Gen Z Trends: Is OK Boomer (Ever Going to Be) Over?

It’s been all over the internet for weeks now. It has appeared in institutional situations and hilarious memes; it’s been trending on social media and spreading a wave of dedicated merchandise. And although the buzz around it has toned down a bit, it seems as if the tiniest sparkle is still able to reignite the flame.

We’re talking about Ok boomer, GenZ’s new signature reaction towards everything and everyone close-minded, condescending and retrograde.

In the new nuance acquired by the epitome, “boomer” doesn’t necessarily refer to the Baby Boomers born between the 40s and the 60s. It addresses the tendency — widely spread among the people of this generation, apparently — of considering young boys and girls as idle, overly sensitive (from here, the derogatory term “snowflakes”), generally “not as good as them at their age”.

And younger generations, especially GenZedders, are really not Ok with this anymore.

So why, after all the pages and posts that have been spent on this topic over the last few weeks and even months, do we think Ok boomer is still a trend worth talking about?

Well, maybe because it’s not merely a trend. The hashtag itself, the merch, the TikTok videos may pass, but the reaction remains.

Ok boomer is the sharp, sardonic, maybe simplistic, but surely straight-to-the-point exemplification of an inter-generational sentiment. GenZ has been able to turn it into a catchphrase thanks to its ability with social media (they even created a song just for it) and overly sarcastic style of language, but this is not only their battle. Equally, being a recipient of an ok boomer remark doesn’t simply depend on age.

As Taylor Lorenz has explained in her NYT article ‘OK Boomer’ Marks the End of Friendly Generational Relations, and later reaffirmed in an interview with CNN, ok boomer is not a matter of ageism: it’s a matter of speaking back to power, establishment, and traditional settings.

Imagine being a student with a college loan that will stay with you for the next ten or twenty years, jeopardizing your future financial independence. Thanks to your tech and gaming skills, however, you create a YouTube gaming channel that finally drives some significant revenue, but your parents keep telling you that you shouldn’t waste time playing around, or you’ll never get a real job. Well, those parents are boomers, even if they were probably born way after the 40s and 50s, because of their lack of trust in an occupational world that is rapidly expanding beyond the traditional 9-to-5 model.

Or imagine being a 30-something finally trying to make a living after unpaid internships and some years of work at the minimum wage because of “lack of experience”. What if someone came up to you and told you that, at your age, they already had their own business and a couple of kids? They’re boomers, regardless of their age, just for the fact they refuse to consider the different economic and social conditions of our times in respect to the years of their youth.

Finally, imagine being a retired person marching during a protest against climate change. What if someone, even younger than you, came to mock you, tell you you should have stayed at home and to let the kids take care of that nonsense? Well, that someone would be a boomer, solid in a pro-status quo view, and labelling the actions against it as “nonsensical”.

GenZ, with its intrinsic cultural values of change and fight against outdated dogmas, has had the power to harness the resentment against stolid and patronizing attitudes (even when they come from TV icons such as Ellen Degeneres) and convert it into a sarcastic yet poignant movement that spreads across countries and generations.

Ok boomer raises the attention towards people who keep society stagnant and don’t want to hear reasons, a protest that builds on one of GenZ’s signature tools: irony. In Lorenz’s words, “it’s the digital equivalent of an eye roll”, a passive-aggressive call to action that marks the fracture not between generations, but between world views.

So, are we just laughing at Ok boomer memes? Are we getting insulted by them?

Or are we trying to understand the values and needs that transpire from this movement? Maybe an active listening to GenZ’s social media-fuelled lament could help build less condescending and more open-minded strategies for change.

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This is part of YAD — Understanding Young Audiences Digest: a free monthly digest on young audiences for VOD and TV professionals. We’ve analysed millions of data points and we don’t mind sharing some of them — if this could help channels and commissioners to reach Gen Z, by understanding their needs, behavioural traits and intrinsic cultural values. 

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