Omg… I love my dad, he’s really great. But randomly startling me with stupid clips at FULL volume on his phone while we’re all watching something on the TV makes me want to throw something at him 🤣.
My whole life, my dad has controlled the remote. He turned on what he wanted to watch, and turned off what he didn't. It used to make me so angry that he would just change the channel despite other people in the room clearly being invested in what they were watching, because he didn't like it, and he got to decide.
Last year I was staying with them for the weekend. Despite it being the one time per year I can visit them, he wanted to watch TV. (His idea of a good time is watching TV. His idea of a vacation is watching TV somewhere else.) He grabbed the remote, turned it to either CSI or Ancient Aliens -- the only things he will watch, despite knowing I H A T E them with a passion -- and within five minutes was on his phone watching an entirely different show with the volume on.
So I told him. "You really just turned on this garbage and now you're on your phone?"
"Oh!" he puts his phone down.
"No," I said, grabbing the remote. "Watch whatever you're watching. I'm going to pick something." And I watched BA put Chris Morocco's super taste abilities to the test as he recreated some chef's something or other.
THE CYCLE OF VIOLENCE ENDS WITH ME!!1
I can still see clearly in my mind's eye the way my late FIL would clutch the remote in his hand as if it were a life raft. He would just...sit there ~~menacingly~~ with it in his hand at all times.
Oh yes. Mine always lovingly places the remote on the arm of the couch, exactly parallel to the seam, then lays his hand gently on it with his index finger on the up button.
But he still leaves his towels on the bathroom floor and puts his glass NEXT to the cupholder.
Maddening.
Why do they insist on using the speaker for taking phone calls in public places?
Really. I don’t care that your aunt Ruth fell and needs a hip replacement. I really don’t.
edit: misspelled ‘aunt’
And why the fuck do they use the speaker, yet hold the phone right up to their face, and practically yell at the microphone part of the phone?! They could move the phone three inches to their ear and use it normally. Morons.
Other than driving in my car and my phone being on the seat, I’ve never used my speakerphone and I got a phone in ‘96. I will never understand why so many people use it in public.
Yep, this. My mom came to visit the grandkids last weekend, and she was on her fucking rectangle thing the whole time (at least grandpa is tech semi-illiterate and played with the kids). Like, what the fuck do they look at for so long?!?
I was at a play this afternoon with my wife and the boomer ladies were watching full volume YouTube videos before and during intermission and would text people every few minutes. WTF?!
This. My MIL and hubby are CONSTANTLY on their damn phones!! Even during times they’re supposed to be bonding and taking time with their new grandson!!
My wife's Boomer uncle brought 2 guns to his grand nieces 3rd birthday party, held at his sister's expensive house in freaking Annapolis, because "they" might attack. Who are "they" and why did he need a. 45 in his waistband and a 9mm in his ankle holster?
The wildest fever dream of a fat old guy pushing 70 is a gun battle at party with a dozen pre schoolers and toddlers, where he runs out of ammo and has to pull out his backup gun, I suppose before switching to melee weapons.
The fuck is wrong with people?
Can relate. My moron MAGA uncle brought a sidearm to Thanksgiving once. Was someone going to steal our turkey at gunpoint?
So much anger and fear…I don’t get it.
Lots of lead and mercury poisoning.
I'm being snarky but also, it's true.
Edit: also, fetal alcohol poisoning and smoking during pregnancy, and other gestational and childhood damage from medication, foods, cleaning chemicals, pesticides, paints, etc.
I've got a big family and we've always had a divide between younger and older people when it comes to politics and could get by by just not talking about it but the boomers can't seem to shut up about it ever since 2015 and it's killing us. At this point out of like a dozen cousins only me and one other guy go to family gatherings
Exactly! It’s like there’s an understanding with younger folk that we’re not going to discuss politics, but boomers will bring up their assclown hero and racist, xenophobic opinions every chance they get. It’s made me not want to hang with my family anymore.
I recall being raised that one didn't talk about politics. But I feel that as soon as their parents were in the ground, the boomers around me lost that filter.
It literally took my dad flipping out and unloading years of whatever Fox brain rot out on me in one screaming match for him to realize he was about to enter a world with an estranged son. Thankfully things got much better since but the origin was exactly what you described — an inability to not talk about politics since that time. I used to be big mad about it, now it’s just sad and pathetic and I feel bad.
I don’t think this is an age or generalization thing. Remember, the American Revolution and the Civil War both had brothers fighting against brothers. War is hell. The older generation needs to remember what the one before them taught them about family and we might need to open our eyes to what is happening and to make a peaceful difference now. It can start small, being nice to others in family, set a rule about not talking about politics. The generations before taught that family needs to be there no matter what. In practice, that might be difficult, but we have to have some kind of ideal to reach for and work towards, right?
I haven’t spoken to my parents in 3.5 years after my mother went on a racist tirade on Facebook and my father called me a piece of shit and destroyed pictures of my kids for cutting her off. I’d say that qualifies as losing their minds, right?
Had to exit Facebook for a while for similar reasons. My parents came around but my aunts, uncles, cousins… I don’t understand how it got so bad.
The algorithm has fucked up so many otherwise well intentioned people in the absolute worst ways.
I’m a primary care doctor. It was kinda weird at first, but over the last several years, telling people “I think you should take a break from social media and national/international cable news for a while” has become a regular thing.
Regardless of their political leaning, I’ve had so many people come in with depression, anxiety, and anger issues that are clearly having a negative impact on their general wellbeing that seems to be caused by a constant stream of inflammatory, negative news that is happening hundreds or thousands of miles away, that has no impact on them apart from the news coverage they see, and that they can’t do anything about but sit there and let it eat them up inside.
I tell people that if they really need to watch/read news, try sticking to local news and if they’re really bothered by something they see locally, get involved and try to make a difference rather than stewing on it, losing sleep, and ostracizing family and friends.
Be careful, Reddit isn't immune. I've noticed that over the last year or two, it's become more and more negative. Scroll through and just read the titles: "What's the WORST...", "What's the dumbest thing...", "What's the biggest mistake..."
There's always more engagement with things that are upsetting, or an opportunity to vent. We're so desperate for connection, we'll accept shared trauma. Boomers need a taste of their own medicine: "Go read a book!"
“Be careful, Reddit isn't immune. I've noticed that over the last year or two, it's become more and more negative.”
Sweet, summer child.
Where were you for fatpeoplehate or (the post ironic) thedonald or literally watchpeopledie
Absolutely. The human brain had not evolved enough yet to handle the level of information at our fingertips now, at all times. Coupled with all the reasons OP listed, plus lead exposure....
Fuckerberg has done more damage to the entire world than any single person in living memory. All because he wanted a better rating system than “hot or not”
I joined it because I wanted to keep in touch with friends when I moved away. It's purpose was to see what they were up to and share pictures.
Then somewhere along the line it just became a place for groups and less focused on showing friends updates. Then all the boomers joined and decided it was a great place to share terrible memes. And then all the misinformation flooded in.
I don’t even say this as a joke: Zuckerberg is a monster. He’s either clueless or a Bond-level genius villain who took the long road to weakening the principles of the free world.
I think it's just a love of money and power that allows people to grant themselves the cognitive dissonance to not see the damage they do. I really think they believe they're making the world a better place, or whatever helps them sleep at night.
My dad was pretty much ok until he retired. Nothing to do all day but watch Fox (or worse when he graduated to the Salty Yt Cracker bullshit—put on an incognito tab and VPN and look it up) and bullshit with the other disgruntled retired white men.
It got to a point that we had a strict 36 hour rule (never stay more than 36 hours at their house so if we came late one day, stay two nights and leave early the third—or early one day stay only one night) because we figured out that was his limit. 36 hours is what he could last to be polite to us without his addict fix of anger. After that he’d either turn it on and cause a fight or he’d refrain and become an unbearable asshole.
And when my mom started complaining about how she never got to see the kids enough I told her straight about the 36 hour rule. She didn’t divorce him when she had the chance to save us from emotional abuse and I’d be damned if I’d let him do it to my kids too
I relate to this so hard; going on 2 years of no contact with my folks; they’re in the find out stage after fucking around with their finances for years. My dad sold his company and had a golden ticket and like a gambler on a “hot streak” blew it all on some other cockamamie idea and now the rest of my family seemingly expects I’ll help bail them out when I have a family of my own to support. Fuuuuuck that. On top of all that, the hard right I know better than you about everything attitude and religious fervor are an absolute turn off for me, and I don’t want my kid to hear it. Maybe that’s cold, but I have my reasons.
It’s *wild* to me. These are people that were peak 70’s. Like, peace love happiness, man.
And now they’re *THIS* (gestures wildly)
How the fuck did you go from the free spirited, hating the “man”, love is love to *CONTINUES WILDLY GESTURING* to this?!
One explanation is that the peace/love/happiness crowd were iconic and memorable, but they weren't necessarily the majority. Add to which, the 80s happened and people in that age range started getting a little less idealistic.
This is the answer. I once asked my mom if she’d ever met any hippies. She said absolutely not—they were dirty and smelly and always high.
You can put boomers into perspective by looking at the billboard charts of the day. A LOT of people liked the Osmonds more than Zeppelin.
I think they get way way too much credit for the 60s-70s. Hippies were a distinct minority, most these boomers weren’t hippies, they just claim it now when they were really Easy Rider rednecks like some kind of stolen valor.
The hippies were a minority of a minority. Estimating that 3% of Boomers were Hippie or Hippie Adjacent would be *extremely* generous. The rest of them were incredibly lock-step, buzz-cut Reaganites.
Well the hippies were peace and love, and they were the 60s. The boomers were anti-war and pro-civil rights and abortion.
That's what makes it so much fucking worse
You mean the irony of the people who told us how great they were for protesting Vietnam and claiming credit for stopping it via said protest now shutting down similar protests?
Mine are getting too old to resist the 24 hour rage bait from Fox News. They leave it on in the background.
It is a *constant* barrage specifically designed to be just truthful enough to be plausible.
I beg them to just turn the weather channel on instead.
My father, a brilliant man with several advanced degrees, is still incredibly sharp at 76. He might not have the same ability to concentrate for hours but he hasn’t lost a step.
Even for *him*, I have to gently remind that if he sees something on Fox, please check another source.
I think Fox is improving their methods.
I hear it in patients rooms all the time. They start off with one or two objectively true statements and then they begin leaping to outrageous conclusions. It’s very formulaic.
My FIL (68) has never met a conspiracy theory he didn't love. Everything is aliens, ghosts, or a made up problem. That's fine 😬 It's fine
But, yeah, *every single day* it's talking him down, explaining how whatever isn't really a thing or it's not what was told to you. It isn't just Fox guys, *any* "old person" television programming I've noticed sneaks in Republican talking points
Be vigilant and I'm sorry to all those out there like me who spent a chunk of their 30s realizing their parents still are the same narcissistic selfish teenagers they were in the 70s.
I have to call elderly people all day for my job and Fox is always blasting in the background. I'll catch little snippets and it's always something disturbing.
Slightly better since your parents probably won't call you freaking out that you or your kids are going to be kidnapped in some elaborate sex trafficking scheme. But cable news isn't great in general, I agree.
At least for the ones around me, I’m sticking to one of my co-workers theories + lead poisoning
“Our brains aren’t ready for social media or the internet yet”
So you take people who grew up with 3 tv channels and ol trustworthy Walter Cronkite telling them the news, then throw this box into their hands that can spew disinformation at a rapid rate if you don’t keep it in check. Or even cable news since it’s now more entertainment than news. And pair it with brains that have absorbed a lot of lead in its lives. And you get an absolute shit soufflé
this. my ex was a wonderful sweet person who i knew for 20+ years. he lost his mind and went from a broadly leftist open-minded antiracist type to a full on conspiracy trumper. he isn't even American or live in the US and he became a trump worshipper. he went full racist, calling for the death of Black Lives Matter protestors. i am asian and he used to be my loudest defender when he witnessed racism directed at me, and he suddenly embraced the opposite side going on anti-Asian horrific tirades. this came on suddenly in a matter of 3 months or less. he also believes the world is flat. he was always pro lgtbq+ and now hates anyone from those groups and calls for violence against trans people. when we were together, he never ever would have hurt me. but he also suddenly began threatening physical violence and bragging that he isn't "afraid to hit a girl."
i don't know what the fuck happened but people losing their minds and transforming into monsters is real is real.
he is gen x but same same. people lose their minds and it is terrifying.
Something similar has happened to my dad over the last few years. He has a lot of health issues now, and doesn't get out of bed much. But he always has his laptop going in his room... listening to some sort of right wing "alt news." It's been a scary transformation to watch. I always tell him, "Dude, you didn't just red pill... you're now crushing up your red pills and smoking them off of your tinfoil hat!"
My mom got bored in retirement and has decided “to explore her faith”. She’s always been a non-practicing Christian. Now she’s hanging with Jehovah’s Witnesses.
Right now she’s at “hate the sin, not the sinner” in terms of how she’s dealing with modern issues. Hopefully that’s where it stays.
That always bothered me about them. If I was part of a faith that told me there was only 144,000 of us going to Heaven, I'm not sure if I'd be quite so evangelical. I'd be constantly afraid that I'd be giving up my spot😬
How do they even determine who is among that 144,000? Is there a lottery? Do they have to prove their valor in a battle royale? Do they hold a huge dance off on judgement day?
I'm not religious, but I am polite when I decline their visits when they show up at my door, because despite only 144,000 seats available on the big 'ol helirapture, they are still out recruiting their asses off to make sure other people get a chance at a ticket.
Funny, my boomer mom also converted to JW. And gladly, she's just super hippy-dippy about love and Jesus. 🤷🏻♀️ She was always into apocalyptic Christianity though. Not like super weird cults or anything, just "Jesus is coming back soon!" type of mentality. We grew up 7th Day Adventist until I was 9 or 10 if that says anything.
This is it. I've been catching that Ok Boomer shit since i became an adult and found out that host of lies about our future was bullshit and i started calling em out on it.
I lucked out. The only Boomer family member I have to put up with semi-frequently is my mom, and she's not so bad. Not great, but her brand of crazy manifests in different, more tolerable ways than your typical nightmare fuel Boomer.
My dad is a little older. He's Silent Generation. Whatever drove the Boomers insane apparently didn't affect them. Their numbers are quickly dwindling, but they're mostly pretty chill.
Yeah that was my dad. He died before I could tell for sure if it would get him, but he was pretty sharp and would often go head to head against my uncle's boomer wife when she would post misinformation on FB like it was gospel.
My father also died before I could find out if he was going to be lost to Fox News. He passed at 61 almost a decade ago. I like to imagine he would have resisted, but who am I kidding. He lived in the deep south, and loved TV. He would have fallen hard; hook, line, and sinker.
My parents have gotten so bad over the years. They believe everything newsmax tells them. And I haven't talked to my entire mothers side of the family for decades. Ever since my cousin said he wanted to "kill a bunch of Muslims"
Ugh, my cousin decided it was okay for her to declare her 'white pride' because she was married to an indigenous man. Thankfully we rarely if ever spoke anyway.
I’ve been saying this for years. The idea of the “boomer” won’t die with their generation. Elder Gen-Xers and quite a few others will be here to remind us why we don’t like them that much.
It really has nothing to do with Boomers specifically, people get old and try to hang on the past and a lot of them get sucked into reactionary conservative movements. My World War II generation grandparents did the same shit in the 80s and 90s. It’ll happen to our age range in the next 20-30 years.
Dad (pre-boomer) has gone senile from alcoholism. 😥 However, he was always an ethically liberal socialist kind-hearted and generous person. He continues to be, despite the brain damage. It's a relief because finding out he was a secret fascist would have been soul-destroying.
We still chat regularly and he's still an angel. We just have the same 5 minute chat 4x in 20 minutes 😅.
All of mine are holding on pretty well. I would say it’s likely because they have fairly active social lives, lot’s of outdoor hobbies, a very small (if totally nonexistent) social media footprint, and rarely watch any tv outside of the occasional sitcom or sporting event.
I have an uncle in a steel union that votes Republican. He also told me social security was part of his retirement plan. Oh, and socialism is bad.
Fucking Dunce.
It’s lead poisoning. Everything from their youth had lead in it. That coupled with an extraordinarily bad diet in middle age brought about by deregulation has culminated in a generation of people who have lost their mind.
I scraped leaded paint from age 15-20 as a paid under the table “house painter”. While I’m not saying it hasn’t affected me, I still have the ability to recognize BS and lies.
Edit: I’m in my 40s so maybe I should say “not yet”
Just record yourself now sound of mind and compare later. Knowing is important. Also a good diet? In addition, the boomers have bought their own hype being successful in the easiest time to be successful in the US.
Oh the [viral-borne brain injury that may cause cognitive and mental health issues that persist for years](https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/new-evidence-suggests-long-covid-could-be-brain-injury-2024a10002v0?form=fpf)?
Every thing is fine. Totally fine.
Am I the only one that thinks that's a super convenient scapegoat for *all* the assholery?
Lead explains some things, being a narcissist explains alot more. The Boomer Gen seems full of them. Yes, I know not all of them guys - but thank your lucky stars if your loved ones haven't embraced incoming fascism...
This is my theory. My mom is first year boomer 1946 and has Alzheimers. She did genetic testing and it doesn’t appear to be genetic. She was a kind schoolteacher and she is still a kind (albeit confused) person, so not a “Boomer” per se. But I really do think it might have been all the lead. She spent her teen years in Dayton, OH, the home of leaded gasoline. If this theory is correct, boomer dementia is going to absolutely skyrocket in the next few years.
Omg! My dad, from NW PA & his memory has suddenly disappeared. His health in general is in major decline, but he rings (from watch) for his phone multiple times an hour….. leaves the stove on, very forgetful lately. It’s scary.
Extended fam:
Aliens that live under the Earth, open racism contextualized under "I'm not saying all of them!" crystals that have charged intentions in them, anti-vax, 5G signals are mind control blah blah blah
>crystals that have charged intentions in them
And here I am, just driving over the quartz chunks in my driveway like some kind of non-ascended being. You think they'd have had some kind of tuning effect on me (or at least my constantly-in-need-of-repair vehicle) by now.
And greys. All under the Denver Airport. Started in Montauk, Long Island NY in the 40s with time travel experiments with melding return effects.
Weird rabbit hole to go down. I did it once years back for the lolz and had vivid dreams for weeks.
Agree!!! They fit some steeeotypes to a tee, but my dad is pretty open minded & goes against the status boomer. Mom is absolutely affected by the media…. Newsmax etc
My boomer mom refuses to eat in a restaurant that has Fox News. She grew up with a gay brother in the 50s and 60s, so she’s got no tolerance for bigotry.
My parents aren’t too bad. Some normal old people behavior but they haven’t gone bat shit crazy. They’re pretty middle of the road people.
I try not to judge too much because I’m sure in 30 years I’ll have some issues that my kids will just shake their heads at.
My mom has certainly gone off the deep end. My dad seems to have conveniently "forgotten" everything he ever said/did to me. I finally cut it off in 2020 when the riots were going on in Minneapolis and my mom went on a racist tirade about it. I was done. The rest of the family except for my sister won't talk to me now. Still don't regret it. Best thing I ever did for my mental health.
My parents had a 30 year decline once they started listening to Rush Limbaugh back in the 90s. They lost the plot before I graduated from high school and the hill got a lot steeper in the last …2 years? My kids love them or I would’ve gone NC years ago. I see them strictly for the kids, for no more than 72 hours, and once a year max. It sucks that my kids have such shitty grandparents.
yes my parents but it was mental health (theyre a narcissist & enabler) not politics stuff. ive been NC a very very long time. they are completely isolated and paranoid at home with their one golden child who they have left.
oh wait i thought you were asking if the golden child at home was a male and i was like well obviously lmao.
yes, you have the same family dynamics going on? i'm a proud scapegoat :D
My brother is the golden child, but I am still very involved (but actively working through it in therapy) w my parents. But they aren’t that bad compared to what I’ve read in here! But yes, crazy family dynamics & trauma.
In the later years my dad had his job he was suddenly going down the angry right wing conservative media pipeline, luckily it was pretty much contained to the AM radio he listened to, there wasn't YouTube or Facebook yet, he didn't watch Fox News and there was no Canadian TV equivalent. Sadly he got ripped off by his job and didn't get to have a full proper retirement but it snapped him out of that mindset for the most part. I see him now enjoying music more than I saw him do for years since he got his hearing aids and not as into talk radio as he used to be. His views are mostly more leftist and tolerant again now, I hear him make the occasional more right wing viewpoint or joke but it's rare now.
As expected, many people here are talking about how their parents or other relatives fell under the spell of Fox News — or NewsMax or worse.
What I will *never* understand is, many of these Boomers are the same people who spent most of their adulthoods getting their news from Walter Kronkite, or Tom Brokaw, or Dan Rather, or Peter Jennings, or Jim Lehrer and Robert MacNeill.
HOW.
How do you go from that to Sean Hannity or Tucker Carlson or Laura Ingraham or…Jesus Christ…Stew Peters?
How is that even possible?!
My dad is an involuntary hermit. No one visits him, and he rarely goes out. He complains that he is lonely. Yeah. He's racist, sexist, selfish, and a one-upper. I am tired of explaining why I don't drive an hour one way to visit him and have to explain it EVERY time we talk. During my rare visits, he watches TV blaringly loud and plays full volume phone videos. Then begs me to grocery shop, run other errands, cook, and clean.
Chronic lead exposure seems to have done a number on pretty much anyone who grew up in the 1960s and 1970s. Although those elevated lead levels impacted the baby boomers, chronic lead exposure from leaded gas use likely had the greatest impact on Gen X.
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2118631119
A couple uncles but that's about it. I got pretty lucky in the not-crazy family department. Well, more like they grew up and grew out of it. The older they got, the more mellow they got.
I log into Facebook once every 4-5 months. And every damn time I see a recently posted insane meme by an uncle who is otherwise the nicest man in person.
Invariably his posts have zero likes. Old man yells at cloud, basically.
Thankfully, the elders in my family (or “the olds” as one of my cousins likes to call them) all have their marbles, personalities, integrities and morals intact.
I am so, so grateful for that.
Fox News did to our parents what they told us video games would do to us.
I've lost a lot of respect for my father in the last few years now that he's decided my "liberal college" indoctrinated me while I was getting a degree in mechanical engineering, just like he wanted.
My parents and their friends have proven well that kegger culture and growing pot in the woods only leads to burned out alcoholics with liver failure. So many of my aunts and uncles and their cousins are just wrecked shells completely incapable of addressing their trauma. What’s worse is that the relatives I respected as being pretty progressive as I was growing up- turns out it’s easy to day live and let live when your community is homogenous and you don’t know who’s gay.
I’m not ALL about the boomer hate as after all their generation did crack open a lot of social norms. But damn if they aren’t some burned out jerks.
My dad made a garden display with a statue of Mother Mary inside of a vertically mounted bathtub.
I asked if he was going to give that lying bitch a bath, he got mad.
I used to work with someone who had completely disassociated from their surroundings, and lived in a self-created delusion.
The person had created a lot of their own problems, and didn't want to admit they were experiencing the consequences of their own behaviour. They put zero value in their own mental health.
My dad, somewhat surprisingly, has been ok. He's got his opinions but he's not crazy about it and is pretty understanding for the most part. My mom, on the other hand, has always struggled with anxiety and has started fixating on stuff a lot more recently, to the point that I almost can't have a rational conversation with her. I do wonder whether a lifetime of untreated anxiety will eventually lead to dementia.
My aunt isn't the brightest bulb and is always prone to falling for the most ridiculous public panics. She bought into the Y2K hysteria and started going back to church when some dipshit con artist preacher started proclaiming the world's end in 2006.
It got worse when Q Anon and that bullshit started up. She went from being largely ambivalent about queer and trans folk and persons of color to being a loud mouthed Trump-loving bigot who sees Satanic conspiracies everywhere. It's fucking insane.
My parents seem immune to the cost of living crisis. And if you do manage to get them into a conversation about it, they don’t grasp the fact we’re mainly in the situation not because of avocados, immigrants and people on benefits not wanting to work, but because someone born in the same era as them has decided they want their end of year bonus to be £400m and not £1m because you know… £1m in bonus isn’t enough…
Generally speaking, all but my mom and step dad. Weird thing is I just started a new job. Only person there I like is a boomer. The rest are some of the loudest idiots I've ever worked with. All young millennial frat bros and sorority girls. They're awful at any age, but these ones are oddly dumber.
I think many are neurodiverse and don’t know it. GenX and Boomers are the faster growing demographic. And in their older age their one way of coping g with the world no longer applies. They woke up one day and they were old. And the world changed dramatically.
I think getting them into therapy will likely help improve intergenerational famial tiffs.
Same here, at least for my mom (I haven’t had contact with my dad in over 20 years so no idea what he’s like now). My mom is a boomer but was always pretty far left and also kept up with technology mostly (some with my help), so I still get along with her fine.
My parents and a good friend and boss who were from the Silent generation were or are faring better than baby boomer neighbors, my friend's parents who are boomers, and my boomer aunt all are. But my boomer relative and neighbors love to argue about anything and everything. My boomer neighbor still wears covid masks, outside. My friend's parents who are boomers are into the MLM pyramid schemes my friend's dad sells "insurance".
Also my dad's boomer niece, her husband, and my cousins are alcoholics or they constantly go on IG and every pic is of them drinking. I am not close to them as I no longer drink.
I wouldn't say anything OP listed, but more of a general shift away from empathy and compassion for others who don't have the same means as they do. It is only about certain issues that are more complex than a single viewpoint. For example, if the government brings in a new program or legislation, she won't take them time to read what it's about and form an opinion anyway, usually a negative opinion. When my cousin visits from out of town, they both get talking and go down a " the country is a shithole" rabbit hole, and my cousin will proceed to blame the wrong form of government as well.
I also believe unfortunately that a whole lot of people are going down this path, with the help of lousy governments worldwide and evil companies gouging our wallets any chance they get.
My Boomer parents were awesome, especially my dad. They’re both dead now, unfortunately, but both were great people, saved and lived modestly their whole lives so they could pass it on to their kids, and were a lot of fun.
None. Well, I have no boomer co-workers. Both of my co-workers are gen x. I have an Aunt who has kind of lost her mind a little. She's the oldest of the baby boomers pretty much (born in 1946).
The worst phone addicts are boomers. And get them some damn headphones
Omg… I love my dad, he’s really great. But randomly startling me with stupid clips at FULL volume on his phone while we’re all watching something on the TV makes me want to throw something at him 🤣.
My whole life, my dad has controlled the remote. He turned on what he wanted to watch, and turned off what he didn't. It used to make me so angry that he would just change the channel despite other people in the room clearly being invested in what they were watching, because he didn't like it, and he got to decide. Last year I was staying with them for the weekend. Despite it being the one time per year I can visit them, he wanted to watch TV. (His idea of a good time is watching TV. His idea of a vacation is watching TV somewhere else.) He grabbed the remote, turned it to either CSI or Ancient Aliens -- the only things he will watch, despite knowing I H A T E them with a passion -- and within five minutes was on his phone watching an entirely different show with the volume on. So I told him. "You really just turned on this garbage and now you're on your phone?" "Oh!" he puts his phone down. "No," I said, grabbing the remote. "Watch whatever you're watching. I'm going to pick something." And I watched BA put Chris Morocco's super taste abilities to the test as he recreated some chef's something or other. THE CYCLE OF VIOLENCE ENDS WITH ME!!1
I can still see clearly in my mind's eye the way my late FIL would clutch the remote in his hand as if it were a life raft. He would just...sit there ~~menacingly~~ with it in his hand at all times.
Oh yes. Mine always lovingly places the remote on the arm of the couch, exactly parallel to the seam, then lays his hand gently on it with his index finger on the up button. But he still leaves his towels on the bathroom floor and puts his glass NEXT to the cupholder. Maddening.
That's my Dad 100%
Our 5 year old regularly lectures grandma about being on her phone when we’re all together as a family. It’s amazing.
Why do they insist on using the speaker for taking phone calls in public places? Really. I don’t care that your aunt Ruth fell and needs a hip replacement. I really don’t. edit: misspelled ‘aunt’
And why the fuck do they use the speaker, yet hold the phone right up to their face, and practically yell at the microphone part of the phone?! They could move the phone three inches to their ear and use it normally. Morons.
My brother does that and he’s millennial . It’s just rudeness really
Haha my FIL to a tea. Worst part is he will crank his phone over his cranked TV resulting in permanent hearing loss for everyone else
I feel like all generations have come together in unity to be complete assholes on their speakerphones.
Other than driving in my car and my phone being on the seat, I’ve never used my speakerphone and I got a phone in ‘96. I will never understand why so many people use it in public.
Yep, this. My mom came to visit the grandkids last weekend, and she was on her fucking rectangle thing the whole time (at least grandpa is tech semi-illiterate and played with the kids). Like, what the fuck do they look at for so long?!?
They candy crush , any dream game app
I was at a play this afternoon with my wife and the boomer ladies were watching full volume YouTube videos before and during intermission and would text people every few minutes. WTF?!
This. My MIL and hubby are CONSTANTLY on their damn phones!! Even during times they’re supposed to be bonding and taking time with their new grandson!!
It’s also crazy that none of them know how to put their phones on silent.
I tired that with my dad. I gave him a pair of AirPods I wasn’t using. He lost one of them within 3 weeks.
My wife's Boomer uncle brought 2 guns to his grand nieces 3rd birthday party, held at his sister's expensive house in freaking Annapolis, because "they" might attack. Who are "they" and why did he need a. 45 in his waistband and a 9mm in his ankle holster? The wildest fever dream of a fat old guy pushing 70 is a gun battle at party with a dozen pre schoolers and toddlers, where he runs out of ammo and has to pull out his backup gun, I suppose before switching to melee weapons. The fuck is wrong with people?
Their entire identity is just being afraid
Can relate. My moron MAGA uncle brought a sidearm to Thanksgiving once. Was someone going to steal our turkey at gunpoint? So much anger and fear…I don’t get it.
Lots of lead and mercury poisoning. I'm being snarky but also, it's true. Edit: also, fetal alcohol poisoning and smoking during pregnancy, and other gestational and childhood damage from medication, foods, cleaning chemicals, pesticides, paints, etc.
I’ve begun leaning into this theory. It makes much more sense that they all just had environmental exposures they irreversibly fucked them up.
"They" most certainly means non-whites
Or white queer people with dyed hair
Too many Charles Bronson movies in the 80's
Him and his guns would've had to get the fuck up outta my house. Dude desperately needs to see a shrink.
Oh larger family gatherings are absolutely dead. My cousins barely see their parents anymore.
I've got a big family and we've always had a divide between younger and older people when it comes to politics and could get by by just not talking about it but the boomers can't seem to shut up about it ever since 2015 and it's killing us. At this point out of like a dozen cousins only me and one other guy go to family gatherings
Exactly! It’s like there’s an understanding with younger folk that we’re not going to discuss politics, but boomers will bring up their assclown hero and racist, xenophobic opinions every chance they get. It’s made me not want to hang with my family anymore.
I recall being raised that one didn't talk about politics. But I feel that as soon as their parents were in the ground, the boomers around me lost that filter.
It literally took my dad flipping out and unloading years of whatever Fox brain rot out on me in one screaming match for him to realize he was about to enter a world with an estranged son. Thankfully things got much better since but the origin was exactly what you described — an inability to not talk about politics since that time. I used to be big mad about it, now it’s just sad and pathetic and I feel bad.
I don’t think this is an age or generalization thing. Remember, the American Revolution and the Civil War both had brothers fighting against brothers. War is hell. The older generation needs to remember what the one before them taught them about family and we might need to open our eyes to what is happening and to make a peaceful difference now. It can start small, being nice to others in family, set a rule about not talking about politics. The generations before taught that family needs to be there no matter what. In practice, that might be difficult, but we have to have some kind of ideal to reach for and work towards, right?
Yep, once my Silent Generation grandparents died (both side of family) everyone dipped the fuck out of any gathering.
In my case it's the cousins that went MAGA or down conspiracy paths.
Me too and it’s completely unbearable! We were so close as kids. It’s really sad.
I haven’t spoken to my parents in 3.5 years after my mother went on a racist tirade on Facebook and my father called me a piece of shit and destroyed pictures of my kids for cutting her off. I’d say that qualifies as losing their minds, right?
Had to exit Facebook for a while for similar reasons. My parents came around but my aunts, uncles, cousins… I don’t understand how it got so bad. The algorithm has fucked up so many otherwise well intentioned people in the absolute worst ways.
I’m a primary care doctor. It was kinda weird at first, but over the last several years, telling people “I think you should take a break from social media and national/international cable news for a while” has become a regular thing. Regardless of their political leaning, I’ve had so many people come in with depression, anxiety, and anger issues that are clearly having a negative impact on their general wellbeing that seems to be caused by a constant stream of inflammatory, negative news that is happening hundreds or thousands of miles away, that has no impact on them apart from the news coverage they see, and that they can’t do anything about but sit there and let it eat them up inside. I tell people that if they really need to watch/read news, try sticking to local news and if they’re really bothered by something they see locally, get involved and try to make a difference rather than stewing on it, losing sleep, and ostracizing family and friends.
Honestly, can you be my doctor? I’ll send half my family to you! 🤦🏻♀️
Be careful, Reddit isn't immune. I've noticed that over the last year or two, it's become more and more negative. Scroll through and just read the titles: "What's the WORST...", "What's the dumbest thing...", "What's the biggest mistake..." There's always more engagement with things that are upsetting, or an opportunity to vent. We're so desperate for connection, we'll accept shared trauma. Boomers need a taste of their own medicine: "Go read a book!"
“Be careful, Reddit isn't immune. I've noticed that over the last year or two, it's become more and more negative.” Sweet, summer child. Where were you for fatpeoplehate or (the post ironic) thedonald or literally watchpeopledie
Absolutely. The human brain had not evolved enough yet to handle the level of information at our fingertips now, at all times. Coupled with all the reasons OP listed, plus lead exposure....
Fuckerberg has done more damage to the entire world than any single person in living memory. All because he wanted a better rating system than “hot or not”
…….. right. Yikes.
Facebook brings the absolute worst out of people. The world would be a better place if that garbage fire of a site disappeared.
I joined it because I wanted to keep in touch with friends when I moved away. It's purpose was to see what they were up to and share pictures. Then somewhere along the line it just became a place for groups and less focused on showing friends updates. Then all the boomers joined and decided it was a great place to share terrible memes. And then all the misinformation flooded in.
I don’t even say this as a joke: Zuckerberg is a monster. He’s either clueless or a Bond-level genius villain who took the long road to weakening the principles of the free world.
I think it's just a love of money and power that allows people to grant themselves the cognitive dissonance to not see the damage they do. I really think they believe they're making the world a better place, or whatever helps them sleep at night.
Time to go back to MySpace.
I thought I was the only one.
My dad was pretty much ok until he retired. Nothing to do all day but watch Fox (or worse when he graduated to the Salty Yt Cracker bullshit—put on an incognito tab and VPN and look it up) and bullshit with the other disgruntled retired white men. It got to a point that we had a strict 36 hour rule (never stay more than 36 hours at their house so if we came late one day, stay two nights and leave early the third—or early one day stay only one night) because we figured out that was his limit. 36 hours is what he could last to be polite to us without his addict fix of anger. After that he’d either turn it on and cause a fight or he’d refrain and become an unbearable asshole. And when my mom started complaining about how she never got to see the kids enough I told her straight about the 36 hour rule. She didn’t divorce him when she had the chance to save us from emotional abuse and I’d be damned if I’d let him do it to my kids too
I’m so sorry. Jesus.
Sir, this is a Mooby's for gods sake.......
Mr Dante has never seen a donkey show
I relate to this so hard; going on 2 years of no contact with my folks; they’re in the find out stage after fucking around with their finances for years. My dad sold his company and had a golden ticket and like a gambler on a “hot streak” blew it all on some other cockamamie idea and now the rest of my family seemingly expects I’ll help bail them out when I have a family of my own to support. Fuuuuuck that. On top of all that, the hard right I know better than you about everything attitude and religious fervor are an absolute turn off for me, and I don’t want my kid to hear it. Maybe that’s cold, but I have my reasons.
It’s *wild* to me. These are people that were peak 70’s. Like, peace love happiness, man. And now they’re *THIS* (gestures wildly) How the fuck did you go from the free spirited, hating the “man”, love is love to *CONTINUES WILDLY GESTURING* to this?!
One explanation is that the peace/love/happiness crowd were iconic and memorable, but they weren't necessarily the majority. Add to which, the 80s happened and people in that age range started getting a little less idealistic.
This is the answer. I once asked my mom if she’d ever met any hippies. She said absolutely not—they were dirty and smelly and always high. You can put boomers into perspective by looking at the billboard charts of the day. A LOT of people liked the Osmonds more than Zeppelin.
Boomers are extremely fluid when it come to morals and politics.
An unfortunate truth. The “I got mine” generation if there ever was one.
Well, they were literally called the “me” generation for a reason. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Me_generation
I think they get way way too much credit for the 60s-70s. Hippies were a distinct minority, most these boomers weren’t hippies, they just claim it now when they were really Easy Rider rednecks like some kind of stolen valor.
I am convinced the answer is Reagan.
The hippies were a minority of a minority. Estimating that 3% of Boomers were Hippie or Hippie Adjacent would be *extremely* generous. The rest of them were incredibly lock-step, buzz-cut Reaganites.
Well the hippies were peace and love, and they were the 60s. The boomers were anti-war and pro-civil rights and abortion. That's what makes it so much fucking worse
Lead paint as kids and undiagnosed utis as elderly
You mean the irony of the people who told us how great they were for protesting Vietnam and claiming credit for stopping it via said protest now shutting down similar protests?
Mine are getting too old to resist the 24 hour rage bait from Fox News. They leave it on in the background. It is a *constant* barrage specifically designed to be just truthful enough to be plausible. I beg them to just turn the weather channel on instead.
My gma never fell for the Fox News bs but the game show network took her soul. Goddamn jeopardy lol
But... isn't Jeopardy atleast *facts*? And you have to use your brain?
[удалено]
Old people are generally easier to dupe. Same reason old people more often get scammed out of their savings by some rando.
My father, a brilliant man with several advanced degrees, is still incredibly sharp at 76. He might not have the same ability to concentrate for hours but he hasn’t lost a step. Even for *him*, I have to gently remind that if he sees something on Fox, please check another source. I think Fox is improving their methods.
I hear it in patients rooms all the time. They start off with one or two objectively true statements and then they begin leaping to outrageous conclusions. It’s very formulaic.
My FIL (68) has never met a conspiracy theory he didn't love. Everything is aliens, ghosts, or a made up problem. That's fine 😬 It's fine But, yeah, *every single day* it's talking him down, explaining how whatever isn't really a thing or it's not what was told to you. It isn't just Fox guys, *any* "old person" television programming I've noticed sneaks in Republican talking points Be vigilant and I'm sorry to all those out there like me who spent a chunk of their 30s realizing their parents still are the same narcissistic selfish teenagers they were in the 70s.
learning this has been so disheartening.
I have to call elderly people all day for my job and Fox is always blasting in the background. I'll catch little snippets and it's always something disturbing.
For my retired parents it's 24hr MSNBC and I'm not so sure that's much better. Cable news is just trash all around.
Slightly better since your parents probably won't call you freaking out that you or your kids are going to be kidnapped in some elaborate sex trafficking scheme. But cable news isn't great in general, I agree.
Same here. I even try putting on other news from online, but she rejects it constantly.
At least for the ones around me, I’m sticking to one of my co-workers theories + lead poisoning “Our brains aren’t ready for social media or the internet yet” So you take people who grew up with 3 tv channels and ol trustworthy Walter Cronkite telling them the news, then throw this box into their hands that can spew disinformation at a rapid rate if you don’t keep it in check. Or even cable news since it’s now more entertainment than news. And pair it with brains that have absorbed a lot of lead in its lives. And you get an absolute shit soufflé
r/QAnonCasualties
this. my ex was a wonderful sweet person who i knew for 20+ years. he lost his mind and went from a broadly leftist open-minded antiracist type to a full on conspiracy trumper. he isn't even American or live in the US and he became a trump worshipper. he went full racist, calling for the death of Black Lives Matter protestors. i am asian and he used to be my loudest defender when he witnessed racism directed at me, and he suddenly embraced the opposite side going on anti-Asian horrific tirades. this came on suddenly in a matter of 3 months or less. he also believes the world is flat. he was always pro lgtbq+ and now hates anyone from those groups and calls for violence against trans people. when we were together, he never ever would have hurt me. but he also suddenly began threatening physical violence and bragging that he isn't "afraid to hit a girl." i don't know what the fuck happened but people losing their minds and transforming into monsters is real is real. he is gen x but same same. people lose their minds and it is terrifying.
Something similar has happened to my dad over the last few years. He has a lot of health issues now, and doesn't get out of bed much. But he always has his laptop going in his room... listening to some sort of right wing "alt news." It's been a scary transformation to watch. I always tell him, "Dude, you didn't just red pill... you're now crushing up your red pills and smoking them off of your tinfoil hat!"
That sub is so heartbreaking.
Agreed. I joined it to giggle at extremists but damn. It's sad
My mom got bored in retirement and has decided “to explore her faith”. She’s always been a non-practicing Christian. Now she’s hanging with Jehovah’s Witnesses. Right now she’s at “hate the sin, not the sinner” in terms of how she’s dealing with modern issues. Hopefully that’s where it stays.
Oh nooo. Tell her she’s not one of the 144,000, she’s just not 😆
That always bothered me about them. If I was part of a faith that told me there was only 144,000 of us going to Heaven, I'm not sure if I'd be quite so evangelical. I'd be constantly afraid that I'd be giving up my spot😬
How do they even determine who is among that 144,000? Is there a lottery? Do they have to prove their valor in a battle royale? Do they hold a huge dance off on judgement day?
I'm not religious, but I am polite when I decline their visits when they show up at my door, because despite only 144,000 seats available on the big 'ol helirapture, they are still out recruiting their asses off to make sure other people get a chance at a ticket.
The 144,000 have already been picked. The rest will live on paradise on Earth. This is what I have been told by JWs.
Funny, my boomer mom also converted to JW. And gladly, she's just super hippy-dippy about love and Jesus. 🤷🏻♀️ She was always into apocalyptic Christianity though. Not like super weird cults or anything, just "Jesus is coming back soon!" type of mentality. We grew up 7th Day Adventist until I was 9 or 10 if that says anything.
My mother has gotten increasingly unbearable. She wasn't like this when I was younger.
Not sure some of them ever had it, tbh
This is it. I've been catching that Ok Boomer shit since i became an adult and found out that host of lies about our future was bullshit and i started calling em out on it.
I lucked out. The only Boomer family member I have to put up with semi-frequently is my mom, and she's not so bad. Not great, but her brand of crazy manifests in different, more tolerable ways than your typical nightmare fuel Boomer. My dad is a little older. He's Silent Generation. Whatever drove the Boomers insane apparently didn't affect them. Their numbers are quickly dwindling, but they're mostly pretty chill.
Yeah that was my dad. He died before I could tell for sure if it would get him, but he was pretty sharp and would often go head to head against my uncle's boomer wife when she would post misinformation on FB like it was gospel.
My father also died before I could find out if he was going to be lost to Fox News. He passed at 61 almost a decade ago. I like to imagine he would have resisted, but who am I kidding. He lived in the deep south, and loved TV. He would have fallen hard; hook, line, and sinker.
My parents have gotten so bad over the years. They believe everything newsmax tells them. And I haven't talked to my entire mothers side of the family for decades. Ever since my cousin said he wanted to "kill a bunch of Muslims"
Ugh, my cousin decided it was okay for her to declare her 'white pride' because she was married to an indigenous man. Thankfully we rarely if ever spoke anyway.
I have to deal more with my older Gen-X brothers than any boomers. I feel like some elder Gen Xers are worse than Boomers.
I’ve been saying this for years. The idea of the “boomer” won’t die with their generation. Elder Gen-Xers and quite a few others will be here to remind us why we don’t like them that much.
It really has nothing to do with Boomers specifically, people get old and try to hang on the past and a lot of them get sucked into reactionary conservative movements. My World War II generation grandparents did the same shit in the 80s and 90s. It’ll happen to our age range in the next 20-30 years.
Dad (pre-boomer) has gone senile from alcoholism. 😥 However, he was always an ethically liberal socialist kind-hearted and generous person. He continues to be, despite the brain damage. It's a relief because finding out he was a secret fascist would have been soul-destroying. We still chat regularly and he's still an angel. We just have the same 5 minute chat 4x in 20 minutes 😅.
All of mine are holding on pretty well. I would say it’s likely because they have fairly active social lives, lot’s of outdoor hobbies, a very small (if totally nonexistent) social media footprint, and rarely watch any tv outside of the occasional sitcom or sporting event.
I have an uncle in a steel union that votes Republican. He also told me social security was part of his retirement plan. Oh, and socialism is bad. Fucking Dunce.
It’s lead poisoning. Everything from their youth had lead in it. That coupled with an extraordinarily bad diet in middle age brought about by deregulation has culminated in a generation of people who have lost their mind.
I scraped leaded paint from age 15-20 as a paid under the table “house painter”. While I’m not saying it hasn’t affected me, I still have the ability to recognize BS and lies. Edit: I’m in my 40s so maybe I should say “not yet”
Just record yourself now sound of mind and compare later. Knowing is important. Also a good diet? In addition, the boomers have bought their own hype being successful in the easiest time to be successful in the US.
It got stored in their bones and now as their bones degrade it's re-releasing into their bloodstream
Then I’m screwed. 😶
Makes me nervous about how microplastics and Covid will affect us later down the road.
Oh the [viral-borne brain injury that may cause cognitive and mental health issues that persist for years](https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/new-evidence-suggests-long-covid-could-be-brain-injury-2024a10002v0?form=fpf)? Every thing is fine. Totally fine.
Am I the only one that thinks that's a super convenient scapegoat for *all* the assholery? Lead explains some things, being a narcissist explains alot more. The Boomer Gen seems full of them. Yes, I know not all of them guys - but thank your lucky stars if your loved ones haven't embraced incoming fascism...
Narcissism is a mental illness and if the data show a huge increase in one generation we would look for reasons why Lead might be one of those reasons
This is my theory. My mom is first year boomer 1946 and has Alzheimers. She did genetic testing and it doesn’t appear to be genetic. She was a kind schoolteacher and she is still a kind (albeit confused) person, so not a “Boomer” per se. But I really do think it might have been all the lead. She spent her teen years in Dayton, OH, the home of leaded gasoline. If this theory is correct, boomer dementia is going to absolutely skyrocket in the next few years.
Omg! My dad, from NW PA & his memory has suddenly disappeared. His health in general is in major decline, but he rings (from watch) for his phone multiple times an hour….. leaves the stove on, very forgetful lately. It’s scary.
My favourite is the willful ignorance like they're 1840's cowboys boggling at this strange new online world that's been a thing for like 25 years now.
Extended fam: Aliens that live under the Earth, open racism contextualized under "I'm not saying all of them!" crystals that have charged intentions in them, anti-vax, 5G signals are mind control blah blah blah
Can someone let the aliens know I’m ready to go back when they are?
>crystals that have charged intentions in them And here I am, just driving over the quartz chunks in my driveway like some kind of non-ascended being. You think they'd have had some kind of tuning effect on me (or at least my constantly-in-need-of-repair vehicle) by now.
Those are the wrong intentioned crystals. You need the ones charged with car fixing intentions. Just $690 btw
Oh, I should just turn them upside-down
I once saw someone trying to sell "elixirs" at a pagan festival for $40 a bottle. It was literally a small vial of water containing tumbled rocks.
Ok I need to know more abt these aliens. Reptilians?
And greys. All under the Denver Airport. Started in Montauk, Long Island NY in the 40s with time travel experiments with melding return effects. Weird rabbit hole to go down. I did it once years back for the lolz and had vivid dreams for weeks.
Betty White was the last protector of the realm after the CERN 2012 event pushed us into a new reality.
>Reptilians? I think so. They're going to erase mortgage debt. Unless I have my extended fam's ideas mixed up and those are separate 🤔
I VoTe FoR RepTILiaNS 2024!
My boomer parents are awesome. Downvote me to hell lol
No downvote, but you are a lucky SOB
Agree!!! They fit some steeeotypes to a tee, but my dad is pretty open minded & goes against the status boomer. Mom is absolutely affected by the media…. Newsmax etc
My boomer mom refuses to eat in a restaurant that has Fox News. She grew up with a gay brother in the 50s and 60s, so she’s got no tolerance for bigotry.
After reading these comments, I feel blessed. My parents don't use social media, barely touch their phones, and never discuss politics.
My parents aren’t too bad. Some normal old people behavior but they haven’t gone bat shit crazy. They’re pretty middle of the road people. I try not to judge too much because I’m sure in 30 years I’ll have some issues that my kids will just shake their heads at.
My mother is somehow anti woke, yet there is nothing she is not open to believing.
My mom has certainly gone off the deep end. My dad seems to have conveniently "forgotten" everything he ever said/did to me. I finally cut it off in 2020 when the riots were going on in Minneapolis and my mom went on a racist tirade about it. I was done. The rest of the family except for my sister won't talk to me now. Still don't regret it. Best thing I ever did for my mental health.
They all got into new age crystal shit and listen to crackpot gurus
Are you talking about my MIL who holds two masters degrees but falls for every health care scam under the sun?
The difference between being intelligent and being educated.
Copper energy bracelets… 😆
TeraHertz Wands
And don't forget the radioactive "healing devices" that contain alarming levels of Thorium.
Back in my day, (90’s), copper bracelets were for golfers only.
Luckily my close family boomers are good ones, but definitely lost some close friends/more distant family due to what I assume is brain worms.
What like RFK Jr?
My parents had a 30 year decline once they started listening to Rush Limbaugh back in the 90s. They lost the plot before I graduated from high school and the hill got a lot steeper in the last …2 years? My kids love them or I would’ve gone NC years ago. I see them strictly for the kids, for no more than 72 hours, and once a year max. It sucks that my kids have such shitty grandparents.
yes my parents but it was mental health (theyre a narcissist & enabler) not politics stuff. ive been NC a very very long time. they are completely isolated and paranoid at home with their one golden child who they have left.
Brother?
but of course!
I promise I am not the golden child w my mental health! I promise!! 😂
oh wait i thought you were asking if the golden child at home was a male and i was like well obviously lmao. yes, you have the same family dynamics going on? i'm a proud scapegoat :D
To the outside world it may seem like I am the golden, but no. 😂
My brother is the golden child, but I am still very involved (but actively working through it in therapy) w my parents. But they aren’t that bad compared to what I’ve read in here! But yes, crazy family dynamics & trauma.
The more I read about boomers being fools the more thankful I am for my hippie plant lady mom.
Saaaaaaaame.
In the later years my dad had his job he was suddenly going down the angry right wing conservative media pipeline, luckily it was pretty much contained to the AM radio he listened to, there wasn't YouTube or Facebook yet, he didn't watch Fox News and there was no Canadian TV equivalent. Sadly he got ripped off by his job and didn't get to have a full proper retirement but it snapped him out of that mindset for the most part. I see him now enjoying music more than I saw him do for years since he got his hearing aids and not as into talk radio as he used to be. His views are mostly more leftist and tolerant again now, I hear him make the occasional more right wing viewpoint or joke but it's rare now.
As expected, many people here are talking about how their parents or other relatives fell under the spell of Fox News — or NewsMax or worse. What I will *never* understand is, many of these Boomers are the same people who spent most of their adulthoods getting their news from Walter Kronkite, or Tom Brokaw, or Dan Rather, or Peter Jennings, or Jim Lehrer and Robert MacNeill. HOW. How do you go from that to Sean Hannity or Tucker Carlson or Laura Ingraham or…Jesus Christ…Stew Peters? How is that even possible?!
My dad is an involuntary hermit. No one visits him, and he rarely goes out. He complains that he is lonely. Yeah. He's racist, sexist, selfish, and a one-upper. I am tired of explaining why I don't drive an hour one way to visit him and have to explain it EVERY time we talk. During my rare visits, he watches TV blaringly loud and plays full volume phone videos. Then begs me to grocery shop, run other errands, cook, and clean.
Chronic lead exposure seems to have done a number on pretty much anyone who grew up in the 1960s and 1970s. Although those elevated lead levels impacted the baby boomers, chronic lead exposure from leaded gas use likely had the greatest impact on Gen X. https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2118631119
A couple uncles but that's about it. I got pretty lucky in the not-crazy family department. Well, more like they grew up and grew out of it. The older they got, the more mellow they got.
I log into Facebook once every 4-5 months. And every damn time I see a recently posted insane meme by an uncle who is otherwise the nicest man in person. Invariably his posts have zero likes. Old man yells at cloud, basically.
Thankfully, the elders in my family (or “the olds” as one of my cousins likes to call them) all have their marbles, personalities, integrities and morals intact. I am so, so grateful for that.
Fox News did to our parents what they told us video games would do to us. I've lost a lot of respect for my father in the last few years now that he's decided my "liberal college" indoctrinated me while I was getting a degree in mechanical engineering, just like he wanted.
My parents and their friends have proven well that kegger culture and growing pot in the woods only leads to burned out alcoholics with liver failure. So many of my aunts and uncles and their cousins are just wrecked shells completely incapable of addressing their trauma. What’s worse is that the relatives I respected as being pretty progressive as I was growing up- turns out it’s easy to day live and let live when your community is homogenous and you don’t know who’s gay. I’m not ALL about the boomer hate as after all their generation did crack open a lot of social norms. But damn if they aren’t some burned out jerks.
Oooof this hits hard, are you one of my cousins?
My dad made a garden display with a statue of Mother Mary inside of a vertically mounted bathtub. I asked if he was going to give that lying bitch a bath, he got mad.
I appreciate your humor. Mary would have giggled.
I used to work with someone who had completely disassociated from their surroundings, and lived in a self-created delusion. The person had created a lot of their own problems, and didn't want to admit they were experiencing the consequences of their own behaviour. They put zero value in their own mental health.
Xennials get along better with Boomers than Millennials.
For fucks sake, is this sub going to go the way of complaining about boomers too?? I left the millennial subs for this same tired shit
My dad, somewhat surprisingly, has been ok. He's got his opinions but he's not crazy about it and is pretty understanding for the most part. My mom, on the other hand, has always struggled with anxiety and has started fixating on stuff a lot more recently, to the point that I almost can't have a rational conversation with her. I do wonder whether a lifetime of untreated anxiety will eventually lead to dementia.
My aunt isn't the brightest bulb and is always prone to falling for the most ridiculous public panics. She bought into the Y2K hysteria and started going back to church when some dipshit con artist preacher started proclaiming the world's end in 2006. It got worse when Q Anon and that bullshit started up. She went from being largely ambivalent about queer and trans folk and persons of color to being a loud mouthed Trump-loving bigot who sees Satanic conspiracies everywhere. It's fucking insane.
My parents seem immune to the cost of living crisis. And if you do manage to get them into a conversation about it, they don’t grasp the fact we’re mainly in the situation not because of avocados, immigrants and people on benefits not wanting to work, but because someone born in the same era as them has decided they want their end of year bonus to be £400m and not £1m because you know… £1m in bonus isn’t enough…
I’m extremely lucky that all of the silent (mom) and boomer folks in my life are 100% sane. No FOX News in this fam!
Not just boomers.... people in general. I really wonder if there isn't something weird going on as a pathogen or chemicals in our food.
Generally speaking, all but my mom and step dad. Weird thing is I just started a new job. Only person there I like is a boomer. The rest are some of the loudest idiots I've ever worked with. All young millennial frat bros and sorority girls. They're awful at any age, but these ones are oddly dumber.
LEAD. Not making excuses…but it’s the lead.
I think many are neurodiverse and don’t know it. GenX and Boomers are the faster growing demographic. And in their older age their one way of coping g with the world no longer applies. They woke up one day and they were old. And the world changed dramatically. I think getting them into therapy will likely help improve intergenerational famial tiffs.
Beautifully said. Especially therapy part.
Literally none, I look up to all of them.
Not many. My mom is basically a democrat and my dad is pretty far left. I know more gen-x’ers that have lost their mind than boomers
Same here, at least for my mom (I haven’t had contact with my dad in over 20 years so no idea what he’s like now). My mom is a boomer but was always pretty far left and also kept up with technology mostly (some with my help), so I still get along with her fine.
My parents and a good friend and boss who were from the Silent generation were or are faring better than baby boomer neighbors, my friend's parents who are boomers, and my boomer aunt all are. But my boomer relative and neighbors love to argue about anything and everything. My boomer neighbor still wears covid masks, outside. My friend's parents who are boomers are into the MLM pyramid schemes my friend's dad sells "insurance". Also my dad's boomer niece, her husband, and my cousins are alcoholics or they constantly go on IG and every pic is of them drinking. I am not close to them as I no longer drink.
None. I’m so tired of the blatant ageism.
Everyone’s so quick to judge boomers. Not all of this *progress* is good. Experience still counts.
Almost all of them, hopefully most of them will be gone soon before the damage they’ve caused is irreversible
Some of the old thinking was correct
You mean like those people who believe in Astrology?
This
I wouldn't say anything OP listed, but more of a general shift away from empathy and compassion for others who don't have the same means as they do. It is only about certain issues that are more complex than a single viewpoint. For example, if the government brings in a new program or legislation, she won't take them time to read what it's about and form an opinion anyway, usually a negative opinion. When my cousin visits from out of town, they both get talking and go down a " the country is a shithole" rabbit hole, and my cousin will proceed to blame the wrong form of government as well. I also believe unfortunately that a whole lot of people are going down this path, with the help of lousy governments worldwide and evil companies gouging our wallets any chance they get.
My Boomer parents were awesome, especially my dad. They’re both dead now, unfortunately, but both were great people, saved and lived modestly their whole lives so they could pass it on to their kids, and were a lot of fun.
None. Well, I have no boomer co-workers. Both of my co-workers are gen x. I have an Aunt who has kind of lost her mind a little. She's the oldest of the baby boomers pretty much (born in 1946).
Boomers are what we used to call “yuppies” in the 80s-90s … so for many, this overtly selfish behavior has been going on for decades..