Hot Take Hotter Take is a column with takes so hot they’ve melted Vincent’s brain and where the remaining thought juice is left to dribble out onto the page from his melted skull. 

When the middle schoolers rise up in rebellion, will you join them? Or will you perish face up in the gutter with “Ok Boomer” scrawled over your unmoving forehead? What does it mean to be a Boomer anyway? Literally, it stems from “baby boomers”, the moniker for the generation born after World War Two ended but before the Civil Rights Act was passed. Boomers are growingly the enemies of the Zoomers, the latest generation to start developing higher-level cognition. If you aren’t a Boomer in the literal sense you might think you’re safe from the teens Fortnite-dancing on your grave when the revolution starts, right? Wrong. Writing for The New York Times, Taylor Lorenz describes the newest battle cry of the Tik Tok generation, “Ok Boomer” as a: “…Reply to cringey YouTube videos, Donald Trump tweets, and basically any person over 30 who says something condescending about young people—and the issues that matter to them.” To the youth in the country, being a Boomer isn’t an age, it’s a mindset.

Hot Take: You can be a Boomer at any age

The Baby Boomers will be the largest voting bloc of actual voters in the next election. In addition, they make up a large portion of the corporate and government leaders in the world. In many ways, the Boomers control the country and its politics. When kids rant at the Boomers for destroying the economy, denying climate change, or any other issue of modern society, they aren’t targeting an age range. Rather, they are targeting the people with backwards values who actively blockade the progress they hope to achieve. Age is just a correlation. Meaning, you can be a young person and still be a “Boomer” or you can be an old person who’s safe from being labeled as one. What matters is who you choose to side with in the battle between the past and the future. 

HOTTER TAKE: ADD A BOOMER VOTING TEST

If Boomer mentality truly is to blame for the misgivings in the world, then perhaps it’s time to find out who among us is a Boomer. I propose aptitude tests to discover which people in our society deserve being “Ok Boomer”-ed into the back of public discourse. Questions can be as simple as, “Have you ever posted a meme on Facebook about why millennials are killing fly-fishing?” or, “Do you think Applebee’s is good?” For those who fail the Boomer test, maybe their role in society should be re-examined. Do you feel like the vote of a Boomer deserves to count as much as yours? Do you trust the Boomers wouldn’t take your vote away if they got the chance? Strike first against the Boomer vote, then the teens can rebuild society in earnest. 

Vincent Rendon can be reached at vrendon@sagebrush.unr.edu or on Twitter @VinceSagebrush.