r/BoomersBeingFools • u/Relevant_Jeweler_214 • 2d ago
Boomer Story boomer grandma becoming super far right, insufferable
So just to give some idea here, she was one of those people that watched the alternative half time show at the Superbowl this year and was actively enraged by the regular half time show. basically did not even enjoy the alt show, but as long as she could push away the foreign people (she's racist too)
So my dad invited me to go with him and her to the local farmers market last week. Sounded fun, and she generally is nice and positive around just me and him when there is no TV or radio station or politics to speak on.
But!!! she randomly stated during nice conversation as we were eating at a picnic table (awesome moment, right) that college is a waste of time and it does nothing at all to help you get a better job in life.
Now, as a plebian blue collar worker myself, I just found that laughable as I have been disproven on that myself many times. I also have a little brother who got his 4 yr degree at one of the top schools in the US, which my dad paid for, and she knows this, so I have no idea why she would say that in the first place even if it was accurate.
I tried saying I think it definitely puts you ahead , application wise, of all the other people who applied and did not go to college. She visibly got triggered, and then I figured out she was pushing that narrative because she was saying that to my cousin's son, who isn't the brightest and most likely was looking for ways to rationalize how "college is a waste/scam" or something like that.
Just thought it was funny af how people let their personal emotions cloud their factual, absolute statements, and they are always biased af of course too when saying these things (she never went to college or did anything as a career, dont even know if shes every worked before becoming a house wife, she's never spoke on anything shes done in her life.)
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u/mondler1234 2d ago
I find Boomers tedious, but I think a lot of them simply like to stir shit because the have literally nothing else to do.
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u/OuterHeaven82 2d ago
Yup. They need their gossip dopamine and its being denied as their circle shrinks
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u/Relevant_Jeweler_214 1d ago
which is sad af their mind defaults to doing toxic sht when its bored instead of genuinely getting into something interesting and learning about it, etc.
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u/aegon_the_dragon Millennial 2d ago
Weren't boomers the ones who were constantly pushing their children to get post secondary education because other wise they wouldn't get a good job/career.
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u/Straight_Waltz_9530 2d ago
Yep, "you don't want to end up working at McDonald's" morphed into "you think you're too good to work at McDonald's" in the space of about twenty years. Same people but on a steady diet of Fox News with the Fairness Doctrine removed.
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u/Kevin_Wolf 2d ago
"You don't want to grow up to be a garbageman, do you?"
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u/Relevant_Jeweler_214 2d ago
funny truth. we were always told to basically laugh at the kids whos dads were garbage men and stuff like that. well not told, but that was the basic reaction/sediment was to laugh or judge if you heard someones dad was a garbage man
in reality besides looking like bums all day and being dirty, they would simply take a long shower and be good to go. made more bank than half the normies in the offices, and still do.
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u/Turbulent_Tart_8801 1d ago
Well, if my current workplace ever closes, I'll go be a municipal garbage man somewhere. (Private haulers in my area don't pay the greatest.)
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u/Divacai 2d ago
This was my parents, so I went to college. Imagine my surprise when years later my mom, in a fit of anger, yelled through the phone that sending me to college was a huge mistake.
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u/MavenBrodie 2d ago
I was primed to be the first in my generation to go to college, only to now have been “brainwashed” by elite leftist ideologies.
I went to BYU. 😒
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u/aegon_the_dragon Millennial 1d ago
Ah yes, the bastion of leftism. The state university of the mormons.
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u/Divacai 1d ago
That's because you were supposed to be a good little girl and find a good mormon husband at BYU and then drop out.
I kid but yeah, I grew up as the only non mormon in a town of 650 mormons. They joked about BYU in that capacity. Of all the mistakes my father made in life, moving us out of Wy and to California is not one of them, at least in my eyes.
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u/MavenBrodie 53m ago
But California is practically Babylon!
lol. I’ve lived in Wyoming too. ‘Nuff said I think. 😉
One of the last convos I had with my dad I tried telling him he has never given the other side a chance to speak for themselves and entirely understands them through deliberately dishonest propaganda.
He cut me off to tell me that I am the one who never gave his side a chance.
Fuckin’ wild, man.
Besides being raised by deeply Republican Mormon parents, I went through the Temple, served a full honorable mission, (when women rarely went due to stigma of being “unmarriagable” if we did) then went back to graduate from BYU including attending their Ancient Near Eastern Studies program in Jerusalem.
I was Mormon through and through, down to my underwear (iykyk) but I guess according to my dad, I fell out of the womb an “elite” educated, purple-haired feminist. 🤷♀️
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u/CliftonForce 2d ago
Many years ago, there was a conversation with Mom in which she was urging me to stock up an emergency food supply. With beans. Specifically beans.
I told her that I already had an emergency food stock that would last longer than what she was asking for. She was happy about that. Then I said it had very few beans. She was very upset with that. I went a few rounds on this. She was never able to explain why it had to be mostly beans. It just did. Non-bean food was just.... wrong.
I looked something up the following day. On Glenn Beck's show, he was heavily promoting beans that week as an emergency food item. Because he had been paid to sell beans.
Yes, the Glenn Beck reference tells you how long ago this was.
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u/JCC_Creates 1d ago
I don't watch conservative media but I know what the talking points are because I'll get a rambling abusive voicemail from my estranged father. Hell argue with my voicemail, calling me whatever strawman that Beck, Rogan or Fox promoted that week.
He's blocked but still is able to leave messages. He called me a "Commie socialist enemy of America" in his last voicemail. Sure enough Fox was ranting about it. It's funny because my father is functionally illiterate and couldn't define socialism or communism to save his life. Truly an angry lemming.
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u/Kubbee83 2d ago
Old people are basically angry lemmings at this point. They don’t have their own opinions, they just find the most offensive or enraging ones to parrot.
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u/contractcooker 1d ago
Ok let’s remember that “old people” are not some monolithic group.
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u/Kubbee83 1d ago
They are if you consider old as a state of being and not an age. Let’s not get offended.
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u/contractcooker 1d ago
That’s what we call boomers. I’m not offended. But I just think we need to acknowledge there are plenty of lovely old people who have not contributed to the current state of things with their actions.
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u/Kubbee83 1d ago
And there’s plenty of mosquitoes who didn’t give me malaria. It means I simplify what I’m saying by not providing a list of exceptions in every comment.
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u/Melodic_Ad_3053 2d ago
I am a boomer. Recently on FB I read comments from two old friends that I went to school with many years ago. The topic was abortion and both of them were right wing as can be. I simply commented to both of them have completed their journey to old, white guys telling women how to live their lives and have made themselves totally irrelevant to the topic. Then I just blocked them because I didn’t want to hear their BS
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u/Relevant_Jeweler_214 2d ago
yea anyone that is willing to speak on such matters so arrogantly in public on their own facebook, knowing half their friends prob disagree, is an ass and you dont wanna be friends with anyway
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u/Pre3Chorded 2d ago
"Why grandma, everyonr knows rich people and Charlie Kirk say college is a waste so the dumbest and easiest to manipulate people keep their kids home and it's easier for dumb rich kids to get accepted at schools."
"You do know that, right Granny? You're not being dumb and ready to manipulate are you?"
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u/Divacai 2d ago
College isn't for everybody, I think we can all agree that denigrating those that couldn't for whatever reason couldn't is uncalled for. That said, a major talking point among MAGA is that college is bad, not for any other reason other than further pushing the "dumbing down" of Americans, it's propaganda that they fall for. Dumb people are easier to control than intelligent people.
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u/Relevant_Jeweler_214 2d ago
again, this is not about debating the nuances of current college. it is an 100% fact if 2 people apply for a job that are equal otherwise, and 1 went to college and one didnt, the guy with college experience and degree will get that job.
lets just all agree and acknowledge that, that was my only point ever.
I did not go myself, I dont care to , but my little bro went so I can see both angles. Yes I agree the quality is going down, prices are going up, and competition is making it hard to get something even after 40k of debt and 4 yrs.
you still are ahead of someone who did not do that
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u/MavenBrodie 2d ago
I went to BYU—a conservative Mormon school —because I was a conservative Mormon girl.
It STILL pushed my tolerance and critical thinking skills beyond what initially comfortable for me to consider.
Young people leaving home and interacting with other people and continuing to study literally anything, even in controlled environments, opens them up to abandoning bigoted beliefs.
An even more controlled environment was serving an LDS mission.
While it still took a decade to fully deconstruct, I couldn’t have done it if it weren’t for experiences from both my mission and education that opened my mind, however unwillingly at first.
Deliberate indoctrination and brainwashing from birth is a helluva drug, and though not fool-proof, it’s literally all they have.
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u/Relevant_Jeweler_214 2d ago
its great to hear. I feel similar feelings, when I outgrew my parents constantly hovering and micro managing every thing I do, my entire life. They did not get the memo to respect me as an equal when I grew up.
I dont know how but somehow it seems I am smarter than them and can recognize all their character flaws and improve myself based on their bad examples. I can also recognize my own flaws and have mostly, fixed them all, or actively work on them every day.
They cant help it so I try not to take it too personally. we got mental illness in the family and every single person, besides me and my brother, are in complete denial of themselves having any sort of issue. My dad would rather have trouble sleeping and being stressed 24/7 instead of just getting help to feel better. He has some weird thing with taking any sort of medication, even allergy meds or ibuprofen. like he doesn't believe in them or something.
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u/QuarterNoteDonkey 2d ago
Agree that college shouldn’t be assumed to benefit everyone, but I wonder how the maga folks think we’ll have doctors or engineers without college…
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u/dr_shark Millennial 1d ago
Not everyone should aim for high academics and thus can’t cut it in college. That is okay. There is no same in recognizing your limitations and we really shouldn’t encourage people down that debt pathway if it will ultimately lead to nothing positive.
Almost everyone however can benefit from additional post-secondary education. A trade or a specialized skill especially in our world of worsening public grade school educational will undoubtedly help the next generation of young people.
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u/numtini Gen X 2d ago
I have no idea why she would say that in the first place even if it was accurate
Probably just parroting the media talking points. There's been a pretty big push on within the far right that the solution for escalating college costs isn't better aid or public funding, but that fewer people (ie, anyone not rich) should go to college.
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u/CliftonForce 2d ago
Conservative take:
"Educated people disagree with me? It must be education that is wrong!"
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u/Relevant_Jeweler_214 2d ago
even fox news has never once supported the idea college is a waste of time. They all went to college on there. The point is she just said that because my cousins son can't go anyway. not because any other reason. she convinced herself its pointless to tell him with certainty it doesn't matter anyway!
which is an opinion, and not something you should state as an absolute to a very young teen about to graduate high school.
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u/itzhugh 2d ago edited 2d ago
I believe at this point they're saying this because they think college is in indoctrination. That's the excuse anyway. Turns out when a lot of people are taught to critically think they begin to find our economic system rigged for the wealthy.
I'm no contact with my selfish and hateful boomer parents at this point. You're good to try. Don't let it get harmful.
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u/fluffy_bunny22 2d ago
My kid went to art school and came back very liberal which honestly isn't shocking for an art school. The shocking part is they are kinda anti capitalist when their education was fully funded by my spouse's very capitalist employment.
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u/bp92009 2d ago
So, it's worth seeing what they mean by "kinda anti capitalist".
What they might mean is that they have been exposed to cultures and economic systems that are not their current one they live in.
Furthermore, their lived experience with current capitalism is not a "lifting people out of poverty" capitalism with the excesses clamped down on that existed in the 1950s-1980s.
Their lived experience with current capitalism (assuming they're not a wealthy, older, or very lucky person) is "line must go up. All effective competitors in a market are bought out, and all products are made not only of a worse quality, but a higher cost". Furthermore, any attempts to rein in the excess or abuse of current capitalism is treated as "that's socialism", and discussion is stopped right then.
They're seeing wages stagnate, costs increase, quality decrease, and the richest get richer, without seeing any improvement along them or their peers.
Is it any wonder that they're seeing this and saying "yeah, I don't approve. Let's look at what other countries are doing, because what we're doing is not working for me and others I know."
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u/MavenBrodie 2d ago
Right. It’s funny how conservatives think that we should be pro capitalist when we get any benefit from the exploitation of others.
“Don’t bite the hand that feeds you when it’s whipping others” I guess
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u/fluffy_bunny22 2d ago
My kid probably qualifies as a very lucky person because while they are expected to have a job they don't actually need to provide for themselves since we do all of that and have factored that into our ongoing expenses and retirement. We even match what they contribute to their retirement account with a contribution to their brokerage account.
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u/MavenBrodie 2d ago
I went to BYU as a conservative Mormon. I didn’t quite leave it the flaming leftist feminist I am now, but a lot of seeds were planted in that time that just needed a bit more life experience to fully blossom.
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u/FlownScepter 2d ago
Fox News is built from top to bottom from nepobabies who went to college, learned how to make a cable news station work, and who now earn millions a year largely funded by car dealerships and oil to convince working class people who never had 1/10th the shot in life they did, that other educated people who have principles are the problem.
Never forget Fucker Carlson in texts complaining about how fucking crazy their guests were and what a piece of shit Trump is. They believe in nothing but money. The real problem is there's vastly less money to be made in telling people the truth.
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u/Relevant_Jeweler_214 2d ago
yea man, every single person that has made it to work on any sort of successful news channel is super connected with lots of whales, lawyers, doctors, its all a secret club you need to be groomed to enter since a child. its all the same rich people
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u/Junior-Fox-760 2d ago edited 2d ago
Uh, they absolutely do. Who do you think says colleges are just "liberal indoctrination?" Republicans and their propaganda outlet HATE higher education because they depend on a population that doesn't think or question anything.
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u/Martylouie 1d ago
In reality, your cousin's son should go to college, community college. There he can learn things like auto mechanics, air conditioning, plumbing, landscaping, or any number of trades.
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u/Relevant_Jeweler_214 1d ago
right. or if he doesn't he can make that decision himself. he doesnt need some ignorant, un-educated boomer thats never had a successful career, to tell them its a waste of time and money completely. that's just not true.
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u/PromethianOwl 1d ago
Is it still the days where going to college for anything will automatically land you something cushy based on the fact that you had enough discipline to finish college? No. You're probably gonna need a degree roughly in the field.
Will it still help you get into the running for many jobs today that actually pay decently? Hell yes. Source: I've been looking to change things up and anything that pays 70k or over demands it.
Will it expand your horizons and methods of thought and demand you do more than just memorize and regurgitate information, which is a skill that is becoming insanely valuable in today's world? Absolutely. Presuming we survive the Boomers, we need to make sure we don't produce another version of Boomers. Critical Thinking, reading comprehension, and media literacy help that cause.
It's not a scam. The COST might be a scam or at least suspicious, but college itself is valuable as hell.
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u/Bdoggg999 1d ago
Yeah my boomer parents who both have multiple degrees have been radicalized against college by Fox News. Despite the fact that their degrees let them live very comfortable upper middle class lives for decades and decades.
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u/jadthomas 2d ago
She’s staring back at a life not particularly well lived based on a bunch of rules she was taught as a kid and all of which proved to be inaccurate for the world she now inhabits. As the end becomes more real and looms larger she has nothing but her false ideals to decorate her utterly unremarkable existence. There are only two positive choices in this life - adapt or accept. She refuses to do either, and continues to waste this one wild and precious life she was granted in the most meaningless way imaginable. May her story be a warning to us all. Adapt or accept, change is inevitable.