"OK Boomer"

endacl · 11-11-2019 1:38am

Junkyard Tom wrote: »

I think this might be the dumbest thread I've ever read on baords.ie and that's quite a feat.

The messer in me wants to reply ‘ok boomer’.

Grown up me agrees with you completely though.

Conflicted...

mobileforest · 11-11-2019 6:59am

Poor_old_gill wrote: »

Every single one of your references is to the US - this is why so many people find this boomer sh*te to be complete nonsense as it means nothing in an Irish context and is just another step on the path for an extremely annoying element of my generation (millenials) who think that they are American, speak with an American accent, talk about candy & soda while having grown up in Tullamore or some other town around Ireland.

It's almost the manifestation of what people are looking to rebel against with the phrase - as it is being used in reaction to some being called snowflake or being called lazy - yet it's a petty and overly sensitive response to something using a lazy and illogical American reference.

The irony is off the scales.

It's like someone telling you that you're lazy and you deciding that staying in bed will show them.

If you read my other post you'll see I agree that the generations are less applicable to Ireland, including calling yourself a millennial.

mobileforest · 11-11-2019 7:05am

is_that_so wrote: »

Here's a set of definitions from Boomers to Gen Z and the new kids on on the block, the Alphas!

https://mccrindle.com.au/insights/blog/generation-next-meet-gen-z-alphas/

I would disagree with them having 14 yrs per generation. Lumping people into generation is a bit oversimplifying things but for grouping I prefer the Strauss–Howe generational theory. Their theory about generations being both a response to and creation of the current era is interesting along with their idea of time being cyclic. Mind you their theory still mainly applies to Americans.

mobileforest · 11-11-2019 7:28am

JupiterKid wrote: »

I would agree with nearly all of your post - especially the pre- and post Celtic Tiger generation thing ....but there WERE quite a few latchkey kids growing up in Ireland of the 1980s and 1990s. A good few friends of mine in the 1980s had mothers who went back to education and part or even full-time work when their youngest kids were in their early teens. It wasn’t anywhere near as widespread as the USA or Canada but it did exist and was growing....

My own mum died suddenly when I was 15 and as my older sisters had just moved abroad by that stage and my Dad worked 5 days a week up in Belfast - I lived on my own in the family home, 5 days a week, from the age of 16 until I moved out myself at 24.

Part of the Gen X generalisation is that they are first gen to grow up in single parent homes as divorce only became wide spread in America during their childhood. Does this mean every kid in the 70/80s grew up like this? No. Just like how not all Boomers grew up in a perfect home. The boomer hate in America I think is just millennial "kids" rebelling against their parents. Boomers were often raised by PTSD alcoholic GI gen parents and came of age during the 70s oil embargo crisis (google "stagflation", life wasn't all roses for them). To think they had it any easier than any other gen is just stupid. I think this misbelief comes from their tv shows that tended to show a perfect life (think shows like leave it to beaver and father knows best) with family realism only entering mainstream tv with Gen X generation shows like Married with children and the Simpsons (although both funny sitcoms, they did give a more accurate picture of the American family not seen since the Honeymooners). I think TV sadly informs way too many people of their past. Heck, millennials like to slag Gen X by referring to Friends as if that was what their gen lived like in the 90s (I would argue that Kevin Smith's films, "Clerks" especially, would give a more accurate depiction of the time).

I think things that shaped Irish generations would be the Celtic Tiger, its end, the Good Friday Peace (for NI and border regions especially), and the current rapid social changes like gay marriage and abortion. I would argue that Ireland's "boomers" (a gen raised during rapid economic growth and having a larger than average impact on changing society norms while still young) would be the 20-30-somethings today (who due to us influence call themselves millennials).

Mezzotint · 11-11-2019 7:48am

The USA has a huge issue with aging politicians, but it's not something I'm sure is repeated in NZ or here.

Median age of an NZ MP is 49 and the PM is 38.
US House of reps is 58 and the president is 73.

Ireland's political representatives aren't generally tending towards octogenarians either and the Taoiseach is 40 and most of the cabinet aren't particularly old either.

There is genuinely a big issue with the US babyboomer era still absolutely dominating politics in the US, but that issue doesn't seem to apply in NZ or here.

So I don't know, are anglophone countries just succumbing to US driven social media and adopting US talking points? If so we're doomed as the US is a basket case at the moment in terms of everyone jumping into narrow identity silos and yelling at each other. It seems to be leading the world in political toxicity at the moment.

Also the "boomers" in the US includes the generation that was probably most socially progressive of all and that profoundly changed things. They were the 60s revolution, the anti Vietnam war protestors, the actual hippies. So I'm not quite sure how the term became an insult.

Stick a label on it, go viral ... Yawn.

Yurt2 · 11-11-2019 8:02am

Pretty much every generation has a sour-puss element that decries the younger generation as they grow into old age. Nothing new, it's been happening centuries. It's probably a mass psychological reaction to watching their youth fade and seeing a younger cohort assert themselves. It's unpleasant, but I'm sure millenials will grow up in turn to do that to another generation - such is life.

tuxy · 11-11-2019 8:06am

Yurt! wrote: »

but I'm sure millenials will grow up in turn to do that to another generation - such is life.

With many of them being in their late 30s you can already see them do this.

Mezzotint · 11-11-2019 8:10am

tuxy wrote: »

With many of them being in their late 30s you can already see them do this.

They tend to be condemnatory and judgemental in both directions. It'll be a total 'mare if generation Z teams up with generation X and starts giving the millennials a hard time.

mobileforest · 11-11-2019 9:14am

Mezzotint wrote: »

The USA has a huge issue with aging politicians, but it's not something I'm sure is repeated in NZ or here.

Median age of an NZ MP is 49 and the PM is 38.
US House of reps is 58 and the president is 73.

Ireland's political representatives aren't generally tending towards octogenarians either and the Taoiseach is 40 and most of the cabinet aren't particularly old either.

There is genuinely a big issue with the US babyboomer era still absolutely dominating politics in the US, but that issue doesn't seem to apply in NZ or here.

So I don't know, are anglophone countries just succumbing to US driven social media and adopting US talking points? If so we're doomed as the US is a basket case at the moment in terms of everyone jumping into narrow identity silos and yelling at each other. It seems to be leading the world in political toxicity at the moment.

Also the "boomers" in the US includes the generation that was probably most socially progressive of all and that profoundly changed things. They were the 60s revolution, the anti Vietnam war protestors, the actual hippies. So I'm not quite sure how the term became an insult.

Stick a label on it, go viral ... Yawn.

The age thing in the USA is shocking. Canada just had a national election and Trudeau at 47 was the oldest of the three leading leader candidates. He is also old than Macron and Varadkar. Liz Warren, the youngest frontrunner for 2020 in the USA is 70 (and will be about 72 at the time the job will be ready for her).

Mezzotint · 11-11-2019 9:31am

mobileforest wrote: »

The age thing in the USA is shocking. Canada just had a national election and Trudeau at 47 was the oldest of the three leading leader candidates. He is also old than Macron and Varadkar. Liz Warren, the youngest frontrunner for 2020 in the USA is 70 (and will be about 72 at the time the job will be ready for her).

It's bizzarre and it's also relatively recent.
If you look back at the history of US presidents age upon taking office most were in their mid 50s to early 60s, with JFK and Obama being younger, both being in their 40s.

Trump is the second oldest after Ronald Reagan and will be probably the oldest Republican candidate ever to stand. He's going to be 74 -75.

All of the main players are in their 70s closer to 80 in the case of Pelosi.

Michael Bloomberg is throwing his hat in as potential Democratic Party candidate at 77.

It's like the US has entered an era of Monty Burns style oligarchy, on both sides the power is held by elderly billionaires and millionaires.

Meanwhile, the US is the only developed country where life expectancy has actually fallen and is now below OECD average. Almost sums up the inequalities. Elderly billionaires at the top, kicking down.

gozunda · 11-11-2019 10:36am

Yurt! wrote: »

Pretty much every generation has a sour-puss element that decries the older generation as they grow into old age themselves. Nothing new, it's been happening centuries. It's probably a mass psychological reaction to watching their own youth fade and seeing an older cohort having their **** together and doing well. It's unpleasant for them, but I'm sure these youngsters will grow up eventually

FYP

decky1 · 11-11-2019 10:56am

worked with an older guy many years ago , when we'd be talking about sex etc he say 'Jesus lads could we talk about something we can eat' I think that's what we need on this one.

JupiterKid · 11-11-2019 2:19pm

I agree with the others on here who think that tacking lazy American generalisations and labels onto an Irish context is just facile and lazy as Ireland lagged about two decades behind the rest of the West in terms of prosperity and social change.

For instance, Ireland was too poor and far too Church-dominated to have a 1960s social amd sexual revolution in the actual 1960s - what we had instead was a slow, punctuated change from the 1970s to the 90s than a major change in the 1990s. The 90s was the 60s Ireland never had.

Also the "boomer" generation didn't encapsulate the perfect suburban American dream - that would have thier parents 'generation., born the the 1920s and 30s. The boomers grew up with unprecedented prosperity, rebelled in the late 60s and 70s and faced settling down in the Reagan era with much less secure jobs and prospects. High rates of marriage breakup too.

If a music album encapsulates the so-called "boomers" - it's Rumours by Fleetwood Mac
For "Gen X" it might be Nevermind by Nirvana. For the supposed "Millenials" - I dunno...

As the song In The Living Years" by Mike and The Mechanics goes - "every generation blames the one before."

Mezzotint · 11-11-2019 3:38pm

Even the US generalisations are hugely reductive. If you grew up in one of the big urban areas, and were white, it was a fantastic era to be around in. Prosperity, stability and a seemingly very progressive society that was booming.

If you grew up in a more conservative part of the US, it was often also a poor, conservative and very religious backwater and if you weren't white, a lot of the 'boom years' didn't really arrive until the 80s and 90s. I mean despite all the progress, they were still stuck in what amounted to a very recently apartheid society until the mid 60s and it took a long time for that legacy to dissolve. It still hasn't and may even be rolling backwards in the last few years.

Also if you were gay it wasn't exactly a wonderful place to grow up, other than in a few narrow spots like San Francisco and that was relatively bubble-like and hidden.

Ireland's progress in some ways parallels Spain, without the dictatorship. The first cracks in our conservatism started to appear in the 60s but they didn't really open up until far more recently. The debates about condoms were in MY LIFETIME and I'm not even 40 yet and gay rights were well within my lifetime, as was divorce. Imagine: until 1995 there was no divorce AT ALL in Ireland and our more recent joining the 20th century in 2018 when it came to access to safe, legal abortion.

We've made huge progress, but let's not get too complacent about our wonderful new liberal Ireland. It's only very recent.

Different regions and countries all have had their own time lines.

I'm even finding that a lot of British Brexiteers are misremembering the 1950s, possibly through the lens of the 1970s US sitcom, Happy Days. The American 1950s were fantastically bright and cheery (if you were white, straight, and so on) but by comparison post war UK was only just over rationing. Yet, they seem to be imagining a past of pink cadillacs and giant coiffed hair.

topper75 · 11-11-2019 6:03pm

mobileforest wrote: »

I think things that shaped Irish generations would be the Celtic Tiger, its end, the Good Friday Peace (for NI and border regions especially), and the current rapid social changes like gay marriage and abortion.

These are moreso mere newspaper polemics content for most people. We need something based on real life as it is lived.

So I propose the Ann and Barry generation.
And before that we were the Sean Maura and Rusty generation.
I don't know who the current shower are reading.

gozunda · 14-11-2019 2:28am

sk8erboii wrote: »

Jesus all this drivel. Boomers need to die already

Jeez all the hyperbole. Woke youngsters really need to grow up. And truth - everyone will die some day...;)

Yurt2 · 14-11-2019 7:26am

Edit: Blah, why bother. Old man shakes fist at cloud.

Dante7 · 16-11-2019 2:46am

I now just reply with "Thanks". It's not the insult that they seem to think it is.

EmmetSpiceland · 16-11-2019 11:21am

Dante7 wrote: »

I now just reply with "Thanks". It's not the insult that they seem to think it is.

And are you met with this “perceived” insult regularly?

I can’t say I’ve heard it used, in a serious way, by anyone.

Lewis_Benson · 16-11-2019 11:41am

What?

"OK Boomer"

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