sleepyowlet:Yeah, but “Ok Boomer”
Nov. 7th, 2019 12:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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sleepyowlet:
Yeah, but “Ok Boomer” is really just a response to certain (usually white cishet) older people who either write or buy into thinkturds like “Why are Millennials so lazy?” or “Why do Millennials never grow up?” or “Why do Millennials buy smartphones and bath bombs instead of houses?” instead of waking up, smelling the coffee and standing in solidarity with us. We read Marx. We know what the Capital does. The whole point of this is that they refuse to see that and would rather believe that a whole two generations of young people are too stupid and too lazy to properly adult than to accept the fact that there is something wrong with the system that treated them well.
We tried talking to them. We tried to confront them with facts and figures a thousand times, I don’t think there’s one Millennial or Gen-Zer alive who hasn’t had that conversation with a parent or another older relative. But at this point, it’s pretty much all willful ignorance on their part.
So we’re tired. There’s no help or support coming from those people, so we gave up trying to talk to them. We’re tired of having to prove our humanity to people who refuse to see that we got fucked by the system before we were even out of our diapers, who refuse to see that they are partially culpable. Because they got into positions of influence in the 80s and could have kept the change going. Instead, they got complacent and mostly stopped fighting and fell asleep on their heaps of doodahs while the capitalist steered governments quietly rolled back much of the progress made. But those Boomers didn’t care because they bought into the mentality of, “I got mine, fuck the rest.”
That’s why we’re pissed. That’s why we’re 100% done. It’s not about hating all older people and it never has been. This is just a very personal response to certain people in our lives who instead of helping us, supporting us in our struggle, or just listening, choose to shit all over us.
korrasera:
This is a really important point to absorb. A lot of the discussion we have around social justice and progressive causes is caught up in the need to draw faction lines and label other people as evilbadwrong so we can dismiss them. Do that without analysis and you’re just signing up for a new dogma, one that tells you that you’re pure and good if you’re sufficiently woke and willing to harm people that aren’t.
That’s why so many people go back and learn Marx, even today. You can’t go on belief alone, and the tools he developed to understand the nature between greed, power, and social hierarchies still sits at the heart of critical analysis of society and the oppression we face on a daily basis.
People want you to attack an identity, a label, a distraction, specifically to keep you from asking who it is that actually holds the reins of power.
anais-ninja-bitch:
also, the discourse is being generated by the same class of wealthy capitalists who materially benefit by dividing the rest of us against ourselves.
fleetnaturals:
also
a lot of the black and brown people of the boomer generation with radical politics were killed or are still in jail
a lot of the poor people of the boomer generation with radical politics died prematurely from being poor
a lot of the LGBTQ people of the boomer generation with radical politics didn’t survive the AIDS crisis
the conservative boomers are not a representative sample of everyone who was born from that era, they were just the ones who had the power and privilege to survive
larmekeii:
lets take it a step further and acknowledge that generation discourse–
which, for the most part is “haha old people are all racist and are ruining the planet”
–not only ignores the realities of elderly and middle aged PoC, but also implies that white millenials and gen-z’rs arent/cant be racist when that simply isnt the case.
e-seal:
As an older person myself I think a lot of this is like the ‘not all men’ and ‘not all white people’ stuff. If you are a boomer who has fought all your life for social justice, equality, everyone having the means and opportunity to have a decent life, etc, it might be irritating to be grouped in with the reactionaries who haven’t, but in the end ‘ok boomer’ is not really about you.
It’s about the people who won’t listen. Who won’t be persuaded by reasoned argument or by the spectacle of human suffering. It’s about the people with whom you’ve probably also been brought to tears of frustration all your life.
I’m not going to lie, watching Piers Morgan be roundly shut down on twitter by dozens of people going ‘ok boomer’ to him gave me great joy. It’s all he deserves.
sleepyowlet:
Yeah, but “Ok Boomer” is really just a response to certain (usually white cishet) older people who either write or buy into thinkturds like “Why are Millennials so lazy?” or “Why do Millennials never grow up?” or “Why do Millennials buy smartphones and bath bombs instead of houses?” instead of waking up, smelling the coffee and standing in solidarity with us. We read Marx. We know what the Capital does. The whole point of this is that they refuse to see that and would rather believe that a whole two generations of young people are too stupid and too lazy to properly adult than to accept the fact that there is something wrong with the system that treated them well.
We tried talking to them. We tried to confront them with facts and figures a thousand times, I don’t think there’s one Millennial or Gen-Zer alive who hasn’t had that conversation with a parent or another older relative. But at this point, it’s pretty much all willful ignorance on their part.
So we’re tired. There’s no help or support coming from those people, so we gave up trying to talk to them. We’re tired of having to prove our humanity to people who refuse to see that we got fucked by the system before we were even out of our diapers, who refuse to see that they are partially culpable. Because they got into positions of influence in the 80s and could have kept the change going. Instead, they got complacent and mostly stopped fighting and fell asleep on their heaps of doodahs while the capitalist steered governments quietly rolled back much of the progress made. But those Boomers didn’t care because they bought into the mentality of, “I got mine, fuck the rest.”
That’s why we’re pissed. That’s why we’re 100% done. It’s not about hating all older people and it never has been. This is just a very personal response to certain people in our lives who instead of helping us, supporting us in our struggle, or just listening, choose to shit all over us.
korrasera:
This is a really important point to absorb. A lot of the discussion we have around social justice and progressive causes is caught up in the need to draw faction lines and label other people as evilbadwrong so we can dismiss them. Do that without analysis and you’re just signing up for a new dogma, one that tells you that you’re pure and good if you’re sufficiently woke and willing to harm people that aren’t.
That’s why so many people go back and learn Marx, even today. You can’t go on belief alone, and the tools he developed to understand the nature between greed, power, and social hierarchies still sits at the heart of critical analysis of society and the oppression we face on a daily basis.
People want you to attack an identity, a label, a distraction, specifically to keep you from asking who it is that actually holds the reins of power.
anais-ninja-bitch:
also, the discourse is being generated by the same class of wealthy capitalists who materially benefit by dividing the rest of us against ourselves.
fleetnaturals:
also
a lot of the black and brown people of the boomer generation with radical politics were killed or are still in jail
a lot of the poor people of the boomer generation with radical politics died prematurely from being poor
a lot of the LGBTQ people of the boomer generation with radical politics didn’t survive the AIDS crisis
the conservative boomers are not a representative sample of everyone who was born from that era, they were just the ones who had the power and privilege to survive
larmekeii:
lets take it a step further and acknowledge that generation discourse–
which, for the most part is “haha old people are all racist and are ruining the planet”
–not only ignores the realities of elderly and middle aged PoC, but also implies that white millenials and gen-z’rs arent/cant be racist when that simply isnt the case.
e-seal:
As an older person myself I think a lot of this is like the ‘not all men’ and ‘not all white people’ stuff. If you are a boomer who has fought all your life for social justice, equality, everyone having the means and opportunity to have a decent life, etc, it might be irritating to be grouped in with the reactionaries who haven’t, but in the end ‘ok boomer’ is not really about you.
It’s about the people who won’t listen. Who won’t be persuaded by reasoned argument or by the spectacle of human suffering. It’s about the people with whom you’ve probably also been brought to tears of frustration all your life.
I’m not going to lie, watching Piers Morgan be roundly shut down on twitter by dozens of people going ‘ok boomer’ to him gave me great joy. It’s all he deserves.