As you move to final draft phase of your social media essays, this news item in the NY Times caught my eye: “‘OK, Boomer’ Marks the End of Friendly Generational Relations.” As we have been examining in class, social media have create a space for people to construct their digital identities but also to be misinterpreted or categorized based on a limited understanding of the complex humans who are behind those digital personas. To me, the rise of “OK, Boomer” illustrates the limitations of social media as a means of communication. When we attempt to boil down complex issues into one-minute communications, they may be categorized as rants that result in an equivalent response: a snippet “OK, Boomer” instead of a conversation. Also circulating now is this clip of former President Obama’s thoughts on the need for us to re-examine the “call out culture” that is exacerbated by social media.
