According to the founder of 'Wholesome Boomer Content,' a lot of their content resonates with others because "boomers are often portrayed for only the mean/entitled/racist ones. In actuality, there’s lots of good old people and this account highlights the better side of their generation, so people like seeing that, cause it’s something positive," they told Bored Panda.
The secret to the Twitter account's quality is due to lots of people sending in "tons of submissions." And with more content to choose from, the founder can then curate the experience as they see fit, picking only the funniest screenshots.
Meanwhile, something that drives the founder's passion for the project is a desire to make internet users feel good. "I stay passionate [about the project] because while only talking about wholesome old people is boring, I could see a whole network of wholesome content coming out of this in which I can focus on anything happy, ultimately just improving the day of people scrolling through social media negativity."
Two reasons why baby boomers get so much flak, according to the founder of 'Wholesome Boomer Content,' is that their views haven't caught up to match the changes in the world and due to the improvements in tech allowing us to see more of their bad sides. However, what the 'Wholesome Boomer' project does is that it shows that there's plenty of room for nuance and that boomers aren't a one-size-fits-all generation.
"I think with the digital age, everything gets recorded. Couple that with our last president and a politicized pandemic, and a large portion of their generation has been outed for their very outdated beliefs which has led to tons of justifiable dislike. I don’t think my community sets the record straight, it just shows that the term 'boomer' includes a wide range of people and not just a single hive mind."
The thing about classifying generations is that plenty of experts have different ways to categorize things. So for instance, while boomers in the US are generally said to be born between 1946 and 1964, others define the generation as encompassing those born from 1943 to 1960.
For instance, the latter definition is used by William Strauss and Neil Howe, according to whom, baby boomers are people who were too young to have personal memories of the Second World War, but were old enough to remember the postwar boom in the United States.
Meanwhile, boomers outside of the US also have different date ranges for their birth. For example, in Canada, a boomer is somebody who’s born from 1947 to 1966. In France, the baby boomer generation refers to those born between 1946 to 1973 while in Spain it’s 1958 and 1975.
So there’s a lot of different ideas floating about how to classify boomers and, by extension, other generations. If you have different ideas about what a boomer is, trust me, you’re not the only ones, dear Pandas. (And let’s not get started about how difficult it is to classify millennials…)
It’s not surprising why the ‘Wholesome Boomer’ Twitter account is so popular. It creates a nice contrast between the modern understanding of what a boomer is and how those gosh darn rude kids tend to behave these days. What’s more, the community highlights the most wholesome aspects of human beings. And who here doesn’t enjoy finally feeling good about humankind for a change?
