Generalizing entire groups of people usually isn’t recommended. I know boomers who would code circles around any of the kids who think that configuring wifi is the height of tech literacy.
Cool, tell those boomers to tell their boomer peers we are literally on a dying planet and they need to vote for politicians that want to stop the end of the world.
I understand it’s fun to blame boomers for climate change, but this was something that started before their generation existed and it will continue to be a problem after they’re gone. You can also blame them for inaction in addressing it, but given that the only real solution is an extreme degree of collective austerity across multiple civilizations, which is something innately at conflict with the expansionist nature of capitalism as an economic system (something which also predated boomers and which will continue to be a problem after they’re gone), then I would say that if you expect the problem to start being solved as soon as that generation is dead and buried, you’re going to be sorely disappointed.
Oh no! A statement which applies to the vast majority has some exceptions! Better break out the um-actually and technically-incorrect stamps.
As someone who has worked in IT, age has a strong negative correlation with tech literacy. Is every boomer tech illiterate? Of course not. Some boomers built the tech we use today. But most boomers are worse with tech than most ten year olds.
My generation will have tech illiteracy problems worse than the boomers. Yours will be even worse than mine. It’s because most people reach a point where they stop trying to keep up with everything and fall behind.
You’ll start to see it after you pass 40 or so. Then when you’re in your 60s it’ll be your generation’s turn to be mocked as the bumbling idiots who ruined the world.
So have fun with that.
Uhhh… no. Gen z has had to deal with and understand changing technology since birth. I have faith in them.
The only thing boomers have proved is they’re able to do is ruin the economy and fuck over their children.
Yeah nah, I’m sure every generation will cop flack for something, it’s just that since WW2, and the cold war, problems like plastic, lead paint etc let alone the environment weren’t really on the agenda. People just didn’t have a list of big bad world problems besides war.
On one hand I agree that technology is changing at a rapid pace, and ageism is a thing, especially more so now with climate change, but I think the issue is how quickly can the “wall of education” be broken down so that a critical mass of the human population can be enabled to learn how to calculate complex integrals, produce a computer software and program, to make a pipe bomb lol, or fix their car etc, you get my point.
Information freedom is becoming a big deal for people these days but at the same time individuals are no longer expected to be so rigidly self reliant. First it was paper, then books in libraries, nowadays we have the internet. YouTube, torrents and search engines definitely help a lot, but I haven’t seen a top ten problems for humanity video on YouTube yet lol. We’re almost coming full circle, however, I still think we should pay homage to the idea that being self reliant and learning how to do something for yourself is essentially a good thing, not necessarily only valuable to prevent loss of information but for further collaboration opportunities. It’s not necessarily Nazism to argue that if every person’s mind was a library, idiocracy and risk of displacement would become less likely to occur on every level. Think of Hal from A Space Odyssey
Your mechanic can fix his own car the same way your locksmith can unlock his own van, and your tech support guy will probably learn to fix his own computer. If you can do all of those things, even if you don’t become a valuable person in society, at least you’ll be better at taking care of yourself and less likely to be a burden to your group.
In saying that, if I was an old 60-70yr old man, I would consider re-educating myself in a field not so hot for the younglings, you know, the usual work like the trades, engineering, computing, and big data are big money for many young people these days, so it makes sense, if you’re older to get into something less physical like painting, gardening, landscaping, digger operator, software UI development, accounting, systems engineering, matchmaking, etc, something that is either boring or niche enough that many avoid it while simultaneously needing it. Remember boredom is the weakness of the younglings lol
I always find it funny: the internet is a lot softer and more inclusive than it ever used to be. Explicit sexism, racism, homophobia/transphobia, etc. are treated with zero tolerance most places. But straight up ageism? That’s the last truly accepted form of bigotry. Because getting pissed at a group of people who will be dead soon for not fixing all the world’s problems is easy when you’re young. When Gen Z gets to be 40 and there are no more Boomers but nothing is still being done to address the world’s myriad problems, I like to think there will be some self-reflection on the nature of the world in which they live and the innate difficulty of addressing complex problems driven by societal inertia. But we both know there won’t be and they’ll probably pivot to hating Gen X and Millennials. Or maybe they’ll go the other direction and blame young people.
Misandry seems to fly pretty often on the internet too.
Most specifically towards CIS white men. Even though I’m not that specific subset, I feel bad for them. Racism, bigotry and etc are tolerated when it’s directed at them and they can’t even defend themselves. Anytime they try to, they get met with whataboutism. Most of them are just flipping burgers. Just very tiny portion of CIS white men are iconic powerful people.
I’m pretty sure most powerful people are straight white men. That being said, most straight white men aren’t powerful.
I can answer your question: When the Boomers are gone the Millenials will be called “Boomers” and blamed instead.
I dropped into a European Discord server a while back and got called a Boomer when I mentioned my age (40). I’m a Millennial. Apparently the server was full of 16-19yr old kids so I wasn’t made to feel very welcome. Not been back since.
But Millenials will most likely take the hit when Boomers are gone except the term “Boomer” is now just a generic insult against people in middle age+.
As a representative of Gen X, I can honestly say that I’m glad you think they’ll pick on your generation, and leave mine alone.
Seems likely. I’ve seen plenty of people say “Oh, this old-ass Boomer thinks [whatever shitty opinion here].” And this is in direct reference to people in their late forties/early fifties. And if you correct them and say “that person is Gen X - they’re the child of Baby Boomers,” they’ll pivot to “well, Boomer is a mindset, not age group.” But it does seem more likely to be an insult for old people or people who appear to be out of touch in some capacity.
When I’m 80 and the world still isn’t fixed, I’ll be blaming the billionaires, just like I am right now.
Vape is just propylene glycol and vegetable glycerine, both food safe, with typical food flavoring additives
That’s primarily because boomer politicians replaced effective literacy programs with programs that allow those with learning disabilities and other intellectual impairments to navigate the world. This means that many gen Z and younger millennials were robbed of quality education that enables self-directed study and critical analysis of text. Primarily so that connected education product companies could make a profit.
Yeah, people who grew up with boomers as parents, teachers, bosses, weird aunts, etc. Find the ultra- reductiveness to be very silly. The labeling of the entire post war generation as incompetent neocons has never fit well except in the minds of people whose only knowledge of history comes from tiktok. Where do they think their anti- establishment ideas came from? Do they think the hippies and civil rights activists were millennials or something?
I know boomers who would code circles around any of the kids who think that configuring wifi is the height of tech literacy.
I know one of those too. And all the others call their grandkids to configure the wifiinstall the internet on their phone for them.
And yet they will still have, compared to the average beyond their age group, significantly higher lead content in their blood.
I’d bet significant money that the ones who are able to fill technical and intellectual roles are the ones who were lucky enough to avoid the worst of the toxic air.
There’s a reason boomers are almost universally fucking dumb.
The world is so much easier to reason about when an entire generation can be explained by a meme though.
I’m with you, remindes of this fun article on our human desire to see things black and white
Yeah, we are so much better than them because … (insert own reason of entitlement)!
classic phrase repeated each generation since recorded history
Tech illiteracy will happen to most everyone, get off your high horses. Replace lead with microplastics or some shit for future generations. I’m sure the next generations will hate gen Y/Z just the same.
I don’t think you know your generations, the boomers were the creators of the internet and tech but didn’t know that had it so good and think everyone else does. Their parents were the ones that didn’t get tech so much. The gen x just goes along with everyone because they’ve never had any power and probably never will, they’re being skipped. Millennials are gen x extreme but have more numbers, and gen z is fucked. This isn’t a generational thing but a power and status thing. The people who have power and money have been fucking over the ones that don’t since this country began.
The gen x just goes along with everyone because they’ve never had any power and probably never will, they’re being skipped.
I mean that tracks for me.
the boomers were the creators of the internet and tech
No, a very tiny number of them were. The vast majority can just about connect to their own wifi assuming the guide was printed and not a QR code.
Gen Z grew up with tech just basically works, and hides all the complicated stuff behind 17 submenus and automatic installs. I know plenty of gen Z who literally don’t know what a file path is.
Millenials and Gen X are the generations who needed to know tech if they wanted to use it. Unlike tech savvy boomers, there’s a lot of them, since computers were consumer products by then. And unlike gen Z, nothing was simple or automatic and there were no guides. You learned how to learn, or you didn’t get to use a PC for anything other than solitaire.
I guess I’m biased, I have a lot of boomer relatives and parents of friends that are still working in tech. In my world, it’s a lot of them.
No, a very tiny number of them were.
The following might be true, I also know a lot of younger people in every generation that don’t know tech. I mean most humans don’t want to know that stuff unless they have to. Maybe that’s confirming that Gen x and Millennials had to know.
Gen Z grew up with tech just basically works, and hides all the complicated stuff behind 17 submenus and automatic installs. I know plenty of gen Z who literally don’t know what a file path is.
Now that’s the truth if I’ve ever seen it. I’m right at the old edge of Gen Z, and some people just three to five years younger than me have trouble finding that file they downloaded.
Now, I’m not judging for that. If you don’t grow up using a PC, how would you know the ins and outs?
But what really gets me if someone needs to use a PC for Uni or work, and still doesn’t make any effort to learn after a year or two of using one.
That’s just inexcusable, no matter the age.
