That’s bullshit - you’re literally defining that by someone’s age. That is the definition of ageism.
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I’m literally not. The probability of being something != absolute definition of being something. That’s why Swarbrick can justifiably respond to a chronological Gen Xer like Muller with “Ok, Boomer”, and why I (also a Gen Xer) could make the same comment about Ben Shapiro. It’s also why I doubt anyone will ever say “OK, Boomer” in response to anything you say.
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Wouldn’t it be more useful to lob insults/real arguments at the conservatives, neoliberals, libertarians, dominionists, the ultra-rich, the profits-at-any-cost businesses, et al., who are really to blame for the world’s ills, rather than at a cohort of people defined by their age? Might as well define a group by the absolute value of the cube root of their social security number.
I’m including any boomer who’s insulted a millennial (or Gen X or silent generation or whatever) here.
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Yes - you literally chose to define those characteristics by an age denominator.
Defining pedophilic behavior as gay because you find a higher association of same sex pedophilic behavior - still homophobic.
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I think I’m Gen WTF.
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Well, not all of them are campaigning against measures to combat climate change, not by a long shot, but this is pretty-much on point.
Having said that, I find “OK, boomer” to be infantile.
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[resisting urge to take bait… resistance failing]
Now that you’ve mentioned it, when I was as old as the Millennials and Zoomers are now, I’ve never felt the urge to insult the Silent Generation or Greatest Generation. Certainly individuals of those generations, but not the generations themselves. True, bootlickers and fascist apologists aren’t endemic to any specific generation, and even suggesting they might be muddies the waters significantly. Case in point: the “Boomer” in this story being solidly GenX. On the other hand, the Boomers are way more culturally and politically ubiquitous than other generations have been at a similar age. “OK Boomer” is problematic and inaccurate, but it didn’t just come out of nowhere.
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Yes, because the postwar economic anomaly existed in the context of a rough historical era: 1945-2001. If one grew up and spent much of adulthood during that period and had baseline skin and gender privilege, one is more likely to operate under the cultural assumption that its prosperity and associated consumerism and deregulation is the norm and that we can just go on living that way.
If one grows up gay, in contrast, there’s absolutely no political-economic cultural or other assumption one can point to that ever made it more probable (in actuality, not in benighted opinion) that one would be a paedophile.
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*citation needed
I’m not quite a boomer but I have certainly earned my very substantial cynicism. Nevertheless, you may be right about the correlation, but to simply then devolve this into some sort of “all old people/boomer” trope is ageist and lazy.
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You’re just doubling down on saying ageism is fine because you have these views of people that age.
And yet I didn’t devolve to that. Point out anywhere in my comment history when I said “all old people/boomers”. The correlation goes to probability, and in real life probability isn’t an all-or-nothing thing.
I have those views of people that age (and again, I’m talking about the privileged group that set the attitude that gets “Ok, Boomer” in reply) because that’s what they’re used to, from the point of view of political-economic culture. Younger people tend to question it more, precisely because they’re not used to it. If you want to call that “ageist”, I can live with it.
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Oh, sorry. I didn’t say you actually did it. But the “OK Boomer” tag does. Your arguments largely seem to be in defence of that infantilism.
And this is why “OK boomer” is so lazy. The tag takes that probability even further and becomes ageism.
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Again, I see “OK, Boomer” as critiquing an attitude and assumptions that happen to be grounded in a time of unusual prosperity that people born between roughly 1945 and 1965 grew up in and spent most of their adulthood in. It’s a shorthand, and judging by the butthurt response an effective one. But I do think it’s going to burn out from overuse pretty quickly.
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The group that “set the attitude” may deserve the response. But that’s not all old people.
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Again, point out anywhere where I said “all old people”.
If you’re comfortable with insisting people use an ageist descriptive for people from that group who themselves disagree with this - I’m not okay with that.
Find another non ageist description.
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Yeah, you’re right, but it has quickly become a lazy and blunt aegist insult. If you’re fine with that, we likely have nothing more to discuss.
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I’m open to suggestions, as long as they encapsulate the idea that people like Muller are working on the outmoded neoliberal-globalist assumptions of the post-war economic anomaly. That’s the core of the problem here, whatever the age of the person taking that attitude.
Otherwise, I don’t have much problem with “Ok, Boomer” accomplishing that, whether it’s aimed at Muller (an X-er), Biden (a Silent), or Clinton (a Boomer).
