"“Out-of-the-blue texts like this used to flood my nervous system with panic, but now I remind myself that what I just read is likely an exaggeration of the facts and isn't the full story,” she said. “I've gotten so many 'URGENT SOS' text messages that I've mentally renamed them 'clickbait' because that's how they read.”"
"Online, millennials, Gen Xers and Gen Zers often discuss their boomer parents' penchant for sharing bad news in the worst possible ways: Texting “he is gone” along with a photo of the family's dead cat, or calling and saying, “Welp, he dead,” without specifying who the “he” in question actually is. (Your grandfather in his 90s? Your dad with health issues? Some neighbor who hosted a Fourth of July party you went to in the '80s?)"
"Some on Reddit wonder if boomers take a certain pleasure in being the “first to inform anyone and everyone of someone else's bad medical news.” The cliffhanger, clickbaity messaging style is such a common experience, it might as well have a name: The Boomer Bad News Drop."
A sick relative message arrived as an urgent, context-free text with a graphic photo. The sender later learned the relative was already on antibiotics and doing fine, but the initial message created alarm because the recipient did not know who was being referenced or how serious the issue was. Similar out-of-the-blue updates are described as common, with recipients mentally reframing them as exaggerations or clickbait. Examples include messages like “he is gone” paired with a dead pet photo, or calls stating “Welp, he dead” without clarifying who “he” is. The pattern is discussed as a named phenomenon involving cliffhanger-style delivery of bad medical news, sometimes about people the recipient barely knows.
Read at BuzzFeed
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