I Won’t Get My Knickers in a Twist at
‘OK, boomer’ Our generation has gotten more than our share of attention and indulgence over the decades. Rather than get prickly when a Generation Xer or millennial plays this new insult card, I’ll stop and think about it … and consider that maybe they’re right. By Steven Pet row
Excerpted from “Stupid Things I Won’t Do When I Get Old” by Steven Petrow, published in June by Kensington Publishing Corp.
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chapelhillmagazine.com July/August 2021
t started with a brief clip on TikTok, an online service most boomers had never heard of. A split-screen video: on one side, our prototypic baby boomer – bearded, bespectacled and baseball-capped. This whitehaired guy is lecturing on the failings of millennials and Generation Zers, with the usual litany of complaints. They’re entitled, lazy and self-absorbed, and they refuse to grow up. On the other side of the split screen, a young’un makes a placard that reads, “OK, boomer,” held up repeatedly to counter each verbal volley. Now, that little put-down has become the rallying cry of a generation (or two or three) fed up with the boomers’ condescension, greed, political corruption and destruction of the planet. Ouch. But guilty as charged. “The older generations grew up with a certain mindset, and we have a different perspective,” 19-year-old Shannon O’Connor told The New York Times. Shannon, who designed a T-shirt and hoodie emblazoned with the tagline, “OK boomer, have a terrible day,” added that “a lot of them don’t believe in climate change, or don’t believe people can get jobs with dyed hair, and a lot of them are stubborn in that view.” According to Shannon, when she uses “OK, boomer,” it’s like she wants to prove them wrong, that she will be successful, that the world is changing. The snub has even made it to Dictionary.com, which calls it slang used “to call out or dismiss out-of-touch or close-minded opinions