How did boomers become this way? - Buy whatever you see on TV and spend all your money before you die

[Pokemonquistador2]

Boomers happened because you had a period of extreme deprivation (The Great Depression and WW2) followed by a period of extreme prosperity. (The Postwar period.) The extreme deprivation made people hunker down and go full Buzzcut Conservative and the extreme prosperity made restless Boomer teens flush with money and energy want to fuck and go wild. Hollywood and corporations were all too happy to pander to them, and Communists, who wanted to create a Socialist version of Brave New World, happily gave them the weapons to tear down their parents' and grandparents' way of life.

Boomers created a culture where the Young and New had ultimate moral authority, and now they 're desperately trying to reconfigure themselves to fit in that paradigm by saying things like "70 is the new 30." In eras past, most people who were the Boomers' age would be trying to develop themselves spiritually, conceptualize their accomplishments, and create some sort of legacy for themselves that would live after them. But Boomers instead act as if they were still 25, buying flashy cars, going on trips and buying tons of shit that's doomed to be thrown out in five years when their kids have to clean out their Reverse-Mortgaged houses to try to find enough shit to sell so they can afford their parent's funerals.

As bad as they are, Millennials and Zoomers will probably be even worse, despite owning nothing. Can you imagine any random lolcow dealing with the shocks of parental death and their own bodies slowly falling apart as they hit 50? No wonder so many of them have become COVID cultists and/or have trooned out. These are desperate attempts to keep the Grim Reaper and old age away. Like MovieBob, they still think some Scientist is going to invent robot bodies that they can upload their personalities to in their lifetimes. Shit, scientists can't even cure Alzheimers and they've been trying to for decades. Most scientists don't even know how the brain works most of the time, but here people think they're going to find a way to preserve them and hook them up to VR worlds. Not in this century, and probably not in the next one either.

 

[Maurice Caine]

Boomers happened because you had a period of extreme deprivation (The Great Depression and WW2) followed by a period of extreme prosperity. (The Postwar period.) The extreme deprivation made people hunker down and go full Buzzcut Conservative and the extreme prosperity made restless Boomer teens flush with money and energy want to fuck and go wild. Hollywood and corporations were all too happy to pander to them, and Communists, who wanted to create a Socialist version of Brave New World, happily gave them the weapons to tear down their parents' and grandparents' way of life.

Boomers created a culture where the Young and New had ultimate moral authority, and now they 're desperately trying to reconfigure themselves to fit in that paradigm by saying things like "70 is the new 30." In eras past, most people who were the Boomers' age would be trying to develop themselves spiritually, conceptualize their accomplishments, and create some sort of legacy for themselves that would live after them. But Boomers instead act as if they were still 25, buying flashy cars, going on trips and buying tons of shit that's doomed to be thrown out in five years when their kids have to clean out their Reverse-Mortgaged houses to try to find enough shit to sell so they can afford their parent's funerals.

As bad as they are, Millennials and Zoomers will probably be even worse, despite owning nothing. Can you imagine any random lolcow dealing with the shocks of parental death and their own bodies slowly falling apart as they hit 50? No wonder so many of them have become COVID cultists and/or have trooned out. These are desperate attempts to keep the Grim Reaper and old age away. Like MovieBob, they still think some Scientist is going to invent robot bodies that they can upload their personalities to in their lifetimes. Shit, scientists can't even cure Alzheimers and they've been trying to for decades. Most scientists don't even know how the brain works most of the time, but here people think they're going to find a way to preserve them and hook them up to VR worlds. Not in this century, and probably not in the next one either.

The accepted line from futurologists such as Ray Kurzweil is that somewhere somehow some kind of 'Super A.I.' will be invented (they call it AGI, Advanced General Intelligence) and somehow that will solve all of mankind's problems and manifest some sort of kook utopia out of nowhere. Don't quote me on that just read his book. He says it's gonna be here by 2030.

 

[Lorne Armstrong]

they were the first generations subject to widespread mass media (in the form of TV) and commercialized pop culture

No, I’d say the previous generation was subjected to widespread mass media in the form of radio.

 

[Dom Cruise]

The accepted line from futurologists such as Ray Kurzweil is that somewhere somehow some kind of 'Super A.I.' will be invented (they call it AGI, Advanced General Intelligence) and somehow that will solve all of mankind's problems and manifest some sort of kook utopia out of nowhere. Don't quote me on that just read his book. He says it's gonna be here by 2030.

I remember a lot of talk about that sort of thing around a decade at ago, at the time considering how many huge leaps in technology from 2000 to 2010 there were, shit, it seemed plausible.

But now another ten years later, nope, the country's probably going to be one great big ghetto slum by 2030 with a few rich people enclaves here and there, at this rate almost assuredly nothing like that is going to happen by 2030, I mean it's less than a decade away.

We are way behind where we should be tech wise in the 2020s, no Ghost in The Shell style cyborgs, no massive VR internet and no real AI.

 

[Maurice Caine]

We are way behind where we should be tech wise in the 2020s, no Ghost in The Shell style cyborgs, no massive VR internet and no real AI.

We really aren't. You gotta realize that shit is fiction, you're in the real world and even from the '90s, you could see that this shit wouldn't be real. You just can't do it.

 

[El Gato Grande]

The accepted line from futurologists such as Ray Kurzweil is that somewhere somehow some kind of 'Super A.I.' will be invented (they call it AGI, Advanced General Intelligence) and somehow that will solve all of mankind's problems and manifest some sort of kook utopia out of nowhere. Don't quote me on that just read his book. He says it's gonna be here by 2030.

I remember a lot of talk about that sort of thing around a decade at ago, at the time considering how many huge leaps in technology from 2000 to 2010 there were, shit, it seemed plausible.

But now another ten years later, nope, the country's probably going to be one great big ghetto slum by 2030 with a few rich people enclaves here and there, at this rate almost assuredly nothing like that is going to happen by 2030, I mean it's less than a decade away.

We are way behind where we should be tech wise in the 2020s, no Ghost in The Shell style cyborgs, no massive VR internet and no real AI.

Technological innovation is as alive as ever (look at how far fintech, robotics, E-vehicles, phones and parts of healthcare have come in the last decade), but it’s become less visible and more distributed due to how complex and efficient our technology already is.

Before the jet age aircraft development progressed rapidly because the (piston) engine was the only really complex mechanical part, and new principles which would be obvious to any aerospace engineer in the future were being discovered every day (not to mention the world wars). In the modern era you need a legion of engineers, massive, high tech assembly lines, a lengthy development process in which everything from heat tolerance to software efficiency is accounted for and full compliance with numerous safety standards to make a new plane which is only going to be incrementally better than what came before. This is why three year old aircraft designs became obsolete in 1930-1950 and why modern military aircraft development takes over a decade.

Most futurologist types who wont shut up about AI, Mars colonies, sex robots and how communism will finally work are intellectuals without any sort of STEM background, so they dont appreciate how much investment, time, coordination and work it will take to not only create the technology they dream about, but make it affordable and SAFE.

 

[Aidan]

I don't really have anything to add as the main points I agree with have been covered, but they really are an extraordinarily selfish generation. They are a literal drain on the entire country and don't you dare bring up social security being unsustainable to them. They don't care as long as they get their bit, after that it's for future generations to solve.
Social security is the most obvious example but due to their size and impact on votes this applies across the board at virtually all levels of government, at least in the US.

They really don't believe in planting trees for future generations, as a demographic. Everyone else will reap what they sow.

 

[Sweetpeaa]

I remember a lot of talk about that sort of thing around a decade at ago, at the time considering how many huge leaps in technology from 2000 to 2010 there were, shit, it seemed plausible.

But now another ten years later, nope, the country's probably going to be one great big ghetto slum by 2030 with a few rich people enclaves here and there, at this rate almost assuredly nothing like that is going to happen by 2030, I mean it's less than a decade away.

We are way behind where we should be tech wise in the 2020s, no Ghost in The Shell style cyborgs, no massive VR internet and no real AI.

A decade ago the U.S had a much larger middle class to buy stuff. The middle class is much smaller now which is why companies like apple are taking a hit at least in the USA. Most Americans are android phone users only the wealthy subset uses Iphone's for example. That is why ''the tech race'' from the early 2010's has cooled off. Remember back then all the newest gadgets they were putting out? you really don't see that sort of thing that much these days as there isn't the demand.

If anything ten years ago we were more ''ahead'' and that includes things like GDP etc.

 

[DumbDude42]

No, I’d say the previous generation was subjected to widespread mass media in the form of radio.

radio is much much less powerful than television. the visual element makes a huge difference in how it affects people.

 

[Fish Fudge]

I don't really recognise that behaviour in any of the boomers I know. Most I know have gone to great lengths to put aside wealth for their children, and any extravagent holidays they take are ones that include the entire extended family. The only old people I see buying luxury goods are people having some sort of crisis.

As a general trend though, sure. The baby-boomer generation have influenced policies and practices that are very much focused on short-term value that they directly benefit from.

 

[nigga that crab pollack]

Before the jet age aircraft development progressed rapidly because the (piston) engine was the only really complex mechanical part, and new principles which would be obvious to any aerospace engineer in the future were being discovered every day (not to mention the world wars). In the modern era you need a legion of engineers, massive, high tech assembly lines, a lengthy development process in which everything from heat tolerance to software efficiency is accounted for and full compliance with numerous safety standards to make a new plane which is only going to be incrementally better than what came before. This is why three year old aircraft designs became obsolete in 1930-1950 and why modern military aircraft development takes over a decade.

one of the things people don't seem to understand about the early jet age was that they were legitimately developing prototype aircraft on a whim. you had engineers come up with novel ideas that they had no clue would even work, and got tens of millions of dollars in funding to build functional one-off prototypes of bizarre and non-functional aircraft, and even got test pilots to fly things that the engineers were not even confident in their ability to function. safety was not a concern, neither was cost effectiveness, or anything beyond progress at all costs. AT ALL COSTS. that's why they had like six different companies developing aircraft for specific roles like a damn buffet

it's partially because the advancements were easier to accomplish, but it's also because almost all of the constraints in place that we have now for advancement under the guise of safety, economy, and environmentalism. i'm not saying that we should turn them back, but at the same time nobody seems to be willing to acknowledge that the rate of advancement was partially created by an atmosphere of high-risk low-safety wild-west bullshit that nobody is willing to kowtow anymore. you literally had people strapping jets to their back for funsies and now it's completely unheard of to do that unless you do 20 computer simulations and get a team of lawyers to sign off on it.

there's a reason that there are a lot of advancements in AI and machine learning, because there aren't any limitations telling them that the software needs to be X accurate or X confident or X levels of anonymous to make certain decisions, they literally let the general public beta test their shit. if aircraft development had that level of laissez-faire carte-blanch attitude in the current day then they would be testing a hell of a lot more unstable airframes and novel propulsion methods than they are now, because the cost of failure is so extreme that they have to settle on designs they are over-confident are safe. that's not a bad thing, but don't expect innovation in anything but small unmanned drones. there have been crazy advancements in aerospace and materials science in the last 10 years that are going to take at least 50 years to make it to any sort of practical application in manned craft because of those limitations

 

[nigga that crab pollack]

No, I’d say the previous generation was subjected to widespread mass media in the form of radio.

radio is like listening to someone tell you a lie that you fall for. television is like watching an elaborate ruse designed specifically to fool you into thinking it is reality. television is extremely pernicious in it's ability to mediate people's perception of reality even when people fully acknowledge what they are watching is fiction.

 

[Ser Prize]

radio is much much less powerful than television. the visual element makes a huge difference in how it affects people.

Radio also has a very low barrier of entry. Anyone could set up a radio station.

 

[No. 7 cat]

A decade ago the U.S had a much larger middle class to buy stuff. The middle class is much smaller now which is why companies like apple are taking a hit at least in the USA. Most Americans are android phone users only the wealthy subset uses Iphone's for example. That is why ''the tech race'' from the early 2010's has cooled off. Remember back then all the newest gadgets they were putting out? you really don't see that sort of thing that much these days as there isn't the demand.

If anything ten years ago we were more ''ahead'' and that includes things like GDP etc.

I remember some spinoff of a tech forum (Genmay?) had people buying the shit immediately again and again. My phone runs till it breaks beyond China shop repair.

 

[frozenrunner]

The accepted line from futurologists such as Ray Kurzweil is that somewhere somehow some kind of 'Super A.I.' will be invented (they call it AGI, Advanced General Intelligence) and somehow that will solve all of mankind's problems and manifest some sort of kook utopia out of nowhere. Don't quote me on that just read his book. He says it's gonna be here by 2030.

This is a metaphysical belief in life after death for the anti-religious.

 

[cybertoaster]

As bad as they are, Millennials and Zoomers will probably be even worse, despite owning nothing.

Worse than boomers maybe but millennials will hardly be as bad as genX was.

Imagine getting to live through the 80's and 90's bonanza and do nothing with it. Most millennials became adults just in time for endless wars in the middle east and the 2008 collapse.

And besides genX are the gen that created zoomers, nuff said.

Can you imagine any random lolcow dealing with the shocks of parental death and their own bodies slowly falling apart as they hit 50?

Imagine? just look at Chris.

The accepted line from futurologists such as Ray Kurzweil is that somewhere somehow some kind of 'Super A.I.' will be invented (they call it AGI, Advanced General Intelligence) and somehow that will solve all of mankind's problems and manifest some sort of kook utopia out of nowhere. Don't quote me on that just read his book. He says it's gonna be here by 2030.

Kurzweil its becoming the sad old man who gets to see his future never arrived. He keeps saying how he's going to bring back his father by rebuilding him into an AI using all the writing he left as a framework of memories or something. Thing is most people don't write down what's actually in their minds, and if they do they omit certain details that they know would make them look bad in the eyes of others. So his AI-father will simply be an idealized version of him quoting his diaries back and forth while missing the subconscious that made the original what he was.

We really aren't. You gotta realize that shit is fiction, you're in the real world and even from the '90s, you could see that this shit wouldn't be real. You just can't do it.

There was some big stuff happening in the 90's with bionics and humanoid robots like Asimo. Semiconductors were breaking records every year to the point your new PC was obsolete in 6 months time. Meanwhile almost out of nowhere you had constant breakthroughs the genome project, the dolly sheep clone, chimera mice, stemcells, etc. The internet was a huge deal, you really had to be there to see what a massive shock it was going from having to send physical mail and telegrams to email and chat, from having to go outside and buy a newspaper to getting news live as it happened even faster than from TV. Game graphics went from pixels to 3D, in four years we went from 2D GTA1 to GTA3.

You would be forgiven to believe there would be cyborgs and a VR internet 30 years later.

A decade ago the U.S had a much larger middle class to buy stuff. The middle class is much smaller now which is why companies like apple are taking a hit at least in the USA.

On the contrary companies like Apple are making money like crazy now because they focus solely on the premium-ish market. Apple almost went broke in the 90's during the race to the bottom of PC prices instead of focusing in the high-end market like it does now. Of course apple can do that mostly because of its brand, but the point is you make more money selling expensive stuff than fighting with chinese companies for ever decreasing profit margins. Its the same reason why Tesla stopped at the model 3 and even discontinued the base version because the money its on keeping the brand premium.

Even other brands are trying to move upmarket, honda's new electric cars in europe are anything but cheap, their new compact its geared at the people who buy minis, not the ones who buy civics. I remember talking with a marketing guy who had experience in emerging markets like Brazil telling me thats how things are over there because the middle class its almost gone so the real market its the upper-middle class and above.

Thats why the only factory making iPhone thats outside China is in Brazil...

 

[Dom Cruise]

We really aren't. You gotta realize that shit is fiction, you're in the real world and even from the '90s, you could see that this shit wouldn't be real. You just can't do it.

It was anybody's guess what the year 2029 would be like from the vantage point of 1995.

I feel like we're way, way behind considering 2029 now isn't too, too far away.

To be fair though, smartphones would seem like Ghost In The Shells hit to people in 1995.

Worse than boomers maybe but millennials will hardly be as bad as genX was.

Imagine getting to live through the 80's and 90's bonanza and do nothing with it. Most millennials became adults just in time for endless wars in the middle east and the 2008 collapse.

And besides genX are the gen that created zoomers, nuff said.

This is one thing that really pisses me off, the wasted potential of the 80s and 90s and the fact that my generation didn't come of age until the 2008 collapse.

In particular I can't understand why the cultural zeitgeist of the 1980s didn't last longer, America had really seemed to figure things out back then, it was a diverse culture, but one that was still very pro-America, America just had a certain cocky confidence about itself that as soon as the 1990s came along and everything got slathered in 50 shades of irony, was lost.

There was some big stuff happening in the 90's with bionics and humanoid robots like Asimo. Semiconductors were breaking records every year to the point your new PC was obsolete in 6 months time. Meanwhile almost out of nowhere you had constant breakthroughs the genome project, the dolly sheep clone, chimera mice, stemcells, etc. The internet was a huge deal, you really had to be there to see what a massive shock it was going from having to send physical mail and telegrams to email and chat, from having to go outside and buy a newspaper to getting news live as it happened even faster than from TV. Game graphics went from pixels to 3D, in four years we went from 2D GTA1 to GTA3.

Great point and again, you really can't understate the changes from 2000 to 2010, in 2000 most people still watched movies on VHS on bubble screen CRTs, still used landline phones and computers and internet weren't common and if you did have it chances are it was dial up.

Video games were still primarily N64 and PS1 with the PS2 just barely getting off the ground.

By 2010 everyone had an HDTV, high speed internet access and likely a smartphone, meaning the internet was in your pocket, video games had become HD with way more lifelike graphics.

You would be forgiven to believe there would be cyborgs and a VR internet 30 years later.

I feel like we should at least have VR internet, the 2020s should be like the novel Snowcrash technology wise.

On the contrary companies like Apple are making money like crazy now because they focus solely on the premium-ish market. Apple almost went broke in the 90's during the race to the bottom of PC prices instead of focusing in the high-end market like it does now. Of course apple can do that mostly because of its brand, but the point is you make more money selling expensive stuff than fighting with chinese companies for ever decreasing profit margins. Its the same reason why Tesla stopped at the model 3 and even discontinued the base version because the money its on keeping the brand premium.

Even other brands are trying to move upmarket, honda's new electric cars in europe are anything but cheap, their new compact its geared at the people who buy minis, not the ones who buy civics. I remember talking with a marketing guy who had experience in emerging markets like Brazil telling me thats how things are over there because the middle class its almost gone so the real market its the upper-middle class and above.

Thats why the only factory making iPhone thats outside China is in Brazil...

This is the thing that worries me, in the future you'll either be living in a third world slum or you'll be rich, no middle ground.

Especially as the thug mentality is encouraged by modern culture.

 

[Feline Supremacist]

What do you think about this doc? Real interesting insight of the early boomer era.

This is a good insight into the boomers of the sixties. They rebelled against the draft and when that gained traction, they rebelled against everything. Everything, regardless of whether it was good or a bad to do so. Indiscriminate sex was and drugs were huge but waiting until marriage is viewed as bad and unhealthy. There was this proclamation they were the "Me" generation and it's spot on, because its all about them and fuck everyone else; fuck your parents, your kids, your family and anyone that interferes with your hedonistic degenerate lifestyle, or in today's parlance, consooming. LBJ? Bad, because he's not Kennedy and the draft. Nixon? Bad despite ending the draft and the war because he's not Kennedy, nodrugs and WaPo said so. Carter? Meh because he's useless and didn't make me any money, Reagan is great because boomer greed is the goal. Bush bad because WaPo said so, Clinton good because boomermoneyrun and WaPo said so And so on. It's very simplified but that's basically it. Anything that gives them the freedom to act out and have/make money, is good, any talk of responsibility, is bad. Their children can go out and get theirs, because they are enjoying the hard work and wealth of their Silent Gen parents and whatever speculative and leveraged gains they made in the late 70s80s/90s. Fuck the kids, they need to earn their own wealth.

I've dated boomer men, they're sad. Very wealthy but just pathetic. They have open marriages because of course but they're getting cucked. They find it hard to accept younger women today aren't into fucking everyone they date. Absolutely liberals but still racist and sexist and they get offended when you point it out.

Like one boomer dude was super worried about me using a soldering iron and it was all I could to find a way to politely say "Nigga I changed the lifters on my Ford in high school, melted and shaped silver to make jewelry and my dad showed me to weld at 12, give me a fucking break old man" but instead I just smiled and said "Oh, can you show me?" because they are fragile as fuck.

 

[Iron Jaguar]

I don't really have anything to add as the main points I agree with have been covered, but they really are an extraordinarily selfish generation. They are a literal drain on the entire country and don't you dare bring up social security being unsustainable to them. They don't care as long as they get their bit, after that it's for future generations to solve.
Social security is the most obvious example but due to their size and impact on votes this applies across the board at virtually all levels of government, at least in the US.

They really don't believe in planting trees for future generations, as a demographic. Everyone else will reap what they sow.

This.

Boomers generally do not believe in leaving something for the next generation. Most won't even leave anything for their own children. I have seen multiple Boomer parents do very little with their own lives, knowing they would inherit millions from their parents, then refuse to help their own children out on the basis that they "can't afford to because I didn't earn much money in my working lifetime". - Usually said whilst sitting in a second or third home that their inheritance paid for.

 

[Ser Prize]

Worse than boomers maybe but millennials will hardly be as bad as genX was.

Imagine getting to live through the 80's and 90's bonanza and do nothing with it. Most millennials became adults just in time for endless wars in the middle east and the 2008 collapse.

And besides genX are the gen that created zoomers, nuff said.

Even other brands are trying to move upmarket, honda's new electric cars in europe are anything but cheap

This is the thing that worries me, in the future you'll either be living in a third world slum or you'll be rich, no middle ground.

Especially as the thug mentality is encouraged by modern culture.

The biggest struggle in Gen X was "not selling out, maaaaan". Tells you all you really need to know.

The ultra rich living in palaces while us mere peasants can't even afford housing or vehicles isn't a dystopian future. It's right the fuck now in many parts of the western world.