- A TikToker has gone viral describing an interaction with an older person with the term "boomer panic."
- She defined it as older people unnecessarily getting heated over something trivial.
A woman has popularized the term "boomer panic" for a dysregulated response to a minor inconvenience after sharing an interaction she had with an older person. Internet users said they were glad to have a phrase that accurately described what they witnessed from boomers in their own lives.
In a TikTok from @myexistentialdread shared Wednesday, the user said she was at a self-checkout at a Lowe's Home Improvement store when she realized a dowel she was trying to purchase didn't have a price tag. She said that after taking a picture of the price to show an attendant at the self-checkout, the employee began getting "screechy," unsure how to match the price with the dowel.
@myexistentialdread Like its not that serious #boomers #karen ♬ original sound - existentialbread
"She looks at me, and she goes, 'Well, I don't know which one that is!'" the TikToker said, raising her own voice to imitate the supposed employee. "She starts panicking, and I'm like, 'it's OK'."
The user laughed and said she'd only experienced this kind of sudden and needless panicking with baby boomers.
She defined "boomer panic" as "when you are in an interaction with anyone who's a boomer, and they immediately — any time something is going slightly frustrating, or, like, south — they immediately resort to that screaming and screeching."
Her clip has been viewed more than 900,000 times. The user did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Insider.
Commenters seemed to viscerally relate to what she was describing. The comment section of her viral TikTok was full of people seizing the term and theorizing why so many boomers seem to freak out in non-dire circumstances. "Boomer panic is such a good phrase for this! Minor inconvenience straight to panic," one person wrote, amassing more than 26,000 likes.
Many commenters used their own parents as examples: One person said theirs were totally unable to problem-solve, while another viewer said her boomer mother sent her blood pressure skyrocketing by making "mundane situations completely chaotic and stressful."
"Convinced this is why so many of us millennials have anxiety," one comment with more than 700 likes says.
Another TikToker with the username @percyandpine, who said he was an audiologist and worked mostly with older patients, made a video in response to @myexistentialdread and shared more about the phenomenon.
@percyandpine im aware i look like a potato #boomerpanic #boomers #hearingaids #audiology #audiologist #technology #aging ♬ original sound - Christopher Garrett
The user said he'd witnessed numerous boomers "come in screaming" about their hearing aid not connecting to an app on their phone. "Boomer panic is the best way to describe it," he said. "There are so many boomers that need SSRIs and therapy 'cause it's not that serious."
His comment section was similarly full of people saying they had unduly suffered from their parents' "boomer panic" reactions.
The term is the latest slang on TikTok to describe confusing generational behavior to a younger userbase. It follows others, such as the "boomer stare" (also known as the "lead poison stare"), which refers to a kind of blank but intense facial expression that people say is synonymous with baby boomers.