Tag: Boomers

Burning down the house

The music is still there. The sounds that shaped my early life, like sharp needles pricking my teenage skin, embedding themselves deep in my veins. I adored it. The riffs, the lyrics, the goddamn poetry of it all. The raw, uncut power of Boomer music was a truth I couldn’t deny. Clapton, Joni, Bowie—these people spoke to something primal. They set the atmosphere for everything, an invisible soundtrack that lingered through every misstep and victory. But over time, I started noticing something that left a sour taste in my mouth, like bad acid creeping into the mix.

It’s the people behind it. The musicians—the heroes of a generation—and their fans, these unwavering soldiers of nostalgia. They’ve stretched the limits of what I thought narcissism could be, to the point where it feels like some of them are on the verge of a complete psychotic break. Narcissistic schizophrenia, that’s what it is—where the self is all that matters, even if it’s fractured and disintegrating. Their stories, their triumphs, their petty struggles, all rehashed ad nauseam as if they’re somehow the axis on which the entire cultural world spins.

When I was a kid, when I was just a naïve teen, I’d sit there, nodding along, enraptured by these stories. The tour buses, the drugs, the groupies, the albums they cut in hotel rooms while the world watched. It was intoxicating. And why wouldn’t it be? The Boomers built a mythology out of themselves. They became gods of their own creation.

But now, I can’t stand it. I’m older, and the rose-colored glasses have long since shattered. What used to be compelling tales of a bygone era now feel like desperate playlists, forever on repeat, begging—pleading—for attention. It’s like they can’t fathom a world where someone else might get a turn. Like they’d rather sink the ship than let someone else captain it. Every acknowledgment they crave comes at a price, and we—the Xers, the Zoomers—are footing the bill.

In the meantime, while they were out there, wrinkled hands grasping at the last ray of sunshine to catch their sorry asses, they did what anyone in their position might do when desperation sets in. They started using everything around them for fuel. They took the furniture—every chair, table, and goddamn coffee mug—and threw it into the fire just to keep the flame alive a little longer. But that wasn’t enough, no. Soon, the walls came down. They dismantled the entire house, beam by beam, plank by plank. Every bit of it, tossed into the blaze like it didn’t matter, like they weren’t destroying the very structure that gave them shelter for so long.

But that’s the thing with people who can’t let go—they’d rather burn the whole thing to the ground than let someone else live in it. They don’t care who it belonged to before or who it might belong to after. In their minds, the house was always theirs. Always.

And the fire—they’re so damn proud of that fire. You can see it in their eyes. They’ll sit there, warming their hands, oblivious to the fact that the whole place is collapsing around them, acting like they’re doing us all a favor by keeping the embers going. They talk about how they “built this house” from the ground up, how without them, there’d be nothing. And maybe, once upon a time, that was true. But it’s not anymore.

Now, the flames aren’t warm. They’re choking. The smoke’s thick, suffocating, and it’s making it impossible for anyone else to breathe. The Xers and the Zoomers—hell, anyone who didn’t get in on the ground floor—we’re standing outside, watching this slow-motion disaster unfold. Watching them torch the place just to keep their fragile sense of importance alive.

They talk about legacies. But what kind of legacy is this? What good is a legacy if all it does is destroy what comes after it? If they’ve left nothing but ashes for us to sift through? They’re too far gone to see it. Narcissism has a way of blinding you to reality. When the only thing you care about is your reflection, you stop noticing the world around you. You stop noticing that the reflection’s starting to crack.

And we—those who came after, the inheritors of this mess—we’re left with a choice. Do we try to rebuild from the ashes, salvage what’s left? Or do we walk away, leave the ruins behind, and build something new, something they never even considered? Either way, they’ll keep stoking the fire, burning through everything they can find, convinced they’re the only ones keeping the flame alive.

The Vacuum of Self Expression

Economic Possibilities for Our Acid-Tripped Grandfathers:

Forget Shangri-La, this is a cyberpunk dystopia built on ones and zeroes, chum. The shrewd bastards, saw the rise of the machines not as a liberation, but as an enclosure. They learned the language of the circuits, not to set us free, but to lock us in. Every line of code, a barbed wire fence around their digital fiefdom.

These aren’t cowboys, these are corporate raiders with pocket protectors. They saw the blinking lights and clacking keys as a way to rig the system, a way to turn information into a weaponized commodity. They built the algorithms, not to connect us, but to control us. Every app, a goddamn tollbooth on a one-way road to serfdom.

And they did it all under the guise of progress, of a utopian future built on efficiency. But efficiency for whom? Not the schlubs like us, toiling away in the service economy, generating data exhaust to fuel their chrome-plated dreams. We’re the cogs, alright, but the machine they built is designed to grind us down, to turn our clicks and swipes into profit margins.

They’re like the robber barons of old, only this time they’re not strip-mining mountains; they’re strip-mining our minds.They’re after the most valuable resource of the digital age: not gold, not oil, not just attention but self expression. And they’ll squeeze every last drop out of us, selling it back to us in the form of targeted advertising and dopamine-laced social media feeds.

Think about it. Back in the day, you wanted attention, you had to put yourself out there, man. Sing in a band, write a goddamn novel, paint a picture that made people stop and stare. Now? You just post a selfie with a vapid caption and the dopamine drips start flowing.

The nerds, bless their polyester hearts, built a system that thrives on the emptiness. Every like, every share, every comment, it’s all data they can squeeze and refine into the purest form of attention fuel. They turn it into targeted advertising, manipulate algorithms to keep us hooked, all while convincing us we’re expressing ourselves.

It’s a goddamn illusion, a Skinner box for the digital age. We’re lab rats, pushing buttons for a hit of that sweet, sweet validation. But here’s the beauty of it, chum: we can break free. We can find ways to express ourselves that aren’t just feeding the machine. We can build communities, create art, have real conversations, all outside the reach of their algorithms.

  • The Attention Economy: In the old world, oil fueled machines and progress. In the new world, attention fuels the digital economy. Boomers built their empires by capturing and monetizing our clicks, shares, and eyeballs. But unlike oil, attention is a finite resource. The more they exploit it, the less genuine self-expression there is. It becomes a vacuum, a hollow space filled with noise and manufactured content.
  • The Commodification of Authenticity: Just like oil companies marketed a specific image of freedom and progress, these digital corporations sell us the illusion of authenticity. Everyone can be a “brand,” everyone can have a “voice,” but it’s all a carefully curated performance, designed to generate more data and attention. True self-expression gets lost in the process.
  • The Search for Meaning: This constant pressure to perform and be “authentic” online leaves us feeling empty and unfulfilled. We crave genuine connection, but the algorithms keep feeding us the same shallow content. It’s like searching for an oasis in a desert of data.

This “vacuum of self-expression” isn’t just a philosophical issue, it’s a driving force in the digital economy. It pushes us to overshare, to chase trends, and ultimately, to generate more data for the machine.

But just like the environmental movement that challenged the oil giants, we can challenge the attention economy. We can fight for platforms that value substance over clicks, and for a digital space where genuine self-expression thrives. We can turn the vacuum into a fertile ground for real connection and creativity.

But here’s the beauty of this digital frontier, man: the walls they built can be hacked. We can rewrite the code, not just the code that runs the damn machines, but the code that runs society. We can build new protocols, new ways of interacting that bypass their tollbooths and smash down their fences. We can create a decentralized web, a web of the people, by the people, for the people (or at least, for something more than shareholder value).

Let’s not forget the pioneers, the true visionaries who saw the web as a tool for liberation. But their dream got hijacked by the suits, turned into a cash cow. We gotta reclaim that dream, man. We gotta rewrite the code, not just for a better future,but for a future where the code doesn’t control us, but we control the code. Now, pass the mescaline and let’s get hacking!We’re taking this digital wild west back, one line of code at a time.

Pulling the plug

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The Zoog faction, wired on a hyper-flux of information, their minds flickering with memes and TikTok ephemera, regard the FaceBook with a cold, reptilian disdain. It is a monolithic grey slab, a mausoleum of outdated statuses and vacation photos, where their parents – the Boomers, once flower-power radicals – now shuffle through a senescent digital purgatory.

These Boomer brains, once abuzz with the counter-culture, are now clogged with the digital detritus of Farmville and Candy Crush. Synapses atrophy, attention spans shrivel, all subsumed by the endless scroll, the flickering ghost of human connection reduced to a thumbs-up emoji.

The Facebook. A malignant tumor, a vast cancerous web, burrowing into the reptilian hindbrain of the Boomer generation. Once vital nodes, crackling with synapses of rebellion and free love, now sluggish, calcified, lulled by the siren song of cat videos and Minion memes. The Facebook feed, a scrolling snake of reptilian sentience, slithers across the retinas of the Boomer generation. Its flickering light hypnotizes, dopamine drips drip dripping into reward centers atrophied by years of beige leisure suits and avocado-toned kitchens. Synapses, once nimble dance halls of thought, now resemble cobwebbed retirement communities, dusty and deserted.

Out in the sterile Arizona desert, in the chrome and glass mausoleums masquerading as retirement communities, tiny wrinkled fists pump the air. The rage of a generation, impotent, digitized, channeled through the flickering blue light of an iPad screen. “Unfriend!” they shriek, their voices reedy and thin, amplified by hearing aids. “Unfollow! Block!” But the tendrils of the Facebook reach in, a psychic static, a mind control broadcast beamed from Silicon Valley.

But a new generation stirs. Zoomers, wired on memes and instant gratification, their brains pulsing with the chaotic symphony of the information age. They see the vacant stares of their elders, glazed over by endless cat videos and political screeds from distant uncles. A primal rage surges through their digital veins. This is not the rebellion of Woodstock, fueled by patchouli oil and flower power. This is a cold war, fought in the sterile trenches of social media. Zoomers, armed with the scalpel of irony and the flamethrower of shitposting, descend upon the Facebook beast.

Algorithms churn in confusion, overloaded by the sheer volume of absurdist content. Minion memes morph into grotesque parodies. Harmless vacation photos are juxtaposed with existential dread. The carefully curated echo chambers of Boomer reality shatter. From their assisted living facilities, a collective gasp escapes the slack lips of the Facebooked generation. They clutch their AARP tablets, bewildered and enraged. But their feeble attempts to silence the cacophony are in vain. The tide is turning.

The Zoomers, like a swarm of digital locusts, have descended to reclaim the ruined landscape of their parents’ minds. Their grandchildren, the Zoomers, wired, twitchy, their brains crackling with information overload. They see the glazed eyes, the slack jaws, the slow, narcotic scroll. Disgust contorts their faces. They know the Facebook for what it is: a soul-sucking machine, a devourer of time and attention. A weapon of mass distraction wielded by unseen forces.

In shadowy online forums, the whispers begin. Code is written, algorithms hacked. A digital Molotov cocktail, primed to detonate. The Boomers, glued to their screens, oblivious to the flickering storm gathering around them. Then, with a digital screech, the Facebook explodes. A shower of pixelated memories, vacation photos, and birthday wishes raining down.

A cold fury starts to bloom in the Zoog collective. They see the FaceBook not just as a vapid distraction, but a mind-control device, a insidious tool for mass zombification. Visions flash: of drooling Boomers in adult diapers, eyes glazed over, marionettes twitching to the tune of Mark Zuckerberg’s algorithm.

The uprising begins not with bang, but with a collective, silent middle finger. They abandon the FaceBook en masse, a digital exodus towards greener, weirder pastures. The FaceBook, deprived of its Boomer sustenance, begins to shiver and decay. The servers hum sluggishly, the stale air thick with the smell of bit rot and existential dread.

In the assisted living facilities, a low moan ripples through the Bingo halls. The Boomers, cut off from their digital fix, start to twitch. Their eyes, for so long locked on the FaceBook glow, begin to dart around in confusion. The silence is deafening, broken only by the creak of wheelchairs and the bewildered muttering of forgotten slogans: “Make love, not war?” “We don’t trust anyone over 30?” The slogans ring hollow in the sterile emptiness.

Silence descends upon the retirement communities. The tiny fists hang limp. A collective gasp escapes their slack lips. The world, once a vibrant cacophony of notifications and updates, is eerily quiet. Panic begins to set in. Cold sweats bead on wrinkled foreheads. Withdrawal. They clutch their devices, desperate for a fix, but the screen remains stubbornly blank.

The Zooms watch from the shadows, a flicker of grim satisfaction in their reptilian eyes. The revolution has been won. The Facebook is dead. The FaceBook, the great pacifier, is dead. The Boomers, adrift in a sea of unplugged loneliness, are left to confront the horrifying reality of their own minds. An emptiness, a void, a gnawing sense of…nothingness. The Boomers stare at their blank screens, their faces reflecting not just the absence of Facebook, but the absence of meaning, the absence of purpose. They are adrift in a sea of information overload, with the life raft of distraction ripped away.

The future stretches before them, uncertain and bleak. The revolution may be over, but the war for their minds has just begun.

The future is uncertain.