Hacker News Reader

Comment by lvturner | Hacker News Reader

Sorry, zoomer? Not familiar with that term

It's a way of segregating people by age, then acting derisively about various groups in response to that. You identify bad character traits, call them out with the relevant "generation" phrase, and then sneakily imply that they have that character trait because they're within that age range (even when they're not).

The worst part of it is that this obsession with "generations" is almost exclusively tied to the US. In most countries, this concept is not part of the memescape at all, so it's even more confusing.

When you think about it a bit, you realize there just cannot be "generations" in that sense. People are continuously being born in each and every year. In a family tree there are generations sure, based on the levels of the tree, but not in a population.

The exception is special baby boom periods and their echoes, which do create some more "lumping" or births.

The worst is when people try to apply American generational stereotypes to other countries. Like, no, Hungarian "boomers" didn't grow up in plenty. The 50s were a period of terror and deprivation, not the "good ole days" of prosperity.

Coming from a culture without this obsession, it took me a very long time to learn the concept of generations. And I'm quite upset that I did; it's fairly deeply embedded in my mind, now, as I tied it to so many other concepts in a desperate attempt to make it make any sense. (Is a generation twenty years, or fifty? I still don't know.) It takes some effort to make that realisation now, but I remember thinking exactly those arguments when I was younger, trying to reject the concept.

> Is a generation twenty years, or fifty? I still don't know

Should be the same as the age gap between parents and children, so about 20-40 years, roughly speaking.

It's part of the memescape in other countries, but generally only in the most toxic communities.

Nah it’s mostly a joke only boomers take these labels very very seriously.

Haven't heard this either, but I assume it refers to "generation Z"

Yes, it plays on "generation Z" and the "boomer generation". I believe it is commonly used to refer to people born after the turn of the millennium.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com