A Brief History of Boomer Hating
Even if you don’t typically “Internet,” you’ve probably come across the web’s most exhausted new diss: “Ok Boomer.” The phrase articulates a prevailing sentiment amongst young people: The boomer generation ruined the world and should kindly stop speaking.
It has become a popular social media retort by millennials (born between 1981 and 1996) and Gen Zers (born 1997 and on) to condescending insults, political grandstanding, and anything else said by “grown ups” that seems out of touch. The term has spawned many a meme and several lines of merch.
While the New York Times wrote that this new catchphrase “marks the end of friendly generational relations,” the truth is that “friendly generational relations” were either a fleeting moment in recent history or have never really existed. The youngest and oldest members of society have always been bickering.
Ancient Roman poet and satirist Juvenal called the old “all alike” and “a disgusting sight,” while Geoffrey Chaucer’s famous Canterbury Tales from the 14th century accuses old men of “boasting, fibbing, anger and greed.”
Conversely, adults have always been skeptical, cynical, and downright disgusted by “kids these days.” Ancient Sumerian clay tablets show grown ups grousing about the art of writing being trampled by the then-young, according to author Henry A. Daniels (citing scholar Richard Lloyd Jones). In 1693, author Robert Russell bemoaned, “Children as they have played about the Streets have been heard to curse and swear and call one another Nick-names,” while, in 1790, Reverend Enos Hitchcock complained that romances, novels, and plays had “poisoned the mind and corrupted the morals of many a promising youth.” By 1922, the enemy was jazz music, with one doctor writing in the New York Times that the blossoming art form was making young people become “absolutely bad, and some criminal.” Of course, in this case, railing against the young often came with a dose of racism and a fear of black culture. Still, whether the enemy is nicknames, novels, jazz, or TikTok, the olds have always thought the young ‘uns to be a lost cause.
But, while throwing intergenerational shade may seem innate to the human condition, the almost-instant memification of “Ok Boomer” suggests something deeper. The truth is, dissing Baby Boomers is a time-honored tradition first perfected by their very own parents and grandparents. And it’s basically been going strong ever since.
But first, some context: Boomers — that is, the arguably-excessive amount of people (76 million) born in the United States between 1946 and 1964 — were uniquely situated to draw scorn. The most obvious reason is their obnoxious numbers. By the time the oldest boomers were heading to college, they constituted a whopping 40% of the entire population. Even before they were working, Baby Boomers were already an undeniable force on the American economy and culture. Baby Boomers were born in an unrivaled swell of post-war wealth, in which shell-shocked fathers and apron-clad mothers were often able to rear them in a bubble of middle-class plenty. The sheer economic potential of the Baby Boomers was realized pretty early on, with one 1965 Life Magazine article trumpeting: ”Rocketing Births: Business Bonanza,” while also literally referring to babies and children as “consumers.”
Significantly, the parents of Baby Boomers were generally members of the Greatest Generation (born between 1910 and 1924) who experienced life during the Great Depression and World War II. Maybe fairly, they viewed their children’s life as easy and idyllic, full of “Leave It to Beaver” antics and absent rampant starvation and war. These kids, and particularly, teenagers, also enjoyed the first real manifestation of a mass youth culture and the birth of the teenager as a consumer demographic. This came complete with pandering TV shows, a burgeoning toy industry, and an ever-replenished supply of comic books. Amidst this affluence, Boomers objectively had a much better youth than their parents. So, resentment, it seems, was all but baked into that delicious Baby-Boomer American pie.
And then something surprising happened. Specifically, boomers refused to conform to the pleated-skirt-and-collared-shirt world of their parents.
Now, plenty of printed and digital ink has been spilt regaling the 1960s exploits of the rebellious Baby Boomers. That said, overexposure does not imply exaggeration. While every generation somewhat embodies their parents’ worst fears, boomers were a veritable nightmare for their elders. Where their parents willingly banded together to beat Nazi Germany, boomers defiantly burned their Vietnam War draft cards and commandeered university buildings in rage-fueled uprisings. Where their parents dutifully formed nuclear families, boomers scandalously explored premarital sex, drugs, and rock & roll. Their new values were also reflected in powerful antiwar, civil rights, and feminist movements.
To say their elders were shocked by this rebellion is the height of understatement. During the Columbia University uprising of 1968, the university president Grayson Kirk darkly declared:
“Our young people, in disturbing numbers, appear to reject all forms of authority, from whatever source derived, and they have taken refuge in a turbulent and inchoate nihilism whose sole objectives are destruction. I know of no time in our history when the gap between the generations has been wider or more potentially dangerous.”
Ronald Reagan essentially launched his political career off of Baby-Boomer hating when he came out swinging against the protests at UC Berkeley. The sentiment of Boomer-hating traditionalists was summed up by country music artist Merle Haggard, a member of the Silent Generation (born between 1925 and 1945), in his song “Okie from Muskogee,” which became an anti-Boomer anthem:
“We don’t smoke marijuana in Muskogee,
We don’t take our trips on LSD,
We don’t burn our draft cards down on Main Street,
We like livin’ right, and bein’ free.”
The boomers were accused of creating a “Me Decade” by journalist Tom Wolf, also a member of the Silent Generation. Ironically, Boomers would eventually lob that exact same criticism at their own millennial children.
But after the Vietnam War ended, and the tumultuous years of Boomer raging quieted down, something changed: Boomers slowly became the establishment against which they had railed.
By the early ’80s, boomers constituted the grand majority of the American electorate, according to Bruce Gibney, author of the 2017 book A Generation of Sociopaths, a less than flattering look at the Boomer legacy. Boomers “inherited a rich, dynamic country and have gradually bankrupted it,” in Gibney’s words. The way he sees it, boomers, raised in a time of uncompromised prosperity, simply assumed things would always be that easy: that the economy would grow, wages would rise, and the generation below them would grow up to have a better quality of life — a fact which is, for the first time in recent American history, no longer true. Perhaps this unbridled optimism is what led boomers to elect politicians with policies rooted in cutting taxes for the wealthy and slashing entitlements.
Ironically, the flower children of the 1960s slowly became hated for everything they had railed against: middle-class conformity and massive consumerism. In 1990, Time magazine wrote about the rise of Generation X (born between 1965 and 1980). The intergenerational hatred is already palpable, with Gen Xers being defined in part by their dislike of all things Boomer: “They hate yuppies, hippies and druggies. They postpone marriage because they dread divorce. They sneer at Range Rovers, Rolexes and red suspenders.”
Then came the millennials, who the media had a blast pitting directly against their parents. Millennials were derided by many a boomer-penned editorial for being selfish, lazy, entitled, whiney, and a host of other unkind adjectives. Since many millennials came of age during the Great Recession, they were left the most vulnerable. Their financial lot has remained bleak: Millennials now make 20% less than Boomers did at their age, despite being better educated. In this climate, is it any wonder that articles about millennials “clapping back” at their elders provide reliable entertainment?
The sad and funny thing is this: It even seems like some Baby Boomers sort of hate themselves. In recent commencement speeches, grown-up post-war babies like New York Times columnist Tom Friedman and Apple CEO Tim Cook literally apologized for their generation’s legacy. As boomers increasingly reflect on the world their children stand poised to inherit — a world created largely by them — one has to wonder just how ok they feel.
