently have the wool over their eyes age/die, the rest of us left behind will be better educated and able to handle the dynamics of a fast moving society where sometimes con men are appearing near daily in your life’s feed.
I think there’s a lot of truth to this @DaveLong. Generally, the same kinds of people who were always gullible about neighborhood rumors, and later about The National Enquirer type of crap have been easily tricked into accepting garbage that is “truthy.” Just like it is easy to pass off total fiction that just sounds right about a disliked neighbor, it is easier to pass off total fiction about demographic groups that people are predisposed to dislike or mistrust.
And I also think it is worse now, because the Walter Cronkite era TV news trained people to be children about the news media, just accept that what you are getting is curated and fair and true and everything you really need to know. But that era was an aberration, caused by a lack of competition.
The right has run hogwild with this recently, obviously, inventing an alternate reality out of whole cloth. But this has been building in recent years.
The thing that worries me the most, though, is that this does not seem to be limited to the oldest citizens. I mean, people my age would have a little bit of an excuse, getting so far into our adult lives under the Walter Cronkite news system, and unable to adjust to needing to use some critical thinking. My sense is that younger people are having at least as much trouble with this.
