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‘OK Boomer’ Marks the End of Friendly Generational Relations

nytimes.com

61–70 of 134 posts

Re: ‘OK Boomer’ Marks the End of Friendly Generational Relations

#61

Really? i thought i ended when everyone was talking about how millennials are ruining companies by not buying affordable products. Or saying millennials are poor because they like avocados. Or saying millennials are entitled for demanding a living wage.

> Really? i thought i ended when everyone was talking about how millennials are ruining companies by not buying affordable products.

I think it's important to differentiate between "media-driven narrative" and real-world relations, though that line is a bit blurry. It seems the former often creates the latter.

Right now I'm not sure that "Ok Boomer" is anything more than a meme.

Re: ‘OK Boomer’ Marks the End of Friendly Generational Relations

#62
post #38
post #15

This is silly. The only party here marking the end of "friendly generational relations" is the NY Times itself. Drawing lines through society is the cheapest and easiest way to look wise without making any meaningful comment.

Actually this phrase started around October 15th on TikTok. The phrase’s use in related videos grew rapidly and had not existed before. It’s real sentiment. The fault with this article is that it focuses on merchandise. Edit: here’s the first video I saw it trend in comments: http://vm.tiktok.com/553g7w/

I think the point is that this phrase doesn’t mark any sort of new sentiment. Millennials and later have been hating on boomers for many years at this point on reddit etc.

Re: ‘OK Boomer’ Marks the End of Friendly Generational Relations

#63
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mmm there's that word again, "given."

Can't tell what point you're making, but when my brother left his job at Google our grandmother asked what that was going to do to his pension. As if companies paying pensions was still a thing. These people grew up when a factory job could support a family of four, and companies hired people with no experience and then paid actual benefits. Boomers benefited from very generous circumstances. To suggest they earned t…

[deleted]

Re: ‘OK Boomer’ Marks the End of Friendly Generational Relations

#64
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually this phrase started around October 15th on TikTok. The phrase’s use in related videos grew rapidly and had not existed before. It’s real sentiment. The fault with this article is that it focuses on merchandise. Edit: here’s the first video I saw it trend in comments: http://vm.tiktok.com/553g7w/

> Actually this phrase started around October 15th on TikTok. I highly doubt this. I've seen this phrase for months on both Twitter and Discord. Searching one discord server I'm in yields several instances going back to April. It was just a meme in the beginning. Perhaps evolved from 4chan's "30 year old boomer"

I've seen similar sentiments about Boomers on the fediverse (Mastodon/Pleroma/etc.) for the past year. Maybe the specific phrase "OK, Boomer," might be recent, but the sentiment has been there for a bit .. and it's always been trolling, like any generational call out is (and has been .. since the 50s .. nothing has changed and you can always sell magazines, papers and books by blaming the youth .. or the elderly .. or however you want to draw a line to make a fake left-right divide).

Honestly this article screams of some fake viral TikTok marketing bullshit. Why are they everywhere now and stuff about this Chinese Snapchat/Vine clone making it everywhere? Are they secretly paying for this stuff? Can we stop voting up this spam? No one cares.

Re: ‘OK Boomer’ Marks the End of Friendly Generational Relations

#66

“Society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in.” ― Anonymous Greek Proverb

That's not a Greek proverb. It was written in 1951 by Elton Trueblood, a Quaker, in his book The Life We Prize : https://www.roger-pearse.com/weblog/2017/08/26/a-society-gro... The book is available to loan from the Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/lifeweprize00true

Somewhat unsurprising. If there's one religious group I'm okay with, it's the Quakers.

Re: ‘OK Boomer’ Marks the End of Friendly Generational Relations

#67

Generational names have always been created by authors to sell books. Adam "Ruins Everything" Conover did a talk at a marking conference where he pulled up old copies of Time magazine talking about the entitled baby boomers from decades ago; almost identical to the same articles about every other generation. Generational titles were NEVER used to lift anyone up. They were used to sell books, sell newspapers/magazines…

That doesn't mean it's not a meaningful distinction. There are objective differences in the ways older people and younger people vote and think. You might not like the exact way it's discussed, but there are objective material realities experienced by a person who grew up in the 60s vs a person growing up now, and these things shape their ideology and voting habits.

Re: ‘OK Boomer’ Marks the End of Friendly Generational Relations

#68

Generational names have always been created by authors to sell books. Adam "Ruins Everything" Conover did a talk at a marking conference where he pulled up old copies of Time magazine talking about the entitled baby boomers from decades ago; almost identical to the same articles about every other generation. Generational titles were NEVER used to lift anyone up. They were used to sell books, sell newspapers/magazines…

There’s a journalist with the same name who has written for Buzzfeed, so, maybe?

One of the articles is about gen z / millennials.

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/author/taylorlorenz

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/taylorlorenz/millennial...

Re: ‘OK Boomer’ Marks the End of Friendly Generational Relations

#69
> there’s not a lot that I can personally do to reduce the price of college

Thinking you need to get a college education is the real big Scam you can thank previous generations for.

It will be fun to watch more and more of them wake up and refuse two other big scams which are marriage and male gender role (women woke to this one decades ago).

Re: ‘OK Boomer’ Marks the End of Friendly Generational Relations

#70
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you really believe the article's premise that boomers don't believe in global warming? If so, is it all of them, or just some of them? Of course another purpose of this "culture war," is to take the blame off the politicians who had a chance actually make the regulations and laws and lay it on a generation of citizens. What has Generation Y and Z actually done to stop global warming? I don't see anything but talk.…

I think that a much larger percentage of Gen Z believe in global warming than boomers do. Of course, politicians are elected by people so if everyone believes in global warming and votes that way everything will work out. GenY and GenZ tend to vote for more pro-climate policies, many more of them protest for the government to do something. Many more of them on environmental conscience. The big thing you seem to be mi…

There actually really isn't a "large percentage" difference in generations on global warming: https://twitter.com/aedwardslevy/status/1191047875511357440
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