I’m 69 years old, and I think I’ve stumbled onto something.
Boomers and Gen Z are the same fucking people.
Seriously.
We’re separated by 50 years, completely different technology, completely different economics, completely different childhoods—
and somehow these crazy bastards turned out just like us.
Think about it.
When Boomers were young, we looked at the world our parents handed us and said:
“What the fuck is this?”
Vietnam.
Watergate.
Civil rights.
Women’s rights.
The sexual revolution.
The environmental movement.
We questioned authority.
We questioned government.
We questioned corporations.
We questioned our parents.
We questioned everything.
And now Gen Z looks around and says:
“What the fuck is this?”
Same question.
Different shit.
And here’s where I started feeling this strange kinship with them.
Because they didn’t grow up in my world.
They can’t even imagine some of it.
When I was a kid, you left the house in the morning—
and nobody knew where the fuck you were.
Think about that.
No cellphone.
No GPS.
No AirTag.
No Life360.
No mother staring at a screen watching a little blue dot going:
“Why is John behind the 7-Eleven?”
Your mother had one tracking device.
She opened the front door and screamed:
“JOHN!”
And somehow that shit worked.
You’d hear your name from six blocks away.
“OH SHIT, THAT’S MOM.”
And you ran home.
Gen Z hears this like I’m describing fucking Narnia.
“You mean your parents couldn’t contact you?”
No.
“What if something happened?”
Something happened!
That’s how we got stories.
And we had privacy.
Real privacy.
When I was 22 and did something stupid—
maybe six people knew about it.
Four of them were drunk.
Two don’t remember.
I’m fucking clean.
Gen Z does something stupid at 22—
it’s in the cloud forever.
Their future employer can find it.
Their future spouse can find it.
Their future children can find it.
Some kid they haven’t even conceived yet is going to be sitting at breakfast in 2047 saying:
“Mom, what’s this video of you licking a toilet seat during spring break?”
Good luck explaining that one.
And economically, our experiences were different too.
When I was young, the basic idea was:
Get a job.
Work hard
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