Baby Boomers and how we/they are perceived in today's world

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txfz1
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30 Jan 2022, 10:03 am

I agree as I’m kinda of a late boomer and have no choice in the matter. The issue I have is the generalization of the group into a negative category. This is a common technique to label people that you don’t like, basically de-humanize them. Same as racism use of derogatory terms for people.



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30 Jan 2022, 2:00 pm

I feel strongly that the commonly accepted cut-off years that define generations in most peoples' view is wrong. This is especially true for Baby Boomers. To appreciate the irony, consider that a person born in 1946 could have easily given birth to somebody in 1964, and they'd both be Baby Boomers.

My arbitrary criterion for considering somebody to be a member of my generation, at least for an American. is whether they can remember the Vietnam War. I was born in 1952 and once dated somebody born in 1959 and they told me they couldn't remember it. So to me they had a different generational experience than I.

To me, "late" Baby Boomers have more in common with "early" Gen-Xers than with with early Baby Boomers, and "late" Gen-Xers have more in common with Millennials than with "early" Gen-Xers. So I would put the dividing lines roughly in the middle of the generations as they are usually defined.


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12 Apr 2022, 12:20 pm

I believe that an Early Baby Boomer would deal differently with the following situation than would a member of Generation Jones or an Early Gen-Xer. Suppose you're a judge, and a defendant stands before you who has committed a felony — let's say it's the sort of felony with no obvious human victim. I say "has committed" because the evidence against that defendant is incontrovertible. Yet, the defendant had no idea they were breaking the law at the time. This is probably true for a great many "victimless" crimes. Let's assume the sentencing guidelines call for a life sentence and there are not mitigating circumstances other than the perpetrator's ignorance, so as a judge you have no real choice other than to hand down that life sentence.

So my impression is that an Early Baby Boomer would hand down the sentence but would feel a great deal of remorse, but the member of Generation Jones and the Gen-Xer would not. I'm not saying the latter would be heartless but they'd be comfortable with the understanding that they'd acted correctly.


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13 Jun 2022, 12:47 pm

I'm a Late Gen X (I feel that this matters with Gen Xrs, the upper half - John Hughes Gen Xrs, as opposed to Kevin Smith Gen Xrs - often have very different values and had very different outlook in adulthood).

My parents are both Boomers, though my dad is 1946 and my mom is 1952. They were and are very anti-authoritarian/radical. It's not so much hippie radicalism, though it can *look* hippie, but experiencing themselves as cut out of the mainstream all their lives for various complicated reasons not limited to neurodivergence.

They are absolutely definitely both ND (my mom is Aspie and recognizes that in herself, but feels that identifying it as a clinical label is fascist, which is a big reason I didn't get a diagnosis with anything when I was younger. My dad has *some* autistic traits, recognized by his psych reports as a teenager, but... is socially odd, but extremely extroverted and in the middle of everything always, a bit of a philanderer for much of his life, and the whole picture just isn't there.)

They dialed it back a bit during their 30s through 50s during the peak earning years but it still came out during my rearing, and most of their friends were pretty left wing and pretty socially progressive. After retirement, they full on re-embraced the radicalism and though my mom has always had socially somewhat more conservative viewpoints than my dad, she is a full on hippie stoner witch now. My dad is stoned half the time I talk to him on videophone these days, lol. My parents split up long ago (when I was 13-14) but the woman my dad married (very very much another Aspie) is very very hippie...

It makes my head spin to hear younger people talk about Boomers sometimes because I feel like I grew up in a weird parallel world and don't know the same Boomers at all. (And my Boomer friends tend to be hippies/ex-hippies.)


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MaxE
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14 Jun 2022, 5:38 am

@orbweaver, this supports the argument I've made before that we divide age cohorts in generations incorrectly. I tend to lump late Baby Boomers together with early Gen-Xers, late Gen-X with early Millennials, etc. The "Boomers" younger people complain about are either late Boomers or early Gen-X. Early Boomers are mostly retired and many have strongly left wing or anti-corporate attitudes. Those born later are overwhelmingly conservative and comfortable with authority.


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14 Jun 2022, 4:27 pm

MaxE wrote:
@orbweaver, this supports the argument I've made before that we divide age cohorts in generations incorrectly. I tend to lump late Baby Boomers together with early Gen-Xers, late Gen-X with early Millennials, etc. The "Boomers" younger people complain about are either late Boomers or early Gen-X. Early Boomers are mostly retired and many have strongly left wing or anti-corporate attitudes. Those born later are overwhelmingly conservative and comfortable with authority.


This feels right to me. Additionally, people forget that there's a generational grouping that some generational theory people place between Boomers and Gen X: Generation Jones, people who were teenagers during the 70s and early 80s.

My 46-born dad is much more left wing and much more culturally progressive than my 52-born mother.

Then there are the long tails of social trends: one reason I have a hard time finding myself in some generational theory is because my family early-adopted so much stuff a decade or more before those things became cultural mainstream things. For example, I may have been born in 1973 but I'm a digital native who experienced their socialization via computer bulletin boards. I relate really strongly to other people who've relied on the computer through as much of their life as I have (especially because I was using it to compensate for autism so the reliance is a level that mostly Zoomers really approached early on), and that's barely any Gen Xrs, and only some Millennials.


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14 Jun 2022, 9:03 pm

orbweaver wrote:
MaxE wrote:
@orbweaver, this supports the argument I've made before that we divide age cohorts in generations incorrectly. I tend to lump late Baby Boomers together with early Gen-Xers, late Gen-X with early Millennials, etc. The "Boomers" younger people complain about are either late Boomers or early Gen-X. Early Boomers are mostly retired and many have strongly left wing or anti-corporate attitudes. Those born later are overwhelmingly conservative and comfortable with authority.


This feels right to me. Additionally, people forget that there's a generational grouping that some generational theory people place between Boomers and Gen X: Generation Jones, people who were teenagers during the 70s and early 80s.

My 46-born dad is much more left wing and much more culturally progressive than my 52-born mother.

Then there are the long tails of social trends: one reason I have a hard time finding myself in some generational theory is because my family early-adopted so much stuff a decade or more before those things became cultural mainstream things. For example, I may have been born in 1973 but I'm a digital native who experienced their socialization via computer bulletin boards. I relate really strongly to other people who've relied on the computer through as much of their life as I have (especially because I was using it to compensate for autism so the reliance is a level that mostly Zoomers really approached early on), and that's barely any Gen Xrs, and only some Millennials.


I divide the baby boomer into two main subgroups. Vietnam era boomers and post countercultural boomers. The Vietnam era boomers are the stereotype they were teens and in college for the Kennedy Assassination, Vietnam, Woodstock etc. The post-counter-culture boomers remember that stuff but we were kids too young to be involved. When we were teens the culture had obvious roots in the 60s but was not exactly the same. The politics were not the dominant optimism civil rights movement and Vietnam protests but the cynism of Watergate. We just missed the "good stuff" and dealt with the after-effects, divorce, crime, and directionless. It still say "boomer" because the peak year of the literal baby boom was 1957 the year I was born and neither I nor anybody else I knew used the term "Jonesing" for which Generation Jones was named after.

I think Gen X as being teens during the Reagan/MTV years, young adults for grunge. The stereotype quickly changed from cynical slacker in the early 90s to dot com entrepreneur in the late 90s.


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15 Jun 2022, 6:10 am

When I was in college in the early 70s we were all very counter-cultural, just less political as the US removed troops from Vietnam.

If you were in high school in the early 90s you would have been exposed to a very different youth culture as compared to the early 80s. Hair Metal vs. Grunge.


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15 Jun 2022, 6:15 am

I was born in 1961.

I remember the Vietnam War very well. And the 1968 assassinations, but not the 1963 one.

They tend to call us later Baby Boomers members of Generation Jones.

My friend, born in 1963, remembers very little of what I remember from 1969 or before. I consider him of a different generation.

I find, actually, that the college kids today are quite similar to the college kids of the 80s.

I happen to encounter a lot of respect from younger people, college kids. The fact that I don’t talk down to them helps my relations with them. Most people respect perceived experience.



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26 Jun 2022, 8:26 am

A Gen-Xer regrets her generation's lack of activism.

BTW it's not my intention to promote pro-choice as the "correct" point of view.


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03 Jul 2022, 4:20 pm

I'm depressed because it's like after you turn 30 the whole world suddenly hates you, and it's worse than even now because of the boomer 'muricans (and some Canadians) who drive around with pro gun, pro life, and anti everything else stickers plastered all over every inch of their environment-killing SUVs. If I criticize modern technology at all (which I've done since my late teens at least), I'm a boomer and that's wrong. I just don't like phones, okay? I didn't like them even when I was a teenager. That's more of a personal thing. And heaven help me if I get nostalgic about anything that's been around earlier than 2010. I've heard the young ones apologizing online for liking cartoons that have been around earlier than the 1990s like Tom and Jerry or Loony Tunes. Seriously, they have to apologize for enjoying timeless classic characters that have been beloved by people for longer than a decade? Then I guess I had a lot of apologizing to do when I was teenager in the late 80s-early 90s. :roll:

If you're over 40, you're nothing. People just see you as a waste of oxygen. I feel more like I'm on the wrong planet more than ever now. Everything just feels insane.



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03 Jul 2022, 8:57 pm

lostonearth35 wrote:
I'm depressed because it's like after you turn 30 the whole world suddenly hates you, and it's worse than even now because of the boomer 'muricans (and some Canadians) who drive around with pro gun, pro life, and anti everything else stickers plastered all over every inch of their environment-killing SUVs. If I criticize modern technology at all (which I've done since my late teens at least), I'm a boomer and that's wrong. I just don't like phones, okay? I didn't like them even when I was a teenager. That's more of a personal thing. And heaven help me if I get nostalgic about anything that's been around earlier than 2010. I've heard the young ones apologizing online for liking cartoons that have been around earlier than the 1990s like Tom and Jerry or Loony Tunes. Seriously, they have to apologize for enjoying timeless classic characters that have been beloved by people for longer than a decade? Then I guess I had a lot of apologizing to do when I was teenager in the late 80s-early 90s. :roll:

If you're over 40, you're nothing. People just see you as a waste of oxygen. I feel more like I'm on the wrong planet more than ever now. Everything just feels insane.

That is American culture and wherever it is exported. When us boomers were young they said 'don't trust anybody over 30". How did that work out? In other cultures, the elderly are looked up to as wise sages.


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06 Jul 2022, 7:27 am

I’m a Boomer.

I’m definitely respected by many Millennials and Generation Z people (some of whom are college students).

As long as you don’t talk down to them, you’re usually okay. I find the kids today to be similar to kids when I was a kid. Maybe slightly better.

People who judge on the basis of one’s generation I find to be ridiculous.



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06 Jul 2022, 1:56 pm

I am a baby boomer, born in 1959.

I believe many baby boomers don't have a realistic idea of the esteem, or rather the lack thereof, in which younger America holds us.

If not our children, surely our grandchildren and great grandchildren will eventually hate us. And we will deserve that hate.



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06 Jul 2022, 10:14 pm

That’s a gross generalization.

I’ve never met anybody who hates me because I’m a Boomer. I’ll never have a grandchild. I have great nephews and nieces (on my wife’s side)—and none dislike me.

The only people who expressed dislike for me as a Boomer are people online who haven’t met me in person.



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06 Jul 2022, 11:25 pm

kraftiekortie wrote:
That’s a gross generalization.

I’ve never met anybody who hates me because I’m a Boomer. I’ll never have a grandchild. I have great nephews and nieces (on my wife’s side)—and none dislike me.

The only people who expressed dislike for me as a Boomer are people online who haven’t met me in person.


A number of my favorite friends have been Boomers (i.e., the same age range as my parents).


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