You know you're turning into the exhausting boomer everyone avoids when your small talk always includes these 7 topics

It happens gradually. One day you're connecting with younger coworkers, the next their eyes glaze over as you explain why nothing's built to last anymore. You've become that person—the one who weaponizes weather discussions into decline narratives, who can't mention traffic without invoking civilization's collapse.

The transformation isn't about age; it's about calcification. You've worn conversational grooves so deep you can't climb out, verbal loops that announce generational membership like a car alarm. These aren't topics—they're manifestos disguised as small talk, making millennials suddenly need bathroom breaks and Gen Z workers invent dead grandmothers. You're not conversing anymore; you're broadcasting from Radio Yesterday Was Better.

1. Your various medical procedures and upcoming appointments

Nobody asked about your colonoscopy, yet here comes the play-by-play with director's commentary. Your MRI saga, that thing your dermatologist found, the specialist who's booked until March—shared with the urgency of breaking news.

This isn't oversharing; it's competitive mortality. Every chat becomes grand rounds with you as both patient and presenter. You've made decline your personality, turning your body's betrayals into your most reliable content. Young people aren't fleeing because they're squeamish—they're escaping because you've made death casual, like discussing spreadsheets at happy hour.

2. How nobody wants to work anymore

The phrase shoots out reflexively, triggered by any service delay or closed restaurant. Understaffed coffee shop? Nobody wants to work. Package late? Work ethic died with your generation. You've become a one-person decline summit.

What you're actually announcing: the world stopped arranging itself for your convenience. This mythology of universal laziness lets you skip examining why people might choose differently. You're mourning when desperation made people grateful for crumbs, mistaking exploitation for character. The barista you're lecturing works three jobs to afford half the apartment you bought on a single salary at their age.

3. Detailed comparisons of current prices versus 1985

"My first house cost $45,000." Nobody asked, but the number emerges like a verbal tic. Gas under a dollar. College for the price of a current MacBook. You recite these figures like spells, hoping to summon their return through repetition.

These aren't conversations; they're economic séances that ignore forty years of context. You're not sharing wisdom—you're twisting knives, reminding everyone under forty they're failing at a game rigged before their birth. Your "helpful perspective" is really a victory lap around people drowning in student loans.

4. Young people's phone addiction (shared from your phone)

You forward screen-time panic articles—from your iPad. You interrupt dinners to lecture about device addiction, then immediately check Facebook. The hypocrisy is invisible, wrapped in concern for These Kids Today.

The phone sermon is about control—you're unsettled that younger people navigate different worlds than you inhabited. Their phones aren't addictions; they're infrastructure for lives you don't recognize. You mistake different for broken, forgetting you once horrified your parents with cable TV and a Walkman.

5. The customer service tragedy you're currently battling

Your Comcast saga requires three acts and a PowerPoint. Twenty minutes on hold becomes Shakespearean tragedy. You've got screenshots, case numbers, supervisor names—a persecution portfolio ready for presentation.

This isn't venting; it's theater where you star as the last honest consumer fighting corporate evil. Your customer service war stories make you feel significant, righteous, important. Everyone else hears someone who terrorizes minimum-wage workers, who treats inconvenience like injustice. They're not impressed; they're calculating escape routes.

6. Why your specific decade was humanity's peak

The '70s: real music. The '80s: authentic community. The '90s: last good decade. Whatever your golden era, you've crowned yourself its defender, constantly explaining why everything since represents decay.

This temporal narcissism assumes history climaxed during your youth—amazing coincidence, that. You're not sharing memories; you're building fortresses against the present. Your nostalgia has metastasized into resentment that time continued without your permission. The past you're selling never existed; you're just angry the world kept spinning.

7. Kids today and their weakness/entitlement/sensitivity

Participation trophies destroyed them. Can't handle criticism. Expect everything free. You've got TED Talks ready about how soft childhoods created broken adults, delivered to trapped audiences everywhere.

The "kids today" lecture is fear dressed as wisdom—fear that your suffering was optional, that trauma isn't actually educational. You mistake damage for strength, confusing survival with success. These weak kids navigate complexities you never imagined, using tools you can't understand, in an economy you helped detonate.

Final thoughts

Here's what stings: becoming an exhausting boomer isn't about age—it's about choosing comfort over curiosity. It's deciding your experiences are scripture rather than data points. These topics aren't just boring; they're moats, protecting you from genuine connection through performed superiority.

The tragedy isn't having these thoughts—everyone grumbles about prices or feels nostalgic. It's that they've become your only album, played on repeat to shrinking audiences. You've stopped exchanging ideas and started issuing newsletters from the Bureau of Better Times.

The cure isn't pretending youth or faking TikTok fluency. It's recognizing when you're performing rather than participating, when you're lecturing instead of learning. The most magnetic older people aren't the ones insisting their decade was peak humanity—they're the ones still curious, who share experience without demanding genuflection. You get to choose: become the conversational quicksand everyone avoids, or be the older person people actually seek out. The difference is whether you're still interested in what happens next.