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You may not recognize the name Peter Kuli, at first blush, but you definitely know his impact on pop culture. In October 2019, Kuli (a college sophomore) remixed a friend’s audio clips into a music track that he then uploaded to TikTok. The name of the song? “OK boomer.” His tweet about the song ignited a new trend and within a few weeks, tens of thousands of “OK boomer”-themed TikTok videos flooded the Gen Z-dominated platform.
Not long after, New York Times reporter Taylor Lorenz published an article that catapulted “OK boomer” to the mainstream, codifying the point-of-view of a new generation. Gen Z has reached a boiling point over issues like racism, gender inequality, college debt, climate change and gun violence. “OK boomer” became, as Kuli called it, a “digital middle finger” not against baby boomers en masse but against a perceived mindset of ignorance and inaction.