Just for intellectual curiosity, I thought I’d start a thread with my question rather than derail any of the threads where I see the term being used.
I see people calling others Boomers quite often, and usually where it doesn’t seem to fit, and just recently I saw one with the term “new age boomer.”
I’m genuinely puzzled by this since Boomer is a reference to people born during the Baby Boom right after World War 2. At least that’s how it’s always been used, to my knowledge, although nowadays it’s often used as an insult.
Is it that, like with many other “old sayings,” it’s now become just another insult to toss around on the internet without reference or bothering to find out where it originated or what it actually means?
So what does Boomer mean to you and how did you arrive at that meaning? And what the heck is a New Age Boomer?
Education on generations has been growing. My employer held 2 huge workshops on it. I think some folks hear brief explanations of what a “boomer” is, and decided to leverage the negative aspects to create an insult. Others hear this being used, but not fully understanding the context, which leads to differing interpretations.
People born in the baby boom after WW2, when veterans came back from war and humped like wild rabbits making lots of babies! This country needs more kids, so we don’t have to constantly import serfs to make up for population that refuses to have children.
“boomer” in the meme sense that it has picked up lately, is anyone born in the 80s / early 90s that is interested in 90s / early 2000s videogames. It’s not necessarily an insult, although the “okay boomer” meme has kind of turned it into one…which refers to actual Baby Boomers.
“Boomer” isn’t just talking about baby boomer anymore. It could even mean a 30 year old. It’s a meme used on places like Twitch and other social media to just make fun of someone specific viewpoints or their age and not liking change. Zoomer is like the opposite (I think of zoomer being like impatient and never wanting to stay doing the same thing).
I only heard these words as well from playing WoW because I don’t follow teenager slang which I guess is being a boomer but whatever I don’t care, I’m not a kid anymore.
When I hear these words I just assume someone is under like 21 and never played Vanilla WoW.
It’s actually funny reading the description a few posts below. I’d say that sounds about right other than teenagers just thinking they are being edgy and unique in how the play the game, which well is how teenagers have felt like they are unique forever. I do plenty of my own stuff when I play.
Its an insult to anyone that has an “archaic” form of thinking. The word is derived from baby boomers and was originally used for that. With the term zoomer appearing, people keep using boomer as an insult to anyone who played video games before meta and streamer/esports were the norm. Lots of teenagers refer to older gamers as boomers because we use our time to play a game, enjoy the game and learn on our own rather than follow a cookie cutter meta guide online.
Generally speaking, that’s what they mean, but it’s being used generically just to put down anyone “older and more opinionated” than them.
It is, actually, that’s how it was originally intended.
It’s actually used on just about anyone born before 2000 that is playing video games.
The younger generation has this generalization that we are “too old” for video games, not realizing we were the FIRST generation that was really raised with video games as a “normal” thing. I was raised in the 80s, and almost all of my classmates had some sort of video game system in their house all through school.
we were told the world was overpopulated and the amount of people requiring government aid was out of control, and it would be more ecologically and socially friendly, to have fewer or even no children. laws were also put in place to encourage quality of life for children that made it a crime to not provide said quality. many other countries often dont have as high a standard of life, so having multiple children living in lower life quality is not considered a crime. here, you could go to prison and/or lose your children if the standards arent met.
