YOU only have yourself to blame, baby boomers.
WE only have ourselves to blame.
For years now, years too long to count... ok, that's not quite the case, I've just Googled it.
I Googled "When was Millennial" and it helpfully autofilled "coined" for me. Good move, Google. Millennial, I'm told, was coined in the 1991 book Generations by Neil Howe and William Strauss.
The phrase didn't immediately take hold but eventually came to be the go-to term to define those born between 1982 and 2000.
Around 2015, according to my in-depth research, is when the moniker became a term of derision, even abuse.
Poor the Millennials. We've been blamed for everything you can think of - too entitled, too spoiled, too lazy, too snowflakey. Our preferences - for artisanal coffee and organic kombucha - have been mocked, and let us never speak of avocados again.
As a generation working together in harmony, we have killed off gyms, cereal, the high street, lunch and marriage, according to newspaper headlines.
Well, it turns out while we've been hiding in a darkened room, unwed, unfit and without the most important meal of the day, the youth have been preparing a revolt. (I did say we were too lazy).
That's right, the Millennial and Baby Boomer warfare has moved to a fresh battleground and now we have - Ok Boomer.
Gen Z, while everyone else was rattling on about who spoiled it for who, who's spent all the pension money, should take responsibility for zero hour and contracts and who's the worst for destroying the planet, have been busy.
Gen Z, our 1996 to 2010 birthday babies who are also, pleasingly, called Zoomers in certain parts of the world, have been gathered in the war rooms of Snapchat, Instagram and TikTok preparing a pre-emptive strike against similar reductive stereotyping.
Sorry chaps, but the youngsters have got in first and there's really nothing you can do about it.
Are you out of touch? Are you old-school? Do you find it difficult to accept climate change is a real scientific phenomenon? Is that music too loud? It doesn't matter your views either way, actually.
If you're of a certain age, you'll be shut up and put down with the phrase "Ok, boomer."
This is Gen Z's mic drop. It is the young people's retort to those who are out of touch.
And it has been commodified accordingly. You might buy an Ok boomer sweatshirt, which will also suggest the boomer might like to have a terrible day. You might also like to have a sparkly Ok boomer phone case, sticker or badge.
You, the old, have ruined everything for the young and so don't complain about being wished a terrible day. You've earned it.
The Boomers have back themselves into a corner here; any complaining and you'll be accused of being a snowflake.
And please, admire their entrepreneurial spirit and thank God for it, because your choices have allowed the thriving of zero hours contracts and precarious employment.
I hadn't particularly noticed that Ok boomer was a thing until it was picked over by critics when Chlöe Swarbrick, an MP for the Green Party of Aotearoa in New Zealand, retorted the words at a colleague.
The words are "symbolic of the collective frustration that young people in particular feel to placing evidence time after time in the debate... and being met with dogma," she said.
And what a treat for the expression to go mainstream.
The media loves a bit of intergenerational sparring because you can offend great swathes of people all at once, and the more offended people are the more likely they are to engage. This showdown is also particularly delightful given the rhyming potential of Boomer and Zoomer.
On one hand, Ok boomer is the sort of thing a populist narrative loves as a form of polarising easily divided groups of people. It's over-simple tribalism that takes in no nuanced factors such as class, experience or economic power and instead places power in creating a completely false group identity.
On the other hand, it's also just a daft thing people say on the internet. Daft, and yet frustratingly it's quickly becoming less a generational jibe and more a generalised jibe. I've been "Ok boomer-ed" three times in the past week, once by someone I'm sure is older than I am.
Sometimes social media is like being shouted at under heavy shelling, other times a bomb drops and there is silence. Ok boomer is the latter.
Where do you go after an "Ok boomer"?
"Ooh," you could reply, "Very mature." Or a tart "I'm not a boomer". Neither of these very edifying.
Or you could just say "That'll be that then," in your head and return to the paid work you're supposed to be doing. In that regard, for national productivity, Ok boomer is a spur to the economy.
But there's the problem with these reductive phrases - snowflake, mansplaining, boomer, Millennial - they're designed to shut down debate, not for what the person is saying but for who the person is. That's where the silly becomes the serious. Ok, Zoomer? Listen to your elders on this one.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel