With these different strains established, channers next developed highly esoteric remixes and what you might call “prequels.” You have memes about doomers from other historical eras - the early 1900s, the 1800s, even the middle ages. One YouTube video, for example, has a Boomer put a zoomer in a headlock at the gym. Other than these handful of signifiers, though, the zoomer doesn’t have much of a persona you get the sense, however, that he’s bullied, mocked and antagonized by the Boomers. (Yes, 4chan tends to sort identity by preferred beverage and video games.) The zoomer also has web-inflected taste: He likes the rapper Tekashi 6ix9ine and, unlike the premature Boomers, is fluent in the language of memes. Much younger than the terminally nostalgic, financially secure 30-year-old Boomer is the zoomer, a Gen-Z stereotype with an undercut, round-lens glasses, a thirst for coconut water and a devotion to Fortnite. Sometimes he takes the form of an aged-up “ Chad ,” successful despite peaking in high school.
There are allusions to his mortgage, kids and steady job. This character is a dinosaur before his time, and while he’s often portrayed as blissfully ignorant of his meager status, he’s also made out to be the last beneficiary of a bygone prosperity.
It’s a semi-accidental update of Berkeley activist Jack Weinberg’s immortal advice to never trust anyone over 30, as they’re already compromised by - if not fully complicit in - a system that younger people are busy critiquing. He’s too busy trading crypto, chugging Monster Energy Drink, riding around on his lawnmower, listening to 1980s metal bands and enjoying outdated video games. An older millennial, for example, may be perfectly imitating their parents’ progress through the expected stages of career, marriage and family, and hold trust in A) the unstoppable betterment of humanity B) the ability of government to likewise improve or amend its flaws C) order, justice and prosperity under capitalism and D) survival of the world’s existing power structures in the face of climate change, etc.Īnd so 4chan came up with “that 30-year-old boomer,” a guy whose life isn’t all that great, but who fundamentally cannot realize this.
As dedicated students and curators of the Boomer ethos will tell you, one needn’t literally belong to the Baby Boomers to share in their delusions.
These new labels, including “doomer,” “gloomer,” “zoomer” and “bloomer,” are meant to capture a spectrum of mindsets and corresponding life paths that the channers use as a map to the future of society.Īny rundown of these figures - which remain the subject of some debate, and in the nature of memes, have quickly spiraled out of coherence - must begin with the concept of inherited Boomerism. For the last year or so, the imageboard’s anonymous users have concocted an array of generational archetypes that play rhymingly on the “boomer” tag - now widely applied across the mainstream internet to mock out-of-touch, politically regressive, web-illiterate old folks (or younger people with that same energy). Makowka character maker.If you want to understand the shadow that the Baby Boomer generation has cast over everyone born after 1964, look no further than 4chan.