You May Be Guilty Of The 'Boomer Bad News Drop' Without Even Realising

The issue is often less about intent and more about a generational mismatch in how to deal with distressing events.

Lifestyle Reporter, HuffPost

The text Julie Story received from her mum about a sick relative was urgent and frustratingly context-less.

“She’s got another infection,” the message read, followed by a gnarly photo of the infection itself. Later, Story – a Florida-based comedy creator – learned her relative was already on antibiotics and doing completely fine.

But in the moment, she had no idea who her mum was talking about or how serious the situation was.

The text was alarming, but Story said these kinds of urgent, context-free updates from her mum are nothing new.

“Out-of-the-blue texts like this used to flood my nervous system with panic, but now I remind myself that what I just read is likely an exaggeration of the facts and isn’t the full story,” she said.

“I’ve gotten so many ‘URGENT SOS’ text messages that I’ve mentally renamed them ‘clickbait’ because that’s how they read.”

Story recently made a viral TikTok lovingly poking fun at boomers’ knack for delivering bad news, dressed in a ’90s mum wig and clutching a coffee mug. The video struck a nerve: “OMG. Have you been spending time with my mom?” one person wrote.

Online, millennials, Gen Xers and Gen Zers often discuss their boomer parents’ penchant for sharing bad news in the worst possible ways: Texting “he is gone” along with a photo of the family’s dead cat, or calling and saying, “Welp, he dead,” without specifying who the “he” in question actually is. (Your grandfather in his 90s? Your dad with health issues? Some neighbour who hosted a Fourth of July party you went to in the ’80s?)

Some on Reddit wonder if boomers take a certain pleasure in being the “first to inform anyone and everyone of someone else’s bad medical news”.

The cliffhanger, clickbaity messaging style is such a common experience, it might as well have a name: The Boomer Bad News Drop.

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Oftentimes, the Boomer Bad News Drop is about someone you hardly know. But it’s always bad news.

Mike, a millennial with a 70-year-old mother, is often on the receiving end of that. He told HuffPost he calls his mum once a week to check in and fill her in on how he and her grandchildren are doing. When he asks........

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