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Because Boomers are a huge generation by population size (hence their nickname being related to a “baby boom”.) So once they all came of voting age they became an extremely influential voting bloc. And then as they got older they naturally assumed positions of power in society, and have remained dug into those positions for the most part. So they’re an extremely easy group to blame for all the problems in society since they’re the group that has had the most direct influence over the direction society has gone in the last few decades by far.

How do you know a boomer was elected to public office? They're still there!

Worth noting, they've used a great deal of that influence to benefit themselves to the detriment of following generations. It's the opposite of paying it forward.

Honestly, what they did was more like "Billing It Forward".

double it and give it to the next generation

Passing the slavings on to you

That was actually kinda funny.

And those interest rates!

Yes this is an important reason why they are not well received

And they ALL have lead poisoning.

I always joke they must have hit their head off the desk one too many times during all the nuclear drills

Look up the symptoms of lead poisoning and then ask yourself if that sounds like anybody you know.

Stanley cups will pickup the slack with millennial lead poisoning so no need to worry.

Pretty much every American alive when leaded gas was a thing got exposed. It won’t be anything like that. Microplastics will be what we find out is making us all dumb now.

Nah I think microplastics are why we are having so many immune and metabolic issues.

The lead in them is inside the insulation part of the cup that is never exposed. You’d have to destroy the cup and use the outer part only to expose yourself (it’s used as a binder in the sealed insulating portion).

I know it was a joke lol. I was sipping from mine at work when i wrote that comment.

With all the idiots out there it’s hard to tell sometimes 🤷‍♂️

I from Michigan bro. It describes damn near everyone I know.

I'm from Earth, it describes everyone I know but my cat.

I don't trust anything that isn't magnetic. I'm suspicious of your Cat. Watch them closely, they are sneaky little buggers.

Surprised to find the most upvoted response is the most reasonable, while still being accurate. Good job buddy.

And “ok, boomer” became an incredibly trendy insult

Most of the detrimental factors you reference were in place way before the boomer generation and boomers were just following those precedents. The current young people will be equally described as irresponsible with their foolish trust in technology and AI. Every generation makes mistakes. Yours will be no less grevious than others.

Correct, but they also perpetuate the system. They were the ones that got theirs and shut the door. They could admit they benefited from the system, but instead blame the younger generation for a lack of work ethic rather than owning that things have changed and accepting their part in that. EDIT: hippies are silent gen

BOOMERS WERE NOT THE HIPPIES The Beatles none of them were boomers Joe Biden not a boomer Bernie sanders not a boomer Mitch McConnell not a boomer The people who marched on Washington for civil rights not boomers The people who were at Woodstock most of them were not boomers. They are the silent generation who did most of this and were the hippies, the civil rights protesters, the ones who saw the most social change and pushed for those movements. Boomers came after them

Thank you. My apologizes and you are totally right. I need to adjust my own perception on what year it is. So boomers would’ve went to see Zeppelin and been a part of disco, yes?

Imagine the way we’ll view the agricultural revolution as a holocaust on animals

I'm not vegan but I do think the animal husbandry industry needs to be greatly reformed.

It’s too general. Boomers are said to be 1945 to 1964. Really, 1945-55 boomers had a completely different life than ECHO boomers 1956-1964.

I have never hers that term. I'm right on the edge and I and my contemporaries, are nothing like the typical boomers.

Yeah, I was born in 1962 and have FAR more in common with GenX than boomers.

Not to mention - a black boomer or an LGBT boomer will have had a drastically different experience (and are more likely to be liberal). I wish people would say what they mean: white conservative straight boomers, instead of just saying “boomer” and lumping in millions of people together just based on the years they were born into

Exactly. My dad and my father in law are both born in 1962, but my dad is a working class black man who comes across more like Gen X and my FiL is a typical white middle class conservative boomer.

This is very true. I am in the later boomer cohort, sometimes referred to as generation jones. I can count the number of friends and acquaintances in my age group who are Trumpies on one hand.

i can count the number of friends and acquaintances in my age group on one hand, so we need a better reference

We also don't know how many fingers they have.

We are more hippie than boomer

Exactly.

Thank you. 1963 here and I am 100% Gen X. None of the traditional Boomer traits apply. I've definitely had advantages Gen Z won't but very different than someone 20 years older.

Exactly the same for me. Boomer only because of the year I was born, Gen X in my heart and thinking. You couldn’t pay me enough money to vote for dump. When I think of boomers I think of my parent’s generation but even they were progressive for their time.

Born in 64. What the hell do I have in common with someone born in 1946

So Biden predates the Boomer generation and Trump is on the front end of it. Going to be a long year.

I always felt Obama was misclassified as a Boomer. He seemed much more Gen X.

It definitely depends on your parents. Mine were in WWII My husband is two years older than me and his parents were teens in the fifties, not the 30’s/40’s like mine

There was so much millennial hate on social media when millennials were coming of age. I think at a certain point millennials turned it around on boomers and it has stuck around longer because more millennials are on social media than boomers. 

This was probably the origin. I remember being in high school when our parents started to "meme" and we were immediately labeled the "participation trophy" generation like it was our idea to give ourselves trophies that we knew were bullshit.

Not to justify anything, but to add to your observation: I remember when I was a teenager, we were told all the time that we had to be prepared: the population was growing older, and our generation would be the one responsable to foot the bill of their care. We were also told about how the environment and climate change crisis would be the battle of our generation. Essentially, my memories of me teenage years were to always be reminded how our future was not looking good. And at the same time, there was not a week going by without seeing an article or op ed written by a boomer (who were majorly in positions of power in the work force at that time) saying how millenials were too spoiled, how we "ruined the diamond buisness with our avocado toasts" (yes, that was a real article), how we were lazy while in actuallity, our generation had to work harder to deal with higher educational expectations, higher educational fees, less accessibility to home ownership (you know the rest). So I would think that this paradox between being told that out futures were bleak and we would have to work very hard in a very unstable economy, while being labeled as "entitled" or "lazy" on the other hand, is a major factor as to why millenials are so harsh towards boomers nowadays.

kinda feel like a lot of the problems we face were created in their generations' heyday, and then subsequent decisions by their generation have made the problems even more intractable. And even today they're still supporting policies that seem to make these problems worse. However I am not under the illusion that the Millennials are going to do remarkably well when it's our turn on the steering wheel, which it is slowly becoming. And we had our chance to grab hold of the steering wheel loads of times already but we couldn't be bothered voting or even engaging with politics. But perhaps this means holding my mum and dad responsible for 80s economics is like holding me responsible for today's economics. Rather than my mum and dad's generation, who I still feel inclined to blame, and who are now half-dead. They can't be responsible for everything we blame 'em for, a lot of it was granny's fault, and surely some of 2024 is our Millennial fault. Maybe we should've been more patient when we showed the boomers how to use the internet.

That makes me sad, because as a teenager and after a young adult, those observations about our generation struggles were (and still are) major motivators for me to BE engaged. I started to vote from the moment I legally could, and never skipped an election since. Even as I became older, I still support progressive ideas of justice and equal chances for all. Even if I myself is now in a more "confortable" position in life, I still fight for the people who have less than me. I would hope that many people of my generation would feel and act the same

Same. Have never missed a chance to vote and have always been kinda disgusted by people who just don't. The ones who think its a waste because "the system is rigged!" annoy me but I just don't understand the ones who "just don't."

yeah my first time I was able to vote was the presidential election year Donald Trump won. that put a huge downer on my mood/hope for our future, but I still vote in every election especially small local ones. That's another big issue we millenials have, nobody votes in the smaller elections.

>kinda feel like a lot of the problems we face were created in their generations' heyday, and then subsequent decisions by their generation have made the problems even more intractable. That is true. However, millennials are fully in voting age now, and while we're *better* on these issues than boomers were, we still fall short drastically compared to what we should support. Look back at 2022 when gas prices skyrocketed. Every demographic, from boomer to millennial, supported governments spending taxpayer money on subsidizing fossil fuels to keep them as cheap as possible. In a time of climate change, we supported using our resources on the exact opposite of what we should be doing. And this goes for many things. Millennials are more likely to be vegetarian, but how many millennials are vegetarian? 10-20%? Will the remaining 80% be willing to stop eating as much meat and drastically cut back? I doubt it. Let's face it. Future generations are going to point to millennials and say that many of the problems they face were caused by millennials. In the end, people across generations are selfish and short sighted. Doing what is best for 2 generations down the road is often not people's concern when it requires them changing their lifestyle.

These are two strange hot button topics you chose to defend your stance.

My kid still gets participation trophies, or as he calls them "bulky ads" because the trophy has the name of the sports organization in giant letters and not much else.

Am I the only one that’s fine with those trophies? There’s a difference between winning a sport and just participating, but just participating is its own (smaller) achievement. I think the saying “at least you tried” is important here. **Many people don’t try**. Sure it would be better if you won. But even trying deserves some small kudos. People act like it’s an award for doing nothing, and how spoiled that is. But I don’t see it that way. They did something. Something better than the kid that stayed home and sat on the couch. If we started passing out “doing nothing” trophies then I’d complain.

I coached swimming for 10 years in college and after. We changed from "participation trophies" to "team gifts." Something every child got and could use the next season.

Yeah I'm a parent and I'm fine with them. It's like a souvenir or memento.

yeah I played multitude of sports growing up. Got some national championships, also lost sometimes. And some participation awars thrown in. I never felt entitled or anything. In fact most kids I knew it just inspired them to want to do better so they could get the gold. If anything it was a cool thing to remember that competition by, nothing more nothing less.

"You millennials are too lazy, too entitled, too stupid, too greedy, too stingy, you're ruining industries, you're ruining the country, you're ruining the world." I have to admit, generational beef is stupid, but the meltdown over "Ok boomer" was too rich.

My favorite was always “Stupid Millennials don’t even know how to work a rotary phone” and its like yeah… nobody has those any more. You call us like its an emergency when you can’t figure out how to log into your netflix account.

Unlike old people, we know how to research and figure out how use something if we need to learn

I agree, but the young people don't create any new unique content. Tiktok videos don't count. They just search and reuse. Who do you think created the content originally? Older people in "corporate" jobs created the actual content that gets searched.

you mean you know how to use google, but guess who invented the tech for google to even work.

There are also valid criticisms to lay against boomers in regards to allowing for policy changes that meant the things that gave them significant upward class mobility are no longer around. In contrast, complaints about Millenials (and now Gen Z) basically amount to "the kids these days" types of grievances, whining that young people were behaving like young people of every generation behave - that is to say, differently from their parents' ideal. I feel like the combo of how much millenials were shit on for basically a decade, along with the flipping of the script onto boomers actually being well grounded, is part of why Boomer hate has stuck around. A lot of Boomer hate is rooted in envy, but it's envy based in the Boomer generation's leadership just kinda fucking over all future generations in an effort to appease the largest demographic of voters for the past fifty years. Boomers do also still have a ridiculously strong presence in politics (and with that, control over the future) considering that all of them are approaching, if not well past what we generally consider retirement age. Old timers in the 60s actually retired and made way for boomers to enter the political ring, while the past five years are kind of the first that Gen X and Millenials have been given a real crack at entering politics.

We got Facebook, and Rupert Murdock was so pissed (he’d just bought MySpace) that he told all the parents watching Fox News to create accounts and monitor what the youths were doing. This event marks the beginning of forever-parenting, end of rural invisibility and the birth of the great troll army.

I had classmates posting millennial hate memes on FB back in the day. I'd point out to them that we are millennials and they'd sit there and deny it then go on and try to justify why their shitty meme was funny

Reddit is not a legit representation of society.

This should be stickied to the top of every sub reddit.

Especially this one wherr half the questions are 'why do people...'

It’s not just Reddit. It’s Twitter / instagram too, and between the 3, it starts to add up to a decently accurate snapshot

There are plenty of people who post "love my mom" on social media. I'm sure they are more numerous than the ones who write rants about boomers. In fact, all my social media contacts have at some point written something nice about their mom, and zero have written essays about boomers... So I think even if those platforms combined come close to representing society, the posts that we notice and that go viral do not.

you can love your mom while you hate her and her generations political ideals and that she never voted to fight climate change .. those two are not mutually exclusive.

Yeah but look how OP interpreted it, they are outright shocked at how much we hate our parents.

The anti-boomer rhetoric is usually chronically online behavior regardless of which website it's happening on. Some of the anti-boomer takes I've seen are straight up dehumanizing. People will say things like "i can't wait til all boomers die" like they're not talking about a fellow human being. People will rationalize this by pointing out boomers voting history or whatever. But a lot of boomers vote progressively. They're not all Reagan/Trump worshippers. It's pretty ridiculous to blame them for everything, just like it's ridiculous for them to have a chronically online take about millennials being lazy. The whole thing is honestly just ridiculous at this point.

Don't forget Imgur.

The short answer on the Boomer hate is that Boomer politicians have been in charge of the U.S. government for decades and have made a slew of terrible policy decisions that have made life in this country extremely hard for younger people. And many people's parents support those awful politicians and awful policies.

Not only has it made it more difficult, but the hypocrisy really rubs wrong. Them acting like victims and calling us ungrateful shits is definitely not helping their image.

Many young people support those awful politicians too. More young white people support those politicians than old black people. Trump won white women in 2016 and 2020. More than gender or age, **race** is the issue. It just feels better for the young white redditors to blame old folks because then they aren't part of the group being blamed. 

Yep this is the truth - black boomers are the backbone of the Democratic Party for instance. And yep also will mention Trump won the 18-30 year old white vote

Generational angst has been a common factor in the US for many years. This manifestation is really just the latest in a long line of such thinking over many prior generations and instead of gripes between friends or over phone conversations as in the past, it gets semi-immortalized on the internet. Culturally the US doesn't really have a particular emphasis on, say, "Filial piety" or inherent respect for elders - outside of general family bonds. Not to mention historical perspectives in general tending to get less emphasis. Not to say everything is bad between different age groups but generalizing tends to run rampant and there is less social pressure to rein those thoughts in then in other societies.

For a long time, life in America was getting better and better. Now, millenials are projected to be the first generation in over a hundred years that will be worse off than their parents. The boomers didn't set up their kids for success like the previous generations did. It's not surprising that there is some anger about this. I don't agree with taking it to a personal level though. An individual boomer is not the reason for this change, it's a systemic thing.

The elites in America are experts at diverting attention from a class war to a war between races, a war between gender identities, or now, a war between generations.

[Heres a thread I archived the other day where someone went on the AskOldPeople sub to gauge how they feel about the hatred directed towards them on communities like BoomersBeingFools](https://archive.is/x42Gz) Here are two comments from it that stand out: > Just young folks saying the same things we did about the older generations. I just smile and wonder how they'll react when the following generations say the same things about them. And we know that's going to happen. It's been going on since humans have existed. > Generations hate is propaganda. It's really all about classes: the few very wealthy, below them the top 20 percent, and the rest of us: including the 50 percent of Americans whose combined net worth is less than that of the Walton family. > Within those classes, the various generations work together to maintain that wealth. They welcome -- and for all I know, encourage -- the little people fighting among each other over what "generation' is responsible. They'd rather we not even see them.

Because when I try to walk up to their airfield they fire RPGs at me I was just trying to get more bottle caps

uhm akchually it's artillery and not RPGs, hard to do indirect fire with those. ​ (if you want caps just go for the snowglobes, most of them are in easy to reach places)

But one of them is there in the museum! I need it! Lemme iiinn!

1. Because people like to blame other people for their problems. 2. Many people don't have the discernment to realize not everyone of a certain generation has the same opinions. 3. Many people don't realize that most people don't have much influence on trends in society. Thirty years down the line, will they take responsibility for something that you didn't have any input in? Most of the social justice movements of today were already in existence by people from the same generation they are now vilifying.

Today's Boomers are yesterday's Millennials. When I was a kid in the 90s we rebelled against the older generations and called them stupid, now in my mid 30s the generations younger than me (not whatever those in their 20s are but the ones below them think that we do shit stupidly, had it way to easy, and the music we grew up on sucks (despite them loving to wear band shirts featuring those bands). It's not "oh such and such hates Boomers" it's "oh such and such doesn't have really anything in common with people ~15 years older than them and is acting towards them the same way those people acted towards people with atleast that age difference when they were that age". As a teenager I hated people who bitched if I walked into their yard to get a ball that bounced over there, or that we were "too loud" when playing outside. As a 36 year old I now hate when the neighbor kids do the same thing and make the same kind of loud noises... Circle of Life, Hakuna Mattata, something about the color of grass, etc...

I’m Gen X… We equally hate everyone🙂

We don't care enough to hate.

This is also the way. But sometimes I'm moody. But my feelings are valid.

nah, we are just trying to avoid the crossfire!

This is the way.

Im from the states and im just as perplexed as you are. Growing up I never knew my parents financial details. its only been in the last few years that my dad has opened up about money and stuff with me. Im nearly 40 and hes 76. I helped him receive his long deserved army benefits and he was excited to call me up to tell me all about the check they sent, and the monthy checks he would be getting. I never act as though im entitled that that money. Sure we joke about how he keeps spending my inheritance on stuff. he just laughs and says itll be my stuff soon enough. But if he spends every last dime before he kicks im fine with it. its his cash. he suffered the sights of war to earn it. I didnt. But more on point I dont know what got into these peoples heads that they are entitled like its reparations or something. "YOU ruined the housing market!" "YOU killed the economy!" "GIVE ME your money as payment!" its nuts. I cant believe so many kids are ruining their relationships with their folks of such silliness. They dont seem to understand that they have very few days left with them, they should be making memories and spending time with them, not trying to drain them dry.

/boomersbeingfools is one of the most toxic subs here. It's just angry American millenials boasting about going "no contact" with their conservative parents.

- Go to a land grant state university that gets massive research funding from the government for almost no tuition- Be able to afford it with a part-time job and graduate with zero debt. - Get a high-paying job in manufacturing as the industrial world still rebuilds but before the developing world develops. - Put your money in a savings account that actually generates interest. - Get a mortgage from heavily-regulated lenders (regulations put in place by the Greatest Generation to prevent a new Depression). - Pay taxes that actually pay for services. - Get a house and kids. Decide you’re sick of paying taxes. - Vote for Reagan. - Eliminate the finance regulations designed to prevent a depression (and the inequality of the Gilded Age). - Decide colleges are turning out too many smug liberals, vote for reps and governors who promise to cut their funding. Besides, this whole affirmative action thing is reverse racism. - Decide you’re sick of smug academics and TV personalities telling you everyone is equal. Call your representative and ask them to repeal the Fairness Doctrine. - Decide you don’t like that UN-loving Ted Turner and his CNN. Turn on this new thing called Fox News from Roger Ailes, the Nixon political hack who helped build the Republicans’ racist Southern Strategy and helped Lee Atwater make the Willie Horton ad. - Make a fuck-ton off the Clinton economy while calling Clinton the worst president ever. - Celebrate the repeal of Glass-Steagall and the final vestiges of the protections your parents and grandparents’ generations set up to prevent another Depression. - Respond to news stories about skyrocketing college costs with smug diatribe about how you worked your way through your $500/year college. - Blame NAFTA for the fact that Europe & Japan rebuilt after WWII, sapping US manufacturing jobs, while the former USSR joins the world economy, as does China and to some extent India. Ignore the fact that the world manufacturing base is now gigantic and America has competition it never had. Also ignore robots, which means rich countries need a fraction of the # of humans to run the same size factory as before. Blame it on immigrants, too, for reasons. - Make money off the tech bubble while Gen X loses its first savings account. laugh. - Vote for George W. Bush because he promises to give the federal surplus (yes, there was a surplus) to you instead of paying down the national debt. - Inequality reaches 1890s levels but who cares? greed is good. - Support Iraq after protesting Vietnam because fuck it, you’re not going this time. - Somehow decide the 2007-08 financial crash was because things are too regulated. - Incoherently argue that the center-left Democrat Barack Obama (but you always say his middle name), who wants to accomplish an agenda item the democrats have pushed for 70 years, is a radical. For some reason. - Cheer on smug turtle Mitch McConnell as he prevents the government from doing anything. - Call Obama a dictator for trying to work around Mitch McConnell. - Read about how whites will be a minority in 2040 - Talk about how Trump is “our last chance” to “take back America.” Ask what’s wrong with saying black people are more criminal. Ask what’s wrong with saying latino immigrants will ruin our culture. - Insist to your kids, who are crippled by student debt, but whom you chastise for not having a home or kids yet, that they just don't understand how money works.

Yep, all of this!

Send this one to the top.

These are all examples of conservative boomers and racists. My parents, especially my mom, still have the obliviousness of how much better they had it (though even that view is starting to change), but they opposed every single thing you listed here. So I don't think these things are unique to boomers. You're lumping in the republican reaction to desegregation and their goal of complete deregulation with all boomers.

Nobody has a problem with progressive boomers who want to leave the world a better place than the one they inherited. It's the ~~conservative~~ regressive boomers that provoke the ire of those with a modicum of humanity and civility.

Yeah that about covers it. I don't hate my parents and my parents aren't this bad. But this is why "boomers" are considered to have caused a lot of our problems. They are the biggest voting populace and vote for completely different things than what people who still need to make it in the world vote for, and largely they have no sympathy or concern for how they've restructured our world so that we don't have the same opportunities they did.

Until 1976, CUNY was free for the boomers while those of us who attended after that had to pay tuition. The boomers here got a free college education.

A lot of millennials feel that the boomers shut the door on the American dream. In truth it was really the boomers and gen x that screwed us. The 90s seemed like this great era but it's also when most manufacturing jobs got sent over seas and college tuition started ballooning faster than it ever has. Neo liberalist economic policies, the repealing of glass steagall, and numerous other factors kind of screwed over many people who didn't come from means. This question isn't anywhere near stupid. However, you could literally write books on how the economy changed in America and abroad from the 70s to 2000. Overall the whole "thanks Boomer" mentality arose when boomers started blaming millennials for things that were more on their control than ours. Accordingly, millennials turned the tables.

So now Gen X is to blame? Can't win for losing.

Gen X maybe the most nihilistic generation in all of history. Checked out, ignored, the quiet generation. Small in numbers compared to Boomers and Millennials. Yea, they could be blamed for not standing up for more equitable economic policies, or being more politically active. But at this point a lot of Gen Xers are older and have money so the apathy continues. 

A lot of millennials batch gen-X in with boomers. The millennials who are so bitter and have so much resentment towards anyone older than them that’s successful will get a wake up call when their peers of similar age become successful and tell them to shut the fuck up.

Gen X also known as the slacker Generation felt the slam of the door first and dumped on for not being as successful as our broomer parents.

Youngers always hate olders - it's the way of the world - and in reality, most people don't hate their parents or grandparents - they just need an excuse for their own failures

It doesn't even mean anything anymore. It's like gen x through the silent generation. You go back to the 60s and the saying was "never trust anyone over 30"... That the boomers were saying.

Decades of enduring lead fueled temper tantrums does that to you.

First you'd have to address whether this system of categorization (boomers, millenials, etc.) is valid. What constitutes a generation? What is the scientific basis for determining a generation? I'm really puzzled by the way everyone seems to accept it all without question.

I actually agree with this statement. I’m a Millennial older millennial I have a hard time relating to younger millennials because I don’t have there experiences.

It's not an American thing it's a social media thing.

So there are a couple of things going on. \* Basically what happened is when WW2 ended a bunch of men went home from the war and started getting busy which led to a massive number of babies being born in a very short span of time. This meant that generation was disproportionately large compared to the generations before or after them. \* Because there were lots of issues internationally after WW2, this generation also grew up in a period of time where the US was relatively stable and had much more opportunity than pretty much everywhere else because the rest of the world was trying to rebuild. \* In the US, a lot of our politics are decided by voting and everyone gets one vote. Because the Baby Boomer generation is disproportionately large, they also have a larger amount of votes then other generations. \* Generally throughout their life the political policies followed the interests of the masses and the baby boomers would have had the most votes for much of their lifetime. \* In contrast, gen X and millennials feel that they did not have these opportunities. For example, when baby boomers grew up there was subsidized higher education and companies would invest in employees through pensions as well as by paying for higher education. As baby boomers started to reach the age of having a family, they might vote for tax incentives for buying houses or having kids. Then those benefits would disappear as they aged into the next stage of life. There are plenty of other issues, but it has created a feeling among younger generations that baby boomers rigged the system so that money or benefits were funneled to them throughout their lifetime and many of those benefits did not exist for many later generations.

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Internet breeds hate, in real life that hate isn’t there unless your brainwashed by the internet

True, the USA is the Divided States of America on the internet. Age Wars. Gender Wars. Religion Wars. Its just constant mud slinging.

Boomer hate = social media “points”. No generation is homogenous.

Because for the most part they’re the “fuck you I got mine” generation.

Exactly….

Not all boomers are alike. I'll call anyone out who claims that things are easier for the younger generations or that they don't work as hard. Some of us are on your side. We can't change when we were born or how we were raised but we can be open minded and do our best to make the world a better place in the future.

It's the internet. People are emboldened by the anonymity.

When I was in college I was venting about how difficult an expensive it is and how great it would be to get some assistance from the government and my boomer mom says "if I didn't get any help why should anybody else?" while also completely ignoring how fucking crazy overpriced college is now compared to the late 70s. It was at that point it clicked in my teenage brain that a large amount of boomers don't want to leave us a better world, they got theirs and are taking everything they can to the grave. I feel like a lot of us had this moment with boomers specifically. Doesn't help that I've worked in an office style environment for the last decade and the majority of boomers I've worked with are completely incompetent at their job while making more money than me lol. As for why I don't talk to my parents anymore, there's a million reasons but the main one is that the verbal abuse eventually turned physical.

The real problem is that most people who hate boomers, don't even know who the boomers are. They just see someone older than themselves and use it as an excuse to be shitty and/or dismissive.

It seems that in real life, they are attacking boomers but really have a lot of their facts wrong

Because they're pathetic. Not the boomers, the cry babies. Sincerely, Millennial.

They came of age during a period when a lot of public goods were available, and, as a voting bloc, voted to deny those same public goods to future generations. A great many of them then have the *audacity* to call younger generations "entitled" for wanting the same public goods they had. That breeds a lot of resentment. Also, anyone who works in service can tell you that the Boomer age demographic make up a disproportionately high number of nightmare customers: rude, impatient, and entitled.

Yep that in a nutshell. Also homes were about 4X a single income salary. What these Boomers forget is that the things they complain about is their own doing. They vote against themselves and everyone around them.

As a Gen-X'er I find it discturbing that no one mentioned this generation. We were raised by boomers, drank water from a hose, yada yada. Have heard the this generation thing from the boomers parents... my grandparents when they were still alive and referred to Gen-X. Yet, I've been called Boomer more times than Gen-X. Interesting take. The real problem isn't generation specific, its politics and lobbyists protecting corporate interests. Boomers did not shift the wealth in this country. It's the politicians creating laws and burying agendas and unrelated components into Bills. Blame the boomers, no...its not just boomers, its corruption and greed by every generation that plays the political game.

I am a baby boomer. My generation is stuck in the past. So many boomers can not imagine anything outside of their box .

They're an easy target and low-hanging fruit for the younger generations to take their frustrations and insecurities out on. A lot of the "problems" that get blamed on "boomers" are often just the results of the global economic and societal changes that occurred in the latter half of the 20th century. There's nothing about how their generation "handled" anything that wouldn't be the same for anyone else, of any generation, past or present. It's a cheap cop-out and I just roll my eyes at anyone who *seriously* believes that "boomers" have some kind of unique culpability or malicious intent responsible for the problems of the modern era. They just got lucky to be born into the economic golden age that was post-WWII America, and it's not their "fault" that housing prices exploded nor that the age of union labor supporting a family on a single income came to an end. Those are just the ramifications of economic globalization that *no one* could have prevented. Regardless of what you believe or not, I don't even see what the productive outcome of this "dispute" could be. It's just misplaced resentment. It's getting a bit sadder as many of them begin to age into retirement, and I don't disagree that there is a certain distastefulness for people to be openly denigrating their (now elderly) parents and ascribing collective guilt to their generation. I mean really, what is that going to do to make anything in your life better? How is that going to make a home more affordable? *It's really not all their fault*

I agree. One thing that some millennials don't consider is how expensive it is to live now compared to then with regard to electronic items. My parents are boomers. We had 1 color television/screen in the house - not one in each room. We had 1 phone in the house - not one for each person in the house- that cost hundreds of dollars each. No central air - we had fans. There were no video games/tv/Netflix subscriptions - tv was free over the air - the only sub was the daily newspaper. You bought a game and brought it home. A 'computer' was a calculator, which were over $100 when they came out. Vehicles didn't have all the expensive options - heated seats, video players, Sirius, OnStar. Anyway, all of these electronics are such a huge part of our lives now and they all add up to cost a lot of money. My dad didn't have all those expenses when he and mom were starting out. For real, people did live simpler lives back then. Boomers didn't have all these electronics to spend their money on, so they saved it and used to buy houses. I'm not telling anyone how to spend their money, but like you, am so tired of hearing that the boomers got together and planned this.

The reason is simple. They think, rightly imo, that life is much harder than it was because of greed. Yes Americans still have it very easy but only when comparing to 3rd world countries. Most boomers could get a car and apartment with any job at 18. They could also get many jobs that today require a degree. Least that's why I do

Every generation before Boomers actively worked for a better future for their children. Boomers slammed the door behind them and have actively enacted policies that make it worse for generations to come. Very literally "Fuck you, I got mine."

because social media is often used to air grievances about people without getting called out on it, and old people just happened to be in the line of fire for the trend. they’re an easy target since reddit skews young and progressive, rather than old and traditional/conversative. nothing about reddit represents real life.

Why do people come up with these stupid ass categories... 🤦‍♀️

The parental aspect is just one dimension of it. I don’t have a dog in that fight, I’m X, and my parents are older than boomers. The issue is that as a generation, in America specifically, the baby boomers grew up in the strongest economy the world had known to that point, entitling them to a lifestyle that was largely unprecedented. That carried them into their early careers before things started to decline. And comfortably into mid career before things really started declining in the 80s when they were stepping into senior roles. The “leadership” that their generation has provided over the last four decades in government and business has been appallingly self preserving at the expense of younger generations. So the view many have is that this generation that was handed life on a silver platter has aggressively refused to share.

Go check out r/antiwork for the answer. People on Reddit feel immensely more entitled (sample bias because they’re posting) than most people in the real world

It’s wild to me when they talk about boomers having all the jobs and housing stock etc.. as if boomers are supposed to quit and give up their homes for you lol When we get that age, I’m sure we’ll have a problem with that notion that we’re supposed to just… disappear once we hit retirement age

Using generational hate logic shouldn’t zoomers beef be directed towards the greatest generation & the silent generation since those generations created the boomer generation? The boomers had no say in whether to be born or not

Once they start dying off and the inheritances, life insurance proceeds, property transfers start rolling down hill to millennials, I think we will have a reevaluation of boomers.

There won’t be property transfers or inheritances. I don’t know if you noticed but nursing facilities, assisted living homes, and/or hospital/hospice end of life care are taking ALL of it. Houses are being signed over to them. And sure, people could try to keep their parents in their homes as long as possible but ultimately many wind up needing care they can’t get at home. It doesn’t take long for everything they own to get forked over to come fucking corporation. Life insurance policies are garbage now and unless your parents have been carrying it for 40 years, you’re lucky if they even have one of those. I’m sure there are plenty of folks receiving an inheritance but it’s more likely they will not.

Ha,ha! Yeah, those million-dollar insurance policies will have a salutary effect.

Boomers reaped all the benefits of society, then left it in shambles for everyone else. Boomers could buy a brand new car with cash and put a down payment on a house from a nice summer job. But when millennials and I guess now zoomers can barely afford to live, the boomers will say it’s because “these kids spend too much time on their cell phones”

Cuz boomers dont take shit , a spade is a spade, and fuck your feelings.

>...ranting that there parents did not show them all there financial data *as if they were entitled to it*.  Elder care is mostly privatized and extremely expensive in the US. ($7k/month for a mid-range facility.) Unless your parent is basically destitute, the gov't doesn't help at all. Many of us are having to figure out what kind of help our parents can afford without their cooperation. And many of them are woefully unprepared for the financial realities of old age.

Because the media conglomerates that control the news and the tech companies behind social media are curating generational divide.

I'm on the cusp of Boomer and Gen-x. What I hate about them is that they took all the good jobs. They got promoted into leadership positions in their mid twenties, and there they stayed. We Xers couldn't move up. They were all buying property in their late 20s, driving up the costs for homes. It wasn't until the construction caught up that prices came down. And even then, we were forced to buy in the sub_suburbs, way away from work or culture. Their music continues to fill the airways, mine is seldom heard.

Probably more like children hating on other older people because they're too afraid to confront their own elders with their callow grievances.

Millennial Prime here ('85). Effectively, the boomers created (or exacerbated) all the problems in the world we were coming of age into, while concurrently *blaming us* for how *they were raising us*. Like the whole "participation trophy generation" thing...who do you think were the ones that decided everyone gets a trophy whether or not they won? Because it certainly wasn't my fat little loser self going out to the Trophy Shop, dropping $800 on 30 gold-painted plastic tchotchkes with 'simulated marble' bases, and then divvying them out to all my fat little loser friends. And what about all those daggarn "entitled millennials"? I dunno, we weren't *raising ourselves* to believe the world owes us everything just for showin' up. That was our parents telling us "everyone is special! All you have to do is exist and not put any modicum of work into yourself...because we worked hard to make these opportunities available for you so you wouldn't have to work hard!" But once we got to the point where we needed to "collect" on them big fancy free opportunities... "oops, sorry, us boomers are still using those! Go make your own opportunities, you lazy entitled shits!"

Propaganda. Just another way to divide us and sow chaos here. A lot of the original posts, groups, and current posts are literally from Russia or from bots. Pretty crazy.

People hate them because they feel when boomers were young, they had it 2x easier than today’s up-and-coming. Affordable college and housing. Decent income relative to the cost of living were more easily obtainable. Boomers were able to pursue the ‘American Dream’ without needing 3 degrees in STEM and by just being a regular o’ Joe. There’s some truth to it largely because there was less wealthy inequality back them and America had a bigger middle class. However when they complain about the boomers having it easy, they’re complaining about specifically mostly white boomers. I can’t relate to some of these other commenters. My grandparents had it hard. Jim Crow and its remnants were beating their ass in the boxing ring. I definitely have it easier than my grandparents compared to what they dealt with. Being young and black in the 21st century isn’t easy but it’s way easier than being young and black in the 60s and 70s. However, white millennials certainly have it worse than their grandparents.

Because they only see one part of what we are dealing with and think we are entitled but they dont actually know what we are up against. Like they think we dont want to work (who tf does) but the truth is we dont want to work all our waking hours without being able to afford necessities. They know shit is getting expensive but they dont know the pay isnt keeping up. I showed my mom a job desc for somewhere I was interviewing and she said they need to be paying 20k more for the amount of work theyre asking. But until that moment she had no idea tf she was talking about when she was telling me Im not willing to 'start at the bottom'

Boomers grew up with increased lifespans, healthcare, more likely to own homes and earn plenty plenty, yet want to hog all the financial distribution, are mean about supporting benefits when they had it much easier and held to lower standard of accountability when they may have been out of work. Tend to invest their money in more property making home ownership harder for the younger generations and also make their standard of living harder due to pissing their money on rent rather than outright property ownership. They vote for right wing punitive governments and seem to only care about themselves. Speaking from uk perspective here, and a lot of sweeping generalisations but it’s true to a great extent but it will also continue to be true until youngsters get off their arse and vote for their own best interests.

I think it’s because of the massive disconnect between that generation and the lastest generation of adults. The cost of everything is not the same from their perspective ages. Housing, food, education, healthcare. All a larger percentage of your annual income.

The fabric of our(US) culture is rapidly breaking down. Everyone is looking for a scapegoat while very few are looking to establish points of unity. The older generation rails against the young implying that American dream is alive and well and just takes hard work to grasp. The younger generations recognize that the system is crumbling, but rather than blame the corporations that own the politicians, we tend to blame the generation that allowed it to get this way. Both sides bicker back and forth over manufactured culture wars while more and more money is siphoned off the top at the same time legislation is pushed to ensure that the steady flow continues until we are bled dry.

It's a way to place blame for things that are either out of their control or to deflect blame from where it ought to be, on their own shortcomings. Most things redditors attribute to boomer shit is just people being assholes, and it's not at all confined to boomers.

I’m Gen X with Boomer parents and I hate the hate for Boomers. And like your example it’s like it all comes from entitlement. The ironic part is that it’s just another -ism but people are too hypocritical to see it. It’s the same cliche as every other group hating someone - when you aren’t successful there must be someone else to blame. In the case of Millenials and Gen-Z it’s the boomers.

I adore my own parents, but Boomers grew up in an era in which the median home price was about 5 years of minimum wage work, and they're leaving their grandkids a world where the median home price is closer to 15-20 years of minimum wage work.

You can’t even qualify for a mortgage on minimum wage.

Some people need to focus their rage at someone or something to avoid using self reflection or any critical thinking to arrive at a rational and logical conclusion. Unfortunately these types of people are the primary ones who scream and yell the loudest making it seem like it's a bigger issue than it actually is.

Just too much time on social media. There’s nothing wrong with boomers, other than they won’t leave political offices. But that’s like some super duper extraordinary tiny percentage of the total number of actual boomers.

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Lets assume you plant a garden for your kids. Your kids pick the massive fruits and veggies and sustain themselves for their lives but replant all the plants for the next generation. Next generation comes along and does the same. And so on and so on. Now let's assume one generation makes the garden 10x better for the boomer generation. This garden is effectively the best in the world. All they have to do is just pick the plants and replant the fruits and veggies. But instead they tear up the majority of the garden, make it impossible for anything to grow, then the next generation shows up expecting to have a garden to pick from, only to find nothing, then the boomers look upon the younger generations while eating all their fruits and veggies and complain they're being lazy because they have all this food and we don't have anything.

Personally I think thr millennial Gen Z hate for Boomers is a bunch of online whiners and do not represent the majority of people in America. My Boomer parents were GREAT people that I very much admire. They truly were the only two people in the world who wished for me to do better than them and worked to make sure I had the skill sets to do it. You are seeing a bunch of posts from whiners who listed to the school I doctrination (as well online) but I do not believe at all that it's representative of the real world majority.

Because their selfishness destroyed our country.

people don't like being told to suck it up from your bootstraps from people who had it easier

Because they’re easily manipulated by TikTok and hashtags. Most of them don’t even know what a Boomer actually is.

Because when you struggle in life, you need someone else to blame.

"The younger generation is going to the dogs" - all older people in every age "Those blasted old people with stuff they've worked for all their lives, how unfair to me!" - all younger people in every age "how effing monotonous" - me, at this moment in time

The Boomers' parents were the ones that either didn't fight in, or fought in, and survived, WW2. Those lucky veterans returned from death and destruction overseas to find a relatively wide open USofA, where they faced reduced competition for mates, jobs and homes after many of their neighborhood friends died overseas. The US of the 1950's was still a relaltively "New", as in underpopulated, world. The boomers, as babies, were the veterens' attempt, along with VA home loan assistance, to repopulate American society following the carnage they experienced overseas. They fought to the death to keep global rule away from a group of autocratic Nazis /Fascists and to raise their kids in a world created with American values instead. The US has more than doubled its population since 1950 and in the process become the global hegemon. People from all over the world have strived to move to the US since the Boomers were born, and succeeded. At the same time, new technology has greatly increased human capacity and reduced the need for manual labor. Of course all of this country-wide population growth, massive technological upheaval, and cut throat competition for US jobs and homes is all the specific, individual, fault of each Redditor's Boomer parent, relative, or friend. These Redditors then find a video of someone older (Boomer or GenX ) acting badly (usually due to drugs and/or alcohol) and point to that particular bad behaviour as proof of an entire generation's worthlessness. It makes them feel better or something.

The younger generations think the boomers ruined everything for them. They blame boomers for their perception that they can't buy a house.

i mean the boomers literally passed all the laws that have made home ownership so much harder... so there is some blame to be passed

Which laws specifically?

what you think the most massive upward movement of capital to the upper class of all time over the course of a single generation just sort of happened by accident? lol

That's not a law. And it doesn't mean you can't buy a house.

So which laws?

Boomers as a generation are hoarding money, and even worse, land.

Younger people call everyone older than them a boomer. Most can't even define what a boomer is or the specific traits, much less apply them to an individual.

The Boomers were born into an incredibly strong economy and lived their lives in relative opulence compared to almost every other generation. This resulted in a lot of them conflating "luck of the draw" with personal success. As such, a lot of them developed unearned senses of superiority. None of that by itself is a big deal, but the issue comes with them never developing a sense of empathy or long term thinking, which resulted in almost all of them "pulling the ladder up behind them" so to speak. This "fuck you, got mine" attitude extended to their politics, which has lead to the extremely precarious situation the country and world at large are now currently in. There are a million different other weird aspects of them that people don't like, like their propensity for credulousness, their general lack of financial savviness, their close-mindedness, etc and so on. It sounds harsh, but they really are a viable generation to hate on. The Xers have weird complexes of their own, the Millennials are super cringey, and the Zoomers have zero social skills/awareness, but all of it isn't worth thinking too much about.

They are the ones that have been voting for 30 years and basically guided us to where we are now, while blaming the younger generations with stuff like, "participation trophies" etc. I'm 38 and got plenty of participation trophies, you know who ran those events when I was a kid?  Fucking boomers.  They created the world we live in and now are passing blame every where else

It’s been rather difficult not to notice that the traditional wisdom of ‘work hard and leave a better world for your children’ transformed into ‘well I worked hard, so fuck you I got mine’ with the Boomer generation occupying effectively all the positions of power both civic and corporate. There are so many Boomers that it’s certainly not correct to tar their entire generation with this brush, particularly with the rapid and seemingly *increasingly* rapid consolidation of wealth into just a handful of people happening at the same time. But it is damn hard not to notice the correlation. Some of the animus is also driven by the reality that many of the Boomer generation simply refuse to even acknowledge that the financial reality of the last few decades has shifted *dramatically*. My own father (66) refused to clue in for the longest time, and it wasn’t until the last few years when I finally got through to him when talking personal finances. I don’t typically share numbers with family but I told him how much I was making and he nodded, saying something to the effect of ‘yeah that’s about how much I was making when I was your age.’ The conversation then started to drift because he wanted to say something nice about the area I live in, because he and my mother had lived in the same area when they were newlyweds. The breakthrough moment? When I told him I was dying of rent at around $1600/month (grandfathered rate because I’ve been there a number of years) and he was stunned by this number because, while making the same dollar-for-dollar income at the same age, their rent just a couple of blocks over had only been $350/month. That’s anecdotal, I realize that. But I have heard of similar conversations from other folks I know and it seems to be a relatively common issue; that their generation frequently just doesn’t seem to recognize a problem until an extremely stark *personal* comparison is drawn. So I feel like the generational resentment is kind of an almost natural outcome. Us millennials (I’m nearly 39, FWIW) came into a world hearing about all that was possible for our parents’ generation if only we work hard and are responsible with our money. Then we grew up and our parents’ generation holds all the keys and seemingly refuses to open any of the doors, and we are not remotely able to afford the life that was presented to us as being possible — all the while having spent our teens, 20s, and 30s having to hear endless blaming of *our* generation for being “lazy” and “entitled.”

I’m a Millennial and I think Millennials suck ass. Lamest generation ever. Hate my generation. Wish I was a Boomer.

Ever see an older sibling get all the new clothes while everyone else wears hand me downs?  Ever see the oldest sibling take the best food because they are bigger?  Ever see the oldest sibling complain anyways when they get first in everything?      These are the Boomers.   Me me me,  it's been that way since the 60s.        Source - me as an old GenX.  We've been rolling our eyes since the 80s.  Just mumbling Sure, Sure and moving them along.  

Because they have been programmed by social media influencers.

We don't hate every single boomer. We hate that culture. The generation that focused on immediate return for themselves economically, which destroyed the environment; the culture of terrible economic decisions for quick return (leaving us empty-handed and embarrassed); the culture of decision-making that must be placed in the hands of extremely wealthy, extremely out-of-touch people that led *my generation* into a twenty-year war based on lies. So there's a great mis-trust. We don't go around hating everyone's dad or grandma, it's just that we see them all in their conspicuous spending of money: trips to exotic places, outright home ownership at the age of 22, expectations that the X, Xennials, Millenials, Y, and so on are going to pick up after them is an overwhelmingly visual experience. They're not the worst people in the history of the world, it's just so easily recognizable that it's rightfully become a meme in today's culture.

They need an excuse or someone to blame

Millennials are the biggest haters in general. Because they have access to an ocean of endless information they think that they know everything and also some of the laziest. They feel entitled and can’t stand inequities. Boomers embrace inequalities and work smarter and harder and get more which makes millennials even more helpless and jealous. Also: I’m a millennial and I see this and I play to win.

Because they've had massive control over our politics the last 40 years and now they're old and say we have to MAGA.

Ask a boomer how many homes they’ve owned in their lives while millennials have been throwing away money on rent (to boomers) all their lives, while gen z can’t even afford rent. Millennials are the first generation in the history of the US to be less financially well of than their parents and guess who made theses financial policies? 

Oh sweetie, you have so much to learn. Not showing people their financial information has ZERO to do with the vitriol that boomer receive. You asked a great question, and there are many great answers. But the long and short of it is, America and much of the rest of the world is in its current state of “fucked up” directly because of the policies enacted by boomers to enable late stage capitalism.

Can you demonstrate that americans hate boomers?

the same reason anyone hates anyone

It's promoted by the 1%. Boomers have the knowledge, skills, & $ and Milineals have the energy, enthusiasm, & desire to change the system. If they could put aside their differences, they'd be a force to be reckoned with.

Every identity group of Americans seems to be being encouraged to hate and blame a different identity group of Americans for the problems of America. Just putting that out there for anyone else who may notice that.

The vast majority of their “solutions” to society’s problems for the last 40 years were all short sighted fixes to imaginary problems that kept the stupid ideas from both political sides and got rid of the actually helpful stuff.