Post by Kapitan on Nov 11, 2019 13:38:54 GMT
I don’t want to make a bigger deal of this than I think it is, so don’t take this as some major point on an all-important issue, but I disagree about the “ok boomer” stuff. Not entirely, but quite a bit.
First, as a joke, I don’t care. It’s fine. Jokes are jokes. And many, many jokes have some degree of what the censorious prude might consider racism, sexism, religious bias, ageism, homophobia, body shaming, ableism, or some other no-no. That’s the nature of jokes. (To flip that on its head, I’d also just warn that most racism, sexism, religious bias, etc. etc. has some nature of joking in it. So there’s a line in there somewhere.)
But more generally I just don’t like the dismissal of people en masse based on something they can’t really control, such as age (which you can control in that you can always stop aging via suicide, but that’s not a good solution), race, gender, etc. It doesn’t take much imagination to consider the results of responding with “ok blackie,” “ok whitey,” “ok lady,” “ok shorty,” “ok homo,” and so on. The difference isn’t that these words are somehow offensive, because they’re relatively mild words, slight variations on totally inoffensive words or inoffensive themselves. The difference is you can’t dismiss someone based on their color, their gender, or their orientation. That concept is offensive.
I get that millennials and iGens don’t like hearing themselves dismissed as snowflakes—nor should they. It’s equally offensive. But tit-for-tat doesn’t help anything other than make you feel good about your team. It doesn’t help.
Realistically generational descriptors are just silly anyway. I saw recently a hilarious and apt comparison: generational characteristics make about as much sense as astrological signs. To think that people born within 20 years of one another share the same personality traits or ambitions or interests in any real sense is as logical as thinking everyone born on November 11 shares them.
I’m near the tail end of the Xers, myself. Greatest Generation and Boomers always condescended to us right up until Millennials came around to take the heat. And yeah, it was annoying. But it’s also irrelevant. Some of the greatest people I ever met were in those two generations; so were some of the dumbest, meanest, most bigoted, most annoying. Xers, ditto. Millenials, ditto. (I can’t speak for iGen, as I barely know any. But I’d imagine it’s similar.) Praising, condemning, or otherwise judging individuals based on their generation, or defining entire generations as if the individuals within it were all the same thing, is not good at all except in the most broad strokes (e.g. “millennials will have longer average lifespans than greatest generation.”). Anything about “[generation] thinks [such-and-such]” is not good.
But again, that’s a lot of words when the best response was probably the first one: it’s not that big a deal when it’s a joke. Jokes are jokes. (That said, most things stop being funny by the time they’re memes.)
First, as a joke, I don’t care. It’s fine. Jokes are jokes. And many, many jokes have some degree of what the censorious prude might consider racism, sexism, religious bias, ageism, homophobia, body shaming, ableism, or some other no-no. That’s the nature of jokes. (To flip that on its head, I’d also just warn that most racism, sexism, religious bias, etc. etc. has some nature of joking in it. So there’s a line in there somewhere.)
But more generally I just don’t like the dismissal of people en masse based on something they can’t really control, such as age (which you can control in that you can always stop aging via suicide, but that’s not a good solution), race, gender, etc. It doesn’t take much imagination to consider the results of responding with “ok blackie,” “ok whitey,” “ok lady,” “ok shorty,” “ok homo,” and so on. The difference isn’t that these words are somehow offensive, because they’re relatively mild words, slight variations on totally inoffensive words or inoffensive themselves. The difference is you can’t dismiss someone based on their color, their gender, or their orientation. That concept is offensive.
I get that millennials and iGens don’t like hearing themselves dismissed as snowflakes—nor should they. It’s equally offensive. But tit-for-tat doesn’t help anything other than make you feel good about your team. It doesn’t help.
Realistically generational descriptors are just silly anyway. I saw recently a hilarious and apt comparison: generational characteristics make about as much sense as astrological signs. To think that people born within 20 years of one another share the same personality traits or ambitions or interests in any real sense is as logical as thinking everyone born on November 11 shares them.
I’m near the tail end of the Xers, myself. Greatest Generation and Boomers always condescended to us right up until Millennials came around to take the heat. And yeah, it was annoying. But it’s also irrelevant. Some of the greatest people I ever met were in those two generations; so were some of the dumbest, meanest, most bigoted, most annoying. Xers, ditto. Millenials, ditto. (I can’t speak for iGen, as I barely know any. But I’d imagine it’s similar.) Praising, condemning, or otherwise judging individuals based on their generation, or defining entire generations as if the individuals within it were all the same thing, is not good at all except in the most broad strokes (e.g. “millennials will have longer average lifespans than greatest generation.”). Anything about “[generation] thinks [such-and-such]” is not good.
But again, that’s a lot of words when the best response was probably the first one: it’s not that big a deal when it’s a joke. Jokes are jokes. (That said, most things stop being funny by the time they’re memes.)