Ronny Chieng Blasts Baby Boomers in New Netflix Special

Ronny Chieng acknowledges the hypocrisy in his new Netflix stand-up special, Love to Hate It. On the one hand, the first-generation immigrant chastises American culture for refusing to respect its elders. On the other hand, that Confucian value doesn’t stop Chieng from delivering an epic rant about the idiocy of Baby Boomers.

There are the bigger issues — it’s a throwaway aside when Chieng accuses Boomers of destroying the global financial economy in 2008 by pursuing subprime mortgages. But it’s the little things — specifically, Boomers’ inability to go online without spreading misinformation, contracting viruses or getting scammed — that really get him going. 

“They don’t have the antibodies to deal with the internet,” he rages. “Watching Baby Boomers go on the internet now is like watching babies wandering into the kitchen by themselves, just looking for cookies on the kitchen countertop, pulling down knives straight into their eyeballs.”

Anyone with aging parents or grandparents will relate. Boomers might as well turn on the oven and stick their heads inside, looking for pictures of their grandchildren. They fall for internet scams like pandas rolling down a hill. “Twenty Target gift cards? Yeah, that sounds like a legitimate way to pay for antivirus software on my phone.” 

Even though Boomers can’t remember a single password, they’re still a virtual Russian cyber-army who can make any piece of misinformation go viral in family WhatsApp group chats. How do they know that crazy story is legit? Hey, it’s from cnn-n-n-n-n.ru. Chieng boggles at the idiocy of a generation that can’t even right-click.

Love to Hate It is hilarious stand-up, but it’s secretly a thoughtful meditation on fathers and sons. The special kicks off with a profane tale of storing sperm and freezing embryos, a scheme allowing Chieng and his wife to someday have children while enjoying their current kid-free life. “Kids are what you have when you’ve given up on your own hopes and dreams,” he jokes. 

The comic’s struggle to provide appropriate genetic material to the doctors is a comic race to deliver humanity’s most embarrassing medical sample. 

He imagines a worst-case scenario in which his future son wants to grow up to be a stand-up comedian just like dad. Chieng and his wife didn’t spend a fortune to create an A-grade blastocyst just for his kid to become a B-grade comedian. “Go to law school!”

It’s an echo of the message Chieng got from his own father, the first person in his family to go to college and a successful businessman in Malaysia. With no context for the idea of “show business,” Chieng’s father didn’t appear to have an appreciation for the comic’s success. “He wouldn’t understand what I’m doing.”

Or would he? In the way of the best stand-up specials, Chieng subtly stitches together his disparate stories about children, parents and their responsibility to one another in a surprisingly emotional conclusion. He never milks the bit or gets maudlin, which only makes it more affecting. Chieng argues that two things can be true at once — our idiot elders can drive us bonkers while still deserving our respect.