“Stop acting like such a Karen.”
“Maybe you should work harder, you lazy millennial.”
“Okay boomer.”
This conversation never happened. It’s a gross simplification of a growing generational divide in this country. It’s been simplified to a near meme status, it’s almost funny. That’s why terms like Karen live on the internet, populating twitter and other social networks- because they’re a meme-able way of expressing an ideal.
They’re tongue and cheek expressions aiming to articulate a larger cultural phenomenon- a deep divide between generational values. These memes are symptoms of a greater problem: the inability to establish productive, cross-generational communication.
