Ask a Boomer Anything

Boomer here. Old enough to remember everything in the image plus more.

Ask me anything about the 70's or the 80's. Technology and politics are a specialty.

Other urls found in this thread:

youtube.com/watch?v=ZBJXtTIbDTo
youtube.com/watch?v=JAd0sx3E2eI
twitter.com/NSFWRedditGif

How were the 70s under jimmy carter?

Why would you want to roleplay as an old piece of shit?

How firm is Your handshake?

Father was born in 1954 and has no clue how to work a computer, stop lying buddy you arent a boomer

Why did you think globalism was a good idea?
Why did you give away all the careers?
Why did you make college almost mandatory for success?
Why did you replace the ladder that you climbed up with a broken one for your children?
Why did you make it nearly impossible for your children to follow your path to success?

The carter years were horrible. Imagine trying to buy a home when the prime rate is 20%. Imagine hostages being taken by Iran and the President being too much of a pussy to do anything real about it.

Imagine a president who gets attacked by a rabbit while boating.

And then imagine that he has the balls to go on TV and say that the real problem with America was YOU.

That was the carter years.

Nope, not roll playing.

I never got into the whole firm handshake bullshit.

The personal computer revolution came out at the right time for me to catch it at the beginning.

The first "computer" I used was a teletype machine hooked up to an acoustic modem (at school, they had only 1) , Other than playing around, all you could do is play WUMPUS and Oregon trail.

I think I was in the 8th grade when the TRS-80 came out. It was a groundbreaking machine that took the world by storm, even though it was a love hate relationship.

The cool thing about those times is that every computer had their own operating system. Apple and Microsoft were just another choice at that time.

Did you have any interaction with the unix or ARPANET communities before 1993? What was it like back then? Did the Eternal September actually constitute a sea change like Facebook+iPhones in 2007?

Fot you, what was the best decade you lived in?

> Why did you think globalism was a good idea?

At the end of WW2, America was the only superpower left standing. Though much of this was based on the geographic isolation, we came to believe that it was because our ideals were better than everyone else's.

And as only superpower, we felt the responsibility to keep the world running to prevent another Hitler from coming up.

What became globalism started out as our opening markets for our own goods. Following the war, we were an exporter. It started out as a good deal for America.

> Why did you give away all the careers?

People will have different answers. I personally blame the movie "Wall Street". When the film came out, it was like crack cocaine for a generation looking for their way.

The movie promoted the idea that all that mattered was money, and that morality was a waste of time.

And, as a result, more and more companies decided that they would like making a lot more money by outsourcing their labor to cheap 3rd world countries.

Of course part of it too was that the american consumer had not loyalty to their own nation. They didn't care where something was made. If it was $20 cheaper, they bought it; even though doing so would eventually destroy them.

>Why did you make college almost mandatory for success?

I didn't personally, but for generations it was always a matter of relative education. So, when most people didn't graduate from high school, being a high school grad was a ticket to the fast track. Later, as most people did graduate HS, college became the "ticket".

But it's all BS, of course. In the real world, unless you're in a highly technical field, the only thing that matters is how well you do your job.

> Why did you replace the ladder that you climbed up with a broken one for your children?

See above.

Not personally. The closest thing we had to the internet were BBS (bulletin board systems).

Some dude with a computer and a modem, you would dial in and have access to files and folders he exposed. There were even magazines that printed the phone numbers of some of these popular boards.

Probably the 80's. The 70's were too hippie.

Thank you for your honest answer.
Not like you could have personally done anything about it.
The reality of the situation was far away so few would ever have woken up to it.

I was unfamiliar with the phrase "eternal september", so I had to look it up.

usenet... ya, that was something.

Imagine the internet with no monitoring and no rules at all.

There used to be something called "alt.binaries" that was where pictures were put (speeds were too slow for video for most people).

Thank God the internet wasn't monitored then. You think Sup Forums is bad? some of the shit in alt.binaries would still give me nightmares.

What did you think of the Berlin wall coming down?

Were you in the military?
>stories?

Why are you incapable of driving the speed limit?

A lot of people knew it was happening even then, especially here in the detroit area.

At least one radio station put on an event where they set up a japanese car in a parking lot and let people take a baseball bat to it.

And if you worked for an auto company, you damn well better not try to park a foreign car in their employee lot. There wouldn't be anything left of it.

And no one asked, but probably the best car of the time (at least the most fun to drive) was the 1977 Cutlass Salon.

We used to joke that the only thing it couldn't pass was a gas station.

kek

How racist are you?

I have a memory hole of this. I was working 60 hours per week, and it was before cable TV was readily available, so I missed watching it life.

(that and I was working when OJ had his low speed chase so I missed out on that too)

No, I was between wars. And between wars, the military was always seen as a place fuck ups go when they couldn't get a job in the real world.

For the elderly, it's because their reaction time slows down and their scared.

For me, it's because it's too slow. I normally set the cruise control to 80

Who started the fire, and was it always burning?

Not especially, but some of that has to do with my background.

The first black person I ever saw in person was in High School.

I know it's cool to blame boomers for everything; but I want to go on record.... we didn't start the fire.

alt.binaries was still popular for piracy right up until the birth of Netflix streaming, but I suspect that's a secondary usecase.

Were Italian kids the shitskins at your school?

Has the world been burning since it started turning?

Do you miss the 80s? Wouldn't you say that nowadays, there is degeneracy everywhere. Like feminism has ruined women, loss of faith, loss of traditional values, etc

Do you have any children/grandchildren? If so do you worry about them inheriting a deteriorating civilization?

What are your political views?

Why is most of your generation filled with dumb liberal faggots who are basically the 1960/70's version of today's millenials?

No. In reality it was like the movie "Revenge of the Nerds" and nearly every other 80's teen movie.

The class system revolved around sports. The football players were the "in crowd", and they dated the "cheerleaders".

From a popularity standpoint, they were the 1%, with everyone else just trying to get by without making waves.

At least where I went to school, there weren't any racial segments because we were all white europeans.

Why did the boomer generation do everything they could to destroy the west?

I want to ask you why you're still breathing and taking up space on MY planet.

Tell ya what, grandpa. How about you go back to your interracial marriage and civil rights era, you fucking antique?

Did you vote for Governor George Corley Wallace in 1972? If not, why the fuck are you here?

Asking the real questions

I think every generation eventually misses the decade where they were young.

Yes, I miss the 80's. It was a lot of fun. And you are correct that the country has gone to shit with the SJW's and the rest.

Most of all, I miss being young, lol. Trust me... when you turn 50 you will realize it was a blink of the eye.

You are sort of correct. The boomers are divided into at least two groups. The separation age seems to be those born before 1960 and those after.

I'm on the tail end of the boom, so I can only speak for my group...

we saw our older brothers and sisters as being hippie fuckups with totally unrealistic opinions about the world.

we learned from their mistake. We're the reagan generation and we came out almost as conservative as our parents.

It's funny. Without our money, you would die.

So either you don't know this and you're representative of the brain trust you call your generation;

or you do know this and your suicidal.

Either way it's pretty fucked up. Must be the adhd drugs they put you all on at 5 years old.

Back in the early 60's, the Supreme Court made proficiency tests for employment illegal because "muh racism". After that, employers started looking for a college degree as some kind of indication you were semi-intelligent enough to hire. That spread around until almost everyone wanted to see a diploma in order to get a job.

The good news: College didn't really cost all that much compared to now. I graduated in 1979 and my last year's tuition came to about $4,000 which was also what I paid for my first car, a used 1976 VW Rabbit.

I remember the 72 election, but I was too young to vote.

But I did vote in the quisp vs quake election of 1972

Back then, how racially aware was the average joe?
Did white identity politics die out right after '68?

Nixon was good wasn't he... he was just set up, what he did doesn't compare to shit happens now right?

Wallace didn't run in 1972 because he was shot. You're thinking of 1968 and I was too young to vote but my father voted for him.

There was a push in the 70's to train kids how to treat everyone fairly.

For example, this was a poplar PSA that ran all the time:

youtube.com/watch?v=ZBJXtTIbDTo

I'm not into racial politics myself, so I can't give you too much background on the subject.

>tfw born in 74 and never got to try Quake

Quisp was the fucking shit, though, as I recall, but memory may not be fully correct after all these years.

Nixon was VERY popular. This is the 1972 electoral map, which gives you an idea.

(though the guy he ran against was a total pussy asshole, so any republican was going to win).

The politicians back then were giants. Both parties had a farm system, where no one got the nomination without proving themselves for decades.

Nixon?... titanium balls. He didn't a fuck what anyone thought. Great president in my opinion.

I preferred quisp.

Quake always tasted like honeycomb cereal.

>Nixon was good wasn't he... he was just set up, what he did doesn't compare to shit happens now right?

Pretty much. The press hated Nixon and he hated them right back. Nixon knew the press would twist anything he said, so he gave a lot of speeches on TV to talk directly to the "silent majority". Back then, the networks had to give him air time for these.

When Watergate blew up, there was some news about it every fucking night. I think Nixon lost support because people were just tired of hearing about it all the time and wanted it to just go away.

Nixon was a choirboy compared to Clinton.

>That spread around until almost everyone wanted to see a diploma in order to get a job.

It's kind of funny that society looping back into the whole "education barely matters for jobs" mindset. Degrees are becoming more and more worthless, and 70% of getting a job nowadays is knowing someone.

thanks roger stone

Do you feel guilty that your generation screwed the generations here now and yet to be born?

A lot of it is that the college standards have fallen too.

100 years ago, you couldn't get into college unless you spoke Latin, Greek, and had a working knowledge of most philosophy and literature.

>my jewish friend called me prejudiced
>comments and ratings disabled
Haha
>I'm not into racial politics myself, so I can't give you too much background on the subject.

Considering the demographic situation back then (no real pressure) and the lack of internet, I can definitely see why you wouldn't be too into that.

The biggest mistake of my generation was having the balls cut off your generation when you were born.

Somewhere along the line, our children came to believe that life is easy, fair; that they are somehow owed something by their family or society; and that their needs must magically be fulfilled.

Every generation has had to work at it. Yours will too.

Ya, where I grew up, we were all like the guy in the movie "blast from the past"

youtube.com/watch?v=JAd0sx3E2eI

The whole Tom Eagleton mess really fucked up McGovern, not that he had much of a chance anyway.

For those who have no idea what I'm talking about: At the Democrat convention, the nominated Thomas Eagleton to be George McGovern's running mate. A couple of weeks later, it was found out that Eagleton had undergone shock treatments for depression. After that, Eagleton was given the heave-ho and they brought in Kennedy family shill and crony Sargent Shriver (Maria Shriver's father) to fill in.

What is your opinion on Reaganomics?

That and McGovern's pledge to end the war at any cost.

While most people by that point were against the war, they didn't want to throw it away and admit that their children died for nothing.

It was bullshit, but even bullshit sounded good compared with the carter years.

Most people don't understand that reagan didn't start out as an icon.

When he first got elected, people thought he was too old and possibly stupid.

The early days of his administration was just treading water.

What turned it for him was getting shot.

Aside from surviving, the way he handled it (tough, joking), endeared him to the american public.

That's when the real reagan legend started.

Not us, the people you're thinking about were the red-diaper babies, the generation that preceeded us. They got themselves into teaching so that they could avoid the Vietnam draft. That's why colleges are full of commies. (((They))) invented Cultural Marxism. All this insanity you hear today comes from that, almost a straight line.

If you want to blame us for something, blame us for disco.

Do you have a favorite all time movie OP?

Several.

Anyone remember this

Peace with honor. Oh yeah, and Linebacker II.

No

And that is why I identify myself with Gen Z

t. born in 1998

What were they?

I hope so, I was in my 40's.

Try one harder... anyone remember this?

>

nixon = vietnam duh

more bombs dropped than all of wwii

updated version

I was about 5 miles away from that.

I'll stick with just the political ones...

All the President's Men
Wag the Dog
Primary Colors
Dick
Bullworth

I woke up to that.
>7am in AZ
>woken from a dead sleep by my mother screaming and calling me to come look at the TV
>watched the second plane hit live
Fuck Muslims.

Kids these days...

... if we were to give them a radioactive toy, somehow WE'D be the problem.

...

That was the great thing about that time. We had toys that could seriously hurt you if you weren't careful.

GenXer here. You know anything about the jewish quesition? Did people ever discuss that in the 70's or 80's?
I never heard shit until the internet.

>
Falling Down
Runaway Train
Seven Samurai
2001
La Strada
Clockwork Orange
Midnight Cowboy
Good Bad Ugly
Lawrence of Arabia
Fiddler on the Roof
Star Trek original tv series
Twilight Zone tv series
Dr No

Jim jones says do bongs now!

>t live

yeah i forgot we could have won if not for libs hahahaha

Many people don't know that this is where the phrase "drink the kool aid" came from.

Also that the phrase "jump the shark" for a TV show came from Happy Days

Favorite Western TV show?

If there was anything, people kept it to themselves. Anyone who talked openly was labeled a crackpot or worse. Remember, we had only three TV networks and maybe a couple of local TV stations if we were lucky. Everything was heavily bluepilled.

We were.

The Combined Action Patrol program turned the tide of the war, and probably would have won it.

But the political will to fight wore out at home.

If you're OP, did you know about this as it was happening? were there news broadcasts about what Jones was up to?

The Rifleman with Chuck Connors. Never got into Gunsmoke. Watched Bonanza every Sunday.

Were girls around college age as big as sluts they are now?


Also did you see the Apollo 11 landing ,. and in bw/color?

Until 1978 with the miniseries "Holocaust" came out (I think on NBC)

LBJ started Vietnam you retarded fuck.

The first time I heard of Jonestown was after the suicide. It was big news on all of the news networks and in the newspapers.


My parents got us all out of bed to watch the landing. It was in black and white.

can you give us an account of what it was like after Kennedy's assassination? were there a lot of crackpot theories?

Before my time.

That thing that heated up the plasti-goop got seriously hot as hell. It's good to see other oldfags here

>You think Sup Forums is bad? some of the shit in alt.binaries would still give me nightmares.
Examples?

But the 1979 house committee on assassinations was a joke. They went into it thinking there was a conspiracy, so they let themselves get fooled by fake audio "evidence"

Am I being detained?

Let's put it to you this way... the "dark web" used to just be the web.

>Were girls around college age as big as sluts they are now?

Probably. One thing that was really different was there was none of this piercings or tattoos/tramp stamp shit. Disgusting.

>Also did you see the Apollo 11 landing ,. and in bw/color?

Well, the TV feed was only in B&W, so nobody saw it in color. Also, you couldn't really see much because the contrast was so high that Armstrong was a silhouette. I think they cleaned that up later.

A lot of the contrast problem was because it was being broadcast in Kinescope, where they are pointing a camera at a video monitor and broadcasting that.

christ no wonder there was such a huge surge in cancer rates.

We didn't find out until a day or two later when the reporters got down there. And yes, that's where the term "drink the Kool-Aid" came from, although it was actually cyanide laced Flavor-Aid, Kool-Aid's competitor.

Yeah burned my fingers more than a few times. Those molds got really hot.

I used to spend a lot of time on usenet, and you're right, it really was a lot like the wild, wild west back then. Sup Forums about 8-9 years ago was something similar, but not as crackpot nutty or as anarchistic as usenet used to be.

I am even older than you senpai. We had the jim jones graffiti i posted earlier all over campus. I do not disagree with anything you have told these kids.

Reagan being shot changed everything even though I thought at the time of his election George H.W. would have been the better candidate.

At that time the country wanted anyone but Carter.

But there aren't really any parallels to today, I cannot draw a single one between then and now. We trusted Walter Cronkite and the rest of the media then. Now you cannot trust any of them, and there are more of them.

You're alright, oldfag.

what do you think of an ancap society