OK, Boomer: hashtag for a generation conflict
Young people are using the 'okboomer' hashtag on social networks to criticise the baby boomer generation. Born in the post-war period which saw a massive increase in birth rates, the baby boomers don't have a clue about life today and therefore they don't have the right to tell the young how to behave, millennials argue. Are they right?
Kids turning old people's weapons against them
Columnist Molly Roberts voices her approval in The Irish Independent of the way the millennials are giving their parents' generation the cold shoulder:
“'OK, boomer' is appealing because, on the simplest level, it flips the script. Old people have been telling young people for years they don't get it because they just haven't had the chance to learn. Now, young people have developed a cryptic code for telling old people they're the ones who don't get it, and that failure is all the more flagrant because they have had countless chances to learn. But the flipping is craftier than just that. What's important isn't that the kids are fighting back. It's that the kids are fighting back without really fighting at all.”
The real problem is class differences
Older people who worked hard all their lives deserve better, The Guardian argues:
“Rather than scoff at the relative privileges of a few, we should be trying to recreate some of the conditions that made life a bit better during the postwar years 'boomers' were born into. That means, of course, organizing against our bosses and pressuring our political leaders to reshape the economy to work for the many, not snarking at the working people who spent years of their lives providing for us. After all, the problem with generational analysis is that even though it claims to be rooted in economic realities, it cannot see the reality of class.”