{"id":102698,"date":"2026-05-27T03:00:12","date_gmt":"2026-05-27T07:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=102698"},"modified":"2026-05-26T10:47:38","modified_gmt":"2026-05-26T14:47:38","slug":"the-boomers-dont-hate-you-they-just-prioritize-feeling-good-about-themselves","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2026\/05\/27\/the-boomers-dont-hate-you-they-just-prioritize-feeling-good-about-themselves\/","title":{"rendered":"The boomers don’t hate you, they just prioritize feeling good about themselves"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is something I see very clearly in Canadian baby boomers — most of whom support Mark Carney and the Liberals because they feel<\/em> that’s what nice people do, and boomers want to think of themselves as nice people above all else. On the social media site formerly known as Twitter<\/em>, Devon Eriksen<\/a> responds to a meme expressing later generations’ view of the boomers:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

On the surface, it sounds like Boomers hate you. Or like they have the attention span and logical thinking skills of a goldfish. <\/p>\n

Neither one of these is true. <\/p>\n

Their complete dismissal of any of your concerns, and their total refusal to understand your situation or worldview, is actually quite sensible in light of one key fact about them. <\/p>\n

They’re not hateful. They’re not dumb. They just have an incredibly low emotional pain threshold<\/strong>. <\/p>\n

They cannot stand to feel bad about themselves for any reason, even for a moment. <\/p>\n

When you create a meme like this, or you tell the story of how you are forty years old and can’t afford a house because you trained for three different careers and got rugpulled by work visas and offshoring every time … <\/p>\n

… then they don’t even think about it as a worldview or a perspective or an experience that you have. They don’t think about you at all. <\/p>\n

They think only about the effect on their own self-esteem, which must be parried. <\/p>\n

You have, you see, told a tale of playing life on hard mode, which implies that they were playing life on easy mode, which implies that they are not wizards of insight and paragons of virtue. <\/p>\n

That’s why they will immediately respond with these incoherent lines about whining and bootstraps and firm handshakes and avocado toast. Of course they don’t make sense. They don’t have to make sense. The goal isn’t to persuade you of anything or engage with you at all. <\/p>\n

The goal is simply to have an excuse to avoid thinking about something which might make them feel bad. <\/p>\n

These Boomerisms are magic talismans used to ward off emotional discomfort<\/strong>, in much the same fashion as all the species of plants they smoked their way through when they were your age. <\/p>\n

I don’t see a solution to this. <\/p>\n

I don’t know any way to tell Boomers that Hart-Cellar, CRA1964, DEI, open borders, social welfare programs, anti-racism, gay marriage, gun control, the sexual revolution, etc, were massive mistakes and need to be stopped, while hiding the obvious implication they were the ones who made those mistakes. <\/p>\n

If we wish to save Western civilization, to make things good enough again that actual Americans can manage to have homes and marriages and children, then we’re going to have to find a way to work around the Boomers, because they’re never going to get on board.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is something I see very clearly in Canadian baby boomers — most of whom support Mark Carney and the Liberals because they feel that’s what nice people do, and boomers want to think of themselves as nice people above all else. On the social media site formerly known as Twitter, Devon Eriksen responds to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[28,53,13],"tags":[407,262,1106,139],"class_list":["post-102698","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media","category-politics","category-usa","tag-babyboomers","tag-culture","tag-genz","tag-psychology"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-qIq","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102698","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=102698"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102698\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":102701,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102698\/revisions\/102701"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=102698"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=102698"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=102698"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}