30-Year-Old Boomer

About

30-Year-Old Boomer is a character spread on 4chan mocking older millennials who enjoy things that are considered to be out of touch with younger millennials, particularly in regards to video games. The phrase generally appears in a greentext story based on a snowclone reading "that 30 year old boomer who X," accompanied by a specific Brainlet Wojak variation.

Origin

On April 7th, 2018, an anonymous 4chan^[1] /biz/ board user coined the expression "30-year-old boomer" (post shown below, left). On April 23rd, 2018, an anonymous 4chan^[2] /biz/ user used a variation of Brainlet Wojak as an illustration for the "30-year-old boomer" (shown below, right)

>that 30 year old boomer who trades cryptos."

On May 1st, 2018, an image of the Brainlet Wojak wearing sunglasses was first used in a /biz/^[3] thread to illustrate the meme (shown below, left). On May 2nd, 2018, an anonymous 4chan^[4] user posted the image of the Brainlet Wojak with the caption ">that 30 year old boomer that thinks arena shooters are good" (shown below, left), marking one of the first posts associating the meme with gamers.

On May 4th, 2018, an anonymous /biz/^[5] user posted the first known image of a Brainlet Wojak wearing sunglasses and holding a can of Monster energy drink (post and image shown below, left and right). The image proceeded to become closely associated with the meme in the following months.

Spread

Over the following month, multiple variations of the character appeared on 4chan, particularly its /biz/ and /v/ boards. Variations of the character showed him drinking a Monster energy drink or wearing a VR headset (examples shown below).

As of June 15th, 2018, there are 22 pages of 4chan posts containing the "30 year old boomer."^[7] The spread of the character led to the creation of a Facebook page devoted to the meme that gained over 100 followers as of June 15th, 2018, and over 41,900 followers as of January 22nd, 2020.^[8]

Various Examples

Zoomer

A Generation Z variation of the character referred to as a "Zoomer" is frequently referenced on various 4chan image boards, where he is depicted as a young man with an undercut haircut wearing glasses (shown below, left). On June 27th, an anonymous 4chan user posted a crying variation of the Zoomer character along with the caption ">daaad turn off the lawn mower I'm trying to play Fortnite" (shown below, right).

Templates

Search Interest

External References