Please don't offend snowflake boomers

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Because humans are hypocrites. Because many boomers don’t realize they had safe spaces but they were not called that back then. They called them fraternal organizations or professional organizations, or sisterhoods, or country music bars, or rock music clubs, or historical societies,or gated neighborhoods, or lily white neighborhoods. They were places where people who had similarities can talk with people like them without “outsiders” who would not understand.

The difference is today’s safe spaces are more conspicuous. They are in more formally public spaces, they are formally designated as safe spaces and are quite open with discriminating against others and about being “triggered” by different type of people. Back then is was more unspoken understandings and euphemisms.

I would not have done well in that time because (like many here) I tend to take things literally. If I'd been born 50 years ago I would have run afoul of those unspoken understandings and they would think I did it deliberately.

Before it is over with honesty is going to illegal.

Societies generally are becoming more stressed and hostile generally. Ok Boomer is just one of many manifestations of the targeting mass groups of particular people with slurs and labels. It's a sad trend that seems to be accelerating. Possibly it is embedded in the present prevailing political climate where hostility is more or less constant and politicians have deliberately encouraged these divisions of "them and us" mindsets. Stressed people are easier to manipulate and perhaps more gullible to those offering authoriarian solutions, as in "you can't trust the media, you can't trust people generally, but you can trust me..."

True but “Ok Boomer” is the current manifestation of what has been going on forever and well before the current decline in civility. Young people have always felt their parents are out of touch with their lives and in the way of progress and parents have always thought the younger generation is spoiled and ungrateful.

Ok boomer is often used on anybody of any age whom it is felt is espousing out of date ideas and especially on those criticizing Millennials and Gen Z.

What the decline of civility has changed is to increase the assumption of grave offense. “Don’t trust anybody over thirty” was a more ageist term then “Ok boomer” is.

In my experience young people are more open to older peoples music then we were. If you were caught listening to Frank Sinatra you would be excluded and bullied. I can’t remember any of my peers listening to or saying they like Big Band Swing music. Clothing stores featuring earlier styles were not considered trendy, quite the opposite, “Hand me downs” not “retro”.

 

Zoomers dismiss us because they don't care.

I think that whole OK Boomer thing is very dismissive of baby boomers and their life experiences. I also think it dismisses the knowledge and experience that boomers have in life.

I've heard people frequently complain about the younger generation (whichever one it happens to be from Chaucer's time to the present) as far as being lazy, immoral, less capable, etc. Kids are just pushing back. The most I would've done is an eye roll. If I was especially cranky, it would've been giving the finger through a closed door, from the comfort of my own room.

Funny (strange), how the younger generations criticize us Boomers at every possible opportunity, but when their bills start coming in "Past Due", they approach us with smiles and flattery, hoping to get a "loan" from us that they will also never pay back.  Some people never learn to be responsible for themselves, but spend their lives blaming their teachers, their parents, society in general for their "bad luck" when they should have been listening to us Boomers tell them the mistakes we made that set us back, and the perseverance we exercised to bring us forward again.

No one ever seems to realize how much wisdom the previous generations have accumulated until the moment they realize that their parents really weren't all that stupid.

"When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years." -- Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain)

Very good point!

Age doesn't necessarily bring wisdom.

I'm Gen X, never really thought of my parents generation as all that special. They basically coasted on the wave of their parents and grew fat off the land. Now, there's a lot less of the land to go 'round and a lot more people competing for the same space. Imho, the greatest generation, the parents of the Boomers were/are awesome. It seemed they could weather anything. They knew hard times, war the old fashioned way (up close and personal), they didn't seem to show PTSD the way the later generations have. They were just tough. They loved music, loved dancing and could make a little go a very long way. I spent a lot of time with my grandparents, they were the best.

Boomers see themselves in positions of power and they do possess some decent secrets of life related to finance. And it may be a while before they die out. I get along best with older people.

But, I really have no dog in this game.

If you don't think WWII vets didn't show PTSD, you likely didn't know too many of them. They might not have discussed it openly, but plenty of their homes were torn apart by the effects the war had on them and other homes weren't torn apart but were still deeply impacted by the way some of them dealt with those feelings.

The fact that it wasn't discussed or well-documented doesn't mean they didn't deal with it.

PTSD was called “battle fatigue” or “shell shock”. It is hard to say how widespread it was. Growing up in the 60s there were a plethora of WWII movies and TV shows and they were popular among the people who fought in the war without apparent PTSD. That generation was lauded with parades got all sorts of GI loans. The motto was move on with your life and don’t burden others with your personal problems. “Crazy” people were sent away and were not talked about. How many vets became alcoholics and beat their wife and kids? If you heard yelling and screaming from your neighbors you did not “rat them out” and call the police. That was considered their personal business, their house, and they knew what was best for their children.

Last edited by ASPartOfMe on 24 Jan 2020, 9:36 am, edited 1 time in total.

I'm sure it existed. It just didn't seem to paralyze. My husband's father was in WWll, they had children over a twenty year span of time. So, my husband is still a Boomer. His father was an alcoholic, but not an incapacitated one. While I'm sure there was trauma, the greatest generation seemed to be able to keep moving through, remain functional. There's always going to be a certain percentage of alcoholics who go on to become low bottom drunks, but the one's I knew were functional, worked, provided for their families. They may have passed out by 4 pm, though.

a. Experience brings wisdom.
b. Older people have more experience than younger people.
: : Older people have more wisdom than younger people.

QED