Long gone are the days where we can envision a sweet, nurturing grandmotherly figure guiding the stumbling, carefree youth by hand to a better future. In sweet grandma’s place, we find a cantankerous old woman, each wrinkle of her forehead showing bitterness or entitlement in place of wisdom. The image of the grandfather, looking out into the distance, imparting his accrued wisdom over the years to the future generations in his children and grandchildren, has warped into that of an angry old man screaming at the youth, spit dangling from the corners of his thinning mouth, verbally berating them for every little mistake or character “flaw” he chooses to see in them.
The older generations have left a very bad impression on the youth these days. A sizable portion of the old generations of today, just like those of the previous older generations before them, have shriveled up into bitter old prunes, intent on patronizing the young and criticizing every aspect of their lifestyle and culture. And it’s getting quite old. Pun intended.
For one, older generations blaming the young for everything bad happening today is nothing new. For as long as life has been recorded and documented, this phenomenon has been going on. It even has a term: Juvenoia. It’s better known by the proverbial saying “Back in my day…(insert something that was “better” back in the day here).” Yawn. I’m sure drinking hose water and riding on your grandpappy’s wagon was a blast, but circumstances change the world and therefore the ones born into such change.
So why do the blaming Boomers blame everything on the [Gen X and] Millennial generation? The irony of it is quite baffling to me. After all, Boomers and Gen Xers raised Millennials. So when they blame Millennials, they’re indirectly blaming themselves for their failures to raise them right (though they would never acknowledge this logical fallacy).
Youtuber VSauce made an excellent in-depth video on Juvenoia that goes into much needed details about why Boomers (or older people in general) have a tendency to complain about the laziness and incompetence of the younger generations. It’s a really great analysis on why humans in general tend to behave this way as they age. I highly recommend anyone watch this for perspective:
Vsauce exhaustively researched psychological findings on the Juvenoia matter. He discussed the nostalgia effect, the endowment effect, the reminiscence bump, and overall poor memory of the past among many other factors contributing to Juvenoia. I explored this issue on my own and came up with additional psychological aspects contributing to the blaming Boomer culture. If I were to shorthand it, it’d be something along the lines of: “The Greatest Generation unintentionally reared spoiled, entitled Boomer Brats, pioneering the “[All about] Me Generation.” Now, time for the longhand explanation.
One day not too long ago, Google noticed I was searching for the word “Boomer” a lot, so the YouTube algorithm recommended a video about this gentleman, Steve Allen, recounting his reasons for spoiling his Boomer children and how he came to regret it. It’s a short video this time, about 5 minutes:
For those who still can’t bring themselves to watch the video in full: Steve Allen was a successful writer and TV host among a plethora of other things. Before all that, he was a poor sixteen-year-old who ran away from home during the Depression era in hopes of finding a way to eat and survive. In the video, he illustrates those dire times in heartbreaking detail (at one point he mentions how he had to resort to eating trash to survive and thoroughly enjoying his “dumpster finds”). He not only provided insight into the gravity of his times, but also the times that came after. What came after the Greatest Generation pulled us out of the Depression post-World War II? The Boomers, of course. And boy, were those the luckiest bastards to be born at that time…
As Steve Allen mentions in the video, the Greatest never wanted their children to suffer the same fate they did when they were young and poor and starving. So to compensate for their own suffering, in a way, they did what any normal, kind-hearted person would do for the betterment of their children and hustled for a big-paying job and set up a trust fund or bank account specifically for their children.
By the time the children were college age, the Greatest had already saved enough money for them to go to college free and with a sizable amount in their savings account thereafter. With no exorbitant student loan debt, the Boomers seemingly had it all: money in the bank, little to no debt, a college education that granted them opportunities to work high-paying jobs, and cheap prices on everything from houses to cars to groceries and gas. They grew up in affluent, suburban neighborhoods with little to no crime and no real troubles, and lived happily into most of their young adult lives, too (preceding the Reign of Reagan which cursed the whole damn nation to hell).
Despite all the privileges Boomer children enjoyed, they were never satiated. Never being satisfied with what was handed to them and always demanding more for themselves, they became known as the official ‘Me Generation.’ Enjoying the majority of America’s affluence as well as holding the most power at the voting polls in sheer numbers granted them almost totalitarian-like control over the political and economical scenes. This is articulated by Youtuber Economics Explained in this video. Feel free to skim or watch in depth, but it’s another knowledgeable, albeit younger, gentleman analyzing the history of the Boomers seizing power for themselves at everyone else’s expense.
So we have these privileged Boomers who grew up in idyllic conditions, earned a very affordable college education, landed good-paying jobs and bought a house and cars for their family while accumulating mass amounts of wealth on top of their trust funds and savings accounts with which their Greatest parents’ provided them. They also had practically full reign over politics through sheer voting power and could sway policies in their favor, everyone else be damned. So what? What does this have to do with why Boomers blame Millennials for every struggle of today? Trust me, I’m getting there! I need to build up this story more first. Which leads me to the wonderful psychological aspects of living a privileged life as the Boomers did.
The Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin posted a research paper on the sociological and psychological effects one has from living in a higher socioeconomic setting. The researchers (Côté et. al) surveyed and statistically analyzed over 3,000 participants across four separate US studies to draw their conclusions. They hypothesized that those who grew up in a high socioeconomic standing (SES) and continued to live that way into adulthood had what they called “sustained privilege” that led them to feel and behave entitled to privileges not bestowed upon other generations.
Turns out the “sustained privilege” hypothesis was in fact corroborated through the data…
The meta-analysis of the studies “supports the sustained privilege hypothesis that higher income individuals with higher income parents feel the most entitled.” Boom. Here’s the first piece of peer-reviewed, scholarly evidence supporting the idea that privileged individuals suffer the worst cases of entitlement and self-interest, to the brink of sheer narcissism. I’m guessing this is probably where the coining of the “Me Generation” originated.
You can protest that this is but one study (actually, it was a meta-analysis of four combined studies in the US on the same issue) and therefore requires more replication to support this “sustained privilege” theory. You would have plenty of other data to choose from to confirm this finding in this Journal of Experimental Social Psychology paper or for the less academically-inclined, a NY Times article confirming the very same findings. If that still isn’t enough for you, I suggest you research “High SES entitlement” on Google Scholars for your own research, or just watch this YouTube video on a Professor’s analysis of the Boomers’ privilege in the 40s, 50s, and 60s:
(the first 7 minutes or so are the most informative on this particular issue).
So we have a lot of proof now that those who grew up with high SES privileges and continue to live with high SES privileges are the most entitled brats of them all. We also have evidence that they became quite self-centered and narcissistic due to these privileges they took for granted (see video link directly above for reference). This narcissism led such high SES individuals to act in their own best interests, neglecting the needs of all others. And so Boomers who were oftentimes born, raised, and continued to live in such prime conditions throughout their adulthood voted for policies that would directly benefit them and no other group, simply because they felt entitled to those privileges above anyone else. Their counterculture movement of the 50s and 60s was soon forgotten and even reversed in the 1970s and 80s as the Reign of Reagan terrorized politics, all due to the Boomers voting such politicians into office in the first place.
Reagan propagated the epic failure of the War on Drugs, stripped the people’s rights away one by one through the repeal of such policies as the Fairness Doctrine Act, and brainwashed the Boomers using very biased media that no longer required scrutiny on the accuracy of their data sources, thanks to the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine Act.
Boomers, who were already living beyond comfortably, allowed themselves to be brainwashed by these horrific radio and TV news sources, convincing their entitled selves that they earned their money through sheer hard work, but not these ‘damn Millennials’ who want everything to be free without working for it. And this is where we’ve landed today.
The Boomers, being as privileged and influential as they were in the 40s, 50s, and 60s, reaped all the benefits at the expense of the well-being of their children and their children’s children (i.e., Gen Xers and Millennials). They continue to confirm their prejudice of the young through biased media sources like the notorious Fox News, which further divides the regular American people against each other, especially the Old vs the Young Americans.
Consider the fact that Fairleigh Dickinson University conducted a research survey a decade ago that found Fox News viewers were less knowledgeable about political matters than those who didn’t watch the news at all! I mean, YIKES. That’s really fucking tragic. How could you know less about political matters watching Fox News than people who didn’t even watch the news? The answer is simple, really. Media sources are morally corrupt after the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine Act, and therefore perfectly okay with brainwashing you. Now, to prevent some stupid Fox News loyalists from accusing me of being a biased “socialist” or whatever stupid label they want to post stamp on me, I will also highlight here that this Fairleigh Dickinson survey unveiled that MSNBC watchers were worse off than “no news watchers,” too. You see? Both red and blue news anchors are corrupt, brainwashing piles of shit!
So returning to the original point of this blog post: Historical documents, interviews, research, and surveys reveal to us here that 1) Boomers in general were quite privileged growing up compared to subsequent generations; 2) their “sustained privilege” basically transformed them into the self-centered, narcissistic “Me Generation”—a term specifically coined for the Boomers—that always prioritized themselves over anyone else, their Gen X children and Millennial children and grandchildren be damned; 3) their overwhelming numbers lent them immense voting power at the polls, which had them voting in policies that benefited them at the expense of everyone else and ultimately led to: 4) descendants of Boomers (Gen X and Millennials and now Zoomers) left with less opportunity, more debt from cruel, predatory loan practices (read 2003-2007 subprime mortgage loans and current student loans practices), and a heavy tax burden for younger generations to support this massive Boomer population of decrepit, patronizing old cranks into their retirements. You can imagine just how fucking delighted we are to be paying for these goobers’ lifelines. I can guarantee you a good lot of these Bitter Boomers aren’t even remotely grateful for our taxes supporting their asses into their retirement, either. Such is the way of a narcissistic, “Me”-centered, entitled brat.
And now, to the final point: Incapable of empathy for others due to their “sustained privilege” which caused entitlement and narcissism, coupled with their willingness to be brainwashed by news sources like Fox News (and websites personally funded by business tycoons with huge stakes in the market) because exerting too much cognitive effort to do own scholarly research mAKe bRAin hUrT, and because they clearly suffer from cognitive dissonance and self-delusion on how hard-working they were compared to generations of today, Boomers feel the need to place all the blame on younger generations for any shortcomings of today. It’s the easiest scapegoat to blame the young for all of their secret self-loathing and deep-rooted sense of guilt for not earning everything they received and taking it all for themselves. Is this last point on cognitive dissonance, secret guilt, self-delusion, and self-loathing too far-fetched? I strongly beg to differ.
Let’s start off with cognitive dissonance, since it’s a rather peculiar psychological concept. If you read the Wiki definition, you’ll see that it’s a psychological concept where one feels stress from the introduction of an uncomfortable fact or set of facts about oneself. To offset this sense of discomfort one feels when discovering a not-so-nice-looking fact about oneself (in this case, “I was a privileged brat who had life easier than those living today do”), they act in contradictory ways to make themselves feel better and justify their reasoning for doing so.
So in the case where it’s revealed that many Boomers led easier, more privileged lives than generations of today do, a Boomer suffering from cognitive dissonance would say something like, “When I was your age, I had to walk uphill to school both ways!” or “When I was your age, I had to work 70-80 hours every week!” This is obviously cognitive dissonance bullshit, considering that many Boomers didn’t have to work full-time or even part-time jobs to support their college education because pre-Reagan college was, in actuality, very cheap or very free :
Even if said Boomers did have to pay something for a college education, many times mommy and daddy money from their trust funds or personal savings accounts paid for tuition in full, or they rode on a full-paying scholarship, which almost never happens today. Or if you were like my entitled Boomer mother, your husband just paid them off. How convenient! (Needless to say, my entitled Boomer mother wasn’t the least bit grateful for this, as she swore she would ‘take everything she could get from him” when they inevitably divorced. Funny how my personal account of an ungrateful, entitled Boomer parent seeking more, more, more for themself perfectly lines up with the material discussed thus far in this post). But I digress. Just read this random forum asking Boomers how they afforded their college tuition and you’ll see what I mean. Many thanks to the contributing Boomers who are not suffering from cognitive dissonance for providing HONEST and very insightful answers in this forum by the way.
The “least fortunate” of the Boomers without mommy and daddy money or a scholarship had to work (gasp!) a part-time job to afford their tuition. This is laughable to me, because I had to work a part-time job in college just to feed myself, none of my underpaid work funds going towards my even heftier college tuition. But cognitive dissonance doesn’t like facts that make oneself look bad. So these Boomers who can’t handle or admit they had it easier in a lot of ways cook up all sorts of crazy fallacies to justify why they deserve what they have today: fat pensions and bank accounts, an unnecessarily oversized house among plenty of other luxuries they enjoy that we cannot today without paying an arm and a leg for it (I shudder to think what that privatized medical bill would cost…).
We now see how cognitive dissonance makes one feel uncomfortable about one’s unearned fortunes. We can observe how that uncomfortable cognitive dissonance feeling leads one on the path of self-delusion about one’s personal achievements (“I had to walk uphill bOtH WaYs!”) as a means to justify one’s fortunes and absolve oneself of any guilt felt from being the lucky one who screwed over the succeeding generations for personal gain. But from where am I drawing the self-loathing conclusions?
In all honesty, it’s purely instinct. I suspect there’s a lot of secret self-loathing going on underneath the privileged Boomer’s surface. When I watched the documentary Born Rich (2003) by Johnson & Johnson heir Jamie Johnson, I learned some very significant lessons pertaining to this matter. For one, when something is given to you rather than earned, a lot of the heirs and heiresses question whether or not they deserve such fortune (as they should). Jamie Johnson was one such rich guy.
Noticeably perturbed by this, Jamie constantly asked himself why he of all people deserved to inherit such a fortune over others. One of Jamie’s ultra-wealthy friends from the documentary, Josiah Hornblower, of the Vanderbilt fortune, felt similarly. He recalled feeling very depressed about the whole inheritance thing, and finds true happiness and joy only when he’s working alongside the middle class citizens. (You can see how his empty eyes light up with life when recalling his two-year work experience with the regular folk in the documentary.) Of course, Jamie and Josiah are one of the only privileged ones from that documentary who dig deep enough inside themselves to search for merit not related to their inherited fortunes. The other rich privileged kids of the documentary, in one form or another, rely on the mechanisms of cognitive dissonance to temporarily reprieve them of any feelings of guilt or self-loathing. Prime example from this documentary: Ivanka Trump uses cognitive dissonance to express how “proud she is” of Daddy Trump for his many “achievements.” Considering I’m typing this in the year 2022, 2 years after Trump signed the OPEC+ deal that would cause oil prices to soar artificially so that shareholders could enjoy higher earnings in their stocks while we the regular people were the ones forced to pay for their scam through overinflated gas prices, and also considering how three of his elected Supreme Court goons reversed a landmark Supreme Court decision of 50 years standing, I’m trying really hard not to laugh in disgust as I type that out.
Aside from that documentary, others on YouTube have chimed in about this “instinct”: about how the privileged and entitled secretly loathe themselves because of their lack of true self-achievement. Check out the comments on this previously mentioned YouTube video (where TV host Steve Allen regrets spoiling his Boomer children). For convenience, I’ll share some of the top voted comments relating to this concept here:
Wow! I’m nowhere near the only person who feels the same way! Nearly 7,500 others agree with me from that first comment alone! The second comment there really woke me up to the idea that privilege + lack of self-achievement = self-loathing: “They [entitled Boomers] feel really jaded towards younger Generations despite the fact that they were the ones who raised the younger Generations.” Couldn’t have said that better myself.
So here we have personal anecdotes, scholarly and peer-reviewed research and surveys, documentaries, YouTube videos, and interviews from professionals on the Boomer subject all at hand (thank you, Internet) to explain why Boomers blame Millennials for everything. The long handed conclusions confirm my shorthanded one from the beginning of this post, with a little bonus: “The Greatest Generation unintentionally reared spoiled, entitled Boomer Brats, pioneering the “[All about] Me Generation…who screwed over everyone else, including their own children and grandchildren, so their entitled asses could reap more for themselves from the system, everyone else be damned. And because they’re narcissistic, they have the gall to place all the blame on their children and grandchildren.”
This spoiled group of Babies felt deep-rooted guilt and self-loathing for their privileged lives, which in turn led to employing the mechanisms of cognitive dissonance to make themselves feel better about the whole situation. This cognitive reprieve has Boomers denying their privileged positions, so they can continue undermining and screwing over the generations succeeding them for personal benefit without feeling the least bit guilty about it. Cognitive dissonance is a very ugly, nasty and rampant psychological phenomenon. In this specific situation, it has compelled a group of old people to delude themselves and deny the truth: that during their privileged youth, they had almost everything in their grasp. During their adulthood, they stole everything from the youth of today through predatory Wall Street loans, actively voting at the polls for policies that would strip our rights away one by one for their own personal gain (read privatized healthcare), and further bleeding us dry with our tax dollars supporting them into their ungrateful retirement.
I never meant to generalize an entire group, but the Boomers left me no choice. Barrage after barrage of complaints about my “lazy” and “entitled,” generation spending all our money, somehow, on coffee, cellphones (which everybody uses) and avocado toast, from these fossil fuels for bloggers, has left me intolerant of any ignorant statements they make about Millennials.
In all honesty, I’m pissed off. Personally growing up with an entitled, narcissistic Boomer mother was enough for me. But enduring every other Millennials’ and Gen Xers’ equally entitled Boomer parents, too? Hell no.
Now before you say it, I will. I know not all Baby Boomers were rich and spoiled and entitled. That’s not how the world works, thankfully, otherwise, we’d probably already be extinct by now. But for all those privileged Blaming Boomers beating on the youth? A hearty fuck you to you. 🖕
I am sick and tired of the Blaming Boomer Bane. The toxic word vomit that spews from their entitled, out-of-the-loop, obsolete mouths has me fed up. I wake up every day now infuriated by the world they’ve created for us. A world that is overheated, over-polluted, overpopulated—no thanks to our current Boomer Supreme Court of 2022—and overpriced. A world where my rights are being privatized (read healthcare and education), stripped from me if I’m not rich enough to retrieve them. As I’m bled and hung to dry further through my taxes financially supporting this ungrateful bunch of Babies, resentment is the only feeling that remains. But the Babies take it even one step further than that, having the audacity to blame their byproducts, in the form of their offspring, for every crisis happening today. This is the worst time to be alive in America since 1929, and it is not the youth who are to blame.
Addendum Bonus: