The media loves to sensationalize this generational divide. Yet Boomer-roleplaying also speaks to something deeper: a perceptible generational rift between Boomers and their younger generational counterparts, both millennials and Gen Z. As Boomers have acclimated to the subtleties of social media with varying levels of success, mimicking the more bizarre posts of theirs that stand out among the mundanity of a Facebook feed - humble-bragging job announcements, carefully posed and filtered photos, multi-level marketing pitches - is just amusing. Younger users, who have traditionally been the vanguard of social platforms, set the online social rules that are later imitated by older internet users. Part of this is simply that role-playing - especially this kind of low-barrier role-play - is fun.Ĭompared to the high-barrier, elaborate character-building involved in physical role-playing games like “Dungeons and Dragons” or even MMORPGs like “World of Warcraft,” popping online to post a single status in the imagined voice of a Boomer is an easy lift. These are dedicated to pretending to be a wide variety of characters: influencers, farmers and cows, middle-aged moms at Target, doctors and patients, aliens pretending to be human.īut those groups' memberships are significantly smaller than “A group where we all pretend to be boomers.” Something about roleplaying as a confused online Boomer seems to have struck a nerve. Spencer has written about how a Reddit channel called “MildlyInteresting” spawned popular spin-off subreddits like “InterestingAsF**k” and “NotInteresting.” And within the subgenre of “roleplaying”-type meme groups, there are other current Facebook groups similar in premise to the Boomer one.
Online communities where members riff on certain internet stereotypes or memes isn’t a new thing. He continued: “According to Facebook's analytics, it's about a 2500% jump in the past 28 days.” “Then due to a Tweet by it started growing exponentially. “Originally, it grew relatively slowly, maybe 50 or so members a day, and we were at around 5,000 members about 4 or 5 days ago,” Richard said. That’s because the Facebook group is called, plainly, “A group where we all pretend to be boomers.” All of these posts are people acting.Īnd while it is hard to quantify what exactly makes something a “Baby Boomer post” - and while the stereotype of the tech-illiterate Boomer is largely unfair and ignorant - the Facebook group’s feed is an endless stream of extraneous punctuation, all-caps, Minion memes, and public posts that should’ve been private messages (“Are you coming home for dinner, Jane?!”)Īccording to Justin Richard, one of the founders and admins of the group, its popularity has taken off immensely since it started about two months ago. But the group’s members are, for the most part, not. The themes of these group posts - friends and grandchildren, home ownership, nostalgia for the middle twentieth century - recall the concerns of Baby Boomers. IS IT IN THE MALL?”Īnd below that, someone posts a photo - a side-by-side comparison, first of actor Cary Grant dressed in a wool overcoat in one panel, and a thin young man dressed in light-wash denim shorts and a pastel top, immersed in his smartphone, in the second panel. MY GRANDDAUGHTER TOLD ME TBERES A FAXEBOOK APP FOR PHONES ON THE APP STORE. “I USE FACEBOOK ON MY HOME COMPUTER BUT ITS SO SLOW. Then, a few scrolls down, another user writes: Yep,I'm crazy but I love mowing the lawn, and it is GREAT exercise and give me a feeling of accomplishment and adds to the beauty of my home. “Getting off Facebook so I can mow the lawn.
A typical typo-addled exchange in one peculiar 60,000-member strong Facebook group starts off like this:
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