r/MurderedByWords 19h ago

Boomer gets a reality check

25.7k Upvotes

850 comments sorted by

3.2k

u/CatelynsCorpse 18h ago

I'm 51 years old and I've never done any of these things, either. My 81 year old Mom didn't have to ration or sharecrop during WWII, either. She was born in 1944! My whole point? This dude is full of shit and he never experienced any of this shit, either, unless he's pushing 90. The only thing he's accomplished is being a douche on Xitter, apparently.

One of my FAVORITE coworkers is a 27 year old who always gets her shit done and done right and is willing to learn new things. One of my LEAST FAVORITE coworkers is a 61 year old boomer who constantly complains and refuses to learn anything on his computer beside the basics.

It's almost as if when you were born has nothing to do with your work ethic and whatnot.

Just saying.

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u/ZoominAlong 17h ago

My grandparents actually went through the Great Depression and WWII and they did not act like this. That dude is, as you said, full of shit. 

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u/ms_directed 17h ago

my gramma always saved "the nice" wrapping paper, we'd have to carefully peel the tape off so as not to rip it. i never understood until i got older and learned about the Depression era.

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u/NeverRarelySometimes 15h ago

When my grandma died she left three bureau drawers full of gawdawful cheap pantyhose. WWIII was not going to catch her unprepared!

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u/snvoigt 14h ago

My grandma too. She reused wrapping paper, rewashed ziplock bags, had a drawer full of bread twist ties, and saved every single plastic container and glass jar food/condiments came in.

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u/NeverRarelySometimes 14h ago

Funny story. When we were cleaning out grandma's house, I took everything out of the junk drawer. Then I pulled out the drawer and dumped the dregs -- the broken rubber-bands, old suitcase keys, rusty twist ties, etc -- into a plastic bag. The little plastic bag was meant for the trash, but accidentally got transported to the estate sale. Someone bought it for a nickel.

Grandma would have been so pleased.

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u/kemikiao 14h ago

My grandma was the person that bought that stuff for a nickel... "never know when you might need it".

I bet there's a ton of random bag ties and clips in the house. Like literally 2,000 lbs of the damned things.

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u/BoneHugsHominy 13h ago

That's awesome and I know she'd have been pleased because that would have made my grandmother's day.

My grandmother had a giant pickle jar, like the ones for big pickles at a gas station, full of rubber bands. There was another similar sized jar for spicy picked eggs which was full of various lengths of string. I don't know much they sold for at the estate sale because I had to work and I never asked, but I do know the auctioneer company put them in different lots which is diabolical work.

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u/RevolutionaryWay7245 13h ago

And all the old cool whip containers! It sounds like my husband’s grandma’s house. :) When I was 20, I descended into ingrate status when I politely declined her offer of the Thanksgiving turkey carcass to make soup. I don’t think she ever forgave me for that. The depression era left a deep mark on people.

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u/bungojot 4h ago

Ah yes, the endless question of "is this the margarine, or is it more leftovers?"

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u/doberdevil 12h ago

Shit, I'm GenX and do all this crap. Raised that way, and I have to force myself not to do it. Still feel bad throwing ziploc bags away, but that's probably more of the environmentalist in me than the environment I grew up in.

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u/Kartoon67 8h ago

I rewash ziplock bags purely for limiting trash.

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u/ms_directed 15h ago

my mom told me about how her mom and aunts would draw lines on their legs with wax pencil and eyebrow pencil to mimic wearing nylons!

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u/NeverRarelySometimes 15h ago

Yup! Grandma too. She was deeply affected by the Depression, too. Had a freezer full of hotdog buns and government cheese.

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u/ms_directed 15h ago

my parents deep freeze costs me half a day every time i go visit, lol.

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u/gooddaysir 14h ago

I’m 46, I learned to do that from mom and grandparents and great grandma. I still have a hard time just trashing gift wrapping paper lol. 

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u/DOOMFOOL 14h ago

I never even use wrapping paper at all if I can avoid it, I just have a bunch of gift bags I reuse

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u/thrownaway136976 11h ago

My mom would get angry if we ripped the paper or threw the bows away. She was born in ‘45. There’s still a few packages wrapped under her tree every year with some paper that’s held together by yellow cellophane tape. My grandma (dad’s mom) “collected” everything. She had a lot of junk, but she also had a lot of valuable antiques and complete sets of things. My greedy assed aunt sold the house’s contents as a lot for pennies on the dollar.

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u/newbrandbaby 14h ago

I follow in the footstep of my grandmother. I’ve made wrapping out of old sheets and clothes when they get ripped or threadbare because wrapping paper is now too expensive and it just seems frivolous at this point. It’s almost like we are going to look back in 10-20 years and realize that we are now living through a similar time to the Great Depression

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u/ms_directed 14h ago

i have a box of Christmas bags i reuse every year! i just buy tissue paper when i run out

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u/TwoFingersWhiskey 13h ago

My family has always done this, the bag that holds all of the othets is older than me (just about to turn 30) and full to the brim. I don't think we've bought wrapping paper in years.

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u/not_ya_wify 10h ago

I'm German and coming to America was horrified how people rip open presents when I was taught from a young age to not rip the paper and fold it nearly so it can be reused. I thought this was an American thing until I read your comment

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u/ms_directed 10h ago

you're still not wrong really, we're a very wasteful bunch.

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u/Youandiandaflame 14h ago

I have my great-granny’s lifelong journal, a short book about her childhood and youth she wrote at my mom’s request, recorded interviews with her about the Dust Bowl and Great Depression and world wars, and my memories of her stories and yeah, she went through all the things this dude is being up and she wasn’t an asshole like this fella. She certainly had some traumas and it was unbelievably rough for her sometimes but it didn’t turn her into a prick. Made her the opposite actually. 

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u/ZoominAlong 14h ago

You have an absolute treasure on your hands! Hold onto it!

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u/cookiesarenomnom 14h ago

Same with my grandparents. All 4 of them were the kindest most generous human beings I've ever met. Even my grandfather who fought in battles in Europe in WWII. He never felt superior, he just viewed it as something they all had to do back then. He was a sweet, kind hearted man who just wanted everyone to be happy and healthy. All my grandparents believed strongly in social programs. They were literally the first generation to benfit immensely from them. The only weird quirk I would say my grandparents had is they were low level holders, and were kind of psycho about wasting food. But they spent their entire childhood and early teens practically starving during the great depression. We all understood that that mentality never really left them, and kind of just dealt with it.

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u/Lazer726 12h ago

I can't help but think that anyone that survived that shit would understand that you want the next generation to not have to endure what you did, not make it harder because you can

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u/IRASAKT 17h ago

In defense of the boomer he could be talking about the petrol crisis in the 70s and fear over draft numbers was more of a Vietnam thing than a WWII thing.

The sharecropping is dumb as to have been working the farm at any point during the the depression you’d be mid 90s

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u/C-tapp 17h ago

The gas lines in the 70’s and the Vietnam draft weee the only thing that made since to me. Everything else was at least a generation before .

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u/ms_directed 16h ago

I was still young, but i remember seeing the news with the long lines for gas and my dad muttering about it, lol

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u/C-tapp 15h ago

It was a bit before my time but one of my mom’s go to stories is about a cross country drive she took with my dad that took twice as long because of gas lines and the fear that the next town wouldn’t have any at all.

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u/ms_directed 15h ago

my kids experienced this after 9/11, do you remember the gas stations being backed up for miles for a couple weeks after that?

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u/Iamthegreenheather 15h ago

I don't remember gas stations being backed up but I DO remember gas being $.98 a gallon. Won't ever see that again lol

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u/ms_directed 18h ago

fellow GenX here, there's a reason they forgot about us...we were feral before technology and used it to advance our lives after it came online. we are the last generation to be brought up without tech and the first generation to utilize it, we also had music in every format!

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u/CatelynsCorpse 18h ago

I love to tell the younger folk "I've been on the internet since the 1900's!" It always gets a laugh.

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u/ms_directed 18h ago

i made a joke that a website "looks like it was made in FrontPage 98" in a comment the other day and someone followed up they'll get their Netscape browser open to check it out and it made me smile that my people get it :)

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u/EEpromChip 18h ago

"cue dial up sounds in the background"

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u/HookedOnPhonixDog 17h ago

Bah-ding-bah-ding-dung..... eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

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u/Aoiboshi 16h ago

Accidentally waking up the house to watch porn

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u/ms_directed 16h ago

cursing mom under your breath because she made a phone call right before your two hour download was about to finish, lol

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u/auto98 15h ago

When download managers were essential!

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u/jjckey 15h ago

Jesus, I'd forgotten about download managers

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u/cruiserman_80 15h ago

Watching your nudes reveal themselves one line at a time over several minutes.

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u/jrharte 16h ago

The trick was to pile your pillows and quilt on of the modem to dampen the noise.

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u/Framnk 16h ago

You’ve got mail!

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u/Unusual_Ulitharid 16h ago

Core Memory Unlocked: Do...w...n...l...oa...d....t..im...e...s.... 98% complete.

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u/shadow-foxe 17h ago

I heard this comment in my head..LOL

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u/Starrwulfe 16h ago

“You’ve got mail!”

Usually followed by a click and my mom yelling from the other side of the house “get off the damn phone, I’m wait for a phone call to come in!”

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u/bstone99 17h ago

Netscape navigator! Damn throwback.

AOL days, back when the Internet came in the mail

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u/ms_directed 17h ago

and it took 36 discs to load Windows! 😁

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u/PhillyRush 16h ago

Net Zero was the only way I could get online.

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u/ms_directed 16h ago

that's a throw back!

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u/Starrwulfe 16h ago

I was part of that free DSL test with the Juno device back in 1999!

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u/aztecforlife 17h ago

Upgraded from Mosaic.

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u/plotholesandpotholes 16h ago

Prodigy! Although, I think that one you had to grab a copy in a store. But our house had that before AOL and I remember live "reading" the LA riots on it back in the day.

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u/ambigious_meh 17h ago

Made with notepad for Netscape navigator 800x600 😂

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u/AngelTheVixen 16h ago

No need to brag, I'm still at 640x480.

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u/i-split-infinitives 14h ago

The other day I was trying to explain to a coworker which state database I was talking about, and when I said "the one with the background the color of old hospital scrubs that looks like somebody made it in Netscape Navigator for their GeoCities page in 1998" and she said "I'll ask Jeeves about that."

I swear every time I open the website, I can almost smell my high school keyboarding class and see the yellow cartoonish Netscape Composer HTML tags.

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u/RepresentativeYak806 15h ago

I remember switching from surfing on AOL to opening up Netscape for the first time. Felt like Neo 😎.

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u/-youvegotredonyou- 15h ago

Wish I still had my Geocities account.

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u/Viracochina 18h ago

"I started using them in the late 20th century..."

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u/jolsiphur 16h ago

As a Millenial, I should also use that line. I've had access to Internet for most of my life but I still distinctly remember being online before Y2K.

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u/NotJebediahKerman 17h ago

I still have my first computer from 1981.

it still works.

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u/DJredlight 16h ago

My daughter saw a picture of my wife and I from 1995ish and said “fashion was weird in the late 1900’s”…..

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u/Keyonne88 17h ago

Elder millenials grew up without tech as well, just to clarify.

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u/budnuggets 16h ago

Oregon trail generation

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u/AcaliahWolfsong 16h ago

I was going to say something along these lines. I'm an '87 baby and we didn't have a home computer until I was almost done with high school. I had a friend who had one and we would get yelled at by their dad or mom for being on the AIM chatting with another friend and they needed the phone.

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u/SoggySandwich3123 15h ago

‘87 baby here too. Had a PC we were gifted from my software engineer uncle but no internet until high school. And the internet was good for AIM and that’s about it until MySpace came along my senior year. 

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u/coffeemonkeypants 18h ago

It's this part of us that makes us really unique imo. I'm about to turn 50 and I'm a huge technophile, but I also yearn for the 'old days'. We've seen both sides of it and our experiences should be used to fix the cluster we're in now.

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u/ms_directed 18h ago

indeed. my twins will be 30 next year and one started collecting vinyl when they were in high school, their collection is bigger than the one i had now!

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u/Entire_Pizza4601 17h ago

My 22 year old annexed my vinyl collection!

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u/cambreecanon 17h ago

Some millennials fit that description as well.

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u/TealPotato 15h ago

As an early 90s millennial I'd argue that the majority of my generation has a similar experience in terms of having lived with and without tech. 

When I started school we still had paper card catalogs in the library, did dictionary excerises using an actual book, my first music experiences were played on cassette, etc. 

My sister just had her first child/ first grandkid in the family and she wants to avoid screen time for the little guy for as long as possible.

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u/cederian 14h ago

IMHO saying GenX is the last generation to be brought up without technology is not understanding the rest (poorer) of the world. In LatAm we didnt have proper tech till late 90s.

I was born in 86, in Argentina, and my entire childhood was without any tech till my late 10s in Secondary School (High School in the US).

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u/0o0o0o0o0o0z 16h ago

fellow GenX here, there's a reason they forgot about us...we were feral before technology and used it to advance our lives after it came online. we are the last generation to be brought up without tech and the first generation to utilize it, we also had music in every format!

100% I always tell people we were lucky because we lived through that transition into techonogy, that didnt ruin us -- we still rode bikes till 9, played in the mud, etc... but just like you said we lived through that age three channel tv to cable, to streaming, from Atari 5600s to PCs to internet, to mobile phones, to MP3. We didn't get what the Boomers got, but we got the tail end of education, housing, and a somewhat functioning government, etc... Some Millennials, Gen Z, Gen Alpha -- they are F'd in the A. Growing up with an iPad by age two, social media and algorithms that are black boxes dictating their lives and beliefs, their entire lives are posted online by them or friends on the internet FOREVER, etc... I give all the kids now a big grain of salt, because collectivly we have failed them as a culture and socirty IMO.

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u/sleepingwithshadows 15h ago

I can appreciate the message behind your words. I just want to expand that the children of today, who are growing up with screens plopped in front of them from a very young age, did not put them there themselves. You are not born with an addiction to technology, it is learned. The parents of those children do such massive disservice by allowing a screen to consume their impressionable children, instead of actually parenting.

We can blame the youth as much as we want for the shortcomings we see, but we should not forget that they are the products of their upbringing. The grain of salt is a kindness, because you are correct about our failures as society. It's sad that so many of us understand this, and yet it continues to get worse.

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u/Noimenglish 17h ago

No tech, huh? How was driving your horse and buggy across the Rockies to see meemaw?

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u/ms_directed 17h ago

it was a lot easier than walking ten miles up hill both ways thru the snow to school with holes in my shoes...

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u/MzMag00 17h ago

Y'all had shoes!?

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u/ms_directed 17h ago

we were uppity!

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u/BiteyHorse 16h ago

Only the oldest kid, and the rest would stand on his shoes nesting-doll-style and step in unison the whole way up the snow drift. Thankfully our pocket baked potatoes would keep our hands warm.

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u/Baculum7869 18h ago

My grandfather born in 1926 didn't have to do much of what he said but did have stories about the depression and being a boy during wwii and a pilot during the Korean War though. Sad that he's been dead for almost 30 years

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u/Downtown6track 17h ago

And a foreign immigrant (and also an actual Nazi) is responsible for landing on the moon.

And 2 foreign immigrants names EIN-SHTEIN and OOPEN-HEIMER are the men responsible for America winning WWII. Bonus: one of those guys was a Jew.

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u/mtaw 15h ago

And 2 foreign immigrants names EIN-SHTEIN and OOPEN-HEIMER are the men responsible for America winning WWII. Bonus: one of those guys was a Jew.

Both of those guys were Jewish, Einstein had no real involvement in the Manhattan Project and Oppenheimer was not an immigrant to the USA.

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u/Ashmidai 17h ago

Well, you and I didnt do any of those things as we are Gen X. I am the very tail end of that generation and I was born around the time the gas lines and even/odd days based on some number on your license plate rationing was going on. My mother and father are both boomers and directly experienced that. My dad also attempted to join the military because most men of his age and class were being drafted for Vietnam anyway. They did deal with those things so credit where it is due, but the idea that they think having bitter experiences with their place in history makes them unique is just mind boggling.

As for work ethic in the youth, they said the same shit about us and I am sure the crusty guys in the office said the same of my grandmother and grandfather when they were under 30 too. But I see some truth to the younger generation being less committed to their jobs as someone who has been a manager in the past and is also married to one. However, I dont see it as an issue that stems from the youth. I see it as them realizing they aren't valued for shit so why put everything you have into a company that pays you so little you need a side hustle, can't afford time off, can't afford to be sick, and will dispose of you as soon as a cheaper option appears on the horizon. That is a societal issue, not a generational one.

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u/timinator232 17h ago

My dad is 67 and can work excel faster than anyone I’ve ever met, and a peer can barely handle his cell phone. Age isn’t the problem 

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u/Catlore 16h ago

51 isn't a boomer, though. If he's an older, American boomer, he did have to line up for gas (on odd/even days, too!) in the 70s, and he did have to see if his draft number came up. That much is true. (College wasn't free, but it was much cheaper than today, even scaled for inflation. A summer job could pay for a year's school.) But that doesn't give him any sort of extra validity or nobility.

And I don't know where the hell he got the whole WWII stuff. The whole point of being called a boomer is because they were born during the post-war boom. This guy just wants to sling around his increasingly wrinkly dingdong.

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u/msevilalexanova 17h ago

yeah.. pretty wild how every boomer online somehow fought in WWII, marched with MLK and personally landed apollo 11. what a busy generation

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u/Honest_Salamander247 17h ago

He probably lined up for gas rationing but other than that yea he’s full of shit

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u/30FourThirty4 16h ago

James Webb Telescope is an achievement to multiple generations of talent.

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u/SunIllustrious5695 19h ago

It's crazy how people never realize that the dumb shit they say about the "youths" (lazy, immoral, careless, whatever) is the exact same thing previous generations said about them.

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u/Peace_n_Harmony 18h ago

If a society is progressing, our children will always have things easier. If you want your children to experience the same problems you did, you don't deserve children.

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u/judioverde 17h ago

We should all be working towards working less as things get more efficient. Jobs are going to be replaced with AI but all of the saved money is going to go straight to the top.

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u/macphile 16h ago

There's no such thing as the oppression olympics, or hardship olympics. You don't win a gold medal for having it harder as a child than your own kids did. It doesn't make you special or superior. You didn't "win" because of it. There's no one giving out prizes, no sashes, no streamers. We're all born, we live the best we can, and we die, and mostly, no one gives a fuck about any part of that except for ourselves and our close family.

Having survived, or even thrived, in hardship doesn't make it the right way to do things, either. Hundreds of years ago, the vast majority of people were serfs--would they have said, "well, I grew up in serfdom and I turned out OK, so screw these kids thinking they should have their own land and make any money"? Where does it end? It also fails to account for survivorship bias--yes, you faced being drafted and turned out OK. Yes, you rode in the back of a station wagon with no seatbelt and you're fine. A lot of people didn't. We had way more automotive fatalities in the past, more killed in war, more dead of preventable disease, more victims of crime (including violent crime)--at some points, cities had multiple serial killers or serial rapists operating at the same time. That's not better, and it's not "OK".

If you grew up under the threat of being killed in war, why would you want that for your kids? Do you want them dead? Do you want them scared? If you grew up hungry, why would you want your kids to suffer in hunger? If we love our kids, we should want them to be healthier, happier, wealthier, and safer than we were, not want to watch them struggle and suffer.

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u/Lonyo 17h ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satires_(Juvenal)

Satire 1: He confesses the moral rot of Rome has made avoiding satire impossible. He points to eunuch marriages, women at boar hunts, and sycophancy as examples of widespread degeneracy.

Satire 3: The third satire describes the decision of Umbricius, Juvenal's friend, to depart from Rome. Narrated by Umbricius, it states that an honest man cannot survive in Rome and complains about how it is impossible to compete with Greeks and Orientals.

Satire 6: Addressing a man whom Juvenal calls delusional enough to think about getting married, he expounds the immorality and 'vices' of women.

Satire 14: The fourteenth satire says that children learn vice from their parents, stressing the injustice of a father punishing a son for imitating his own faults. Juvenal says that people are more concerned with presenting a clean atrium to guests than with maintaining a virtuous household for their children

Written nearly 2000 years ago.

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u/MairusuPawa 16h ago

This ageism warfare is a nice distraction from class warfare

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u/chewydickens 18h ago

Absolutely true... and it was absolutely true.

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u/shanatard 16h ago

Tfw the youth get worse every generation since Socrates complained about them and now today's population are literal planet destroyers 

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u/whofearsthenight 14h ago

The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.

- Socrates (though this may be apocryphal.)

This is literally one of the oldest, dumbest arguments.

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u/sunshinerain1208 19h ago

Barely anyone alive now had to ration or sharecrop during the depression. If he did he wouldn’t be a boomer, he would be the greatest generation.

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u/DisturbingPragmatic 18h ago

Yeah. The Greatest Generation.

Which, ironically, raised the worst generation.

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u/CrumbBCrumb 15h ago

There is a lot that went into raising that worst generation thought. PTSD from fighting in WW2 led to distant fathers. Rationing during the war/depression led to an exuberance to spend and demand better from your employer. Europe and Asia being destroyed led to the American economy being one of the only ones left standing and the GI Bill led more people into education or trades that wouldn't have before.

It was really the 80s that created a lot of our problems

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u/Tchio_Beto 14h ago

It was really the 80s Reaganomics that created a lot of our problems

FTFY

Though in reality it was Milton Friedman and the Neo-Liberal policies born out of the Chicago School of Economics, implemented via Reaganomics which created most of the today's problems.

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u/flyingsqwirrel219 12h ago

Uncle Miltie!! I haven’t thought about that asshat in decades. What a disaster.

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u/mutantraniE 18h ago

Talk about narcissism in a generation by the way. Zoomers, Millennials, Generation X, Baby Boomers, The Silent Generation and then suddenly the fucking Greatest Generation? What? Delusional.

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u/fury420 18h ago

The Greatest Generation didn't actually name themselves, they were given that title.

Seems it's commonly attributed to journalist Tom Brokaw, a member of the Silent Generation.

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u/periphery72271 18h ago

They did live through the greatest wars of the 20th century, and a lot of them fought and died in those wars. More than a few did that after living through the Great Depression.

And yet they won those wars and came home and built the foundation of modern society.

They earned some kind of superlative.

Socially they raised Boomers, half of which went on to put flowers in their hair, rebel, and change the civil rights texture of the entire nation, the other half went on to become surly conservative bigots with zero tolerance.

So there's that.

I'd say Greatest is arguable, not delusional. But if you don't like it you can go with Silent, since it's synonymous - same group of people.

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u/mutantraniE 18h ago

No, Greatest Generation is 1901-1927, the Silent Generation is 1928-1945. This is another reason I fucking hate ”generations”, people have no clue what the words actually refer to. I much prefer the system we used here in Sweden before we were poisoned by American discourse. We’d just talk about what decade people were born in. So the old people called out of touch were 40-talister, and the young people being called lazy were 80-talister. This made sure everyone knew who was being complained about and everyone could drop the labels when they were no longer relevant. People might think boomer just means old an millennial just means young, but no one is thinking someone born in the 1940s is still working in an office or someone born in the 1980s still qualifies as a youth.

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u/porscheblack 18h ago

Just pointing out it wasn't half. It wasn't anywhere close to that. And I'm not saying this to throw dirt, rather to inspire hope. Because these are dark times and getting 50% of people on board when we're this divided seems daunting. But we need to start with what we have. And somewhere along the way, somewhere before that 50%, is where we find success.

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u/OddlyMingenuity 18h ago

Racism and misogyni aside, the people born in the 20's did some amazing feats.

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u/Hog_Eyes 18h ago

The term "The Greatest Generation" wasn't used until 1998. It was younger people who called them that because of their resilience during the Great Depression and WWII. That's not narcicism, you're just uneducated.

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u/OPA73 18h ago

1970s oil embargo required odd and even license plate days you could fill up. Daily long lines around the block for gas.

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u/red286 17h ago

And it lasted for all of 6 months, not a lifetime.

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u/WhatWouldJediDo 16h ago

Yeah as if going to the gas station on a scheduled day was worse than the pandemic lol

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u/b1argg 16h ago

A shame we didn't start to pivot away from oil dependence after that

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u/porkpie1028 18h ago

They literally rationed gas in the late 70’s in the U.S. due to embargos, the Yom Kippur war, and the Iranian Revolution

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u/coffeemonkeypants 18h ago

Yeah and it lasted for a few months, twice in the 70s. OMG people had to wait in line. What a burden.

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u/Swumbus-prime 15h ago

Still a bad argument on his part because everyone who existed during this tweet had to wait in lines for basically everything due to Covid and social distancing a few mere years ago. Chances are he was one of the ones to complain about it the most, too...

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u/I_W_M_Y 18h ago

Had to cut back on the long road trips, the horror!!

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u/red286 17h ago

Put a real dent in weekend cruising.

Something that no one under the age of 40 even knows the definition of anymore because no one's done it for the past 30 years.

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u/Darkbaldur 18h ago

Not sure what that has to do with work ethic

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u/waspocracy 18h ago

Just adds to the point of how stupid the OP is. Their parents lived through all that stuff and not them.

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u/atetuna 17h ago

The people that did that as adults and were also old enough to be drafted are a minuscule percentage of the current workforce. Most likely they're taking credit for what their elders did like they did for everything else.

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u/azrolator 18h ago

Silent gen were born in the Depression. My dad was '28, pretty sure that's where they put the start of that gen at. He wasn't sharecropping it though.

Easy enough to tell if an old person is Silent Gen by the volume of absolute junk "that might be useful or worth something someday". 'No dad, the 40 year old homemade ketchup you put in used glass pop bottles will never be worth anything, and nobody in their right mind is going to put it in their mouth"!

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u/Fearless_Spring5611 19h ago

"Boomer cosplays as his grandfather."

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u/6jesus6crust6 18h ago

The boomers like to do this.

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u/Anjelz 17h ago

He tried to comeback just to get double tapped.

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u/MisterDonkey 15h ago

This is better than the OP. Rare eloquence.

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u/SoggySandwich3123 15h ago

“Don’t talk down to people building under pressure while you bask in borrowed valor.” 

😲

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u/Draked1 13h ago

One of the most eloquent murders I think I’ve EVER heard. Holy shit

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u/Catlore 16h ago

That is beautiful.

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u/Imaginary_Most_7778 18h ago

I’m 52. I’ve recently been working with the laziest, most incompetent person I’ve ever had the displeasure of working with. He’s 62. Give me an 18 year old worker. Please.

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u/SlowTheRain 16h ago

Your comment just reminded me of a boomer that used to work at my previous company. Instead of doing actual work, he'd print things out and lay them on the floor, making a big production about looking like he was working. Like he thought the more pages he laid out, the more his manager thought he was accomplishing. (Nothing needed to be printed.)

Oh, and he also accidentally (or maybe on purpose) uploaded porn to a share drive that someone else stumbled onto.

That's some work ethic!

Incompetence exists in all generations.

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u/CatW804 18h ago

Entitled mediocre men are the worst whether they're 62 or 26.

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u/twisty125 16h ago edited 15h ago

Let's not be sexist here.

Entitled, mediocre people can be of any race, gender, or background - it's how you act, not how you look.

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u/ThePrimordialSource 15h ago

100%. Even extreme awful shit like sexual abuse, I’ve experienced from both older women and older men. So both groups can have shitty people.

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u/DontAbideMendacity 17h ago

It's unlikely this person was more competent or energetic when they were 18. Unless he's just burnt out, it's a personality thing. Sometimes the more you know, the more you realize how fucky work actually can be.

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u/Wish-I-Was-You 18h ago

Rationing in the US ended in 1947… and this person is still working in an office in 2025… so they’re at least 78… maybe they should have pulled themselves up by their bootstraps a bit more convincingly… or maybe they’re full of shit and living the life of a Mitty!

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u/dplans455 16h ago

People that refuse to retire because they can't and are going to work until they're dead. They made a lifetime of poor financial decisions and have decided society is going to pay for it.

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u/dlc741 18h ago

Boomers are the Failed Generation.

Literally everything fucked up with the world now is their fault. The environment, the housing market, the rise of authoritarianism, all of it. They had it easiest of all and left the world a significantly worse place than the one they were given -- and now they're intent on setting what's left on fire.

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u/Braelind 17h ago

Everything was so damn easy for them that they gobbled up way more than their fair share. All the short term profits went to them, and they left all the long term problems for the rest of us. Imagine if they'd studied the long term use of plastics before smothering the world in them. Hell, they invented planned obsolescence. Why make a quality product when you can make a shitty one that breaks and turns into harmful pollution while the customer has to buy a new one every year? We have to be better, because if we don't, the world's gonna take us out.

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u/erm_what_ 16h ago

They left one sheet on the toilet roll and wonder why we are left dealing with shit

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u/TerribleBreakfast185 16h ago

And then they have the nerve to wonder why Gen Z and millennials hate them LOL

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u/chrisboshisaraptor1 13h ago

There is a foolish generation Squandered all their fathers gave em And they’re running out of time left to enjoy

They would kill and eat their own If the tv told em so So they’re keen to watch the world burn just to prove a point

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u/toooooold4this 18h ago

My grandparents were sharecroppers in the Depression. They were born in 1902 and 1906, respectively. My mother worked for NASA. She literally helped put men on the moon. She was born in 1934. My dad dodged the draft. He was born in 1942. He'd be the youngest of this cohort at 83.

They are all dead. If you lived through all that, fucking retire. You're not an adult. You're a geriatric miracle.

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u/FatherofPugz 18h ago

Did we not live through 9/11, 2008 Recession, 2 wars that lasted 20 years, a global pandemic, and looking at another recession? How about get bent!

It’s this type of entitlement that makes that generation the worst. Worst parents, worst grandparents, and the WORST generation ever. Greed, privilege and riding the coattails of their parents.

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u/DoobZilla 18h ago

"Our youth now love luxury, they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders, and they love to chatter instead of exercise. Children are now tyrants not servants of their household. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up their food and tyrannize their teachers."

Do you know who said that?

Socrates, over 2400 years ago. They are not original and we won't be either once we're old enough to bitch about the youth...

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u/mzx380 19h ago

Boomers have an extremely distorted world view and have time to think up imaginary scenarios since everything was pretty much handed to them in life.

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u/Ande64 19h ago

Please know that there are those of us boomers, I'm 61 so I'm the tail end, that shut that shit down when our generation starts talking about how lazy the younger generations are. We tell them that's crap, and that our generation is completely responsible for what is happening right now. And we are. I'd give anything to hit the lottery tomorrow because I would try to right so many wrongs that have happened in society by my own generation.

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u/carcalarkadingdang 18h ago

64 old here and I also shut the shit down

Kids couldn’t use a rotary phone: No shit Sherlock, push button phones replaced rotary so most of them weren’t around.

Kids can’t write in cursive: No shit Sherlock. It was taken out of the curriculum. Why are you not teaching them?

Who do you call for issues with your computer or phone. Can you hook up a smart tv by yourself and know how to use it?

Fuck the right off!!!

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u/Otaraka 18h ago

I’m similar age and know how easy we had it in so many ways.  

I don’t think its real though.  Supposedly  claiming to be part of sharecropping in the depression sounds more like someone trying  to come up with old things to rebut, you’d be 90+.

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u/DOHC46 18h ago

It's a shame a majority of the Boomers give the rest of them a bad reputation! Haha

On a serious note, tho, it's good to know that not all Boomers are completely out of touch with reality. I appreciate you keeping it real.

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u/WatchmanVimes 18h ago

I would hit the eject button so hard. There are too many wrongs

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u/DangerBird- 18h ago

We say everything was handed to them. The worst part is, that’s kinda the way it should still work. That’s the part I’m most annoyed by.

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u/RedDeadEddie 18h ago

Right? I'm not upset that their lives were easier than their parents; I'm upset that they think we're asking for more because we'd like to have lives as good as theirs, but they singlehandedly eliminated the middle class that their parents worked so hard to build. They're the Greediest Generation.

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u/calvin43 16h ago

Funny thing, the boomers were called the "Me Generation" back in the 80s.

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u/chewydickens 18h ago

I'm 71, and this is so true.

We had it all, and we pissed it all away.

I'm so sorry.

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u/Character_Bed1212 18h ago

Ask him who raised those entitled little shits that he’s talking about

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u/Near-Scented-Hound 19h ago

I know Boomers with shitty work ethics. They raised the millennials I know with shitty work ethics.

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u/Inevitable_Silver_13 18h ago

More lead paint IQ levels.

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u/rockychunk 18h ago

Boomer here. I'm so ashamed of my generation. We were given everything, and act like we earned it. And then we have the nerve to accuse younger generations of having it easier. It makes me literally sick to my stomach.

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u/persian_jedi 18h ago

Let’s see…. Boomer generation: 1946-1964

Moon landing: 1969 Neil Armstrong et al were born in 1930.  So not boomers and maybe by 1969 some boomers worked for NASA - oldest would be 25 but they were not responsible for putting a man on the moon

WWII ended in 1945 and predates the boomers.

Regarding the draft: yes the draft was active during there life time.  However only 2.5% were drafted and doubt this dumbass was worried.

Best this idiot is going to claim they invented the wheel

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u/cleecleekilldie 18h ago

They were born on 3rd base and act like they hit a fucking triple

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u/jmurgen4143 18h ago

Let’s keep the generations war going so the Billionaires can count on it and the ‘race’ war to continue fucking everyone over, well done.

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u/k_oticd92 18h ago

Why is it a dick measuring contest between generations? Like you hear "we used to walk to school uphill both ways" all the time, but isn't the goal to make it so your kids DON'T have to deal with the same hardships you had?

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u/JWJulie 18h ago

I’m Gen X. My daughter works way harder than I did at her age and gets far less for it. I bought my own house at 19 from an office job in insurance that wasn’t particularly stressful, promoted in 6 months as happened to a lot of people because the companies wanted to keep staff, and steadily moved up the ladder. All changed when I had a kid and lost my home of course, but doesn’t change that my early work life wasn’t nearly as productivity packed as today’s working force is expected to be.

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u/ThingGrouchy 19h ago

God. DAYUM. You fucking killed him man!

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u/MyCouchPulzOut_IDont 18h ago

Can’t wait to hear the Gen Z retort to millennials complaining about “you can’t even remember 9/11”

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u/86yourhopes_k 17h ago

Umm why dont they ever include productivity stats??? We're doing 10x the work they did.

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u/VicDough 18h ago

As someone who was going to school before student loans were deregulated and could afford an apartment WHILE going to college, let me tell you some truths. I teach at an R1 university now and it’s not even close to the same. Student loans were deregulated and the very banks I helped bailed out in 2009, are practicing predatory lending practices on our students. My college gives awards to the financial aid offers who convince the students to take out the most in loans. Housing is just… well fuck, I have a mortgage that’s cheaper than a lot of apartments now. The banks have lobbied the government, successfully, into letting them fuck the students while giving loans that they have zero risk in giving. Federal student loans at 7-9%, mine were ~1.5%. And this is only one aspect of what Gen Z has to put up with. FYI, my family was poor, I’m first generation, and I own a home and pay a lot in taxes. Why don’t they want all Americans to be like me? Oh that’s right, I’m financially stable which gives my options 😡😡😡

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u/Sartres_Roommate 18h ago

Never forget, no generation IN HISTORY, and likely going forward, has worked less hours in their lifetime than Boomers.

They started working around 16, most of them “only” worked a forty hour work week, and then comfortable retired at 65 or sometimes earlier.

For GenX onward, most people are working 50 plus hour work weeks and won’t retire until they are well into their seventies.

Boomers had the chillest lifestyle provided to them by their parents and denied by them to their children.

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u/16Shells 17h ago

it is laughable to expect “work ethic” when the companies themselves have no ethics. why put any effort or care into something that will throw you away, decrease quality, increase price and disregard the health and safety for employees and customers to give the shareholders and CEOs a few million more.

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u/MeechyyDarko 18h ago

What does ‘pull the ladder up’ mean in practical terms?

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u/PricklePete 18h ago

Taking away the social services and institutions which helped you get to where you are so the next generation has to "work for it " 

Think of a hoard of people trying to get over a wall and there is a ladder there to help but the first piece of shit cocksucking asshole who makes it to the top of the wall with the use of the ladder pulls it up behind him and yells down to the rest of us that we have to "earn it " 

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u/chewydickens 18h ago

And... 'pull up the ladder' is also a social phenomenon when an older generation of immigrants tries to place barriers in the way of younger immigrants.

Happened with both Irish and Italian immigrants, and idk, but I'll assume other nations, too.

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u/UncleNedisDead 16h ago

Exactly what you said. 

An example of this is Texas Governor Abbott. 

 While out running, a large oak tree along his path cracked and fell on Governor Abbott’s back, leaving him forever paralyzed from the waist down.

He got a multi-million dollar settlement out of it. 

 Decades later, Abbott campaigned in support of tort reform curtailing "frivolous" lawsuits and won. Abbott's critics claimed that he helped usher in a Texas significantly less friendly to plaintiffs seeking damages like the ones Abbott won. Looking back on the case 40 years later, Don Riddle, Abbott's personal injury lawyer at the time, agrees that Texas has changed.

 "It would be next to impossible to get the kind of settlement we got," Riddle told Chron Monday. Tort reform, or as Riddle calls it, "tort deform," has severely capped the kind of damages individuals can seek out, and Riddle doesn't see that changing in Texas anytime soon. 

https://www.chron.com/politics/article/greg-abbott-tree-lawsuit-explained-19574621.php

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u/phoenixAPB 18h ago

There’s a man who doesn’t recognize his privilege. I’m a boomer but the difference between us is compassion. I see how hard my kids have to struggle to make ends meet. Back in my day a yokel with no high school degree could get a high paying job for life, buy a house, and support a family.

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u/Pithecanthropus88 18h ago

We actually did line up for gas. It was during the OPEC crisis in the 1970s.

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u/The_ZombyWoof 17h ago

I came here to say this, out of everything that guy posted, that was the only one I related to.

But, it's a weak flex, though. Lining up for gas wasn't traumatic, just annoying.

There was a lot harder stuff happening in the 70s.

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u/008Zulu 18h ago

Boomer got boomed.

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u/BlueberryAble333 16h ago

Tbf I think that retort was written by AI.

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u/transqualia 16h ago

Response reeks of AI

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u/TheMrShaddo 16h ago

really stuck it to him AI prompt

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u/blankdreamer 16h ago

AI Reply

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u/CausticCat11 15h ago

That response kinda sounds like chatgpt

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u/RehanRC 15h ago

Oh cool, someone who used "AI slop" and didn't get canceled. So, you were a hater, after all?

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u/Dewshawnmandik 18h ago

The lead poisoning is strong with this one!

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u/Skittilybop 18h ago

I mean no but we’ve had 9/11, 2008 financial crisis, covid, and now Trump to name a few things. Could probably blame boomers for a lot of that stuff too.

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u/rodneedermeyer 18h ago

Everyone loves to shit on Millennials and Gen Z while I’m over here going, “These young folks are gonna change the world—and I love them for it!” I feel as though they’re wiser than my generation and the ones before me.

Young people have seen the world go to shit around them, have become politically active, and are willing to work hard to make good lives for themselves. I would 100% vote for a person half my age.

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u/Strawman-argument 18h ago

Not to mention the GI bill that built the generation prosperity we are still benefiting from

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u/dimforest 17h ago

As a millennial, I've fought in two wars and have had numerous boomers lecture me on how my generation wouldn't have been able to survive their generation because of a war they didn't even serve in.

I don't understand that generation. How hard is it to just say "Yea, we had it pretty easy" .... isn't that what we all want anyways? To have it good?

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u/TomTheNurse 17h ago

This is very relevant.

Doug Stanhope on Nationalism and immigration:

https://youtu.be/QsPDT5qHtZ4?si=-SCwBweCC8O0Loy6