Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/11/10/old-white-dudes.html
…
5 Likes
Baby Boomers will be dead soon so its okay to make fun of them.
5 Likes
I know this is NZ and not Oz, but isn’t a Boomer a kangaroo, in the Antipodes?
Old Man Kangaroo==Boomer
5 Likes
They’ll be around for a while yet, but dead or not, the damage is done.
2 Likes
What damage?
Thing is, every generation makes their own damages because people are people. Millennials, Gen X’ers, Gen Z’ers, whatever we call them/us* - we’ll all get old one day and will be confronted by our own angry, arrogant, know-it-all successors who blame us for everything that is wrong with the state of the world as it is at that time. That is inevitable.
*What is the catch-all term for people born in the '80s anyway? Am I technically a millennial?
11 Likes
You are not technically a Millennial, you are completely and utterly a Millennial, you are the person that the boomers have spent the last 10 years making fun of with all those millennial articles and such. All of that blame and making fun of millennial, that was all directed at you.
Hey, bright side, they completely forgot about GenX, the people born between 1965 and 1979. There weren’t enough of us to even worry about I guess.
Boomers are now at least 64 years old. They should be leaning back, letting GenX and Millenials take the reigns, and enjoy their retirement. Instead, they are campaigning against climate change because it might cost money to fix and they will be dead before it gets too bad.
20 Likes
Kangaroos? They’re just a bunch if Wallaby wannabes!
3 Likes
Technically a Gen-Xer like me but even I will say “OK Boomer.”
8 Likes
Millennial is supposed to mean people who were 20 or under at the turn of the century (2000) - so 1980-1999.
In some way - Boomers understand this more than GenX/Millenials do… you don’t think that teenagers can seriously ruin retail shopping right? That takes real economic power. The irony is if the damn Boomers would retire or just share some of the corporate profits then the younger gen wouldn’t have taken to cut throat bargain shopping (thus Amazon) and abandon the high markup retail chains.
(That’s ignoring the fact that most retail failure is due to venture capital vultures - but I forgive them for it, because most normal people are ignorant of that fact).
5 Likes
Yep; all the soccer moms driving SUVs aren’t boomers. I’m sure that they would throw themselves in front of a train to save their kids, but they won’t examine how their choices are making an impact on the long term survival of those same kids. Also; people will generally value their own comfort and convenience over the survival of anyone else.
However; the boomers had the economic power to make huge changes and if we had (yes, I’m a boomer), Greta Thunberg wouldn’t be so angry.
9 Likes
Few are - they’re grandmothers.
Soccer moms are GenX - some of whom are grandmothers- Milly’s - and even a few Z’s.
5 Likes
How dare you focussing on one person and her emotions who AFAIK constantly tries to remind everyone that rational policies and politics based on sound scientific results are needed instead of focussing on short-term feel good stuff?
Sorry, not sorry I couldn’t resist.
7 Likes
“OK Boomer” is a viral zinger deployed by millennials and Gen-Z’ers when they are concern-trolled and mocked by their elders, including (but not limited to) baby boomers (older Xers like Muller are clearly fair game).
Anyone who exhibits the Boomer mentality (which basically amounts to a willingness to sacrifice young people’s futures to preserve their own comforts) deserves this retort, regardless of age. That includes X-ers and even some Millenials (like the trustafarian dickhead who made the avocado toast comment).
Muller tweeted an incoherent vat of weaksauce that focused on the fact that he was too young to be a boomer.
I’m sure Muller was a conservative (or at least a privilege-blind white male twit) when he was a teenager, which means the Boomer mentality comes naturally to him despite his being an X-er chronologically. All being younger does is make it less probable one will express the Boomer attitude, not impossible.
10 Likes
So what? I’m sure I’m doing this Battle of Generations wrong, but I honestly can’t get myself worked up into even a semblance of righteous rage over this. (Besides, all those “millennial articles and such” and “blame and making fun of millennial” haven’t figured even a bit into my life in the past 10 years.) As I said - each generation has their fuckups. And there will be a day when proud Millennials will be confronted by angry young people (let’s say, “GenA-because-the-alphabet-was-over-so-we-started-over”) demanding justice for all the damage they’ve done and demanding that Millennials should just shut up and hand over the reins, that’s how the world goes and has always gone.
(I’m not defending anyone’s fuckups and damages btw, but I honestly can’t take all this “OK boomer” “lol boomer” thing seriously.)
2 Likes
Of course. If the data doesn’t fit - change the definition.
These boomers need to be redefined:
Andrew Anglin
Andrew Auernheimer aka Weev
Andy Nowicki aka the Nameless One
Augustus Invictus (born Austin Mitchell Gillespie)
Brad Griffin aka Hunter Wallace
Christopher Cantwell
Colin Liddell
Daniel Friberg
Daniel J. Kleve
Dillon Irizarry (aka Dillon Ulysses Hopper)
Greg Johnson
Jason Kessler
Jason Reza Jorjani
Johnny Ramondetta (aka Johnny Monoxide
Lana Lokteff
Matt Forney
Matthew Heimbach
Matthew Parrott
Mike Peinovich (aka Mike Enoch)
Nathan Damigo
Pax Dickinson
Richard Spencer
Tara McCarthy
Theodore Beale aka Vox Day
Tim “Treadstone” Gionet aka Baked Alaska
Brittany Pettibone
Colton Merwin
Corey Stewart
Gavin McInnes
Jack Posobiec
Kyle Chapman
Kyle Prescott
Lucian Wintrich
Mike Cernovich
Milo Yiannopoulos
2 Likes
I’ve always defined it as an attitude that one is more likely to have if one was born before 1965 (and obviously more likely to have if one is white, male, and/or cisgender). Unfortunately, that sub-group of selfish Boomers had the clout to set the political discourse for a long time, and a smaller but still ambitious group of younger people have decided it’s worth emulating.
Also, a lot of the names on that list more accurately deserve the retort “OK, fascist” and/or “OK, bigot”. They’ve moved beyond simple clueless and entitled selfishness to something far more toxic and dangerous in the short-term.
13 Likes
I understand- it means something you don’t like that you can add ageism to.
But - sorry - the entire leadership of the resurgent Nazi movement - not old.
They should still be called Nazis - not middle aged and younger people.
5 Likes
No. Again, it’s simply a matter of probability in my view. The younger one is, the more probable it is that one will have a well-earned cynicism about where neoliberal globalism and consumerism has led us. That doesn’t mean there aren’t exceptions, like Muller, who are operating on the old assumptions of the post-war economic anomaly. But if one never really knew a period of general prosperity, one is less likely to be operating on its assumptions.
As I indicated above, I agree. Fascists and racists aren’t anchored to any historic economic period and its assumptions.
4 Likes
