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“Ok Boomer”

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/teens-use-ok-boomer-fire-back-older-generations-criticisms-n1073331

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/ok-boomer-fox-trademark-234917772.html

https://edition.cnn.com/2019/11/06/asia/new-zealand-ok-boomer-trnd/index.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OK_Boomer

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/10/31/why-gen-z-millennials-using-ok-boomer-baby-boomers/4107782002/

As we have studied in class, memes are one of the best representations of popularity and how popularity grows in social networks. The growth of the phrase “OK boomer” follows this rich get richer trend, as it has been used of 44.6 million times million times on social media site Tik Tok, and referenced many other times on twitter, Instagram, Facebook and more.

How did it start? While it is hard to pin down the origin of the phrase/meme “Ok Boomer”, people think it originated on Tik Tok: “The term, a viral meme among millennials and Generation Z, exploded this year on the TikTok social media app, where countless mocking videos are calling out what young people perceive as out-of-touch Baby Boomers and their patronizing opinions.” A few viewers with high visibility started by posting videos slamming “Boomers” in retaliation for comments made about the GenZ population having “peter pan syndrome” and not wanting to grow up. These few high visibility posts, or “rich” posts” encouraged thousands of other users to also comment on the phrase “OK Boomer” causing the phrase to gain popularity exponentially fast.

The phrase “OK Boomer” is now so popular that Fox has tried to trademark it as a TV show name. They are now running into issues with this trademark as it is such a popular phrase that it is almost impossible to lay claims to it. Additionally, it has gain such popularity that it is now being used by policy makers to as a slur against older decision makers: “A 25-year-old New Zealand lawmaker giving a speech supporting a climate crisis bill was heckled by an older member of Parliament. Her witty response baffled her audience, to the delight of millennials everywhere.” Every time that that phrase is used in a high visibility manner, it just gets even more popular and even “richer”.

 

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