Not OK boomer, short people & no vaccine for crazy
Dear Rachel,
For years, I’ve tried to articulate the behavior of certain boomers on social media platforms. There’s an excessive use of photographs with motivational quotes scripted over them, aggressively misleading political posts, plenty of one-sided conversations, and pithy lines attributed to Mark Twain or Abraham Lincoln or Mother Teresa. But I can’t unify this into a single theory. Any ideas you can contribute?
– Strung-Out Theory
Dear Stephen Hawking,
Maybe I have culled those particular boomers from my feeds. But what I have noticed is a serious uptick in ads for those weirdly specific, endless lists of qualities printed on various t-shirts and other merch. “BORN in AUGUST, blonde-haired badass, LOVES TO RIDE, gave my life to jesus, one fierce MAMA who you BeTtEr NoT lOoK aT because my MAN loves ME very MUCH (and he bought me this bandana). — Mahatma Gandhi.” Does this fit in your theory?
– Only a hypothesis, Rachel
Dear Rachel,
I’m curious about people that don’t discipline their kids. That seems to be a new trend – aren’t they just making tomorrow’s problems?
– Parent Trap
Dear Today’s Problem,
There have always been lenient parents. I’d prefer lenient parents to ones who beat their kids. There is never a reason to beat a kid. But there is a reason to beat a letter-writer, and that’s when they make their letters so short that we here at Ask Rachel have to fluff up our answers to fill the space. We have word counts, people! If I don’t fill my allotted space, then the paper has to sell more ads. And if the paper doesn’t sell more ads, then it has to cut pages. And if the paper has to cut pages, that means you get less “Flash in the Pan,” or less “La Vida Local,” or maybe the horoscopes have to go. Don’t make us cut the horoscopes. It’s why people pick up the paper.
– Yesterday’s solution, Rachel
Dear Rachel,
My mother has turned into an anti-vaxxer. Not anti-*every*-vaccine, just anti-Covid vaccines. She doesn’t want to get it? Fine. I can respect that. But she’s anti-vax in that she criticizes everyone who *does* get it for then *daring* to go in public as if they’re “invincible.” *Even if* they still wear a mask and distance. This makes me think there are many layers of crazy underneath this one. Any idea how I can peel those back and destroy them?
– Daughter of Crazy
Dear Doomed by Genes,
Someone on the internet, probably Mark Twain, said that it’s hard to win an argument with a smart person, but impossible to win with a stupid one. Not calling yo mama stupid, but her thinking sure is. Layers of cray-cray for sure. The problem is, you can’t burn a rotten onion. Nor do they fall far from onion-trees. As Deepak Chopra says, “Enjoy your life now, because those layers are a-coming for you.”
– Cry cry cry, Rachel
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