How Old Is the "30-Year-Old Boomer"?

For the past several months, a relaxed, unshaven and slightly embarrassing Wojak (a.k.a Feels Guy) has been circulating around 4chan's /v/ board. This is the "30-Year-Old Boomer", a parody character somewhat akin to its Nintendo Switch-loving cousin Soyboy Wojak. But instead of getting jazzed about the latest bing bing wahoo game and wearing a big dopey smile, this particular lad is all about that normie life, and more specifically, as celebrated in the American suburbia around the turn of the new millennium: He mows the lawn on his John Deere and throws a barbecue in the backyard while blasting AC/DC. He likes to get amped up on Monster Energy drinks and play Quake.

Like other memorable Wojak that capture the essence of today's cultural generation, the "30-Year-Old boomer" seems to be a spot-on caricature of that late-millennial guy whom we are supposedly familiar with. In this case, it would be "the Aging Man Child of the ‘80s Who Moved to the Suburbs and Started a Family."

If you frequent Know Your Meme, it’s no secret that this Wojak has been received favorably by the community, yours truly. But there's something about the character that doesn't add up, something that has bothered me for some time:

He cannot be 30 years old.

For this character to be 30, he would have had to been born between 1987 and 1988. Upon further examining the arithmetic behind the lore, if you will, it becomes rather obvious that the character must have been a product of an earlier time. What is the more likely age of the so-called "30-Year-Old Boomer," then? Let's take a look at the evidence.

Exhibit A: His "Shitposting" Son

One of the most popular 30-Year-Old Boomer parodies portraying him as a “morning person” involves him waking up his son at 10:00 A.M on a Saturday by revving up the lawn mower. Rudely awaken, the son begs his dad, the supposedly 30-Year-Old Boomer, to give it a rest because he was "up all night shitposting." The casual manner in which his son uses the word "shitposting" indicates that he is likely in his mid-teens, at the least. In this scenario, our 30-Year-Old Boomer would have had his son at age of 15 to 16, a story clearly not unheard of but statistically improbable considering today’s challenges in starting a family and buying a home for American adults under 35. For this supposedly late-Millennial manchild to own a house and raise a teenage son in the comfort of a Suburban home, it is plausible that our "30-Year-Old Boomer" would be at least 7-10 years older.

Exhibit B: His Quake

Another signature trope surrounding the 30-Year-Old Boomer is his apparent obsession with video games from the mid-late 90s. Examples of the character have him espousing the virtues of games like Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (1998). For whatever reason, one of the 30-Year-Old Boomer's favorite games is Quake, a first-person shooter franchise first released in 1996.

Were the character born in 1988, that would mean he would have been eight-years-old when the game came out, and given the violence in Quake, which became a subject of controversy upon release, it's difficult to imagine even the most liberal parent letting their eight-year-old play such a violent computer game. The more likely scenario is that the 30-Year-Old Boomer discovered Quake a few years later as a teenager in the early 2000s, which would put the "30-Year-Old Boomer" at least roughly 3-5 years older.

Exhibit C: AC/DC

Arguably the best part of the 30-Year-Old Boomer is his love of AC/DC, particularly their song "Thunderstruck." Several parody images and videos show the guy rocking out to the track while mowing his lawn.

Other edits of the character depict him as being a big '80s metal fan in general (example shown below). Granted, loving an era of music does not necessarily mean one grew up in that era, but the other evidence suggests that the 30-Year-Old Boomer must at least have been aware enough of '80s metal during the '80s to have an impact on his life. "Thunderstruck was released in 1990. In the below example, we see the 30-Year-Old Boomer in an Iron Maiden shirt, and the most seminal Iron Maiden albums were released in the early '80s.

While its difficult to guess the character's age based on his music taste, one can assume the character's love of hair metal as opposed to dominant genres of the late 90s and early 2000s like alt rock, grunge, and pop punk at least made him an outcast among his peers. That, or he grew up when this type of music was more popularly accepted, which would make him born at the latest in the late '70s as opposed to the late '80s.

Conclusion

Based on my painstaking sociocultural assessment of the 30-Year-Old Boomer, this Wojak was probably born around 1980, putting his age closer to 40 than 30. That would offer a plausible explanation for his curious roots in the Gen-X pop culture and his shitposting teenage son.

To be fair, the age ranges of these iconic cultural generations aren’t always clearly defined, and sure, the age of the "30-Year old Boomer" was likely never meant to be taken literally. As the meme evolved, it changed to show how things once considered youthful and hip went out of style, the same way things that once seemed hip to the Boomer generation went out of style. It's a humorously grim reminder that the things millennials like now will one day go the same route. If you're a millennial, you may one day find yourself playing Gamecube, yearning for your iPod classic, and fixing your house while your kids play the Nintendo 9DX or whatever and get music streamed into their brains via satellite chip, and you'll think, "Man, what happened to good things?" You used to be with it, but then they changed what it was. It'll happen to you.

Editor's Note: This is a mock inquiry into the biographical details of a fictional character. The views expressed in this article are based on the circumstantial findings of the author, as it is meant to be a parody of fan theories.