Are the boomers the worst generation ever? If you visit the reddit.com message boards devoted to hating boomers, you’d think yes. They’re clueless! They’re musty! They call reddit a message board!

A sample complaint: They don’t know how to use emojis properly. One news article discussed how Mom had broken some bad news and used the “laughing so hard you’re crying” emoji, mistaking the tears for sadness. You’d think she’d put her clothes on backward and drove the Impala through the window of the beauticians. Mom, it’s time to have that talk about taking your keyboard away.

Someone born in 1949 does not know the particular nuances of these infantile yellow faces? Big deal. Emojis can be “amusing” in the barest sense, or useful for implying some unspoken sentiment, but for the most part they’re illiteracy-facilitators for people who have little to say and spend all day on Twitter proving it.

Spoken like a boomer, brah.

I never considered myself a boomer. That term was reserved for the cohort before me, the people who came of age in the 1960s and decided they knew everything and regarded their elders as antiquated reliquaries. I came of age in the ’70s, and had nothing in common with those close-cropped, sweater-vest collegians who sang along with the Kingston Trio’s “Hootenanny: Live from the Hungry Eyeball in Greenwich Village” or whatever, and nothing in common with the whole hairy, unsanitary Woodstock era where people painted flowers on their face and got crabs.

We had our own culture and our own problems. The idea that we would someday be lumped in with the ’60s in the general rubric of “boomers” would seem absurd. But here we are.

So, let us go to the specific complaints in the anti-boomer subreddit, /r/boomersbeingfools. See if they apply to you. I’ll check myself for sins and supply a Cliched Cranky Boomer Reply, or CCBR.

Their phones are loud. “It seems like every boomer I know keeps their phone ringer volume on FULL. BLAST. What could possibly be so urgent that they feel the need to hear it ring IMMEDIATELY?”

Self check: I admit to having my ringer on medium volume, so everyone can hear my clever ringtone. Cliched Cranky Boomer Reply: At least I’m not sitting on the light rail playing that junk you call music on my phone at full volume.

They cart block. “Lack of spacial/general awareness in public,” was the title of this complaint, and referred to boomers who leave their shopping cart in the middle of the aisle while standing six yards away squinting at the sodium content on a soup can.

Self-check: I am very cart-aware because it gives me the moral standing to judge the cart-clueless. And by “judge” I mean stand there patiently, exuding an aura of saintly irritation until they realize their error and move.

CCBR: At least I’m in the store, not paying someone on Instagrub or whatever to go pick up some bananas. Between that and your $6 coffee, it’s no wonder you can’t afford a house.

They plan. “I’ve seemed to notice that boomers despise spontaneity. Even planning a trip, every little detail is thought out. Whether it’s running errands, or going on a vacation.”

Self-check: I absolutely book things in advance and print out the tickets and have the QR codes on my phone six months in advance. I guess I should just show up at the airport with some underwear in a grocery bag and see where the planes are going today.

CCBR: I supposed Ike on D-Day should’ve just gone around the barracks and said, “What do you think, boys? Should I rustle up some ships and see if we can take Normandy?”

They are smartphone addicts. “Does anyone else’s boomer parents LIVE on that smartphone?”

CCBR: See that shiny glass thing hanging on the wall over there, zoomers? It’s a mirror. Check it out.

They drive bad. “I’ve had more and more older people past 65 years old . . . fail to stop at a red light, just blow through it.” Yes, that’s the problem today: lead-foot grandmas singing “Surfin’ USA” and blasting through red lights en route to Lyn-Lake, where they’ll burn donuts until 3 a.m.

And so on. Look: Clueless, selfish people with an exaggerated sense of their own importance are not a generational issue. There are over 70 million boomers. If you grant that a full third are jerks, that’s about 23 million tiresome, cranky, close-minded people.

I guarantee the zoomers of today will spawn innumerable future coots who are mad when the kids laugh at their uncoordinated shin tattoos. We all age into irrelevance, and that’s the best case scenario.

With Love, A Boomer