Have you ever heard anyone use the term “Boomerasking?” Probably not. It’s one of those new slang terms that the younger generations use today, and, believe it or not, it does not necessarily refer to “Baby Boomers.”
With all the disdain that Generation X, Y and Z members have for the Baby Boomer generation, the latest use of Boomerasking comes from the word boomerang, as in something that booms back to you. A Baby Boomer is someone born during the twenty years after the end of World War II in 1945 when America experienced a baby “boom,” a sharp increase in the birth rate.
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Boomerasking is now being used as a way we have all been seeking to describe it when a person responds to a question by asking another question that redirects the conversation or challenges the original inquiry. It’s essentially a conversational strategy that involves turning a question back on the person who asked it, often to gain more context, buy time, or avoid providing a direct answer.
Alison Wood Brooks from Harvard Business School and Michael Yeomans from Imperial College London wrote a research paper about this.
The researchers dubbed people who do this “bommeraskers.”
“Though boomeraskers believe they leave positive impressions, in practice, their decision to share their own answer,” they wrote, “rather than follow up on their partner’s – appears egocentric and disinterested in their partner’s perspective. As a result, people perceive boomeraskers as insincere and prefer conversation partners who straightforwardly self-disclose.”
In this case, people use Boomerasking to describe someone who is obnoxious and arrogant. You know, someone who likes to hear his own voice a lot.
However, the term can also be used to mock Baby Boomers.
Boomerasking is a term also used, often humorously or critically, to describe a situation where someone from an older generation (often associated with the baby boomer generation) asks a question that could easily be answered by a quick search on the internet.
The term reflects the generational differences in how information is accessed. Younger generations have grown up with the internet as a primary source of information and often instinctively turn to search engines for answers. Older generations may be more accustomed to asking people directly or using traditional resources like books or newspapers.
So, if anyone ever engages in Bommerasking you will now know what they are doing and how to deal with it.
