Slang dictionary
boomerasking
[ boo-mer-ask-ing ]
黑料网 does boomerasking mean?
Boomerasking is when someone asks you a question 鈥� “How was your vacation?” 鈥� but they don’t really care about your response because they just want to answer it themselves. It’s a conversational boomerang (yes, just like the Australian projectile): they throw the question at you, wait for it to complete its obligatory arc through your anecdote, and then snatch it back to land squarely in their story.
According to a 2025 study by Harvard’s Alison Wood Brooks and Imperial College’s Michael Yeomans, there are three common flavors of boomerask:
- Ask-bragging: “Have you been working out lately?” 鈫� “That’s nice. I just hit a personal best deadlift and finally got visible abs. Want to see a photo?鈥�
- Ask-complaining: “How’s your week going?” 鈫� “Mine’s been awful. I accidentally replied-all to a company-wide email and my dog ate half my tax return.”
- Ask-sharing: “Did you sleep okay?” 鈫� “I had a dream that I was adopted by a family of raccoons.”
Boomerasking isn’t usually malicious. Rather, it’s a ham-fisted attempt to seem interested while satisfying the universal, insatiable itch to talk about ourselves.
Where does boomerasking come from?
Coined by Brooks and Yeomans and published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology, the term combines the words boomerang and asking into a portmanteau that describes a familiar three-part sequence: (1) Pose a question; (2) let the other person answer; (3) boomerang it right back with your own story!
The researchers found that boomerasking is a misguided attempt to balance two competing desires: “to be responsive (to a partner) and to disclose (about oneself).” The trouble is, people perceive boomerasks as faux-curious at best and egocentric at worst 鈥� especially when the asker skips the follow-up and goes straight to me, me, me without showing any signs of listening to their conversation partner’s response.
In tests across parties, dates, and awkward office chats, boomeraskers thought they were making a great impression, while their partners recognized the true intention of the question.
Examples of boomerasking
Who uses boomerasking?
Everyone. You may have done it today, even if you didn’t mean to. It’s a common approach to small talk, and we reward users on social media for boomerasking. (Ever seen a TikTok video in which the creator prompts their followers with a question, then jumps to “I’ll go first”?)
And unlike the name suggests, it has nothing to do with baby boomers. Gen Z can boomerask with the best of them.
Fortunately, there’s an antidote: Actually listen, ask follow-up questions, and respond like you care. Or, if you’re going to talk about yourself anyway, at least own it.
Note
This is not meant to be a formal definition of boomerasking like most terms we define on Dictionary.com, but is rather an informal word summary that hopefully touches upon the key aspects of the meaning and usage of boomerasking that will help our users expand their word mastery.