I get that saying “boomer ruined the world for all the generations afterwards” is an insult, but the word itself is now considered an insult?
Genuinely asking here; the constantly shifting landscape of what one is allowed to say when talking to US Americans is a bit hard for me to navigate and I currently only have online discourse as guidepost (which is like 1000% more toxic)
Your question is disingenuous, as the word "boomer" didn't appear isolated with no context. The statement was "the baby acts like a boomer", which clearly has a pejorative connotation--you yourself recognized this when you asked "Which demographic was casually insulted here? The babies/third children?" ... it's not even possible to think that babies are being insulted without thinking that saying they're like boomers is insulting. As I said, that seems to be an unquestioned assumption.
As I said elsewhere, there is no single way that boomers behave. Boomers are simply people born in the post-war boom, from 1946-1964, and they display a huge range of traits. Virtually all statements referring to boomers collectively that aren't purely statistical are pejorative--ageist bigotry.
> what one is allowed to say
This oft repeated nonsense is bad faith. You're allowed to say whatever you want, and people are allowed to respond.
How does “the baby acts like a boomer” have negative connotations?
Sounds like you are personally offended that the word “boomer” exists and projecting here.
> you yourself recognized this when you asked "Which demographic was casually insulted here
I asked this because boomer was the only possible demographic in GPs post, not because I think the term boomer is pejorative in itself. Chilling and ambition are obviously not demographics but qualities.
> This oft repeated nonsense is bad faith. You're allowed to say whatever you want, and people are allowed to respond.
If you want to go there, this argument is bad faith as well… of course I can say anything, but you seem to be personally offended that the term boomer exists and I simply don’t understand why.
> all statements referring to boomers collectively that aren't purely statistical are pejorative
Is that true for every other age group, so for example is every statement that refers to “millennials” or “zoomers” automatically pejorative and ageist?
> Virtually all statements referring to boomers collectively that aren't purely statistical are pejorative--ageist bigotry.
It's not ageist to have complaints against a specific generation, not the one before, not the one after, with those complaints sticking to that generation as their age changes.
(Whether those complaints are right or wrong on a statistical level is a different issue.)
Fine, it's some other sort of stupid ignorant intellectually dishonest bigotry. (Most of the people who get attacked as boomers are actually in the generation before them.)
> Whether those complaints are right or wrong on a statistical level is a different issue.
Only because you have made it one. The word "ageist" was the least part of my comment (but there is in fact a strong ageist element to the pejorative use of the term, contrary to your mischaracterization of the realities of its use ... notably, the people who use it are younger, never older, and have not used it throughout time--they couldn't, as they weren't even born when boomers arrived on the scene and for decades afterwards).
I get that saying “boomer ruined the world for all the generations afterwards” is an insult, but the word itself is now considered an insult?
Genuinely asking here; the constantly shifting landscape of what one is allowed to say when talking to US Americans is a bit hard for me to navigate and I currently only have online discourse as guidepost (which is like 1000% more toxic)