Best comebacks to ok boomer -I prefer to be a boomer than to be a broke millennial, You just don’t have any more arguments,
Just replying “Okay, zoomer” may be the best way to go at first, kind of a one size fits all response, but if you are looking for a comeback that really sticks with the person that offended you, you are going to have to think a little harder. In this article, we are going to help you with that.
First, you may want to understand where the insult is coming from. When someone uses the word “boomer”, they are referring to people born in the two decades immediately after World War II, when the economic prosperity let people start having big families. There was a rise in the birth rate, and we call the people born in this time, namely between 1946 and 1964, baby boomers. As you can surmise, the “baby” part didn’t stick. So when they call you a boomer, the most likely explanation is that you are either defending some traditional value or that you are unable to understand some part of modern culture, be that technology or politics, and someone younger than you is disrespectfully implying that the reason for your beliefs is that you are not keeping up with the times. To put it bluntly, they are calling you old.
Now that we understand what the insult means and where it is coming from, we have to look at the possible replies you could use. You can mix our suggestions with dirty words if you like, but don’t say we told you that.
I prefer to be a boomer than to be a broke millennial
This one is going to the heart of the matter. People tend to think in terms of politics and aesthetics when talking about age, but the one factor that’s more reliable than either of those is this: baby boomers have more money.
Economic anxiety is the leading cause of stress in millennials (people born between 1980 and 1995) and zoomers (people born between 1996 and 2010), so by using this response you are hitting them where it hurts. Use this tool wisely.
Millennials may think of themselves as having the advantage in this verbal situation because the power of memes is way greater in our modern world than reasons, but really, once you look at what the millennial generation is doing, it’s all about taking back power. This means that someone has that power and it’s not them. Boomers and Generation X (people born between 1965 and 1980) are in fact the most powerful people in society, and millennials hate that.
You just don’t have any more arguments
This tends to be the case. Just saying this simple phrase may cause the other person to reexamine the way in which they are behaving themselves in this conversation. Calling someone a boomer while meaning that you feel confident in your arguments, also implies that you don’t want to put the time and effort necessary to show it. By saying “you don’t have more arguments”, you are forcing the other person to show themselves deprived of tools to honestly have a conversation, and everyone watching will see that. They won’t even care if you are indeed acting like a boomer because you are going to be handing them the hard truth.
I may be a boomer, but I am still right
“Okay, boomer” is nothing more than an attempt to dismiss the conversation itself out of hand, so if you manage to not get angry and actually control yourself, you can reengage in the discussion and try to reach more of an understanding that benefits everyone involved. There is nothing bad about being wrong, the same way there is nothing inherently wrong about being a boomer, but one has to use the opportunity of the debate to learn something new. Do not get too distracted, it’s just a meme.
Who’s paying for your internet, kid?
By the mere nature of the insult, the people saying it tends to be older than the people receiving it, and in the current day, where most online spaces are full of very young people, it is a nice comeback just to make them remember their position of comparative inexperience and dependency. Economic anxiety is a nice way of getting into someone’s head.
Back in my day, we respected our elders
This can help you put into words why you feel so frustrated when someone tells you “okay, boomer”. Just the way in which they are disqualifying a whole lot of people which they have a lot to thank and learn from. One has underestimate the other person, if they are using a particularly trendy insult, maybe they will respond to this with something that you can use to get back at them.
I am really hurt by your words
These days, conceding any part of an argument looks like losing, but there is nothing farther from the truth. The problem is people not being open enough about their feelings and relying on buzzwords to kill normal social discourse. By opening up about how being mistreated makes you feel, you may reach the heart of the other person, who may recognize the problem with their language and then look for better ways of continuing the conversation. There is nothing wrong with being vulnerable from time to time, and especially in discussions being honest about feelings can save a lot of effort and words. You are not being a coward by saying this.
Shouldn’t you be on TikTok right now?
This one breaks zoomer’s hearts, use with caution. TikTok is something that is even made fun of by other zoomers, so you might be hitting them exactly where they don’t want to be hit. Make sure to use this as soon as possible, we don’t know when it’s going to stop being cool.
How did you escape? Your babysitter must be looking for you.
This is something you say when you want to be funny. At this stage, you are just trying to be funny and to land a sick burn. If you are going this route, don’t concern yourself with what the reply is, just throw this out there and retaliate. Let the burn sink in.
Did you come up with that on your own?
Don’t feel bad because you didn’t come up with this one, it’s okay when you do it, buddy.
Thank you for your contribution.
Some people still think at this point that saying “okay, boomer” is somewhat funny. This is up to anyone’s opinion, but it is definitively an overused insult, and saying it is not precisely creative. Feel free to use “thank you for your contribution” whenever you want this fact to stick in the other person’s conscience.
Just disengage
They clearly don’t want to talk to you. Maybe the best option for your mental health is to just stop discussing with whoever the person saying that to you is. A discussion is always a means to an end, and if you do not feel at the current moment that you are going to gain anything out of continuing to talk to someone that said “okay, boomer” to you, you should listen to your heart and go do something else.
These are the main paths you can go to in case you are struggling to respond. Now we are going to have a bit of analysis into what is really happening in this situation in which you are being called a boomer, because arguing without trying to understand the other person is just yelling at a wall.
Across all languages, the word “boomer” is an example of a new, if humorous, brand of ageism. This concept is something that is rarely talked about in popular discourse, and that we will be discussing at length.
What is ageism?
Ageism is a form of bigotry that is used to discriminate against someone based on their age. This can go from calling someone too young to understand something to the complete opposite, where we would find the use of “okay, boomer” in our modern political discourse.
It is important to understand that even though we are talking about something that became famous for being a meme, an easy answer to a precarious discussion, usually online, it does tell us something about how the world is functioning right now in terms of power.
Young people that are just joining the workforce face a new set of difficulties that they don’t feel prepared to surpass. This leads them to be on the lookout for someone to assign the guilt to, and this tends to be older people.
Older people are not dumber, but they surely and admittedly don’t keep up with the youth’s codes, which alienates them from our culture and leads to a feeling of social isolation. This applies, of course, in that rare case of someone actually being sixty years old and being called a boomer. People tend to use this insult on people that are not necessarily the age required to be a literal baby boomer, but displaying characteristics usually associated with older people, that usually is the upholding of traditional values.
This can go from religion to other brands of politics. People that were raised a certain way clashing with people that were brought up a different way. There is obviously nothing wrong with that, but people still think of this as an earth-shattering conflict that can save society if resolved. No one likes to listen to their parents when they are teenagers, and this conduct just lives on in teenagers as they grow older, indeed creating a barrier between generations that can lead to something very dangerous: echo chambers.
When we think about what a discussion is, our minds tend to go to people just on the brink of punching each other, and it’s because of this that people don’t know how to argue respectfully and productively with strangers or even loved ones.
So, what does that mean?
The underlying problem is people not wanting to engage with ideas that don’t ail with what they already believe, which in these times when everyone is talking about inclusion, is paradoxically isolating other people. People who then oppose the reigning ideas even more vehemently, creating, in the end, more problems for everyone than those which existed before.
So, instead of asking what the best way of responding is, it may be a better idea to look for other ways in which one can have a discussion, because the moment when one uses memes to respond it becomes clear that the discussion has derailed itself from civility and is now just verbal aggression.
This happens so often in everyday life that we become numb to it, but it can create larger problems in every workplace you can think of it occurring, and in families, it creates rifts between generations that radicalize everyone and keeps their ideas from touching each other and creating a new reality in which everyone can feel as if they are being heard.
Imagine a boss that just cites the company’s manual when giving recommendations to their employees. Now imagine that you are one of those employees. Is it not true that you would be incredibly frustrated and therefore do a worse job than you were before?
That’s why the world is moving towards new forms of interpersonal communication because dismissing someone’s point of view out of hand is just going to make them more sure that the other side is wrong because they don’t want to listen to what they have to say.
Dangerous organizations like cults or hate groups tend to take advantage of lonely people to make them join their ranks looking for a sense of community, and it is our belief that no one in society, no matter how wrong they may be, is deserving of finding themselves in the control of people that just want to utilize them for nefarious ends.
“Okay, boomer” is just the tip of an iceberg that goes miles down into the water where no eye can see. In an age where mental health is such an essential part of the zeitgeist, we should strive to have as many people as possible form part of a community that looks after its members in a caring way, the way everyone wants to be treated no matter their beliefs.
What can I do?
One must also look at oneself in order to find what may be wrong. Being sure you are right often led to a useless discussion that is just going to leave everyone frustrated. Opening yourself to other’s ideas can make them be more open about yours, and doesn’t that sound ideal?
That leads us to our next point. Some may reject the position here presented as being extremely idealistic and therefore useless to carry oneself through life, and that is exactly the problem that paves the way not only to someone’s use of derogatory language to dismiss another person but to that other person’s refusal to look beyond the all too frequent “Okay, boomer”.
“Okay, boomer” is a symptom of people not wanting to engage in civil discourse anymore, and instead of closing themselves to the inner circles that just repeat their own rhetoric back at them whenever they are starting to get doubts. This is what ultimately creates people that don’t really believe in what they are saying, but that more or less consider their beliefs a part of themselves and feel as if replacing or merely examining them could lead to a collapse in their personal identity.
People are not thinking about any of this when they use the phrase, so you shouldn’t blame your nephew, son, or grandson for falling into this kind of rhetoric, but if you are looking to create bridges instead of burning them, you should be trying to not pour fire in a discussion that is not going to let anyone win.
Social media tends to compartmentalize people into groups that oppose one another, and that abstraction, of being behind a screen that makes other people seem just like numbers that go up and down; screens that make someone’s profile picture and comment all that you need to know about them, and therefore create an environment in which everyone is more hostile than if the conversation were happening in person, ultimately is the thing we should oppose more than anything.
“Okay, boomer” is a phrase that exacerbates division and is not going to create anything in a conversation but contempt. Recognizing this makes whoever does it the real adult in the conversation, and educating others on this matter is doing far more for the community and the world than just calling someone a boomer.
Older people tend to think that things were better when they were young, and that is because they were in control of the social narrative as it was happening. Their favorite movies were released in those times. When they hear music from their era on the radio, they get excited and want to share that feeling with everyone around them. Even when you don’t want to think about it, you have to recognize that we are all going in that direction. Another part of this dilemma is that the causes they felt strongly about in their youth likely remain in their head as the only ones worth fighting for, and this gap is precisely the one that keeps growing every time someone says “Okay, boomer.”
This article is our attempt to create and spread awareness that using memes to dismiss people is not going to bring about any good. Honestly, it even ceased to be funny long ago, even when people agree with you. In a time of national division that’s only exacerbated by the toxic climate of social media, we should try to talk more about the things that unite us.
Talk to your grandparents, ask them what their favorite song is. Think about when was the last time someone asked them.
Also read: YOU SUCK BECAUSE YOU THINK YOU DO
