If you have been on the internet within the past couple months, you have undoubtedly seen the phrase, “Ok boomer” be thrown around by just about everyone, regardless of age. The phrase originated on TikTok in January of 2019, but only really started gaining traction in November of the same year.

The first recorded use of the phrase was in 2009, on reddit, long before the phrase was popularized. The phrase gained traction in early 2019 among many smaller subreddits and on 4chan, but after articles from mainstream news sources, such as Vox or the New York Times, started writing about the phrase, it entered the lexicon of many Generation Zers and millennials. “Ok boomer” is meant as a derogatory term to the baby boomers, a generation generally defined as those born from 1946-1964.

The phrase is used because of what is seen as a “Peter Pan syndrome” from baby boomers. The boomers are still focused on what made their childhood and early adulthood great instead of what can make the next generation’s lives great. There is also a wide internet presence of baby boomers complaining about the current generation, whether it be increased time on phones, or no longer going outside, or many other things.

As a response to this, millennials and Generation Zers, or zoomers, have used “ok boomer” to repudiate this attack on their generations. Boomers often consider themselves to be above millennials and zoomers on the internet, and this is just a response to that feeling of superiority. There is also often a perception that boomers refuse to acknowledge that things have gotten too expensive from when they were younger, most often college or cars.

Boomers often wonder why millennials cannot buy homes or afford college, while not recognizing that college tuition has risen thousandfold since they were in college, while the wages earned by an entry-level worker have not changed at all, the same goes for house purchasing. The response to this by the younger generations could no longer be fought by statistics and data, so “ok boomer” originated as a response, to dismiss the boomers the same way boomers dismiss the younger generations. 

Now, boomers have started to respond to the phrase by dismissing millennials and zoomers even further, but more interestingly, the use has begun to occur between millennials and zoomers, and become a generally derogatory term, no longer just towards boomers. The phrase is a response to the boomer mentality, not just baby boomers themselves, so millennials and zoomers are often also guilty of falling into the mentality.

The boomer mentality is one of superiority, where the boomer is considering themselves to be above the other generations because they have “succeeded” in life, they went to college, they have a job, they have a house, and because of these things, they consider themselves to be better than millennials or zoomers.

The other facet of the boomer mentality is a failure to understand humor, a boomer will consistently make unfunny jokes that either do not make sense or are just offensive. The most famous boomer joke is to make fun of the younger generation for using their phones too much, but the boomer humor is also misogynistic, racist, and homophobic. There is often an understanding that these boomers hate their wives because they married young to someone they barely knew.

Because of this, they have projected their hate for their own wives onto all women. Ok boomer is a response to this, the millennial response to the boomer mentality, but if a millennial or zoomer is guilty of falling into the boomer mentality, they will also be quickly “Ok boomered.”