Astral Codex Ten

Boomers

5 min read

Boomers

Article

Boomers is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 5 times across 5 issues between September 06, 2024 and January 06, 2026. The archive places it in contexts such as “It can be satisfying to blame the Boomers and catalog their failures”; “seniors are maximally uncool, especially if you call them “Boomers””; “Boomers can boast that they passed on a better life to their children”. It most often appears alongside US, Richard Hanania, Zoomers.

Metadata

  • Category: Concepts
  • Mention count: 5
  • Issue count: 5
  • First seen: September 06, 2024
  • Last seen: January 06, 2026

Appears In

Source Context

Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.

Your Book Review: The Pale King
September 06, 2024 · Original source
It can be satisfying to blame the Boomers and catalog their failures. But there’s no denying that every flaw we can pin on them has only been amplified in us, the younger generations. Poor work ethic, lack of civic virtue, cynicism, self-absorption, susceptibility to media/celebrity/spectacle—even the oh-so-common move of blaming the Boomers smacks of adolescent petulance, a child refusing to play instead of an adult stepping up and trying to make the game better.
Links For September 2025
September 04, 2025 · Original source
Now that I’ve worked you into a frothing rage, I’ll admit I buried the lede - the particular noisy/disorderly people being discussed in this article are families with young children. Should this change our opinion? At least in center-to-right Silicon Valley circles, caring about disorderly homeless people is currently uncool, but caring about children - or at least fertility! - is very cool (the article also focused on noise-averse seniors, and seniors are maximally uncool, especially if you call them “Boomers”). Can we really apply the same principles to cool and uncool groups?
Against Against Boomers
December 19, 2025 · Original source
Hating Boomers is the new cool thing. Amazon offerings include A Generation Of Sociopaths: How The Baby Boomers Betrayed America, the two apparently unrelated books How The Boomers Took Their Children’s Future and How The Boomers Stole Millennials’ Future, and Boomers: The Men And Women Who Promised Freedom But Delivered Disaster. “You don’t hate Boomers enough” has become a popular Twitter catchphrase. Richard Hanania, who has tried hating every group once, has decided that hating Boomers is his favorite.
Inline links: A Generation Of Sociopaths: How The Baby Boomers Betrayed America, How The Boomers Took Their Children’s Future, How The Boomers Stole Millennials’ Future, Boomers: The Men And Women Who Promised Freedom But Delivered Disaster, has become a popular Twitter catchphrase., is his favorite
Why, exactly, are Boomers so bad?
Zooming out, it seems sort of like Boomers have delivered the greatest period of peace and prosperity in history: global, American, take your pick. The window of Boomer dominance, c. 1980 - 2010, saw the fall of Communism, steadily rising incomes, steadily growing life expectancy, and no foreign wars bigger than Iraq (total American death toll: 4,500).
Highlights From The Comments On Vibecession
December 31, 2025 · Original source
I appreciate this guide to the original intent of the word, but I claim ‘death of the author’ - it seems to me this is more than just a two-year problem. I remember people complaining about hellworld, the broken social contract, the Boomers tearing up the bridge behind them, vanishing opportunities for the young, the blackpill of modern life, etc, well before 2022. Memory can be faulty, but don’t we need something like this to explain the Trump campaign, the Sanders campaign, Chapo Trap House, Red Scare, 4chan, and all the other mid-2010s politicians and media telling us that things were worse than they’d ever been and outrage was the only acceptable response?
> “There is one anomaly, which is that I remember people complaining about the bad economy and the Boomers and hellworld since well before 2020 (consider the Trump and Sanders campaigns), but the official vibes didn’t crash until COVID. Is my memory faulty?”
But an alternate interpretation of this chart is that every generation believes success is ~$500,000/year, inflation-adjusted to the value of the dollar when they were in their early 20s and forming beliefs about success. This is a bit of a stretch - surely Boomers have had plenty of time to update on the value of a dollar since their 20s, especially since many of them are still working and collecting salaries. But the math works out.
Highlights From The Comments On Boomers
January 06, 2026 · Original source
[original post: Against Against Boomers]
Inline links: Against Against Boomers
Boomers had it much easier than later generations.
The political system unfairly prioritizes Boomers over other generations.