I'm going to say something which might sound controversial...
...but old people are just as sucky and irritating as the young.
They are just older versions of people who were young people in the 50s and 60s.
They are brave, stupid, clever, smelly, stylish, boring, fascinating etc.
What a lot of them do not deserve, is our automatic respect. I used to live in a block of flats in the 80s and on the ground floor, we had a number of old people. Half were really lovely people. The other half were t*ssers.
Just wanted to say that...old people are the same as us. Just as worthy and just as irritating.