Photo via Pexels and Facebook screengrabs via A group where we all pretend to be boomers.
car crash near my house,,,3 dead 😂😂😂crying…..pray for them rip
TOM IS DIVORCING ME
These are just a few deranged examples of the posts you can find on “A group where we all pretend to be boomers”. The Facebook page, which launched on 12th May, has become an online sensation in recent weeks; attracting viral tweets, media attention, and hundreds of thousands of followers (over 266,000 at the time of writing).Those damn millennial! When I was their age, I was making 0.25$ while piling coal
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If you keep on scrolling, the suggestions steadily start to appear increasingly unhinged. For example, in “A group where we all pretend to be farmers and cows”, members just “moo” at each other and share empowering agricultural memes. In “A group where we are all cute & wholesome birds”, they post images of “SMOL” and “pwetty” birds (“birbs”) and compliment each other in cloyingly twee comments (“u r so prit!”, “I lyke your bryght coloures”).
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It’s not always so positive, though. In one group, where you can pretend to be a prison “inmate or guard”, the posts can get pretty glum. Members make mundane trade requests for lotions, ramen noodles and conditioners, while also joking about hunger strikes, murders and stabbings. There are fake therapy sessions (one “jailed” member complains that he won’t see his nephew grow up), and lengthy complaints about blunt kitchen knives.
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That said, there is still some content that manages to slip through the cracks. According to several admins, it’s getting harder to moderate some of the more inappropriate stuff that gets posted – and the more popular the group gets, the higher the likelihood of it appearing. (“People love to post things we’ve explicitly banned like racism, homophobia, transphobia,” says Helen, 26, who is an admin on Boomers). As a result, many of the groups have been forced to go private or secret to prevent being shut down, or“zucced”.While the content can be questionable, the general consensus among group members seems to be overwhelmingly positive. Over the last few years, Facebook has become a site for intergenerational rifts, fake news and political infighting – but these closed groups, they say, offer an alternative. You join and express yourself, free from judgment, with other like-minded people. Some of them may be more joke-based, like Boomers, but others are just genuine sites for roleplay; a place to briefly escape the everyday, and take on a new persona.“I think these groups are a great place to let loose,” adds Lea. “It’s nice to just go and be weird somewhere with people. I think it’s healthy. Go be weird, whether it’s in these groups or out somewhere. Just do it. You’ll feel a lot better afterwards.”