IS “OK BOOMER” OK?

IS “OK BOOMER”

Berns Mitra Illustration by Berns Mitra

OK?

“OK Boomer” is a sigh.

I recently got into a spat online with decorated and acclaimed journalist Inday Varona over her insistence that younger generations cease using the expression. I decried the double-standard in “OK Boomer” receiving more flak than using “millennial” as a dirty word and the apparent lack of empathy that disables older generations from understanding just what this expression means to and for us.

There is a failure of empathy in misunderstanding how the youth uses the expression and the sentiment that underlies its utterance. Empathy would have informed her and her fans (I didn’t even know journalists had fans) that the expression is responsive to what has essentially been intergenerational bullying but that it carries with it no malice or condescension. Empathy would have completely struck out the idea that the expression is as destructive or historically charged as using the n-word, as it is accused of being by certain Boomer-controlled international media outlets.

More importantly, empathy would’ve understood that — speaking in references familiar to older generations — we didn’t start the fire. It’s been burning since Boomers have churned out article after article chiding the youth for adapting (and often failing to) to an economy that our elders broke, deciding to be informed and vertebrate on social matters using the technology that became available to us, and generally being different from previous generations as if people and culture are supposed to remain static through time.

But we are not afforded empathy. In classic Boomer manner, our effort to assert ourselves through “OK Boomer” was once again fed into their condescension machine and the same media outlets that presented our avocado toast and social media as global crises are treating the harmless expression as a nuclear-level threat. If anything, Boomers’ responded the way they respond to all things Millennial and Generation Z — dictating with entitlement, spite, and a searing sense of self-righteousness. We’ve heard this too often before, but this time the scolding comes with an accusation of outright malice.

Let’s be real. Boomers lose nothing when we use the expression. Boomers lose nothing when we shrug off their aggressive insertion into everything that we say and do, including our attempts to fix this broken world and make a future possible for ourselves. Boomers lose nothing and they maintain their positions of power — warming seats we may never be able to fill. The expression does not cut them off from the world or discourse they ultimately have power over. It does not cultivate a concerted effort from the media to deride their entire generation, nor does it change the fact that media is an institution that they still control. It does not berate them into developing a sense of guilt for simply being a Boomer.

“OK Boomer,” again, is a sigh. It’s a pretty loud one that, on the other hand, allows us to take back our identity as the youth after our self-determination was willfully snatched from us. We are shedding the generational self-loathing Boomers made every effort to drum into us as we realize that this world belongs not to them, not to us, but to everyone. “OK Boomer” is indicative of an emerging youth with our own agenda and ideas. As a sigh, we let it out almost meaninglessly, yet a sigh says plenty about the sigh-er. After years of insults and self-doubt, are we not afforded a sigh?

This brings us back to the “debate.” While it was mostly ridden with Inday Varona sending me links to articles on for-pay news sites and pointless personal attacks from her fanatics, the sober moments of the broken discourse yielded some insights that we, as the youth, have to at least momentarily consider. Specifically, “OK Boomer” has the potential to alienate an entire generation of people who could otherwise be our allies against pressing matters like climate change and social equality. I also imagine the expression would significantly hamper any attempt to restore intergenerational relations, though I insist that that moral imperative should not fall on us as the hostility did not begin with us nor are we the ones in positions of advantage. We lastly can’t deny that our meme culture has the undeniable tendency to slippery slope what was otherwise harmless into something destructive, so their warning — although off in trajectory — still stands.

So, is “OK Boomer” OK? No. No young generation should ever have to endure years of insults and self-hatred. Our hand should have never been forced. While it’s unfortunate that things have come to this, it is laudable that our only outlet of years of pent up contempt is an expression that will neither harm nor stand its ground — a sigh, a fleeting moment in our attention.

Catharsis in progress. On to the next meme.

TC