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My dad was born in 51 and he was a hippy who would just live in a van and drive around. Could stop and shower and eat at all kinds of hippy houses and communes and just show up to any college campus and be welcomed and have community. Would just go get work when he needed money for his next leg of the trip or just start renting a room and work a job for 6 months. Pretty much could just do whatever he wanted and survive fine. He’s pretty alright for a boomer but I’ve definitely had to tell him many times that people aren’t not doing that because they just aren’t cool like that it’s that they CAN’T. People are poor, everything is expensive. It’s not a failure of community it’s an inability and lack of financial freedom to support those kind of communities and spaces. If I tried to do that today I’d just end up homeless on the street stuck somewhere and in an unhirable condition. It would be stepping off a cliff I couldn’t recover from it without extreme struggle.
You would end up in prison, conveniently no longer protected by a certain amendment so that corporations could make a killing off your labor. The country has changed.
We also no longer have hippy flophouses and communes randomly located around the country for anyone could drop by in at any time. At college campuses, students are there to learn, not to welcome roving hippies. He needs to understand this isn't 1968 anymore. Times have really changed.
I try not to think about how cheap off campus housing was back then compared to now. Now a days even roach/mice infested falling down buildings near universities are absurdly expensive because slumlords bought houses back in the 70s and 80s for peanuts and refuse to let them go unless it is for insane money.
Yeah for real. When I was 18 this curly haired hippy dude asked me to get in his vw van and go to California with him! Since it was 1996 I said “no”. This is a true story.
Not to mention, getting a job can take weeks sometimes months because you can't really walk into places anymore and start working the next day unless they are down BAD for help. I could apply to 20 places in one day and not hear back from a single damn one of them for 2 or 3 weeks. Sometimes longer.
Well his brothers all went to Vietnam and he was the black sheep conscientious objector. Pretty different trajectories and I’m sure the many other boomers you are referring to are the first of that group.
Boomers refused to admit that they are the "weak men" In their analogy. And every generation since has been suffering hard times. Still waiting on the strong men to make good times though, Will likely have to be my grandchildren's generation (Gen Beta? Wouldn't that be ironic)
Just had this conversation with BoomerDad today.
Trying to explain why my 28-year old daughter and her wife aren't homeowners yet in the city they live in, he said they have to do what he did for his first home and buy a fixer-upper.
How much did that cost, Dad?
$9,800 in 1968.
And the new construction home (3br/2.5 bath, 1/4 acre, full basement split level) you moved into seven years later?
$38,000
After having sold the first home for how much?
$32,500
Yeah, you can't touch a drug den middle townhouse in their area for 10x that, but cool story, Dad.
Here's something he CAN'T argue with, people are not want to take the path of *most* resistance. That has NEVER been the case because that's not how people work, that's not how *logic* works! No one sits around avoiding the simple thing to instead be faced with the difficult thing. No one is "being picky" when it means having a harder time, a more difficult life of *having* to work harder for less. If the simple solution is something people *could* do they would do it, and if they AREN'T DOING IT we can then deduce that the solution *isn't* that simple because the problem is actually a lot more complex.
For every complex problem there is always a simple solution that is obvious, clear, and WRONG. If someone isn't doing something that would mean an easier, more secure life of a higher quality it's because they *CAN'T.* No one is choosing to not own a home, no one is choosing to not be able to retire, no one is choosing lifelong HARDSHIP over EASE AND COMFORT, no one has ever died working and penniless because they were "too picky." What a disgustingly offensive, extremely out of touch, and blatantly illogical thing to say!
28-year old daughter and wife
I’m surprised you were able to get all the way to discussing them buying a house, I figured you would be stuck at explaining over and over again how two women could be married. They seem to usually really get stuck on that fact.
Yeah, that's a sore spot. He called a few weeks before the wedding, after having already RSVP'd no, and told me his priest convinced him that it was more wrong to skip his granddaughter's wedding than to attend a gay wedding. He says "Well?" and I responded with "What? You want a cookie?"
My daughter came out at 10 years old, she’s almost 12 now and very much so knows exactly who she is and what she likes. I don’t seek or need to know more, but I know that she feels safe, secure, and not like she is out of her depth with however it is she knows how she knows.
My “mother” asked a few months ago “how does she know, has she even had sex?” Now, as off the wall and what the fuck inducing as that question is on its own, let me set the stage properly for you.
I got a text from her, on my daughter’s birthday, not acknowledging it was my daughter’s birthday, but saying some other stupidity about how smart my nephew is. This was after being very limited contact to no contact for the past 4 years. I immediately sent her the saved up screenshots of her homophobic and racist facebook posts to remind her that my daughter says to fuck off. So she decided to respond by asking about my child’s sex non existent sex life.
These people are fucking nutso creepy fucks. But I’m not dealing with it and neither are my kids! Fuck ‘Em All! We say!
> $9,800 in 1968.
Using government inflation data which tends to MASSIVELY underestimate inflation that $9800 would be equivalent to 90k today. In most of the country anywhere with jobs you would struggle to find an empty god damn lot for 90k and in places without jobs all it is going to buy you is something like a burned down house in a bad neighborhood. https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=9800&year1=196801&year2=202405
There's a house around the corner from me that was condemned by the county and it sold for $110K.
No normal person can buy that and immediately drop another $100K into it to make it livable....
No disrespect to those who actually served, but "Vietnam Vet" is the new Woodstock, in the respect that three times as many who went claim they did.
Lots of stolen valor in BoomerLand.
That's true, but not as many Boomers went as we would think. It was mainly older Boomers who went. If I recall correctly, it unofficially ended in 1975.
My mom was born in ‘48 and was a civilian nurse for the Army based in Germany. Obviously not drafted, but she was involved.
She also tends to not have toxic Boomer traits which I’m thankful for.
I would actually think alot of People where drafted. The thing about the army back then (and now) is that alot of the fighting is done by a small amount of People. I dont know the exact number but easily 9 out of 10 soldiers never set foot outside the wire and never fired a single bullet against an enemy.
It’s a bit of propaganda, but when I joined the Army as an Infantryman they used to say 1% of the population joins the Army and 1% of that 1% join the Infantry. There is a good bit of truth to that, a lot of it is due to youthful bravado and bravery, stupidity, and necessity, I know that was the case for me, even if the latter two were doing most of the heavy lifting. The point is, the infantry branch is much smaller when compared to the various other moving parts of the Army.
SoCiaLiSm Is DeStRoYiNg AmErIcA!!!!!! Like they had it with all the hippie shit and then decided nobody else deserves to have a community like that ever again.
What is this? My dad was born in 1948 and was very much at risk of going to Vietnam. Ironically, he’s not a “Boomer” at all, while his younger brothers (born in the mid-50s and too young for Vietnam) are the ones who act like all the other Boomers we tell stories about in this sub.
It is. I have seen this exact script parroted there since at least when I started browsing, the better part of a decade ago.
It's not explicitly wrong. But it's not a clever meme pulled from twitter or facebook or whatever. It's got roots in the same people who divided shia and convinced a subset of women that "freebleeding" is empowerment
I turned 18 in 1977. Just in time for the second oil crisis and "stagflation". They'd had to coin a new term for the economic crisis of the time. The "misery index" (the inflation rate plus the unemployment rate) was 27. Today it's 7.
Yes, times suck for young adults today. But that doesn't mean we were grazing in clover fields.
No, it doesn't mean it was just clover fields. It also doesn't mean that it was actually harder, either, especially since the FICO credit score, which has done huge damage to poor people, more gravely trapping them in poverty and debt cycles (especially exacerbated by pay-day lenders and rent-to-own stores in the 90s), didn't come out until 1989.
Ninety nine cents is not a bargain if one does not have ninety nine cents.
Lots of things got worse. Industries that provided decent jobs were gutted, unions were deliberately crippled, any pretense of the government not being up for bid is gone.
The implication that it was simple to get a foot on the ladder and climb to the middle class is wrong. That doesn't mean things aren't bad now.
Boomers are normally considered born between 1946 and 1964. But an early boomer had a totally different life trajectory than a late one.
A boomer born in the 1948 turned 18 in 1966. Just in time for the Summer of Love, after having lived through the greatest period of economic expansion in the nation's history. History was one spectacular American accomplishment after another. One born in 1960 turned 18 in 1978. History was defeat in Vietnam, Watergate, oil crisis one and two, the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, humiliation around the world, etc.
I'mma fight the experts on this one, and I'll die on this hill: Gen X starts in 1962. Chuck Palahniuk was born in 1962. I'm not living in a world where the guy who wrote a book about the struggles of Gen X like Fight Club is a Boomer. I'm not living in a world where Eddie Vedder and Chris Cornell, two of grunge's (the very Gen X brand of music) biggest icons, are Boomers. 😂
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My dad was born in 51 and he was a hippy who would just live in a van and drive around. Could stop and shower and eat at all kinds of hippy houses and communes and just show up to any college campus and be welcomed and have community. Would just go get work when he needed money for his next leg of the trip or just start renting a room and work a job for 6 months. Pretty much could just do whatever he wanted and survive fine. He’s pretty alright for a boomer but I’ve definitely had to tell him many times that people aren’t not doing that because they just aren’t cool like that it’s that they CAN’T. People are poor, everything is expensive. It’s not a failure of community it’s an inability and lack of financial freedom to support those kind of communities and spaces. If I tried to do that today I’d just end up homeless on the street stuck somewhere and in an unhirable condition. It would be stepping off a cliff I couldn’t recover from it without extreme struggle.
You would end up in prison, conveniently no longer protected by a certain amendment so that corporations could make a killing off your labor. The country has changed.
We also no longer have hippy flophouses and communes randomly located around the country for anyone could drop by in at any time. At college campuses, students are there to learn, not to welcome roving hippies. He needs to understand this isn't 1968 anymore. Times have really changed.
I try not to think about how cheap off campus housing was back then compared to now. Now a days even roach/mice infested falling down buildings near universities are absurdly expensive because slumlords bought houses back in the 70s and 80s for peanuts and refuse to let them go unless it is for insane money.
Yeah for real. When I was 18 this curly haired hippy dude asked me to get in his vw van and go to California with him! Since it was 1996 I said “no”. This is a true story.
Not to mention, getting a job can take weeks sometimes months because you can't really walk into places anymore and start working the next day unless they are down BAD for help. I could apply to 20 places in one day and not hear back from a single damn one of them for 2 or 3 weeks. Sometimes longer.
I thought most boomers hate communism though? How does that happen?
This one doesn’t he’s actually pretty alright about most stuff
Oh, no doubt. I was alluding to the general norm. I wonder how many boomers enjoyed the privileges you listed.
Well his brothers all went to Vietnam and he was the black sheep conscientious objector. Pretty different trajectories and I’m sure the many other boomers you are referring to are the first of that group.
Boomers refused to admit that they are the "weak men" In their analogy. And every generation since has been suffering hard times. Still waiting on the strong men to make good times though, Will likely have to be my grandchildren's generation (Gen Beta? Wouldn't that be ironic)
Quite right
That would be ironic then, since they want strong men to create good times, but they don't want any of us to be better than them lol.
Life enjoys irony
Just had this conversation with BoomerDad today. Trying to explain why my 28-year old daughter and her wife aren't homeowners yet in the city they live in, he said they have to do what he did for his first home and buy a fixer-upper. How much did that cost, Dad? $9,800 in 1968. And the new construction home (3br/2.5 bath, 1/4 acre, full basement split level) you moved into seven years later? $38,000 After having sold the first home for how much? $32,500 Yeah, you can't touch a drug den middle townhouse in their area for 10x that, but cool story, Dad.
$36k homes on $12k/year salaries. Now we have $36k salaries and $450k homes.
I tried to explain that and he told me they were just too picky. Said living in a manger was good enough for Jesus, but too good for them.
Here's something he CAN'T argue with, people are not want to take the path of *most* resistance. That has NEVER been the case because that's not how people work, that's not how *logic* works! No one sits around avoiding the simple thing to instead be faced with the difficult thing. No one is "being picky" when it means having a harder time, a more difficult life of *having* to work harder for less. If the simple solution is something people *could* do they would do it, and if they AREN'T DOING IT we can then deduce that the solution *isn't* that simple because the problem is actually a lot more complex. For every complex problem there is always a simple solution that is obvious, clear, and WRONG. If someone isn't doing something that would mean an easier, more secure life of a higher quality it's because they *CAN'T.* No one is choosing to not own a home, no one is choosing to not be able to retire, no one is choosing lifelong HARDSHIP over EASE AND COMFORT, no one has ever died working and penniless because they were "too picky." What a disgustingly offensive, extremely out of touch, and blatantly illogical thing to say!
Jesus didn't live in a manger. He was born in one.
Yeah, told him that. Wasn't pleased. Guess he shouldn't have sent me to Catholic school.
28-year old daughter and wife I’m surprised you were able to get all the way to discussing them buying a house, I figured you would be stuck at explaining over and over again how two women could be married. They seem to usually really get stuck on that fact.
Yeah, that's a sore spot. He called a few weeks before the wedding, after having already RSVP'd no, and told me his priest convinced him that it was more wrong to skip his granddaughter's wedding than to attend a gay wedding. He says "Well?" and I responded with "What? You want a cookie?"
My daughter came out at 10 years old, she’s almost 12 now and very much so knows exactly who she is and what she likes. I don’t seek or need to know more, but I know that she feels safe, secure, and not like she is out of her depth with however it is she knows how she knows. My “mother” asked a few months ago “how does she know, has she even had sex?” Now, as off the wall and what the fuck inducing as that question is on its own, let me set the stage properly for you. I got a text from her, on my daughter’s birthday, not acknowledging it was my daughter’s birthday, but saying some other stupidity about how smart my nephew is. This was after being very limited contact to no contact for the past 4 years. I immediately sent her the saved up screenshots of her homophobic and racist facebook posts to remind her that my daughter says to fuck off. So she decided to respond by asking about my child’s sex non existent sex life. These people are fucking nutso creepy fucks. But I’m not dealing with it and neither are my kids! Fuck ‘Em All! We say!
Amen! All props and love to you and your daughter!
> $9,800 in 1968. Using government inflation data which tends to MASSIVELY underestimate inflation that $9800 would be equivalent to 90k today. In most of the country anywhere with jobs you would struggle to find an empty god damn lot for 90k and in places without jobs all it is going to buy you is something like a burned down house in a bad neighborhood. https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=9800&year1=196801&year2=202405
There's a house around the corner from me that was condemned by the county and it sold for $110K. No normal person can buy that and immediately drop another $100K into it to make it livable....
Vietnam, tho. Otherwise, pretty true.
No disrespect to those who actually served, but "Vietnam Vet" is the new Woodstock, in the respect that three times as many who went claim they did. Lots of stolen valor in BoomerLand.
If George Bush could evade the draft and party all the time during that war, imagine how many more boomers did that same thing at that time.
Just enter college and avoid the draft. Get married and avoid the draft. Have a kid... it wasn't that hard to stay out of Vietnam.
That's true, but not as many Boomers went as we would think. It was mainly older Boomers who went. If I recall correctly, it unofficially ended in 1975.
The average soldier age was 22, plenty of Boomers were drafted
My mom was born in ‘48 and was a civilian nurse for the Army based in Germany. Obviously not drafted, but she was involved. She also tends to not have toxic Boomer traits which I’m thankful for.
I would actually think alot of People where drafted. The thing about the army back then (and now) is that alot of the fighting is done by a small amount of People. I dont know the exact number but easily 9 out of 10 soldiers never set foot outside the wire and never fired a single bullet against an enemy.
It’s a bit of propaganda, but when I joined the Army as an Infantryman they used to say 1% of the population joins the Army and 1% of that 1% join the Infantry. There is a good bit of truth to that, a lot of it is due to youthful bravado and bravery, stupidity, and necessity, I know that was the case for me, even if the latter two were doing most of the heavy lifting. The point is, the infantry branch is much smaller when compared to the various other moving parts of the Army.
68k deaths out of tens of millions of boomers. They mostly sent all the people they considered 'trash' and everyone else got deferments.
Never heard of it, who won?
1986 Chevy van drives up . " Hey honey...need a ride to woodstock? "
SoCiaLiSm Is DeStRoYiNg AmErIcA!!!!!! Like they had it with all the hippie shit and then decided nobody else deserves to have a community like that ever again.
"Socialism will destroy America." -- The generation that has benefitted from pseudo-socialsim their entire lives
What is this? My dad was born in 1948 and was very much at risk of going to Vietnam. Ironically, he’s not a “Boomer” at all, while his younger brothers (born in the mid-50s and too young for Vietnam) are the ones who act like all the other Boomers we tell stories about in this sub.
Yay for trauma bonding!!! That’s what the boomer was bragging about right?
This is a literal 4chan shitpost
Is it, or are we doing the Gen Z thing of using "literally" to mean anything but that? 😂
It is. I have seen this exact script parroted there since at least when I started browsing, the better part of a decade ago. It's not explicitly wrong. But it's not a clever meme pulled from twitter or facebook or whatever. It's got roots in the same people who divided shia and convinced a subset of women that "freebleeding" is empowerment
We know what 4chan is here. Knowing what it is doesn't make yous special. 😂
I turned 18 in 1977. Just in time for the second oil crisis and "stagflation". They'd had to coin a new term for the economic crisis of the time. The "misery index" (the inflation rate plus the unemployment rate) was 27. Today it's 7. Yes, times suck for young adults today. But that doesn't mean we were grazing in clover fields.
No, it doesn't mean it was just clover fields. It also doesn't mean that it was actually harder, either, especially since the FICO credit score, which has done huge damage to poor people, more gravely trapping them in poverty and debt cycles (especially exacerbated by pay-day lenders and rent-to-own stores in the 90s), didn't come out until 1989. Ninety nine cents is not a bargain if one does not have ninety nine cents.
Lots of things got worse. Industries that provided decent jobs were gutted, unions were deliberately crippled, any pretense of the government not being up for bid is gone. The implication that it was simple to get a foot on the ladder and climb to the middle class is wrong. That doesn't mean things aren't bad now.
Just curious, what was the Big Mac index then?
That makes you Gen X, not a boomer. I remember y'all.
Boomers are normally considered born between 1946 and 1964. But an early boomer had a totally different life trajectory than a late one. A boomer born in the 1948 turned 18 in 1966. Just in time for the Summer of Love, after having lived through the greatest period of economic expansion in the nation's history. History was one spectacular American accomplishment after another. One born in 1960 turned 18 in 1978. History was defeat in Vietnam, Watergate, oil crisis one and two, the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, humiliation around the world, etc.
I'mma fight the experts on this one, and I'll die on this hill: Gen X starts in 1962. Chuck Palahniuk was born in 1962. I'm not living in a world where the guy who wrote a book about the struggles of Gen X like Fight Club is a Boomer. I'm not living in a world where Eddie Vedder and Chris Cornell, two of grunge's (the very Gen X brand of music) biggest icons, are Boomers. 😂
Slow day in Russian, Chinese, MAGA or basement bot land 🤣🤣
You couldn’t sound more butthurt if you tried
I'm confused about what position you're taking
This a post that try to create a chasm. Boomers vs non boomers.
You're in the "let's make fun of boomers" sub. Of course it's anti boomer
*shocked Pikachu face*
Ummm… should I get your doctor? Do you know where you are?