Not saying this is wrong but sometimes you need to look in the mirror as well. It’s never just one thing. Also, throw away the boomer blame game and refocus on the rich 10%, who are more than just boomers now.
It’s never worth your time or effort to have a discussion/argument with someone who isn’t going to participate in good faith.
That is spot on. I have just concluded that it isn’t my responsibility to educate my parents. And since they don’t listen anyway, I also realized that since that is the case, we have not become closer through the years; but actually the opposite. And that all because they’re not willing to accept facts, because they’re lazy and entitled.
I just find these reductive generalisations a bit silly and divisive. As if anyone born between arbitrary years x and y is part of some sort of united collective that can reasonably critique everyone born between years v and w.
ok boomer.
The hardship Boomers had was mostly far away and hypothetical. They grew up with the constant threat of nuclear war.
The old Star Trek episode “Gary Seven” has an interesting take on this. Boomers expected that civilization would end before they got to adulthood. Then it didn’t, and they had no idea what to do with themselves.
Then they come to a time when they’re resented by both their parents and their children. The Greatest Generation was horny after the war and literally fucked the Boomers into existence, but realized too late that they didn’t actually like having children. Boomers treated their children the way their parents treated them. Gen X sorta puts up with it, but Millennials aren’t having it.
Other than that, capitalism knew by the 1950s that if they push the working class too hard, they’ll revolt. Better to back off the money printer a little to make sure we can keep running it for as long as possible. And so the working class could have a reasonably comfy life doing the same trades for their whole working life (provided they were white). Over time, capitalism found that it can keep a working class revolt from happening by dividing the working class against each other; racism and religion works pretty well. Then it was time to overclock the money printer.
Boomers expected that civilization would end before they got to adulthood.
I figured that was our (Gen X) curse. I remember being fairly sure I’d not see age 20, given all the dystopian nightmares that seemed to surround us. Maybe it was all the boomer-created media we were saturated in.
I seem to recall Douglas Coupland writing on that in much more evocative ways than I could ever muster…but then, even though he coined “Generation X”, I think he’s one of the very oldest in that generation.
I’m 45, so not a boomer but already too old to get any respect from people in their 30’s (90% of my colleagues for example). Simply speaking about something they didn’t experience (reading a map, installing an OS, meeting the love of your life without a dating app…) gets me a “Ok Boomer” each time so what do I do? I just shut the fuck up. I’m not worried, they’ll be in my position very quickly.
Send them this. I’m sure they will get it.
Bro, I’m 28 and I feel this way. It’s like I became uncool overnight
I mean, I’m going to invite everyone of every age to strip bottomless, take any “back in my day we didn’t have your fancy [whatever]” bitching an moaning you have to do, dip it in honey, roll it in sand, and cram it up your exposed ass.
I’m 38. In my mid-20s, I taught flight school, mainly to people twice my age, and this included a fairly large section on reading Sectional Aeronautical Charts. I’ve got zero fucks to give for someone 7 years my senior pulling “back in my day we had maps” shit.
For a community called “LemmyShitPost” there is an awful lot of gold here.
Lemmy’s shit is someone else’s dinner
🤤
I guess it’s to be expected. Boomers were raised in pure bliss, spent half their lives relatively stress-free. Everything was easy and cheap. When you live an easy life, you get used to being dumb, uninformed and lazy. The same would have probably happened to all zoomers in the same situation.
Note that this is mostly specific to North America, Western Europe, Japan and maybe a few other countries. Pretty much everywhere else boomers aren’t all that different from zoomers, save for regular intergenerational differences.
Eh, this seems to be looking at things with rose-colored glasses. That generation, in the prime of their youth, had to worry about getting drafted into going halfway around the world to fight a war of empire, for instance.
I guess it’s to be expected. Boomers were raised in pure bliss, spent half their lives relatively stress-free. Everything was easy and cheap. When you live an easy life, you get used to being dumb, uninformed and lazy. The same would have probably happened to all zoomers in the same situation.
I’m not a boomer, but this isn’t quite a fair characterization. Yes, they had cheap college, affordable cars, housing, lots of upward mobility that most of us would love to have today, but they lived through some shit too. Boomers were in their youth when humanity had its closest brush with global nuclear war when the bombers were in the air flying during the Cuban Missile Crisis. They lived everyday with a really good chance the world was going to end in nuclear war. They were the last generation to see a compulsory military draft and many know high school friends that were drafted and died in Vietnam. We think interest rates are bad these days making borrowing expensive. No shit they were having to get mortgages with a minimum of 18% and 19%:
This says nothing about the many racial and sexual discrimination issues that those groups faced making basic life even harder. In Canada it wasn’t until 1964 that a woman could open her own bank account without her husband’s consent. In the USA, redlining preventing people of color from buying homes in better areas denying them untold billions of dollars of generational wealth from real estate appreciation.
Absolutely give the out-of-touch boomers that are dismissive of the problems young people are facing today the shit boomers deserve. They did so much to harvest the benefits of the last century and leave the bill to the younger generations while simultaneously destroying environment for the later generations to thrive the way they did. Just don’t forget that each generation has its problems too and there hasn’t been a generation yet that has been entirely carefree.
In Canada it wasn’t until 1964 that a woman could open her own bank account without her husband’s consent.
My mother would always remind me that in the United States, this was not lifted until 1974.
Just using the interest rate is an unfair comparison. You have to go get median house prices and median incomes as well to make a proper comparison. Just saying the rate was higher at some point is useless if we don’t also compare the prices and incomes because what really matters is affordability. Not saying your whole comment is wrong, just trying to say that this particular part seems to be biased in favor of the Boomers.
Median home price to median household income ratio This ratio is a key indicator of housing affordability. It measures how many years of the median household’s income are needed to purchase the median-priced home. Period Median Household Income Median Home Price Price-to-Income Ratio 1980 ~$21,000 ~$65,000 ~3.1x 2024 ~$85,000 ~$415,000 ~4.9x Comparison of mortgage payments Even with the high interest rates of the 1980s, the lower home values meant a smaller overall loan and a monthly payment that took up a smaller percentage of the median household income. Here is a side-by-side comparison of a hypothetical mortgage for a median-income household in 1980 and 2024: Mortgage metric Early 1980s 2024 Median income $22,000 $85,000 Median house price $47,000 $415,000 20% down payment $11,000 (~50% of annual income) $83,000 (~98% of annual income) Loan amount $36,000 $332,000 Interest rate 13% 7.5% Monthly payment $397 $2,321 Payment as % of gross income
Just using the interest rate is an unfair comparison. You have to go get median house prices and median incomes as well to make a proper comparison. Just saying the rate was higher at some point is useless if we don’t also compare the prices and incomes because what really matters is affordability. Not saying your whole comment is wrong, just trying to say that this particular part seems to be biased in favor of the Boomers.
I’d written a big post already, and diving into all the details and nuance was too much to put in the initial post. You’re right that the interest rate alone isn’t a determining factor, but I’d also disagree that its objectively in favor of Boomers, perhaps subjectively though. Another factor to consider is that in the downpayment requirements. Today we talk about the “best practice” of putting 20% down on a home, but that’s today. The alternative of putting less-than 20% down and using PMI didn’t even exist as a concept until 1971. It grew in popularity later, but in the early days it wasn’t common. Further, with higher interest rates it meant that much lower pay down of the principal was occurring in the first few years of the mortgage because of amortization. It was the beginning of the age of moving more frequently for jobs, which meant less equity build up as each house sale cycle robbed them of that benefit of wealth, arguable the most valuable investment asset of the working class.
Median home price to median household income ratio This ratio is a key indicator of housing affordability
I appreciate you doing and sharing that analysis.
I think we both agree that its difficult to do an absolute comparison on the home buying/owning experience between the Boomer era and today’s Millennials (or GenZ) simply because so many conditions are different. We didn’t talk about Stagflation or unemployment rate in 1982 being 10.8% compared to today’s 4.3%. I pointed out the interest rate being higher because most folks approach new information as “all else being equal” conditions. The audience already knew that housing price was less in the Boomer era, additional it was known that income was higher proportionally to living expenses than today’s Millennials (or GenZ), what I doubted was common knowledge was the sky high interest rates compared to today. Thats what I was communicating.
They have it backwards. Young people think old people had it easy. This is their justification for not trying. Truth is every generation has it’s challenges. Rather than turn to social media for validation, look for information. There’s no one-size-fits-all solution for everyone but if you’re facing a challenge, someone before you faced the same. Don’t listen to those who tell you not to try. Listen to folks who succeeded, what worked, what didn’t.
PS The only derogatory I can say about the young generation as a whole is, where the fuck is your rock and roll? You’re listening to your grandparent’s music. Lame.
Ok boomer
PS The only derogatory I can say about the young generation as a whole is, where the fuck is your rock and roll? You’re listening to your grandparent’s music. Lame.
I think about this all the time, actually. I think part of it is that music is so atomized into a zillion sub-genres, and there doesn’t seem to be really big zeitgeist-level types of things. Streaming vs. curating has changed the dynamics back to being more similar to what the boomers started off with, ironically, when they were buying 45’s, and before albums became a thing. :)
Anyway, the things that make the really big $$$ all seem rather nutless and uninspiring, if you ask me. Where is the music that might scare the parents?
But then, if you look back at what was charting in a given decade, you might be surprised at how schmaltzy things were way back, too. Look at the Seventies, as a for instance, and see what the top 40 was playing.
Where is the music that might scare the parents?
Phonk was fun in a 2 Fast 2 Furious kind of way. Well, the 5 phonk songs that are good, then everyone else copied those.
Hyperpop is current. It’s super-broad and I’m not sure if there is a great definition. Apparently someone called SOPHIE is like a godmother to this genre before she passed away. From my research hyperpop has become an overly broad genre, ranging from maximalist happy-breakcore (which is how I know it) to depressed autotune mumble rap.
SOPHIE might scare you. I"ve been flipping through her singles as I write this. Like hyperpop itself, her style is very varied. But generally breaks from traditional conventions of both pop and edm.
IMO a big factor is that the production quality of music (as well as movies and TV) hit a point where it no longer sounds or looks as dated. Digital remastering cleans up any flaws, now the only tip off to the age is content.
Yeah I’m hip to the schmaltzy tunes of the 70’s, I’m a big fan. Looking at you BJ Thomas.
I’m sure there is good rock going on now, it’s just not making it into the mainstream. I’m a product of 80’s punk rock. It never got mainstream attention but it did spawn acts that did in the 90’s.
Managed this as a millennial - had absolutely nothing to do with my parents helping pay half my deposit. Nope, absolutely nothing to do with that whatsoever.
I have an offer for a family member to pay the entire deposit and I’m still not buying a house. I’m in top percentile income too but I’d rather retire early and meagerly rent than be stuck for the next 3 decades.
how is owning a home a barrier to early retirement more than paying rent with money you will never see again? you wouldnt be stuck for 30 years and if someone’s gifting you 20% it seems foolish not to. perhaps you should do some self education on retirement and money
The housing market is in a bubble right now. Buying a house is no guarantee of equity when the value can plummet and put you underwater at a moment’s notice.
The value of a paid off home is not the equity, that’s just numbers on a paper until you die and your heirs sell. The value is in living for peanuts for the rest of your life.
My house is paid off. My monthly housing costs are $735 for property tax that can’t increase more than 2% year due to California law. My neighbor three doors down with the same floor plan rents for $8500/month. That difference will only increase for the next 40 (I hope) years until I die.
Even my not-paid-off house is saving me money, since rent has continued increasing and my mortgage has not. I’d probably be paying at least twice in rent for this house as what my mortgage payment is. Bought it 12 years ago.
That too, last year before I finished my mortgage my neighbor was paying well over double my mortgage, property taxes, and maintenance costs combined.
Yeah I don’t think people realize that the biggest advantage of owning is to lock yourself into a stable housing cost. Even before it’s paid off, you lock in a more or less stable monthly housing bill. Maintenance sucks, big ticket repairs suck. But you’re always going to need somewhere to live.
I bought a place ten years ago, and if I was renting the same house today it would be about double the mortgage. Sure, I highly doubt that doubling will happen again in another ten years. But I doubt even more that we will ever see the prices back at 2015 level.
Maintenance costs suck, but even that has a silver lining when you own. It’s yours. When your fridge breaks in a rental you’re not out any money, but they just bring by another jank landlord special. I redid my kitchen with Thermador, not the top of the top brand, but pretty far up there. That cost quite a bit but it’s mine and my kitchen is far better than anything I had renting.
Buying a house increases the switching cost of moving to seek new job opportunities. Since we’re no longer in the days of pensions renting makes sense. Imagine buying a home in Detroit before inscrutable politics and macroeconomics caused it to decline; buying a home means you risk holding the bag, especially if you don’t know how to manage risk from climate change in the coming decades.
Rent often isn’t too far off from the cost of buying. The main financial advantage of buying comes from appreciation, which I would say is a pretty big gamble.
Historically housing as an investment is one of the least risky gambles one can take. They even have a saying, “safe as houses.” People will always need a place to live. Tbh, buying a house is probably safer than government bonds right now.
People will always need a place to live, yes. We also always need food, and general safety from harm. A home is no good if you lose any of the other two while living there. That can happen if, for example, the government or your neighbours decide that your kind is undesirable, or an arbitrary trade war forces businesses in your area into downsizing/bankruptcy and losing you the jobs that paid for your food, or the same happening to farms in the area. How big these risks are will depend a lot on where you are and who you are.
deleted by creator
You can afford a home on a single income if your income is 3-4x of the value of the home, roughly.
Where I live lots of people can afford homes, but they are just super angry they can’t afford the homes that they want. They don’t want a 2bed condo for 400-500K. They want single family home with 4bedrooms that’s about 3-4x the size of the condo, even if they don’t have kids, and are outraged such homes aren’t affordable for a single person.
But also, lots of people, don’t save intentionally and still complain they can’t afford stuff, even thought they could if they did save. These are the types who argue with you that 300/mo on gyms is a necessity… but they never go to the gym.
Ok boomer
Average annual family income in the US is around $80k/a. Are you seriously suggesting that families should be looking for homes in the $20k to $30k range? What kind of home, exactly, do you think you get for that?
This is how we get trailer parks in tornado alley. Or mold infested hovels.
Cardboard box next to the fish market dumpster.
We used to dream of being next to the fish market dumpster. We had to live in a paper bag outside a hogfat rendering plant. The smell still hasn’t gone away some 50 years later, my wife says.
I think they worded that backwards and are referring to the adage (or maybe that is what the banks go off of?) that your loan shouldn’t be for more than 3x your income. So if you make 80k per year you can generally afford a $240k house.
Going above that 3x means too much of your income goes to paying for the house and you don’t have enough for other living expenses+maintaining the house.
Now good luck finding a home for only $240K in an area that actually has decent-paying jobs…
Just as a real example, 70-80k/year is very feasible in the Philadelphia area. I saved up around 90k across a decade (with a worse income…) and bought a place for slightly over 350k. The thing is you NEED that initial down payment amount to make those numbers work, PMI with less than a conventionally mortgage down payment is a debt trap. Most people aren’t financially literate, and people with large amounts of capital take advantage of that in the lending and real estate industries.
If you can settle or pool resources this all gets easier, and if you have disabilities or make poor financial decisions it becomes impossible and you rent trap yourself. Renting still makes more sense for people with jobs that move around, though.
You can afford a home on a single income if the home is 3-4x that of your income, roughly.
FTFY
The building next door, with 4 units of 1100sqft each (spread over three floors, ughhhh) is $1.6 million CAD per unit.
That’s a really big brush you’ve got there, really painting everything in broad strokes.
Poster is the grandma from the picture, can we get an AMA?
Yes its everyone else’s fault
oskibi doomer
This gives me flashbacks to the one time in my life I really wanted to answer “okay boomer”
My father in law was supporting the claim the climate change might exist, but it’s nothing we have to concern ourselves about because it’s going to take decades to do anything.
And I was like: you have grandkids, they will be there in decades! And: you just experienced the first drought of your country, how is that not climate change??
After half an hour going in rounds I gave up and bit my tongue to not torpedo our relationship. Two years later he admitted that maybe there was something about climate change nowadays…
Decades ago my stepmother did this in front of her 8 year old daughter… I was like, ok you’ll be dead, and you don’t need to care about me as your stepson, but what about her?
Ughh… Now her and my dad are MAGA…
Two years later he admitted that maybe there was something about climate change nowadays…
At least they changed their mind (a little bit). I think this is a huge part of the problem: admitting an error and being supported for that admission is something that is frowned upon in certain groups. I think toxic masculinity plays one big factor here. Admitting errors is seen as “not masculine”, especially within conservative groups.
it’s frown upon by every group.
nice way to blame ‘masculinity’ though. as of women or something don’t do that shit.
I am not sure where your defensive reaction comes from, but please read something about toxic masculinity before being so vocal about your opinion. Toxic masculinity can be reinforced by all genders and all genders can be victims.
And admitting your own errors is definitely not equally seen in different groups.
bit my tongue to not torpedo our relationship
I’m so glad my wife is basically no contact with her parents, because I never have to play nice with them.
In my case, they are overall nice and caring people with, sometimes, a bit of a blind spot. I was very glad when they came around on the climate change issue, that was the only sore spot between us.
You’re still more patient Than I.
It’s great that they’re rational enough to change their views in the face of evidence, even if it takes more evidence than it usual.
Life is too short to bother maintaining relationships with people like that. They can rot away in lonely isolation, like they deserve.
You know one snippet of my father in law. Is it really sufficient for you to judge the whole man? I sure hope never to be judged so harshly!
He literally told you he didn’t give a shit about your kids or theirs. That’s indeed sufficient enough for most reasonable people.
the vote though. and they vote a lot more than the people who don’t vote…
dude torpedo the relationship, who gives a fuck. if they want to be ignorant fucks and ruin their relationship with their child, that’s on them
they won’t change if there are no repercussions
You advocate blowing up a parent-child relationship just for not getting the instant gratification of convincing them to change their political views in a single day?
That’s decades of history prior and more in the future hopefully. Some things just take time.
We wil be dead from climate change before they figure it out.
This isn’t some social cause you can be a conservative for. This is high stakes and a deadline.
no, I advocate for not appeasing ignorant assholes, and if the ignorant asshole chooses to react poorly to it, let them
Some people just take a while to absorb new information.
My father would always seem like he was completely stuck in his ways and unyielding if you argued with him for one day. But if you came back the next day, he usually had a much better view and had accepted some of your statements.
I actually enjoyed debating him once I learned this, and learned to drag out the debates over several days. I also understood a lot more by copying his method of learning.Not everything needs to be instant. Give people information, then give them time to think about it.
yes, that’s what I was getting at. doesn’t need to be right that moment, but it certainly doesn’t need to be two years.
The secret ingredient is lead poisoning. The Baby Boomer generation spent over half their lives sniffing leaded gasoline fumes.
Gen X kid walked arduous hikes uphill back from school in the La Cañada foothills in San Fernando Valley, id est, the Los Angeles smog bowl from ~1975 to 1985. I may literally have lead poisoning brain damage.
I don’t know how I’d get checked. 58 now.
Curiously, I empathize with kids these days but am also extremely left-wing, and see each generation getting dismissed by the previous one as having it too easy.
I do not dismiss the next generation as having it too easy. Their minimum wage is what mine was when I young. They are basically in a ponzi scheme economy. They are either going to have to endure this distopia or violently overthrow it.
Ding ding ding!
The reason it feels like people from that era are angrier and dumber than they used to be is because they literally are! It’s literal brain damage!
Yeah, turns out that lead in gasoline ain’t so great for the brain. I remember being oddly fascinated the first time I saw the correlation of lead being pulled from gas and violent crime plummeting 30 years later. You can see it in graphs from all across the world and can damn near set your watch to it.
They still do. General aviation still uses 100LL aka low lead
Blood concentrations of lead are laughable today compared to when leaded gas was in cars. It’s a decrease of 94%. Yes, we still have a lead problem. No, it is no longer anywhere near as bad as it was.
True, but the safe level of lead is none. This is especially true for children.
The FAA finally approved 100UL (unleaded), so the US is on track to stop using 100LL in most cases within the next 20 years
EPA has tight regulations on washing your plane though, so there’s no problem with lead /s
Disclaimer: It’s better than nothing that the EPA tried to do something, but the government really should have gotten their shit together and approved 100UL decades ago
Shh, don’t say it too loud or Maga will legislate the lead back in.
Oh don’t worry about that, they already caused their havoc
Thanks to the FAA’s shoestring budget, they don’t have the funds to just issue an STC to allow existing planes to use it. Each plane owner will have to pay for one to be issued. It costs me $200 to get one issued. It costs that much because the FAA hasn’t had the budget to upgrade their systems, so handling applications takes a lot of labor. They need to manually verify the make and model of aircraft will not be at risk of adverse effects from unleaded gasoline, since safety > all else
It’s a good thing the FAA verifies this, but it shouldn’t be such an inefficient process. The only reason it’s so inefficient is because conservatives have gutted federal agencies for so many years. MAGA will still point to the inefficient process as an example of why they should keep cutting funding, “see how inefficient the FAA is? They don’t deserve our money!”
Hahaha … heh … but seriously, MAGA does want brain damaged voters.
While lead pipes were banned in 1986, millions of lead service lines remain in service across the US to this day…
Lead pipes are less of an issue that it would seem, as the pipes quickly develop a layer of calcium salts on the inside, preventing the water from actually coming into contact with the lead.
By all means, they need replaced. But they’re nowhere near the contributor that leaded gasoline was. That stuff probably fucked up 6 distinct generations. If you lived in a city, you were inhaling lead constantly.
Lead pipes are less of an issue that it would seem, as the pipes quickly develop a layer of calcium salts on the inside, preventing the water from actually coming into contact with the lead.
This right here.
If people remember the lead in drinking water contamination in Flint Michigan, its because they had lead pipes that were well coated with the protective layers and had no trouble with lead in water. Then the newly elected city manager changed water sources to cut costs against the advice of the water engineers in the city. The other source of water was more acidic and stripped out all that protective coating and suddenly there’s huge amounts of lead in the drinking water from the pipes.
Get out of here with your fact-based science, it sounds like you did your own research. We don’t like that. Please comply.
Agreed, fake news. Trump didn’t say this so it isn’t true. Lead never hurt no one. (Ever noticed MAGA’s double negative usage?)
That’s right, water never leaves scale deposits in pipes. Only in hot water tanks and faucets. In between, magic.
Lead gasoline for cars is gone. Lead pipes are still around.
You’re concerned about the big problem that we already solved? Bro, you need to re-prioritize.
Also faucets and fittings are still made with a brass alloy containing lead
Wait, what? In what country(ies)?
I know the US is one that has 100LL
Edit: Misunderstood context, disregard
The boomers have lost all respect
“Ok Boomer” means “that’s nice, now go sit down grandpa, the adults who live in realityare talking”
I treat it like, “Ah I see you shared an opinion in public that is the reason your family abandoned you. And here you are, alone in society - still holding on to your shitty thoughts, and you will die alone.”
Except it gets misused on those of us who were the boomers first victims.
The boomers are like people who think misandry is real. Not necessarily in need of torture and public execution, but definitely not worth listening to.
Genuinely can’t tell if this is a joke or not lmao
I’m just trolling lol
I was told the other day by someone younger than me that saying “okay boomer” is cringe now. The new hot hip fan-didly-tastic slang is “unc status” or “aunt status”, apparently. Means the same thing, but in sleek Gen-Z packaging.
Okay zoomer.
I feel like there is always some level of condescension when talking about other generations of slang and I wonder why. There’s a smack of snark to the redundant duplicated repetition of “hot hip fan-didly-tastic” and “sleek Gen-Z packaging”, and “cringe” is obviously derogatory. Can’t we casually accept that “the new slang is” what it is, and set an example for the younger ones in turn?
Couldn’t contemporary colloquialisms coexist comfortably?
I love using the new slang. It makes my kid turn red, which I find hilarious.
Fuck I am too old for my own generation. Mentally and from my speaking I am way more millenial than gen z
You arent alone lmao
Notably, – yet again – it’s also cribbing/misusing black slang/terminology; disappointing…
How so?
Unc’s a term that’s been in use since at least the 90s (but maybe older; I’m not a historian nor was alive then); it can sometimes be used disparagingly though, generally, it’s usually a sort of familiar way to refer to someone that’s older. Kind of similar in the way “cuz” doesn’t literally refer to someone who’s your cousin but someone you’re familiar with, who’s like family in the same way a cousin might be (you didn’t grow up with them, didn’t see them all the time, but you’re familiar with them).
So it’s not hard to see how this new definition came about but it is, still, sort of just plucking the word and modifying it to a very different context (the disparaging form was definitely not the predominant form and there was a degree of fondness or respect for your elders in the term which this new usage completely eradicates through patronizing that I can’t help but notice is more community-destructing than community-building). While this is a phenomenon that is far from new, it’s felt particularly manufactured in the last decade and a half or so (probably due to the ease with which things can become viral in our current Hellscape-form of Internet); a lot of the “slang” that’s hit mainstream awareness has felt almost more like buzzwords than actual slang or even natural language in the way it’s been used. That’s not directly relevant to your question but just something I’ve been thinking about.
Also, thanks for asking, rather than downvoting; it’s (obviously) not everyone but there’s a non-negligible segment of Lemmy that just seems to have an emotional tantrum every time race comes up.
So it’s not hard to see how this new definition came about but it is, still, sort of just plucking the word and modifying it to a very different context
I think the difficulty here is the assertion that this “unc” stems from black slang rather than a parallel evolution. After “bro” and “cuz” made it into wider adoption, the pattern of taking the first syllable or so off a term for a relative is familiar.
Unrelatedly, the image of the weird uncle spouting bullshit is a cultural meme in at least those parts of the (presumably mostly white) Internet I’ve been exposed to. The subjectively most common forms I see are holiday season complaints about uncles being racist or conspiracy nuts.
That is a very different image of uncles. Combining it with the aforementioned pattern of taking the first syllable to refer to people of a vaguely similar persuasion will lead to a derogatory meaning of “unc” that may well have developed entirely independently of the more respectful sense you mention.
Hence, I’m inclined to believe it’s more of an unfortunate coincidence than a corruption of an originally benevolent term. Either way, it’s unfortunate to have an otherwise positive term associated with something negative, whether by accident or by ignorant misuse.
more community-destructing than community-building
In some sense, that destruction of community may precede the term. If my reasoning above is correct, the term refers to a type of person one would rather not share a community with.
Also, thanks for asking, rather than downvoting; it’s (obviously) not everything but there’s a non-negligible segment of Lemmy that just seems to have an emotional tantrum every time race comes up.
There’s an odd discussion space around the topic, where even the way you treat it becomes a discussion of its own that I don’t wanna get into right now.
However, one part of it may be that people afford the meaning of words different weights. You comment on how slang becomes trivialised, turning into buzzwords rather than proper language. I’d counter that this seems to be a feature of mainstream communication in general: Words (with some exceptions) are treated more lightly, and as we trust the other to catch the intent of our statement, we also throw them with less care.
That doesn’t mean a word I throw lightly also becomes weightless to others, and I suspect that’s where part of the conflict stems from: When you say “this was taken from black culture”, that feels like an accusation of appropriation and racism. If I adopt a word without any intent of disrespect and then get (or feel) accused of saying something racist, I get defensive because that wasn’t my intent. But the way I said it might still have hurt others, and the fact that I said it carelessly is no help.
I think I first saw that disconnect in the discussion around the N-word: To many white people (including myself), it doesn’t have much weight anymore. We don’t hold the contempt that it used to be an expression of. However, to many black people voicing their thoughts online, it seems to still have the sting of centuries of oppression and disparagement. They don’t – can’t? – separate the intent from the vessel that carried it.
The switch of perspectives isn’t intuitive. But it’s worth learning.
I’m curious to learn and to hear the experiences of others. Whatever thoughts I may have are coloured by my own biases, my upbringing, the social environment I live in. I’d rather ask, converse and risk offending out of ignorance than to assume I know the answer and probably end up offending out of negligence.
Avoiding conflict also avoids the lessons we can learn from it. If we take care to avoid lasting harm, we can “play” conflict and learn to avoid actual conflict in the future.
