Comments on: The Trouble with Boomers

By: Kat

Kat — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 00:59:18 +0000

I’ve always thought it was simple — there were just *more* boomers, and they were a fairly homogeneous bunch. They grew up in the conformist child-centered 50s, and thus grew up as a group, and more than a little spoiled and narcissistic.

They were the first generation with disposable income, the first that marketers could identify and target. Culture centered on them for one simple reason — that’s where the money was. And it was easy to get as long as you concentrated on the middle: the middle class, the middle brow, the middle everything except middle-aged.

I was born in 1965. What that means is that all sorts of well-funded programs disappeared as I was growing up and the target market shrank. I think the reason we GenXers are so bitter is that so many wonderful things were held up before us and snatched away at the last minute. So many promises were just broken. It’s not possible to retain your illusions when that happens.

By: Alex Beam

Alex Beam — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 12:18:20 +0000

So .. am I NOT a Boomer? I will not turn 56 this year. Could be important news for me …

By: Fromental

Fromental — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 19:33:38 +0000

Some Boomers are even themselves tired with the Old Boom Box, their old minds craving for fresh food. Is that getting away to easily from the question ?

By: Matthew Battles

Matthew Battles — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 11:29:55 +0000

Perhaps we're finding our way out of the boomer trance by way of the internet, which belongs to our generation. When the web gets nostalgic, it doesn't recall the sixties--it's more likely to look to the early mass media and the beginning of the twentieth century for the roots of its forms: Twitter may be the place to go looking for evidence for our sixties Stockholm Syndrome--and maybe our escape from it. Twitter belongs to people in their 30s, 40s, and 50s. Its culture is unique--but when tweeps imagine they're manning barricades in Tehran, it does look like a sixties-redux desire at work.

By: Peggy

Peggy — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 23:34:26 +0000

I think part of it might be the sheer exuberance of the youth culture, buoyed by numbers and the politics of the day. The quality of the Boomers was their quantity combined with their age, coinciding with (caused by) unparalleled prosperity and leisure time. Time to think differently, numbers to act on it and the threat of death as a very real and immediate thing, ie the draft. Out with ossified forms, they are literally killing us! That the ‘think differently’ has been corrupted and faded and tends towards the middle is probably the fate of all things. But that kind of high energy casts long wavelengths, even when it’s a memory, or a misremembered one. Anyway. You’re right, we should not live in the shadow of anyone else’s culture, even taht of our immediate older peers. Your warning is apt – Stockholm Syndrome, my god!!!