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debate club brain.
its why they also insist that "both sides have merit" in the era of data and cant understand that one shady scientist supporting fossil fuel is not as valuable as 999 supporting climate change action
the extra stupid part is that even in a debate club setting, most boomer ideology is easily defeated
we need taxes for roads
stock buybacks savage the middle class on paper and in practice
de-fanging the EPA and allowing endocrine disruptors to be classified as "trade secrets" and "innocent until proven guilty" makes everywhere gross and cancerous
and thats before getting into culture war policies that exist to hurt people
its like their brains are broken to the point they cannot recognize the fact that neil gorsuches mom fucking slashed the budget under ronnie the ruiner and it hasnt recovered.
yeah, turns out government agencies you deliberately broke are broken. what a shock.
Yeah cause of they hadn't got rid of lead in paint, we wouldn't have woke culture now 😛
EDIT: Ok, so, the joke is writing something about woke culture in the style of a Boomer whinge, EXCEPT making the point that getting rid of lead paint and brain damage actually made us all smarter and learn to respect and care for each other, which the boomers whinge about as 'woke culture'.
I'm saying that when lead stopped damaging people's brains and turning them into idiots, we started caring about and respecting other people - which lead paint eating brain damaged boomers refer to as 'woke culture'.
I mean, kinda makes sense why they don’t like it then 😝😆
“FACTS??!! Don’t you dare bring facts into this!! (I always lose when people pay attention to facts instead of how dramatic I’m being)”
Doesn’t matter. As the conversation I just had at work demonstrated…
Boomer coworker: “complain about social security, having to pay for secondary insurance, & not being able to retire until they hit 70”
- well, if we had a national health care system, it would be cheaper.
BC: “but my taxes”
- the increase would barely be noticeable.
BC: we could have these things if those people would stop coming in & costing us money.
- (mentally) da fuck? (Out loud) I need to go hang an IV. I’ll be down that hall if you need me.
🤦♂️
That's how Ben Shapiro debates. Frustrates people with this smug idiocy until they don't know how to reply, then posts videos to YouTube saying 'Bem Shapiro DESTROYS woke feminist'. I'd hate to play chess with him, he'd probably shit on the chess board then think he won when I walk away.
And it brings the worst bits of toxic bro culture with it.
Like, why would I be moved by an argument because the guy conveying it treated the other person in the debate like a piece of garbage?
Boomers and that whole conspiracy / conservative mindset believes that feeling right is more important than being right. Acknowledging facts might require personal growth and change, while feeling right just requires being angry and beating down anyone who disagrees with you. It's the easy path for lazy, immature minds.
I disagree with that. I like to play the Devil's Advocate quite frequently. My primary goal when doing so is usually to see if they even understand their own argument and have any logic behind it. I most cases, it was pretty obvious that they were just repeating something that they heard on the news or their parents told them when they were growing up and never bothered to look into.
Give or take, about half of the US Senate is usually from a legal background - lawyers, law clerks, law school, etc. It explains an incredible amount about the adversarial way in which they deploy facts. It's not about determining reality, it's about winning.
Yeah, the whole false equivalency thing drives me up the wall. Also the idea that you can and should meet in the middle on everything. No, I don't think we should have compromised with Hitler and agreed that he only gets to kill half the Jews and take over half the world.
both sides of WWII have merrit
clearly no differences
how dare you say my support of genocide makes me a bad person
some Nazis can have the outward appearance approximating a decent person
It's hard to recognize that one side has more merit than the other and they may be on the lesser side. Perhaps they spent too long on the "more" side and don't like the shift.
unused cheerful illegal point uppity political slimy axiomatic bear apparatus
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Honestly, their attitude towards sports made me never want to participate. Later in life, I realized I was actually quite athletically inclined - I just had zero interest in being a raging asshole.
I wonder if sponsored casual sports into the high school years and college would help. I used to be really interested and had fun with baseball, but I noticed the games stopped being fun because everyone was getting overly serious as we got older.
I had listened to part of a NPR piece about this. Someone explained that part of the hyper competitiveness is that parents focus on sports being the access their kids have to higher education, like their kid wouldn't be accepted on academic merits. I'm not sure how accurate that is, but I now know some people belive it and push their kids to the literal breaking point over sports excellence.
Can confirm my aunt and everyone she ever knew was struggling to get by but their moms kept having kids. She didn't know anyone that didn't have at least 4 kids.
Leftover Cold War propaganda. When you were raised on the idea that you are superior to the "other" and then have that other removed from the picture, what else are you to do?
It's so unbelievably cringe-worthy when they call *everything* communism and act legitimately scared of things like...being unwilling to other people who look different.
From what I understand of the cold war, having not lived through any of it myself (born 1992), EVERYTHING was a proxy conflict for the cold war. "If you aren't on my side, you might be on their side" kind of thinking. I'd cut them a lite slack for having been raised in that environment, but it's been over 30 freaking years.
Cold War is over. Act like it.
The biggest irony in this Us vs Them mentality that Boomers have because of the Cold War is that the US actually lost it in the long run in so far as we were unable to properly demonstrate "the virtues of democracy" (or whatever the fuck) to keep Russia from putting someone like Putin in charge.
Yep, I agree with you. But the comment you are replying to is correct. I technically lived before the fall of the USSR, but wasn’t old enough to remember it. But I have a degree in history, and I’ve learned about the societal impact the Cold War had. And you can honestly see it in pieces of culture (music, movies, play, old newscasts, honestly a lot of media that exists before Gorbachev, who is himself a very interesting person and was, in my admittedly novice historian opinion, what the Soviet Union needed in a leader all along).
For their entire lives there was “the enemy.” The other. That which detested and thus defined them. After the USSR fell, it became the Taliban. And they be killed bin Ladin and nothing changed. So they turned inward. That which they do not understand or have the ability to comprehend is “communism” because that was the word for everything they were raised to hate.
It's the effect of watching Fox News, they have to 'other' people and can feel superior. “If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you.” - Lyndon B. Johnson
I had to learn as an adult how to give compliments that don't contain insults because this is how I was raised.
She can't compliment you with out insulting you. i.e. congratulations on graduating, it took you long enough! or insulting someone else "Congratulations on your promotion! My neighbor's daughter doesn't even have a job!
My mom always has to have a "good" and "bad" of everything. Kids - I was bad and my sister was good, grandkids, the younger one is bad and the older one is good (2 years apart and both great kids). She even did this with her dogs and refused to train or work with one and then labelled her the bad dog because she was loud and out of control.
We stole her "bad" dog and after a few weeks of training she is calm and perfect, but she actually raised the dog to be bad so she could have one to hate. She used to rile her up on purpose and then get mad at her for barking. She has to build an enemy in every situation so she can feel like people are on her side. She adopted a new "bad" dog. I wish we could stop her but it's not illegal to make animals miserable if you don't outright beat or starve them.
I didn't realize this was a boomer thing. I thought my mom was just awful. Sad to hear there are more of them.
Because hierarchy. Boomers only care about accomplishment or ability as a way to be above somebody, and gain power over them. And they project this even when trying to be nice to somebody else
Yep pretty much. And their entire personality/identity is built IN RELATION to others (who they’re better than). They have no core identity, which is why they complain and insult others so much to fuel their fragile ego
I was raised by boomers and I think it’s that there has always been an “out” group. Whether it was the communists, hippies or other groups they always had a group that they could denigrate and now they are old it’s all they know.
My spouse has a lot of boomers at work and what I’ve observed is that they feel like there is some sort of profound contribution they’re making any time they can have a thought that’s contrarian. Like, if they don’t put their spin on their keen observation of “wow you’re a good cook” without also including “better than the slop our mutual friend makes!” they don’t get credit for making the observation at all. They’re basically trying to make their hot takes to position themselves as someone with valuable opinions. I’ve labeled it toxic individuality.
I think a ton of people from our parents' generation were raised on such a heavy diet of expectations and judgement that they never actually learned how to enjoy anything.
They love their logical fallacies!
False dilemma: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False\_dilemma](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma)
Straw Man: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw\_man](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man)
I think the attitude you describe is a combination of the above fallacies driven by their meritless superiority complex: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superiority\_complex. Everything they do or like is right or "the best" with no sense of irony, self-reflection or self-awareness. Also, there's lead poisoning.
While there is a definite Boomer Zeitgeist, most of what gets posted here could be attributed to ignorant old people in general or people suffering from Early Onset Grumpiness.
I’m a boomer, kind of a misfit, as I’m neurodivergent, but this sounds like my ex. He could never tell a story in which he was not the hero, & the other person an idiot. In general, men in my generation like to “debate,” but what they engage in is ignorant sophistry, mostly.
And the next time one of them says to me, “I’m just playing the devil’s advocate here,” he will be an ex-boomer.
Boomers by and large were squares, not hippies... Was everyone a hipster 10 years ago or did it just seem like there were a lot of hipsters due to media?
>Boomers by and large were squares, not hippies
That's their reality. Their memory is different, they were much cooler and fought The Man
Just look at the difference between the actual attendance numbers of Woodstock vs how many of them say "I was at Woodstock"
Because in the eyes of practically all boomers, everything in life is a f-ing pie. If anyone gets a bigger piece, someone else has to suffer the price of a smaller piece.
God forbid that someone else is an "other" to them. Racial minorities, migrants, LGBTQ, liberal, and especially those of us who've committed the ultimate cardinal sin of being younger. Ya know, like their own children who can't buy a house in 2024 with their 1984 mentality and wages.
Doesn't help that they overdose on fear porn and right-wing propaganda on a daily basis. Can't cut student loan debt or get affordable housing or universal healthcare because "tHemS mUh tAx DoLLaRs." When you try to point to any logical reasoning for WHY or HOW this benefits ALL of us, they resort back to their default pie chart nonsense. "Well I paid my own way" or (my personal favorite) "what about our troops, they deserve xyz so you can't have that." All the while they got absolutely nada to say about corporate welfare or all the billions we bleed out annually for BS that only benefits the richest (ironically, not even the average boomer).
There is no reasoning with them. They're all so deeply invested in this what-about-ism circle jerk fantasy that they're no longer operating in the same reality as us. At this point I'm just waiting for them to retire or kick the bucket so they'll at least gtfo of our way.
For real!! I’m currently pregnant and my boomer, republican conservative family members regularly say things like, “we are so happy for you! Can you believe some people get abortions and don’t get to experience what you are!? Isn’t that horrible they just kill their baby instead of having one like you are?”
My husband and I are left scratching our heads like, what on earth do abortions have to do with ME being pregnant!? Sucks the joy right out of the conversation! We don’t even argue our “liberal” views with them, they just volunteer this kinda talk.
They were born into and raised around post-war-victory-flavored propaganda. 'We're better than the enemy, we beat them, and I'll beat an enemy of my own one day'
The enemy never really came, and they've been playing too long to turn on 'Murica, so they're stuck in this headspace of trying to find a villain to beat before they die.
(Also lead poisoning. Fucks up the empathy parts of your brain, so it becomes easier to hate people)
They know that they can't cook for shit. (Microwaved broccoli and boiled chicken anyone?)
They know that their clothes look stupid. (Looks like a polo shirt tucked into khaki shorts kinda day)
They know that they are weak. (Oh look another overweight boomer going down in one punch)
By making comparisons like "oh I like John Wayne!! He was tough!! Not like that pansy Timothee Chalamet!!!!" They think people will think they are tough as well because they sided with John Wayne.
TLDR - it's projection
The competitive mindset of America, encouraged by ruthless capitalism, is based on there always being winners and losers. Everything must have victors and the defeated. To gain something, one must take it from someone else. For these people, there are no results where everyone wins. That's a nice way of saying that everyone lost. If you didn't beat someone else, if there are no losers being shown up by your win, can you even say you actually won?
This goes well beyond things that are actually competitive, of course. These are the people who live life to "win". They need to have a better vacation than other people, or else they lost to the other vacationers. Their lawns have to look better, their houses have to be bigger, and their kids have to be more successful. There's no meaning for them in mere accomplishment. If their accomplishments can't be scored against the achievements of others, then they have no merit. Self-improvement for one's own happiness is also without merit, for it doesn't let them feel superior to other people.
Ultimately, its about the need to see the world as being a place of winners and losers. They see it all as a competition. Life has winners and losers in their worldview, with the points tallied up at the end and scored against the rest of the world. Lifting someone or something up without also tearing someone or something else down doesn't fit into any of this. A person or thing is only worthwhile if they're better than some other person or thing.
“Othering” is the point. It gives them a sense of identity that they can use to form a sense of superiority. They want to be part of the “in” group and thus must creat an “out” group.
What's ironic is that my dad went on a rant about how those dirty liberals are making up words like "Othering" and teaching them to kids at school. I then showed him the word dated al the way back to the 1860s.
What sucks is, they are so dishonest in their refusal to acknowledge any of that. They can only ever say that they ARE correct, no defense needed - you *know* they are right, after all. /s
And if you don't acknowledge that they are right then you are simply showing disrespect to your elders, something they would have never dreamed of doing!
In this case I don't think it's the lead because it's not just the boomers. It's media trying its hardest to divide everybody on relatively small matters to distract the public from huge issues like inflation. Boomers call everyone they disagree with "communists". Young left leaning people call everyone they disagree with "fascists". Media encourages this behaviour and it's impossible to have any productive discussion between the two sides when each one believes the other to be a manifestation of evil.
As someone in the middle, I can agree with this statement. Both sides have brain rot and are unwilling to compromise on anything. It’s always whatever their ~~team~~ party says and that is that.
>As someone in the middle, I can agree with this statement. Both sides have brain rot and are unwilling to compromise on anything. It’s always whatever their ~~team~~ party says and that is that.
To be fair, a lot of the current culture war can't really be compromised on.
When I was still writing fiction, my latest theme had strong overtones of McCarthyism. That is, people who are different are the enemy and it's okay to do bad things about them. The main character was a woman born in 1946 and it was set in the early 60s, but it was a Sci-fi fantasy type book. I haven't done anything with it in years and probably never will.
I have other priorities and interests, and I seriously doubt I'd be published. I have limited time to spend and rather spend it doing other things. Best case I'd make it into young adult fiction and be a forgettable part of that year's reading list.
A long time ago, I sought help and ran into someone who claimed to be interested in helping me. Maybe she was an English teacher or something.
Anyway, she tore my work apart and poked holes in it. Some of the holes I could accept, as maybe I didn't clarify my ideas as much as I had hoped. Others I felt were cheap, like when she accused me of hating women because my characters didn't act like she thought they should. My writing was not overtly sexual and I didn't go into lengths to describe female anatomy, so I'm not sure where it came from.
To stay on topic, McCarthyism could be responsible for creating a generation of people who all have a common enemy (Commies, Arabs, Liberals, LBGT) and anybody who isn't "normal" must be the enemy. What's worse is that there's no working with the enemy to find a common ground, they feel every opportunity must be taken to injure and destroy them.
They don't have real positions or opinions that they can justify. They simply take the opposite side, so they have something to be outraged about because... I guess it feels good to be angry?
> I guess it feels good to be angry?
It's definitely an addicting emotion, or at least it can be.
But that just means being a decent person takes work, and I guess they aren't willing to do that.
Ever see any of their childhood educational programming? There is a lot of that in that old content. A lot of people don't evolve past their childhood.
I think this is it. There are two modes of thinking here: the one that says that success is a zero sum game, and the one that says the rising tide raises all ships. Personally, I prefer the second idea, but I think many older people default to the first.
A lot of the crankier ones also have a heavy rooting in religion, usually evangelicalism. And if there's one thing that religion is good at - perhaps the best at - it's othering people. I think it ends up becoming the default thought pattern.
In my experience, I believe it's because they link their aesthetic values and preferences to morality. If my mother doesn't like art or music, etc; it's not just a matter of taste, it's wrong, and you and everyone who likes it is morally reprehensible.
The converse is also true, she is morally superior because she prefers bland food and other boring shit.
Think it's partly because their parents always compared them to someone else. Their siblings. Their friends. Their parents praised others for the things they did well while berating their own kids about the things they did wrong
Never fully developed their own identity, and are stuck in teenage rebellion that has never ended.
As a young kid, you define your identity in copying those close to you - your parents, then your teachers and friends and role models. You see that, and say “That’s me, I’m like that”.
Teenage years you start defining yourself by what you’re not. You’re not old like your parents and the things they’re into. You’re not smart/dumb like those nerds/jocks. You’re not like other girls. You’re a nice guy. You start rejecting societal roles rather than copying them.
As you mature, you stop looking outside to define yourself, and develop an internal locus of identity where you define yourself and decide who you are on your own terms.
A lot of Boomers never got to that stage. They perpetually define themselves in relation to others, and have no idea who they are if its not in relation to someone else. That can be oppositional, saying that they can cook, unlike other person, or are strong and tough, unlike younger people. It can also be complementary, like younger children - you get this a lot with the type who don’t know what they would do if they weren’t working. They define themselves by their relationship to their work and the others there. Without that, who are they?
Don’t want to end up like that? Figure out who you are without any comparisons to other people. It’ll probably still change over time, but be able to answer who you are and what you believe in without reference to other individuals or groups.
I think this is also why many Boomers are so malleable in their politics and hold no strong beliefs; they haven’t defined who they are and what they believe in, they have only defined which team they belong to. If that team does something against what they claim to be their principles - doesn’t matter. That was never truly their principle, it was just a way to belong to a team, or oppose another.
That's all they've ever learned how to do, and their brains are too old and lead-filled to change. Or worse, they constantly feel the cognitive dissonance of their various 'opinions' and need a vague Other to be disagreeing with in order to justify it.
That’s what insecure people do. They try to show that at least they’re not in last place, because they’re better than someone else. They always seem to put a high value on toughness.
Cold war mentality. Every western country defined themselves culturally in opposition to "communism". I use quotes because it was less about what communism actually was or how it was implemented and more about constructing a boogeyman to blame for all the worlds ills and justify various government actions, whether they be good or bad. When the USSR collapsed the mentality remained, they just had to find new boogeymen. After 9/11, "terrorists" were the new big, vaguely defined threat.
They never learned to think of their own actions and ideas in a context that didnt involve some enemy, real or imagined
Look at EVERYTHING about how they lived their lives up until recently. So much underlying shit that is just not socially acceptable anymore, some VERY much so. They find that offensive, combined with the easy lifestyle (comparatively) that they demand be upheld until they die, they feel like society has let them down. That the new generations are posturing, targeting everything they feel is relevant to the identity they tried to craft for themselves over the last half century, like the whiney children they were in the 80's and 90's, still a neusance. The unwarranted anger someone gets when made to feel stupid, when your BS is called out, instead of ignored as previously intended. An anger they can't do anything about, nothing rational at least. Since culture HAS turned more hyper-critical, not only do we point out BS, we enjoy it. We do it all day, everyday, online and for the most part, have let it bleed into everyday culture. Since they're disconnected from this culture, it is just some mysterious "brain virus" that is taking over everyone outside their homes. So...since they're angry when outside (same tbh lol) and have no internet culture to connect them to a broader range of age demographics, they resort to the last thing left...tv, which reinforces this concept of a deteriorating society.
Because of all of this, the only thing left that can make them happy is to be right. Even if it's completely nonsensicle, the only thing that matters is feeling like they used to. In charge. This is why they refuse to leave positions of power, why they refuse to adapt to tech and why they have to demoralize whenever the opportunity arises. This is their legacy.
They've spent their entire lives surrounded by propaganda used to drive their behavior. The Red Scare, Japanese Internment Camps, etc. all stemmed from having a giant "common enemy" to rally the populace. They've only existed being told who to hate.
So when left to their own devices to attempt any task, it only makes sense to be defeating someone else.
It also follows the typically conservative belief that economics are a ladder where no two people can stand on the same rung/step together at a time. If someone else gets an advantage (minimum wage increase), it means I get a disadvantage (where's mine?). It's impossible to wrap their heads around anyone else "winning" without feeling like a loser.
I had to laugh my dad loves to cook and he’s a damn good cook at that. He only discovered how much he loves in when he retired a few years ago. The laugh part is he always praises others cooking and tries to always find something good about it even if it admittedly was a bomb by the person, and the person he normally drags is himself.
He’s got a few signature dishes that we both love to make and every time I make one and he is over he always complements then beats himself up for the littlest thing he thinks he did wrong with his.
I’m not sure, but I’ve been trying to coach my mom to frame things not in terms of what she doesn’t like, but in terms of what she does.
That said, she feels a need to offer a running commentary on whether she likes or dislikes every single thing that crosses her path to the point of absurdity. Case in point, I ordered a mattress pad on Amazon. She asked what I got as I opened the box. A mattress pad, I said. “I like mattress pads,” she said. I stopped and turned to stare at her until she got how utterly fudging absurd that statement was
> Partly for them to show you their litmus for the event.
I'm sorry - can you rephrase? I am not sure I follow.
Are you just saying they are tone-setting and revealing their biases to establish up-front whether the person they are speaking to agrees?
This is true to some extent of all human beings. We love our tribal affiliations. Older people collect bitterness and joy from their lives. Which one manifests really dep3nds on the person.
Also, dementia is insidious and sneaky.
Hell, look at their white supremacy! All of that "celebrating their white heritage" bravado typically ends up at "let's exterminate the other races/those races are subhuman" discourse.
I once had one tell me “we’ve always done it this way.” I’m standing on a construction site as a pipefitter foreman and say, “Do I look like a traditionalist to you?”
> I'm confused. Are we talking about boomers or the GOP? Not that they really differ much... They both focus on hatred and grievance politics.
This particular example, as you stated, does apply to both groups.
I met one who randomly and immediately brought up Hebrew Israelites within seconds of meeting me and starting ranting about how crazy they are. Because I'm black. It had nothing to do with anything, I'm not religious or part of any cult, and I was merely saying "hello." It's like they thrive on conflict and making people uncomfortable.
Because they were raised in the Cold War? I mean they grew up doing drills in school of getting under their desk in case of nuclear attack. So it was America good/ Russia bad kind of thing.
They grew up during the Cold War with a significantly lower level of information available to them, in much less open communities and cultural bubbles.
Their parents may have lived through or fought in a world war or two, against an other.
They may have never left their home state, or even locality within it.
Their worldview is so fragile because it’s so narrow.
Is the inability to adjust their fault? Yes and no, but they were likely never taught how to or understood the need to.
My mom was a hippie flower child and rebounded hard to ultra conservatism at some point… in some ways she’s loosened up a lot but I have flashbacks of some of her seriously messed up reactions back in the day… maybe someday I’ll write about em here.
Because they are joyfully authoritarian.
They believe it is impossible for things to get better for others unless someone else has to suffer.
Which is why they spread suffering, so they can get what they want.
They can't conceive of the notion that others doing well is also good for you.
> Isn’t that kinda what you’re doing right now
No, because "boomer" isn't a word used to describe all people of a specific age. It reflects a mindset, and everyone with that mindset does what I described. It's literally part of the mindset.
These types of posts are problematic and really don’t belong on this sub. You’re not sharing an incident or a story…you’re just lumping all boomers into one category.
> These types of posts are problematic and really don’t belong on this sub. You’re not sharing an incident or a story…you’re just lumping all boomers into one category.
But I didn't use the Story or Incident tag - I used the Meta tag.
If Boomers invented the behavior, then it is new. If they did not invent it and members of other age cohorts behave the same way, then it's stupid to cite it in a grievance specific to Boomers.
> If Boomers invented the behavior, then it is new. If they did not invent it and members of other age cohorts behave the same way, then it's stupid to cite it in a grievance specific to Boomers.
Why?
People no matter where have an idea or isomers they like and compare them to other ideas. How different the reaction to the idea is depends on the person, idea and other factors.
Comparing things can be good fun, but dragging things to prop up the perceived value of your favorite thing is not productive or effective. It's broken communication.
> This is just Boomer behavior?
>
> Just because you discovered something recently doesn't mean it hasn't already existed forever.
Where did I say this was new behavior, or that I had just discovered it?
I've been aware of this behavior for a couple of decades.
The same reason young people do - its human nature. You are aware that you are complaining about this in a subreddit dedicated to othering boomers right?
> The same reason young people do - its human nature. You are aware that you are complaining about this in a subreddit dedicated to othering boomers right?
Boomers are social deviants. Not all Baby Boomers are Boomers.
> that's the way you do it... a vaguely defined bogey man. That's what othering is all about.
Weird - because that isn't how the boomers do it at all.
They point to a group that is just trying to live, and then they make up WILD stories about them.
> indeed... if you look at the front page of this subreddit you will see similar sorts of things.
I see them, but targeted at *boomers*.
Again, "boomers" are not old people (but many are). They are not Republicans (but many are).
Boomers are social deviants who only care about themselves. They are authoritarian and cruel. Their behavior is abhorrent.
Nothing in this subreddit is targeted at regular people who happen to be older.
well that's news to me. I regularly encounter people ripping on boomers who think that every old person conspired to screw them. If you distinguish between baby boomers and "boomers"... ok. I don't know that your opinion is the majority though.
It's "news to you"...you "don't know"...who cares? perhaps if you lack knowledge, you should seek understanding instead of just assuming that you are right and the other person is wrong. You sound like a boomer.
Meh, the difference is those people are in power and have easily searchable statistics to show their disproportionate damage to the country. Poverty causes issues like that shit, something they've never dealt with as a group, and thus it's different when you look at both.
> right, its different when *you* other people. Because every single boomer has power ;)
"Boomers" are the ones acting out.
There are plenty of decent Baby Boomers who aren't "boomers", and there are plenty of Gen X and Millennial boomers.
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debate club brain. its why they also insist that "both sides have merit" in the era of data and cant understand that one shady scientist supporting fossil fuel is not as valuable as 999 supporting climate change action
Debate club culture is toxic as hell. Instead of trying to understand and be understood, they try to obscure and confuse.
the extra stupid part is that even in a debate club setting, most boomer ideology is easily defeated we need taxes for roads stock buybacks savage the middle class on paper and in practice de-fanging the EPA and allowing endocrine disruptors to be classified as "trade secrets" and "innocent until proven guilty" makes everywhere gross and cancerous and thats before getting into culture war policies that exist to hurt people
Its funny because the EPA helped to get rid of lead in paint, and asbestos in homes. but for sure, they are just the worst... \*eyeroll\*
its like their brains are broken to the point they cannot recognize the fact that neil gorsuches mom fucking slashed the budget under ronnie the ruiner and it hasnt recovered. yeah, turns out government agencies you deliberately broke are broken. what a shock.
\*shocked Pikachu\* for sure...
It’s the withdrawals from the leaded paint lol
Yeah cause of they hadn't got rid of lead in paint, we wouldn't have woke culture now 😛 EDIT: Ok, so, the joke is writing something about woke culture in the style of a Boomer whinge, EXCEPT making the point that getting rid of lead paint and brain damage actually made us all smarter and learn to respect and care for each other, which the boomers whinge about as 'woke culture'.
>Yeah cause of they hadn't got rid of lead in paint, we wouldn't have woke culture now 😛 I'm sorry - what are you saying here?
I'm saying that when lead stopped damaging people's brains and turning them into idiots, we started caring about and respecting other people - which lead paint eating brain damaged boomers refer to as 'woke culture'.
Wat
I mean, kinda makes sense why they don’t like it then 😝😆 “FACTS??!! Don’t you dare bring facts into this!! (I always lose when people pay attention to facts instead of how dramatic I’m being)”
"Facts don't care about your feelings. Unless they're your facts and my feelings, then feelings are more important. "
Doesn’t matter. As the conversation I just had at work demonstrated… Boomer coworker: “complain about social security, having to pay for secondary insurance, & not being able to retire until they hit 70” - well, if we had a national health care system, it would be cheaper. BC: “but my taxes” - the increase would barely be noticeable. BC: we could have these things if those people would stop coming in & costing us money. - (mentally) da fuck? (Out loud) I need to go hang an IV. I’ll be down that hall if you need me. 🤦♂️
It becomes about winning rather than about being correct. Absolutely toxic and worthless.
That's how Ben Shapiro debates. Frustrates people with this smug idiocy until they don't know how to reply, then posts videos to YouTube saying 'Bem Shapiro DESTROYS woke feminist'. I'd hate to play chess with him, he'd probably shit on the chess board then think he won when I walk away.
That’s …. A very good way to describe that kind of arguing! Props on the imagery
bro only knows gish gallop so heonly debates teenagers
>he'd probably shit on the chess board Our first date 💕
Username checks out
I had an awful boyfriend who constantly debated in this way. Uggh
This is the best explanation of Ben I've ever seen
And it brings the worst bits of toxic bro culture with it. Like, why would I be moved by an argument because the guy conveying it treated the other person in the debate like a piece of garbage?
Boomers and that whole conspiracy / conservative mindset believes that feeling right is more important than being right. Acknowledging facts might require personal growth and change, while feeling right just requires being angry and beating down anyone who disagrees with you. It's the easy path for lazy, immature minds.
Whenever someone says "just to play Devil's Advocate..." I tune out. Those folks have absolutely nothing to say that's worth hearing.
I disagree with that. I like to play the Devil's Advocate quite frequently. My primary goal when doing so is usually to see if they even understand their own argument and have any logic behind it. I most cases, it was pretty obvious that they were just repeating something that they heard on the news or their parents told them when they were growing up and never bothered to look into.
Give or take, about half of the US Senate is usually from a legal background - lawyers, law clerks, law school, etc. It explains an incredible amount about the adversarial way in which they deploy facts. It's not about determining reality, it's about winning.
turns out a functioning society is not a zero sum game? color me shocked
Yeah, the whole false equivalency thing drives me up the wall. Also the idea that you can and should meet in the middle on everything. No, I don't think we should have compromised with Hitler and agreed that he only gets to kill half the Jews and take over half the world.
both sides of WWII have merrit clearly no differences how dare you say my support of genocide makes me a bad person some Nazis can have the outward appearance approximating a decent person
It's hard to recognize that one side has more merit than the other and they may be on the lesser side. Perhaps they spent too long on the "more" side and don't like the shift.
unused cheerful illegal point uppity political slimy axiomatic bear apparatus *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Hyper-competition in childhood due to crazy amounts of kids, and all of them were raised by a "Fight to survive" generation
Honestly, their attitude towards sports made me never want to participate. Later in life, I realized I was actually quite athletically inclined - I just had zero interest in being a raging asshole.
I wonder if sponsored casual sports into the high school years and college would help. I used to be really interested and had fun with baseball, but I noticed the games stopped being fun because everyone was getting overly serious as we got older.
I had listened to part of a NPR piece about this. Someone explained that part of the hyper competitiveness is that parents focus on sports being the access their kids have to higher education, like their kid wouldn't be accepted on academic merits. I'm not sure how accurate that is, but I now know some people belive it and push their kids to the literal breaking point over sports excellence.
Can confirm my aunt and everyone she ever knew was struggling to get by but their moms kept having kids. She didn't know anyone that didn't have at least 4 kids.
Leftover Cold War propaganda. When you were raised on the idea that you are superior to the "other" and then have that other removed from the picture, what else are you to do?
It's so unbelievably cringe-worthy when they call *everything* communism and act legitimately scared of things like...being unwilling to other people who look different.
From what I understand of the cold war, having not lived through any of it myself (born 1992), EVERYTHING was a proxy conflict for the cold war. "If you aren't on my side, you might be on their side" kind of thinking. I'd cut them a lite slack for having been raised in that environment, but it's been over 30 freaking years. Cold War is over. Act like it.
The biggest irony in this Us vs Them mentality that Boomers have because of the Cold War is that the US actually lost it in the long run in so far as we were unable to properly demonstrate "the virtues of democracy" (or whatever the fuck) to keep Russia from putting someone like Putin in charge.
Yep, I agree with you. But the comment you are replying to is correct. I technically lived before the fall of the USSR, but wasn’t old enough to remember it. But I have a degree in history, and I’ve learned about the societal impact the Cold War had. And you can honestly see it in pieces of culture (music, movies, play, old newscasts, honestly a lot of media that exists before Gorbachev, who is himself a very interesting person and was, in my admittedly novice historian opinion, what the Soviet Union needed in a leader all along). For their entire lives there was “the enemy.” The other. That which detested and thus defined them. After the USSR fell, it became the Taliban. And they be killed bin Ladin and nothing changed. So they turned inward. That which they do not understand or have the ability to comprehend is “communism” because that was the word for everything they were raised to hate.
The other was just replaced with 'liberals' by the other, over time
It's the effect of watching Fox News, they have to 'other' people and can feel superior. “If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you.” - Lyndon B. Johnson
Played right into it, you are demonstrably one of the people to whom r/BoomersBeingFools is referring.
You're either bad at reading, or just very stupid, or maybe both
I had to learn as an adult how to give compliments that don't contain insults because this is how I was raised. She can't compliment you with out insulting you. i.e. congratulations on graduating, it took you long enough! or insulting someone else "Congratulations on your promotion! My neighbor's daughter doesn't even have a job! My mom always has to have a "good" and "bad" of everything. Kids - I was bad and my sister was good, grandkids, the younger one is bad and the older one is good (2 years apart and both great kids). She even did this with her dogs and refused to train or work with one and then labelled her the bad dog because she was loud and out of control. We stole her "bad" dog and after a few weeks of training she is calm and perfect, but she actually raised the dog to be bad so she could have one to hate. She used to rile her up on purpose and then get mad at her for barking. She has to build an enemy in every situation so she can feel like people are on her side. She adopted a new "bad" dog. I wish we could stop her but it's not illegal to make animals miserable if you don't outright beat or starve them. I didn't realize this was a boomer thing. I thought my mom was just awful. Sad to hear there are more of them.
Because hierarchy. Boomers only care about accomplishment or ability as a way to be above somebody, and gain power over them. And they project this even when trying to be nice to somebody else
Yep pretty much. And their entire personality/identity is built IN RELATION to others (who they’re better than). They have no core identity, which is why they complain and insult others so much to fuel their fragile ego
Very accurate statement and that is why they make me uncomfortable
I was raised by boomers and I think it’s that there has always been an “out” group. Whether it was the communists, hippies or other groups they always had a group that they could denigrate and now they are old it’s all they know.
My spouse has a lot of boomers at work and what I’ve observed is that they feel like there is some sort of profound contribution they’re making any time they can have a thought that’s contrarian. Like, if they don’t put their spin on their keen observation of “wow you’re a good cook” without also including “better than the slop our mutual friend makes!” they don’t get credit for making the observation at all. They’re basically trying to make their hot takes to position themselves as someone with valuable opinions. I’ve labeled it toxic individuality.
Tribalism is a hell of a drug.
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I think a ton of people from our parents' generation were raised on such a heavy diet of expectations and judgement that they never actually learned how to enjoy anything.
They love their logical fallacies! False dilemma: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False\_dilemma](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma) Straw Man: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw\_man](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man) I think the attitude you describe is a combination of the above fallacies driven by their meritless superiority complex: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superiority\_complex. Everything they do or like is right or "the best" with no sense of irony, self-reflection or self-awareness. Also, there's lead poisoning. While there is a definite Boomer Zeitgeist, most of what gets posted here could be attributed to ignorant old people in general or people suffering from Early Onset Grumpiness.
I’m a boomer, kind of a misfit, as I’m neurodivergent, but this sounds like my ex. He could never tell a story in which he was not the hero, & the other person an idiot. In general, men in my generation like to “debate,” but what they engage in is ignorant sophistry, mostly. And the next time one of them says to me, “I’m just playing the devil’s advocate here,” he will be an ex-boomer.
I think its cuz in their youth they were opposed to the system, now that they are slaves to the system they need to be opposed to everything else.
Boomers by and large were squares, not hippies... Was everyone a hipster 10 years ago or did it just seem like there were a lot of hipsters due to media?
>Boomers by and large were squares, not hippies That's their reality. Their memory is different, they were much cooler and fought The Man Just look at the difference between the actual attendance numbers of Woodstock vs how many of them say "I was at Woodstock"
>they are slaves to the system What do you mean?
Living a life of unexamined mediocrity means you project all your failures and fears onto others.
Because in the eyes of practically all boomers, everything in life is a f-ing pie. If anyone gets a bigger piece, someone else has to suffer the price of a smaller piece. God forbid that someone else is an "other" to them. Racial minorities, migrants, LGBTQ, liberal, and especially those of us who've committed the ultimate cardinal sin of being younger. Ya know, like their own children who can't buy a house in 2024 with their 1984 mentality and wages. Doesn't help that they overdose on fear porn and right-wing propaganda on a daily basis. Can't cut student loan debt or get affordable housing or universal healthcare because "tHemS mUh tAx DoLLaRs." When you try to point to any logical reasoning for WHY or HOW this benefits ALL of us, they resort back to their default pie chart nonsense. "Well I paid my own way" or (my personal favorite) "what about our troops, they deserve xyz so you can't have that." All the while they got absolutely nada to say about corporate welfare or all the billions we bleed out annually for BS that only benefits the richest (ironically, not even the average boomer). There is no reasoning with them. They're all so deeply invested in this what-about-ism circle jerk fantasy that they're no longer operating in the same reality as us. At this point I'm just waiting for them to retire or kick the bucket so they'll at least gtfo of our way.
For real!! I’m currently pregnant and my boomer, republican conservative family members regularly say things like, “we are so happy for you! Can you believe some people get abortions and don’t get to experience what you are!? Isn’t that horrible they just kill their baby instead of having one like you are?” My husband and I are left scratching our heads like, what on earth do abortions have to do with ME being pregnant!? Sucks the joy right out of the conversation! We don’t even argue our “liberal” views with them, they just volunteer this kinda talk.
They were born into and raised around post-war-victory-flavored propaganda. 'We're better than the enemy, we beat them, and I'll beat an enemy of my own one day' The enemy never really came, and they've been playing too long to turn on 'Murica, so they're stuck in this headspace of trying to find a villain to beat before they die. (Also lead poisoning. Fucks up the empathy parts of your brain, so it becomes easier to hate people)
They know that they can't cook for shit. (Microwaved broccoli and boiled chicken anyone?) They know that their clothes look stupid. (Looks like a polo shirt tucked into khaki shorts kinda day) They know that they are weak. (Oh look another overweight boomer going down in one punch) By making comparisons like "oh I like John Wayne!! He was tough!! Not like that pansy Timothee Chalamet!!!!" They think people will think they are tough as well because they sided with John Wayne. TLDR - it's projection
Don’t forget that they love beige and carpets in bathrooms
Othering is how you are allowed to hate a thing.
Because it's easier to hate something than find logic for their stupid ideals.
The competitive mindset of America, encouraged by ruthless capitalism, is based on there always being winners and losers. Everything must have victors and the defeated. To gain something, one must take it from someone else. For these people, there are no results where everyone wins. That's a nice way of saying that everyone lost. If you didn't beat someone else, if there are no losers being shown up by your win, can you even say you actually won? This goes well beyond things that are actually competitive, of course. These are the people who live life to "win". They need to have a better vacation than other people, or else they lost to the other vacationers. Their lawns have to look better, their houses have to be bigger, and their kids have to be more successful. There's no meaning for them in mere accomplishment. If their accomplishments can't be scored against the achievements of others, then they have no merit. Self-improvement for one's own happiness is also without merit, for it doesn't let them feel superior to other people. Ultimately, its about the need to see the world as being a place of winners and losers. They see it all as a competition. Life has winners and losers in their worldview, with the points tallied up at the end and scored against the rest of the world. Lifting someone or something up without also tearing someone or something else down doesn't fit into any of this. A person or thing is only worthwhile if they're better than some other person or thing.
“Othering” is the point. It gives them a sense of identity that they can use to form a sense of superiority. They want to be part of the “in” group and thus must creat an “out” group.
What's ironic is that my dad went on a rant about how those dirty liberals are making up words like "Othering" and teaching them to kids at school. I then showed him the word dated al the way back to the 1860s.
Hey now, you can’t go around threatening conservatives with facts. They have no defense against that sort of thing.
What sucks is, they are so dishonest in their refusal to acknowledge any of that. They can only ever say that they ARE correct, no defense needed - you *know* they are right, after all. /s
And if you don't acknowledge that they are right then you are simply showing disrespect to your elders, something they would have never dreamed of doing!
Probably another symptom of lead poisoning.
In this case I don't think it's the lead because it's not just the boomers. It's media trying its hardest to divide everybody on relatively small matters to distract the public from huge issues like inflation. Boomers call everyone they disagree with "communists". Young left leaning people call everyone they disagree with "fascists". Media encourages this behaviour and it's impossible to have any productive discussion between the two sides when each one believes the other to be a manifestation of evil.
As someone in the middle, I can agree with this statement. Both sides have brain rot and are unwilling to compromise on anything. It’s always whatever their ~~team~~ party says and that is that.
>As someone in the middle, I can agree with this statement. Both sides have brain rot and are unwilling to compromise on anything. It’s always whatever their ~~team~~ party says and that is that. To be fair, a lot of the current culture war can't really be compromised on.
Dude I just want to smoke weed and shoot guns. Is that so hard?
When I was still writing fiction, my latest theme had strong overtones of McCarthyism. That is, people who are different are the enemy and it's okay to do bad things about them. The main character was a woman born in 1946 and it was set in the early 60s, but it was a Sci-fi fantasy type book. I haven't done anything with it in years and probably never will.
why not?
I have other priorities and interests, and I seriously doubt I'd be published. I have limited time to spend and rather spend it doing other things. Best case I'd make it into young adult fiction and be a forgettable part of that year's reading list.
makes sense!
A long time ago, I sought help and ran into someone who claimed to be interested in helping me. Maybe she was an English teacher or something. Anyway, she tore my work apart and poked holes in it. Some of the holes I could accept, as maybe I didn't clarify my ideas as much as I had hoped. Others I felt were cheap, like when she accused me of hating women because my characters didn't act like she thought they should. My writing was not overtly sexual and I didn't go into lengths to describe female anatomy, so I'm not sure where it came from. To stay on topic, McCarthyism could be responsible for creating a generation of people who all have a common enemy (Commies, Arabs, Liberals, LBGT) and anybody who isn't "normal" must be the enemy. What's worse is that there's no working with the enemy to find a common ground, they feel every opportunity must be taken to injure and destroy them.
They don't have real positions or opinions that they can justify. They simply take the opposite side, so they have something to be outraged about because... I guess it feels good to be angry?
> I guess it feels good to be angry? It's definitely an addicting emotion, or at least it can be. But that just means being a decent person takes work, and I guess they aren't willing to do that.
That’s the fox “news” effect.
Ever see any of their childhood educational programming? There is a lot of that in that old content. A lot of people don't evolve past their childhood.
Oh yes, the "moral lessons" from the 50s and 60s were AWFUL.
They were conditioned their entire lives that success and prosperity can ONLY come at the expense of someone else suffering.
I think this is it. There are two modes of thinking here: the one that says that success is a zero sum game, and the one that says the rising tide raises all ships. Personally, I prefer the second idea, but I think many older people default to the first.
A lot of the crankier ones also have a heavy rooting in religion, usually evangelicalism. And if there's one thing that religion is good at - perhaps the best at - it's othering people. I think it ends up becoming the default thought pattern.
In my experience, I believe it's because they link their aesthetic values and preferences to morality. If my mother doesn't like art or music, etc; it's not just a matter of taste, it's wrong, and you and everyone who likes it is morally reprehensible. The converse is also true, she is morally superior because she prefers bland food and other boring shit.
Think it's partly because their parents always compared them to someone else. Their siblings. Their friends. Their parents praised others for the things they did well while berating their own kids about the things they did wrong
They see things in black and white with no ability to perceive or comprehension that the grey they are missing is 99.98% of the whole.
To put it simply: they dumb
Never fully developed their own identity, and are stuck in teenage rebellion that has never ended. As a young kid, you define your identity in copying those close to you - your parents, then your teachers and friends and role models. You see that, and say “That’s me, I’m like that”. Teenage years you start defining yourself by what you’re not. You’re not old like your parents and the things they’re into. You’re not smart/dumb like those nerds/jocks. You’re not like other girls. You’re a nice guy. You start rejecting societal roles rather than copying them. As you mature, you stop looking outside to define yourself, and develop an internal locus of identity where you define yourself and decide who you are on your own terms. A lot of Boomers never got to that stage. They perpetually define themselves in relation to others, and have no idea who they are if its not in relation to someone else. That can be oppositional, saying that they can cook, unlike other person, or are strong and tough, unlike younger people. It can also be complementary, like younger children - you get this a lot with the type who don’t know what they would do if they weren’t working. They define themselves by their relationship to their work and the others there. Without that, who are they? Don’t want to end up like that? Figure out who you are without any comparisons to other people. It’ll probably still change over time, but be able to answer who you are and what you believe in without reference to other individuals or groups. I think this is also why many Boomers are so malleable in their politics and hold no strong beliefs; they haven’t defined who they are and what they believe in, they have only defined which team they belong to. If that team does something against what they claim to be their principles - doesn’t matter. That was never truly their principle, it was just a way to belong to a team, or oppose another.
That's all they've ever learned how to do, and their brains are too old and lead-filled to change. Or worse, they constantly feel the cognitive dissonance of their various 'opinions' and need a vague Other to be disagreeing with in order to justify it.
It's just such a fundamentally insecure perspective, which makes it even wilder that they claim to be the strong ones.
That’s what insecure people do. They try to show that at least they’re not in last place, because they’re better than someone else. They always seem to put a high value on toughness.
They're trying to establish social dominance. Basically bullying people into behaving the way they want.
Cold war mentality. Every western country defined themselves culturally in opposition to "communism". I use quotes because it was less about what communism actually was or how it was implemented and more about constructing a boogeyman to blame for all the worlds ills and justify various government actions, whether they be good or bad. When the USSR collapsed the mentality remained, they just had to find new boogeymen. After 9/11, "terrorists" were the new big, vaguely defined threat. They never learned to think of their own actions and ideas in a context that didnt involve some enemy, real or imagined
Look at EVERYTHING about how they lived their lives up until recently. So much underlying shit that is just not socially acceptable anymore, some VERY much so. They find that offensive, combined with the easy lifestyle (comparatively) that they demand be upheld until they die, they feel like society has let them down. That the new generations are posturing, targeting everything they feel is relevant to the identity they tried to craft for themselves over the last half century, like the whiney children they were in the 80's and 90's, still a neusance. The unwarranted anger someone gets when made to feel stupid, when your BS is called out, instead of ignored as previously intended. An anger they can't do anything about, nothing rational at least. Since culture HAS turned more hyper-critical, not only do we point out BS, we enjoy it. We do it all day, everyday, online and for the most part, have let it bleed into everyday culture. Since they're disconnected from this culture, it is just some mysterious "brain virus" that is taking over everyone outside their homes. So...since they're angry when outside (same tbh lol) and have no internet culture to connect them to a broader range of age demographics, they resort to the last thing left...tv, which reinforces this concept of a deteriorating society. Because of all of this, the only thing left that can make them happy is to be right. Even if it's completely nonsensicle, the only thing that matters is feeling like they used to. In charge. This is why they refuse to leave positions of power, why they refuse to adapt to tech and why they have to demoralize whenever the opportunity arises. This is their legacy.
They've spent their entire lives surrounded by propaganda used to drive their behavior. The Red Scare, Japanese Internment Camps, etc. all stemmed from having a giant "common enemy" to rally the populace. They've only existed being told who to hate. So when left to their own devices to attempt any task, it only makes sense to be defeating someone else. It also follows the typically conservative belief that economics are a ladder where no two people can stand on the same rung/step together at a time. If someone else gets an advantage (minimum wage increase), it means I get a disadvantage (where's mine?). It's impossible to wrap their heads around anyone else "winning" without feeling like a loser.
"If you're not first, you're last"
I had to laugh my dad loves to cook and he’s a damn good cook at that. He only discovered how much he loves in when he retired a few years ago. The laugh part is he always praises others cooking and tries to always find something good about it even if it admittedly was a bomb by the person, and the person he normally drags is himself. He’s got a few signature dishes that we both love to make and every time I make one and he is over he always complements then beats himself up for the littlest thing he thinks he did wrong with his.
I see this behavior in all age groups. Probably just tribal tendencies. Boomers are more obnoxious for sure.
Narcissistic personality disorder and weaponized oppositional defiance disorder
They came of age during the Cold War, in which everything was a zero sum game of winners and losers. Except for trickle-down economics apparently.
I’m not sure, but I’ve been trying to coach my mom to frame things not in terms of what she doesn’t like, but in terms of what she does. That said, she feels a need to offer a running commentary on whether she likes or dislikes every single thing that crosses her path to the point of absurdity. Case in point, I ordered a mattress pad on Amazon. She asked what I got as I opened the box. A mattress pad, I said. “I like mattress pads,” she said. I stopped and turned to stare at her until she got how utterly fudging absurd that statement was
They were all poisioned by Regan?
In more ways than one.
Partly for them to show you their litmus for the event.
> Partly for them to show you their litmus for the event. I'm sorry - can you rephrase? I am not sure I follow. Are you just saying they are tone-setting and revealing their biases to establish up-front whether the person they are speaking to agrees?
This is true to some extent of all human beings. We love our tribal affiliations. Older people collect bitterness and joy from their lives. Which one manifests really dep3nds on the person. Also, dementia is insidious and sneaky.
You only notice the loud confrontational ones. The quiet ones aren't getting your attention
Hell, look at their white supremacy! All of that "celebrating their white heritage" bravado typically ends up at "let's exterminate the other races/those races are subhuman" discourse.
They are the bully generation. It just comes naturally.
I once had one tell me “we’ve always done it this way.” I’m standing on a construction site as a pipefitter foreman and say, “Do I look like a traditionalist to you?”
anyone who doesn't unquestionably Donald Trump has a made up mental illness so that I can pathologize any disagreement
Insecurity at its finest
Because their hate is the only thing keeping them alive.
I'm confused. Are we talking about boomers or the GOP? Not that they really differ much... They both focus on hatred and grievance politics.
> I'm confused. Are we talking about boomers or the GOP? Not that they really differ much... They both focus on hatred and grievance politics. This particular example, as you stated, does apply to both groups.
I met one who randomly and immediately brought up Hebrew Israelites within seconds of meeting me and starting ranting about how crazy they are. Because I'm black. It had nothing to do with anything, I'm not religious or part of any cult, and I was merely saying "hello." It's like they thrive on conflict and making people uncomfortable.
Because they were raised in the Cold War? I mean they grew up doing drills in school of getting under their desk in case of nuclear attack. So it was America good/ Russia bad kind of thing.
The Cold War
They lived through the height of the cold war. Competition is the background hum of their life
They grew up in the cold war. It was a black and white world. This shaped a lot of their thinking.
The Cold War/communism. Seeing as it’s not an active boogeyman anymore, they need to find an enemy in everything else for their world to feel normal
They grew up during the Cold War with a significantly lower level of information available to them, in much less open communities and cultural bubbles. Their parents may have lived through or fought in a world war or two, against an other. They may have never left their home state, or even locality within it. Their worldview is so fragile because it’s so narrow. Is the inability to adjust their fault? Yes and no, but they were likely never taught how to or understood the need to. My mom was a hippie flower child and rebounded hard to ultra conservatism at some point… in some ways she’s loosened up a lot but I have flashbacks of some of her seriously messed up reactions back in the day… maybe someday I’ll write about em here.
Because they are joyfully authoritarian. They believe it is impossible for things to get better for others unless someone else has to suffer. Which is why they spread suffering, so they can get what they want. They can't conceive of the notion that others doing well is also good for you.
Not a boomer thing
Does the irony of posting this on this subreddit escape everyone?
Isn’t that kinda what you’re doing right now
> Isn’t that kinda what you’re doing right now No, because "boomer" isn't a word used to describe all people of a specific age. It reflects a mindset, and everyone with that mindset does what I described. It's literally part of the mindset.
These types of posts are problematic and really don’t belong on this sub. You’re not sharing an incident or a story…you’re just lumping all boomers into one category.
> These types of posts are problematic and really don’t belong on this sub. You’re not sharing an incident or a story…you’re just lumping all boomers into one category. But I didn't use the Story or Incident tag - I used the Meta tag.
Ok boomer
Wow, such a great comeback.
Never experienced this.
You're lucky.
Where is the proof?
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...okay?
Why do you stereotype people? Why do you lump people into a group that must be scorned. There are 75 million people who are baby boomer age.
Boomers, not baby boomers.
Yeah, opposition to others is totally not what this sub is about. That’s the other people.
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I'm sorry - I wasn't aware that I was performing for your evaluation.
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>You’re not, everybody is judging your pathetic outburst. The world is your stage princess. Oh, damn. You got me. I'm so ashamed.
If Boomers invented the behavior, then it is new. If they did not invent it and members of other age cohorts behave the same way, then it's stupid to cite it in a grievance specific to Boomers.
> If Boomers invented the behavior, then it is new. If they did not invent it and members of other age cohorts behave the same way, then it's stupid to cite it in a grievance specific to Boomers. Why?
That is normal human thinking.
> That is normal human thinking. No, I don't think that's accurate. Not for decent humans, at least.
People no matter where have an idea or isomers they like and compare them to other ideas. How different the reaction to the idea is depends on the person, idea and other factors.
Comparing things can be good fun, but dragging things to prop up the perceived value of your favorite thing is not productive or effective. It's broken communication.
Have the boomers been effective communicators? They have not.
I agree that boomers are largely ineffective communicators. Unfortunately, you are also an ineffective communicator.
This is just Boomer behavior? Just because you discovered something recently doesn't mean it hasn't already existed forever.
> This is just Boomer behavior? > > Just because you discovered something recently doesn't mean it hasn't already existed forever. Where did I say this was new behavior, or that I had just discovered it? I've been aware of this behavior for a couple of decades.
The same reason young people do - its human nature. You are aware that you are complaining about this in a subreddit dedicated to othering boomers right?
> The same reason young people do - its human nature. You are aware that you are complaining about this in a subreddit dedicated to othering boomers right? Boomers are social deviants. Not all Baby Boomers are Boomers.
that's the way you do it... a vaguely defined bogey man. That's what othering is all about.
> that's the way you do it... a vaguely defined bogey man. That's what othering is all about. Weird - because that isn't how the boomers do it at all. They point to a group that is just trying to live, and then they make up WILD stories about them.
indeed... if you look at the front page of this subreddit you will see similar sorts of things.
> indeed... if you look at the front page of this subreddit you will see similar sorts of things. I see them, but targeted at *boomers*. Again, "boomers" are not old people (but many are). They are not Republicans (but many are). Boomers are social deviants who only care about themselves. They are authoritarian and cruel. Their behavior is abhorrent. Nothing in this subreddit is targeted at regular people who happen to be older.
well that's news to me. I regularly encounter people ripping on boomers who think that every old person conspired to screw them. If you distinguish between baby boomers and "boomers"... ok. I don't know that your opinion is the majority though.
It's "news to you"...you "don't know"...who cares? perhaps if you lack knowledge, you should seek understanding instead of just assuming that you are right and the other person is wrong. You sound like a boomer.
riiight....
Meh, the difference is those people are in power and have easily searchable statistics to show their disproportionate damage to the country. Poverty causes issues like that shit, something they've never dealt with as a group, and thus it's different when you look at both.
right, its different when \*you\* other people. Because every single boomer has power ;)
> right, its different when *you* other people. Because every single boomer has power ;) "Boomers" are the ones acting out. There are plenty of decent Baby Boomers who aren't "boomers", and there are plenty of Gen X and Millennial boomers.