Fandom Rifts and a Different Kind of “Boomer”

The internet has taken to all sorts of harsh branding recently. Bossy women with A-lines, glasses, and excessive jewelry are now “Karens,” dudes who chug Monster Energy drinks and punch holes in walls are “Kyles,” and so on. The predecessor to all these modern-day non-slurs seems to be “Boomer,” which has been reserved for middle-aged/elderly people griping about the modern world.

Personally, I’m not a fan of “Boomer” in this context, partially because it’s a little too mean-spirited for my tastes, but also because I think the term could be used in a different context—the context I tried to use it for before the internet went their direction with it.

Bear with me here: the origin of the term “Boomer” comes from “Baby Boomers,” aka the people who were born during the post-WWII Baby Boom. The modern brand focuses on the time at which the Baby Boom happened, since they make up most of the oldest people in the World at this point in time; the differences in upbringings, experiences, and demeanors compared to the younger Millennials and Zoomers naturally results in a rift, with each complaining about the other.

However, my take on the term boomer has less to do with the generation and more to do with the "boom” part of it, and how that generation, with its massive population surge, came about as the result of a a new economic and societal age.

The same thing happens with video games and fandoms—which is where I often applied the term to. More often than not, it starts with a game series that is successful—or at least has a comfortable cult following—but hasn’t exactly blown up. Fans in this age can be considered the OG, old-school enjoyers who, for the sake of classification, will go by “Classicals.”

But then, a new release becomes really successful and hits it off with mainstream audiences. All of a sudden, the series is ushered into the limelight and gets more people than ever hooked onto it. As a result, you get not only new fans, but entirely new types of fans coming into the fold. These are the folks I’d call the Boomers—the ones brought in by the boom.

As evidence by the fact that I classify them separately, these old and new fans don’t always come together as a homogenous mixture. Sometimes, the thing(s) that bring the new fans in is something that old fans either disapprove of or get tired of because of its popularization. Casualization, innovation, and in some cases, simply the popularization, can create a rift between Classicals and Boomers, resulting in a rift within the fandom.

You can find one example within the Fire Emblem fandom. After 12 games, the franchise was ready to let the 13th be the last, but the release of Fire Emblem: Awakening resulted in the series going from a Japan-centered fanbase whose characters you might see in Smash Bros to a globally-acclaimed series.

In the years following, the Fire Emblem classic fans always had a thing or to to say about Awakening, Fates, and the casual direction and dating sim features of entries that followed, but more often than not just focused on their love for the older titles—usually the likes of FE7 (Also called Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade or simply Fire Emblem in the west) or FE8 (Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones). Of course, I say all of this as a self-proclaimed Awakening boomer, and would like to give special thanks to my friends Lily and Sara for filling in some of the knowledge gaps that come with being that.

You can find Boomer rifts in plenty of other media as well, of course. Star Wars essentially has 2 “booms” between the prequel and sequel release periods. And then there’s Among Us, whose boom wasn’t a series release so much as it was simply the game becoming a key part of gamer socialization during the pandemic lockdowns. I would even dare to call the release of Apex Legends a boom for what it did to reinvigorate Titanfall 2 in some ways.

It’s important to mention that the existence of such “rifts” doesn’t always lead to abrasion, and plenty of times, there’ll be plenty of mingling and merging between the two groups sooner or later. Still, it’s important to acknowledge these periods of growth and change when looking at what and how people end up enjoying the things they like. As I mentioned in a previous blog, the same thing can be enjoyed in a wild number of ways.

In any case, thanks for listening. Whether you use the term like I do or prefer the more common application, understanding how the “what” and “when” apply to the ultimate “why” might help with mending, if not at least seeing across those rifts.