Over the past few weeks, the ‘OK Boomer’ meme has gone viral, leading to an offline epidemic of earnest commentary. The whippersnappers of ‘Generation Z’ have taken to TikTok – a social-media platform that seems to be about sharing chill-ironic lip-synching video-selfies – with a flurry of music, artwork, and follow-on merch responding to criticisms of the youth of today with the admonition that older generations should STFU.
Being of the generation that grew up with VHS, audio tapes and landlines, I don’t really get the TikTok thing. It’s cute and funny when my kids use it, and even ‘OK Boomer’ has its moments of mirth. One viral example is a video of white-haired man in a baseball cap and polo shirt droning on that, ‘The millennials and Generation Z have the Peter Pan syndrome, they don’t ever want to grow up’, and a studious young woman deftly designing a sign in response that reads ‘OK Boomer’.
So far, fair enough. The only thing more annoying than young adults blaming their parents for everything is the idea that kids have a responsibility to socialise themselves. Peter Pan syndrome among millenials is the product of a culture that is persistently infantilising young people, hobbling their opportunities to develop independence and blunting their aspiration to grow up. From infancy, today’s kids are trained to regard every slight or criticism as a threat to their own – or somebody else’s – mental health or self-esteem. Young children are discouraged from playing outside without adult supervision. Older adolescents are schooled in the importance of seeking professional support for all the emotional difficulties and life transitions that come with growing up. It is not surprising that they react against being labelled as ‘snowflakes’ by the very society that has instructed them in this way of thinking and being. OK Boomer, indeed.
If only we could leave it at that. Unfortunately, this silly meme has been bounced into mainstream political and media debate to provide yet another opportunity for self-righteous claims that older generations have stolen their children’s future. Politicians, commentators and campaigners are relentlessly transmitting the message that adults have messed up the world for their kids. ‘OK Boomer’ deftly captures the sentiment that everything adults say is not worthy of debate, only summary dismissal.
As such, the meme merely follows a script that has been played out in a range of present-day political dramas – including those around climate change, the Brexit vote, and the election of Donald Trump – to shut up those whose values, attitudes and priorities are seen to represent ‘the past’. It is a script routinely deployed by people of all ages, who are so wedded to the rightness of their own cause that they arrogantly appropriate the voice of ‘future generations’ to put their claims beyond debate.
That is the spirit in which Chlöe Swarbrick, a 25-year-old MP for New Zealand’s Green Party, said ‘OK Boomer’ in a parliamentary debate about climate change last week. It wasn’t a joke, she explained in the Guardian:
‘My “OK boomer” comment in parliament was off-the-cuff, albeit symbolic of the collective exhaustion of multiple generations set to inherit ever-amplifying problems in an ever-diminishing window of time. It was a response – as is par-for-course – to a barrage of heckling in a parliamentary chamber that at present turns far too many regular folks off from engaging in politics.’
Leaving aside the question of what Swarbrick might mean by ‘regular folk’ – presumably, right-thinking graduates – it is worth noting the speed with which a silly meme has been filled with such deep meaning.
Proclaiming that the meme marks ‘the end of friendly generational relations’, the New York Times reports that: ‘Now it’s war: Gen Z has finally snapped over climate change and financial inequality.’ The teenagers currently milking the ‘OK Boomer’ meme – in some cases, for money – are elevated to the status of prophets, engaged in ‘their own little form of protest against a system they feel is rigged’.
Eighteen-year-old college student Nina Kasman is flogging the slogan on a range of single-use tat – from stickers and socks to water bottles and notebooks. She told the NYT that she was driven to producing OK Boomer merch ‘because there’s not a lot that I can personally do to reduce the price of college… which was much cheaper for older generations who then made it more expensive’. From there, she extrapolates:
‘There’s not much I can personally do to restore the environment, which was harmed due to the corporate greed of older generations. There’s not much I can personally do to undo political corruption, or fix congress so it’s not mostly old white men boomers who don’t represent the majority of generations.’
Frustration with ‘the system’ is channelled not towards political action but into making a quick buck. These young entrepreneurs seem impervious to the contradictions within their arguments, to say the least.
Twenty-year-old college student Jonathan Williams is credited with writing and producing the ‘anthem’ of the OK Boomer ‘movement’. The song ‘goes out to all the 65-plus crowd on SoundCloud’ and is peppered with the refrain ‘old ladies suck’. But it’s not really aimed at old people, the NYT assures us:
‘In the end, “Boomer” is just a state of mind. Mr Williams said anyone can be a boomer – with the right attitude. “You don’t like change, you don’t understand new things especially related to technology, you don’t understand equality”, he said. “Being a boomer is just having that attitude, it can apply to whoever is bitter toward change.”’
Swarbrick has also used this argument that ‘Boomer is a state of mind’. This, apparently, lets self-styled generation warriors off the hook: they have nothing against old people, so long as they agree with young people! And if not all young people parrot the same script about stolen futures and impending doom – which they don’t – they can be dismissed as Boomers, too.
All of which shows that, at the end of the day, this debate has very little to do with actual generational differences. As I argue in my book, Stop Mugging Grandma, the ‘generation war’ that supposedly defines our times is not about a clash between young and old. Instead, it masks disagreements over politics, values and ideas about the future. It has the character of an unseemly fancy-dress competition, in which claims-makers compete to see who can appear most like the twentysomething ‘voice of the future’, thereby appropriating the hopes and fears of young people, and using them for their own ends.
The generation war is a proxy, lip-synched conflict, in which the more young people are talked about, the less they are actually listened to.
#6: watchman To: Anthem (#3)
All things are wearisome, more than one can say.
The eye never has enough of seeing, nor the ear its fill of hearing.
What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.
Is there anything of which one can say, “Look! This is something new”?
It was here already, long ago; it was here before our time.
Ecclesiastes 1:8-10
watchman posted on 2019-11-14 12:48:45 Reply Private Reply
#7: WWG1WWA To: Deckard (#0)
I couldn't help but think how sad that was because we "boomers" know exactly who did this to you...set you up...then raised the interest rate so that you will be in debt forever.
I also told her that the only candidate who will do something about this is PDJT. If he says he'll do it, he will do it. The rest want to keep that $$$ slush fund going.
WWG1WWA posted on 2019-11-14 21:38:36 Reply Private Reply
#8: Judas Goat To: Deckard (#0)
Does Generation Snowflake even remotely grasp the ironic congruity of their arm-linked Useful Idiocy?
^^^^OK BOOMER^^^^
"The fire is in the minds of men, not on the roofs of houses"
--Fyódor Mikháylovich Dostoyévskiy's "The Possessed"
Judas Goat posted on 2019-11-19 11:50:46 Reply Private Reply
#9: Judas Goat To: Vicomte13 (#5)
Ol' Bob was just beating the crap out of that grand piano they turned him loose on - and repeatedly, completely, out of sync with the rest of the band.
Bass player kept trying to gently nudge him back on time.. but Dylan was either too shytefaced or deaf to get a clue. Or maybe he just didn't care.
Sad.
Wasn't much of a Dylan fan before that, and was even less of a fan afterwards.
Clearly a legend in his own mind though - and as much of a Judas Goat / Pied Piper as Joooooohny Caaaaaash.
Judas Goat posted on 2019-11-19 12:01:51 Reply Private Reply
#10: Vicomte13 To: Peromischievous leucopus (#9)
I liked Johnny Cash. Not sure why either is a Judas Goat - haven't seen any slaughterhouses for humans around lately.
Vicomte13 posted on 2019-11-19 17:03:22 Reply Private Reply
#11: Judas Goat To: Vicomte13 (#10)
In the context of 1.2+ billion years of binary sexual natural selection, 100 years ago is "lately" enough.
Judas Goat posted on 2019-11-19 20:43:22 Reply Private Reply
#12: Judas Goat To: Vicomte13 (#10)
{ golf clap }
Judas Goat posted on 2019-11-20 09:21:49 Reply Private Reply
#13: Vicomte13 To: Peromischievous leucopus (#11)
Vicomte13 posted on 2019-11-20 10:37:47 Reply Private Reply
#14: Vicomte13 To: Peromischievous leucopus (#12)
Vicomte13 posted on 2019-11-20 10:38:24 Reply Private Reply
#15: Judas Goat To: Vicomte13 (#13)
100 years is nothing in the context of human nature and its evolution; and that nature hasn't changed at all since then.
Judas Goat posted on 2019-11-20 11:00:05 Reply Private Reply
#16: Judas Goat To: Vicomte13 (#14)
Because he's nothing but a crossover Judas Goat fraud who dressed himself up in whichever costume sold whatever to whoever was dumb enough to buy it.
A typical, meth-tweaking, SJW Useful Idiot Snowflake
Judas Goat posted on 2019-11-20 11:02:04 Reply Private Reply
#17: Judas Goat To: Vicomte13 (#13)
Evidently human traffickers didn't get the memo.
Judas Goat posted on 2019-11-20 11:05:45 Reply Private Reply
#18: Vicomte13 To: Peromischievous leucopus (#15)
It's everything in terms of human lives though, and bearing responsibility.
I'm not responsible for what people did 500 years ago. There are folks around here who try to hang the guilt of what some evil Popes did 500 years ago because I'm a Catholic. That's idiotic.
On the other hand, the bad treatment of certain groups of people by the government in my lifetime, that left them with overhanging damage that we can fix - I am partly responsible for THAT, especially if I refuse to address it.
Vicomte13 posted on 2019-11-20 11:14:39 Reply Private Reply
#19: Vicomte13 To: Peromischievous leucopus (#16)
You're talking about an entertainer whose heyday was in the 1950s and 1960s, and who has been dead for sixteen years now, and calling him a "Judas Goat"?
"Judas Goat" is a term generally used for high level authorities who betray the country or their oaths - like some in the conspiracy against Trump.
How is a country singer from the distant past a "Judas Goat"? It's just an insanely over-the-top charge. Cash was never important enough to BE a "Judas Goat".
Calling him one reminds me of a Monty Python sketch in which a very earnest televangelist starts to come unhinged and claiming that "the forbidden fruit" Eve at was FRUIT - and that FRUIT is evil. As the men in white coats are carting him away, he is still hollering "WOE unto the melons!"
Vicomte13 posted on 2019-11-20 11:20:51 Reply Private Reply
#20: Judas Goat To: Vicomte13 (#18)
Human nature hasn't changed in 500 years - and neither has the nature of the caste of eunuch predator "vanguard elite" frauds who feed upon, and proliferate, the weaknesses self-evident in it.
Judas Goat posted on 2019-11-20 11:22:22 Reply Private Reply
#21: Judas Goat To: Vicomte13 (#19)
Maybe in your newspeak dictionary where Judas Goat and Quisling are interchangeable, but in reality land - a Judas Goat is anyone who leads the herd to self-destruction.
Many members of the so-called Entertainment Industry have played that role - either as deliberate actors or Useful Idiots.
Organized Religion has played the role as well - pacifying the cattle as they march obediently, and ignorantly, into the Molechian BBQ.
Judas Goat posted on 2019-11-20 11:31:09 Reply Private Reply
#22: Vicomte13 To: Peromischievous leucopus (#21)
Vicomte13 posted on 2019-11-20 12:50:02 Reply Private Reply
#23: Judas Goat To: Vicomte13 (#22)
Oh, well, what does camping in the desert with the windows blacked out as he binged on meth seem like?
And he was hardly the only 1950s-60s "entertainer" who the parasites running the popular meat machine used to herd the livestock profitably along.
Judas Goat posted on 2019-11-20 13:00:14 Reply Private Reply
#24: Willie Green To: Vicomte13 (#13)
Racial segregation wasn't abolished until the Civil Rights movement of the late '60s and still persists among small communities of bigots & mental midgets to this very day....
Willie Green posted on 2019-11-20 14:49:20 Reply Private Reply
#25: Vicomte13 To: Peromischievous leucopus (#23)
Vicomte13 posted on 2019-11-20 16:18:42 Reply Private Reply
#26: Judas Goat To: Vicomte13 (#25)
Judas Goat posted on 2019-11-20 16:44:05 Reply Private Reply
#27: Vicomte13 To: Peromischievous leucopus (#26)
I don't recall him as a role model so much as a guy with a lot of pain, that came through his songs, and so did the love, and the simmering violence. Not a role model, a...mirror....for the pain and frustration and mistakes and demons, and really difficult love affairs and marriages that so very many people go through.
Johnny Cash wasn't a guy you wanted to BE, he was somebody covered with scars and flaws who sang about what he WAS, and that resonated with huge numbers of people because that's what WE are. Maybe not YOU, but millions of people. I see some of myself in his songs, especially those love songs and duets with June.
Role model? No, not really. Who wants that pain? Who wants to be unlucky in love? Who wants to be rejected on stage? And who hasn't been, in some fashion? It fucking hurts. Johnny Cash sang about that real pain, from his own soul, and people could relate. I was young, and even I could. "Yeah, that's what that feels like."
Bruce Springstein sang in a different genre, but some of his songs were the same. "I'm On Fire", or :Dancing in the Dark" came from the same place that "Walk the Line" and "Jackson" did, just through an electric guitar.
I think that maybe you are a strict moralist in all things, and you don't like public figures to have demons and flaws, or to sing about them, or certainly to be popular for exposing them. I am less perfect than you, having my own flaws and demons. I don't see Johnny Cash, or Bruce Springstein in his "downer" songs, being a LEADER, but as a fellow spirit. Life is hard. Love is hard. They hurt. Music doesn't really dull the pain, but it mellows it, and the shared popularity of some of the most famous songs of men with problems reveals that we've all got them.
You see a Judas Goat, I see a guy in the same boat, but with a guitar and the talent to sing about it.
I don't see anything wrong with that.
Vicomte13 posted on 2019-11-21 07:02:06 Reply Private Reply
#28: A K A Stone To: Peromischievous leucopus (#23)
A K A Stone posted on 2019-11-21 07:58:31 Reply Private Reply
#29: Deckard To: A K A Stone (#28)
Peromischievous leucopus = VxH, former poster.
Deckard posted on 2019-11-21 08:36:12 Reply Private Reply
#30: A K A Stone To: Deckard (#29)
A K A Stone posted on 2019-11-21 09:04:02 Reply Private Reply
#31: Judas Goat To: Vicomte13 (#27)
The parasites in the music bidness used him as one.
Judas Goat posted on 2019-11-21 23:07:02 Reply Private Reply
#32: Judas Goat To: A K A Stone (#28)
Judas Goat posted on 2019-11-21 23:12:54 Reply Private Reply
#33: Vicomte13 To: Peromischievous leucopus (#31)
Vicomte13 posted on 2019-11-22 06:58:57 Reply Private Reply
#34: Judas Goat To: Vicomte13 (#33)
Money being a capitalist abstraction, like derivative a$$paper denominated in quadrillion, that, too often, facilitates predation.
That'd be what puts the Useful in Judas Goat Useful Idiots like Johnny CASH.
Judas Goat posted on 2019-11-22 08:44:57 Reply Private Reply
#35: A K A Stone To: Peromischievous leucopus (#34)
A K A Stone posted on 2019-11-22 09:11:25 Reply Private Reply
#36: Vicomte13 To: Peromischievous leucopus (#34)
It reminds me of the hyper-evangelicals who read the "forbidden fruit" of Genesis as telling us that to eat fruit is a sin. "Woe unto the melons!"
Vicomte13 posted on 2019-11-22 09:18:30 Reply Private Reply
#37: A K A Stone To: Vicomte13 (#36)
Nobody ever said that to you. Be honest.
A K A Stone posted on 2019-11-22 09:20:42 Reply Private Reply
#38: Judas Goat To: A K A Stone, Vicomte13 (#37)
Psychosis is what the "entertainment" bidness was really selling.
How's that workin' for the popular herd these days?
Judas Goat posted on 2019-11-22 09:41:29 Reply Private Reply
#39: Judas Goat To: A K A Stone (#35)
A phony POS right to the end -- CASH, the Grifter in Black, didn't even write that song.
[ON THE RECORD: Why Johnny Cash felt so 'Hurt'
Q: The song “Hurt” was one of Johnny Cash's last songs. ...
A: “Hurt” was actually written by Trent Reznor of the alternative industrial rock band, Nine Inch Nails. It was included on the “Downward Spiral” album released in 1994]
rapidcityjournal.com/blac...ae-bf39-1bb0d058f1bf.html
Yaaaaawn.
Judas Goat posted on 2019-11-22 09:56:18 Reply Private Reply
#40: Vicomte13 To: A K A Stone (#37)
It was a parody, to make a point. You're right, NOBODY believes that. And I can't believe that ANYBODY, including VxH, really believes that Johnny Cash is a "Judas Goat" who led society to perdition.
Vicomte13 posted on 2019-11-22 10:19:15 Reply Private Reply
#41: Vicomte13 To: Peromischievous leucopus (#39)
Why am I even arguing this?
Vicomte13 posted on 2019-11-22 10:20:50 Reply Private Reply
#42: A K A Stone To: Vicomte13 (#40)
A K A Stone posted on 2019-11-22 10:21:09 Reply Private Reply
#43: A K A Stone To: Vicomte13 (#41)
A K A Stone posted on 2019-11-22 10:23:34 Reply Private Reply
#44: Judas Goat To: Vicomte13 (#41)
Evidently because it's all you've got to defend Johny Cash, the meth-tweatking crossover Judas Goat who the parasites in the Music Bidness used to make a profit on the steps of the Temple of the Grand Ol' Opera.
He was tweatking, when tweatking wasn't cool!
Judas Goat posted on 2019-11-22 11:47:06 Reply Private Reply
#45: Vicomte13 To: A K A Stone (#43)
I don't. Thx.
Vicomte13 posted on 2019-11-22 14:03:40 Reply Private Reply
#46: Vicomte13 To: Peromischievous leucopus (#44)
Excitabat fluctus in simpulo. - Cicero
Vicomte13 posted on 2019-11-22 14:05:41 Reply Private Reply
#47: Judas Goat To: Vicomte13 (#46)
Judas Goat posted on 2019-11-23 10:31:35 Reply Private Reply
#48: Judas Goat To: Vicomte13, A K A Stone (#46)
www.google.com/search?&q=...ainers+as+modern+prophets
Who publishes the words in their mouths and for what purpose?
Imagine what the thespians in Nietzsche's "Birth of Tragedy"... could've accomplished with with Virtual HD and surround sound!?
Judas Goat posted on 2019-11-25 17:36:59 Reply Private Reply
#49: A K A Stone To: Peromischievous leucopus (#48)
A K A Stone posted on 2019-11-25 18:43:11 Reply Private Reply
#50: Judas Goat To: A K A Stone (#49)
Judas Goat posted on 2019-11-25 21:35:29 Reply Private Reply
#51: Vicomte13 To: Peromischievous leucopus (#48)
Vicomte13 posted on 2019-11-25 23:43:48 Reply Private Reply
#52: A K A Stone To: Peromischievous leucopus (#50)
What are they proud of?
A K A Stone posted on 2019-11-26 06:50:54 Reply Private Reply
#53: Judas Goat To: A K A Stone (#52)
Judas Goat posted on 2019-11-26 11:04:58 Reply Private Reply
#54: A K A Stone To: Peromischievous leucopus (#53)
www.theguardian.com/music...y-to-hell-all-four-lanes- of-major-perth-highway-to-be-close-for-festival-of-acdc-covers
You don't have a clue what the song is about.
A K A Stone posted on 2019-11-26 11:39:55 Reply Private Reply
#55: Judas Goat To: A K A Stone (#54)
I have more of a clue about the work-product those emasculated Judas Goats produced than you evidently do about how to post a link.
LOL.
Judas Goat posted on 2019-11-26 12:05:30 Reply Private Reply