By Jessica Berget, Editor-in-Chief
I have always identified more with the Gen Z generation instead of millennials. Now, with all these memes popping up making fun of baby boomers, I feel even more alienated by my own generation.
It’s a stupid phrase that has been making its internet rounds lately. A New Zealand lawmaker has even uttered the term while dismissing a heckler. Some are calling it “the n-word of ageism,” which may be a bit much, but it is fairly rude to write off baby boomers just because they are older.
Older generations will always complain about younger generations and vice versa. Younger generations are always going to be more entitled, selfish, and lazy to the older generations—according to the older generations. There’s no point in trying to understand why they hate each other—they just come from vastly different points in history, so there’s obviously going to be a bit of a disconnect.
Just because they made fun of your generation doesn’t mean you should do it back; you don’t fight fire with fire. People can learn from the older and newer generations, so it makes no sense to further create this divide. Each generation has a different culture and history. Baby boomers came from a time of war and the introduction of rock and roll—millennials come from the current era of convenience and student loans. There is obviously going to be some differences, but ultimately each generation has been through some major societal change and there are valuable lessons to be learned from each generation and the hardships they go through. There’s obviously going to be a difference in language, culture, and often music, but each generation is essentially the same, so what’s the point in fighting?
On a similar note, I think it’s silly to blame baby boomers for everything that is wrong with the world or the economy today. They did whatever was cool and the norm in their time in history—just as we do today. Should we be blamed for the misgivings of our society 30, 40 years from now?
