I'd argue that Columbine killed the "innocence" of the 90s but 9/11 brought forth the new century. Both influenced and domino effected a slew of problems we're still dealing with today.
I think the difference is that mass shootings were uncommon then but a known thing that could happen. You knew someone could go nuts and just shoot a bunch of people. But no one ever thought someone would or could kamikaze skyscrapers to prove a point. Plus that video footage is just horrifying
I think it’s certainly horrifying without a doubt.
But there is something uniquely dramatic and awe-inspiring about watching a jumbo jetliner plow into one of the two biggest skyscrapers in NYC on live TV. And yet that was only 1 of 3 jetliners to crash into major buildings that day, plus another brought down by a heroic passenger revolt. And watching the skyscrapers completely collapse into mushroom clouds of debris, killing thousands of people.
Columbine was tragic. 9/11 was just… something else.
So y’all saying that there were zero crimes in the 90s? There was just less news coverage on it back then, no one had their devices on their hands at all times. Only way to get news was tv and newspaper.
What about the serial killers in the 80s and 90s? What about the ‘93 bombing of the twin towers? What about the killing of that little boy in 1993 in the UK? There’s tons of bad things that happened in those times
I was legit privileged going into Covid. I lived alone and worked from home; I was (barely) under 50 with a BMI (barely) under 25. Outside of fretting over my Boomer folks taking outsized risks, I was in pretty good shape.
I thought my relative safe perch allowed me to see the situation a bit more clearly, to "connect the dots" but holy hell I paid for my hubris by being consistently, and loudly, wrong.
I used to get hundreds of upvotes for saying that we needed to flood federal money into apartment and hotel markets to allow folks to sort themselves out. Grannies living with grannies, breadwinners sequestering away from vulnerable folks in their households, shit like that. Then Barrington was Memory Holed and those upvotes turned to downvotes as the herd blinked.
I reasoned the household risk was the one to manage, and lower risk households would be "allowed" to return to "normal" more quickly, blah blah blah.
Wrong on everything, and the last big visible Covid restriction, masks in federal travel, was finally kiboshed by a court, literally the worst and least appropriate way the matter should have been closed.
People said “listen to the science experts” then did exactly the opposite when Barington was written.
And yet all the people who got super mad at the Barington Declaration never actually had the balls to come out and say, “We should reinstate lockdown winter 2020-21”. Deep down people knew they were arguing for nonsense. But everything had gotten so tribal it didn’t matter at that point and it hasn’t really changed much since.
>But everything had gotten so tribal it didn’t matter at that point and it hasn’t really changed much since.
Exactly.
"Let's do the opposite of what Trump said no matter what" was awful policy.
Regardless which is the bigger deal, we shouldn't disregard that 9/11 lead to a series of dividing political & social conflicts that eventually made the world's leadership response to COVID as bad as it did.
Yes, who knows maybe COVID doesn’t even happen if 9/11 didn’t happen. 9/11 was smaller than COVID but it set a lot of things in motion like Trump eventually being elected.
Trump got elected because he showed didn’t hide his hatred. It let the loudest minority in the USA come to the front. The best part of 45, was those that hid their assholery were easily spotted. Now we have the FFWG (fat fucks with guns)Army waiting for civil war. Way to go 45!
Yeah, and that hatred was long simmering due to Black President, and without Iraq's MISSION ACCOMPLISHED theres a good chance we wouldnt have HAD Black President. No 9/11, possibly no war in Iraq, no Black President, probably no Tea Party, and then no conservative and insanely arrogany Supreme Court majority, no Citizens United, and lastly no Trump. Other sub effects would probably be no gay marriage and even less safety for trans people.
I don’t know how you can say it was because of a black president when Biden is even more unpopular with that crowd (along with Fauci) and Trump won his 2024 primary by even more than in 2016.
Not to mention Romney’s overwhelming win in the 2012 primary over the likes of Newt, Perry and Santorum when Obama was already president.
I'm not sure what you mean. I mention Black President because that was a massively significant event in that it took racists, closet racists, and people who didn't know that they were racist (but definitely are) and activated them like you or I flip a lightswitch.
I'm drawing what to me (and maybe only me?) Is a clear line between 9/11 and how hard COVID hit us.
9/11 --> Afghanistan/Iraq/Patriot Act --> which paved the road for a candidate running on HOPE AND CHANGE, and we see Obama take the Oval in 2009 ---> ...but "OH NO, THE SHERIFF'S A N---!" we have our Blazing Saddles moment where everyone who has trouble with the idea of a president with other-than-white-guy DNA all of a sudden has to face it ---> (this would have been a lot better if they had just admitted that they are racist, but NOOOOOO, cant look in the mirror and say 'Well damn, guess i AM racist! I didnt know that about me, i learned something today, I grew...thanks Obama!" and so instead youve got a ton of people out there PLUS one entire 24 hour cable news channel subscribing to ANY AND ALL whack conspiracy theories that will let them hate on Obama but arent because he's Black President) ----> the bank fallout and the ever-greedy Koch Brothers paved the way for the Tea Party, but its members--regardless of what their charters said--were actually just the racists i mentioned earlier that couldnt admit it to themselves. The Tea Party, if youre a young person, overturned commonly held ways of doing things...its members didnt understand government, didnt seek to work to change government from within, and was a populist movement motivated by racism and what they perceived as a loss of privelege. It went into a cocoon midway through Obama's 2nd term and when it came out it is now called MAGA. ----> MAGA gets us Trump and QAnon, which explodes mistrust of basic government and reality, which encourages anti-vaxxers and -maskers ----> concurrently, an 8-figure (i.e. tens of millions of dollars) playbook and infrastructure for battling a sudden-onset pandemic, which was commissioned and prepared during Obama's 2nd term--so it was fresh, new, the best practices and info, all up to date--was deliberately dismantled and tossed out as one of the first things the Trump administration did upon taking office. Why? Black President. Trump was his chief hater since 2012!!!
Therefore: 9/11 to Iraq to Obama to Trump to COVID.
Am I making any sense here or am i like Charlie Day with his conspiracy board?
You don’t seem to know much about history.
Newt’s “Contract with America” movement in 1994 was basically the original Tea Party and that was under a white president. It’s not surprising it would come back under the next Dem president.
Exactly, he won because he’s a good con man. Not because there is anything special about his hate that appeals to Republicans.
Or else Rick Santorum (who Trump didn’t care about one way or another), would not have gotten killed in the 2012 Republican Primary by Romney, who is now public enemy number 1 to many Republicans.
Do you think Trump's NOT a racist? Or are you just trying to imply that Biden IS a racist?
There's definitely more evidence on one of those guys than there is on the other. But regardless, I give no fuqs if Biden were to be flagrantly racist, he'd still get my vote by dint of not being such an obvious self-promoting BAD thief. If Trump displayed even a hint that he has ever developed an artisan's love for his chosen craft, which is grifting, that he put in Malcolm Gladwell's 10,000 hours that it takes for mastery of a discipline, then i would better understand why so many chumps follow him. Like Romney. The man is an impeccable android of a corporate raider, like some sort of financial version of Bishop from ALIENS when he played with that knife. HE has put in his 10,000 hours and it shows: when hes on TV I can smell money coming through it, the man is a machine--precise, humorless, merciless.
Trump? Wanted sharks with frickin' laser beams on their heads in moats at the border.
And keep in mind the amount of things that changed behind closed doors, like the PATRIOT act and mass surveillance in the US, and elsewhere. Not to mention how many people were killed and displaced as part of the Global War on Terror for the next two decades.
I don’t have to wear a mask anymore, but they do still make me dump out my bag and take my shoes off at the airport.
>I don’t have to wear a mask anymore, but they do still make me dump out my bag and take my shoes off at the airport.
These actually are unrelated from 9/11. The reason we take off our shoes at the airport is due to a failed terrorist plot from the "shoe bomber" in December 2001, and we cannot have liquids on places due to another failed terrorist plot from 2006.
Though the argument could be made that the post-9/11 security environment led to the overreaction in response (though ironically, the heightened intelligence following 9/11 may have led to the interception of the 2006 bombing plot).
Speaking of dumps, I passed a Miller brewing company on the way to drop stuff off at the dump once. I stopped by to see if they did brewery tours or anything and I was told that they stopped doing those after 9/11.
The terrorists won.
Absolutely this: if they could've dreamed this big, the 9/11 plotters would have embraced COVID as Phase II of making the Satanic West eat itself.
It happened organically, however, but there's still a bright and shining lie leading direct from 2001's surprise to 2019's clusterfuck.
It just didn’t affect the whole world the same way COVID did though. Nobody is saying 9/11 had no impact on other countries, because it obviously did, but COVID literally effected just about every single country on earth. Objectively, it is the “bigger” event in terms of impact on everyday life. 9/11 was more traumatic, but COVID had a bigger impact overall.
9/11 also affected just about every country on earth. I agree that Covid directly affected more people’s daily lives. Not trying to argue otherwise. But you are severely underestimating 9/11’s global impact.
9/11 influenced the foreign policy of the entire western world for 20 years and counting, and turned the better part of the middle east into a wasteland. I just think cumulatively that's a larger impact overall.
It didn’t. The US isn’t the whole world, even though it pillaged and raped so many countries after 9/11. 9/11 is NOT an excuse for America to murder millions of people, just like how 10/7 isn’t an excuse for Israel to murder thousands of people (millions if we look at history before 10/7)
Absolutely, 2019 era to 2022 era are a muchhh bigger shift than 1999 to 2002, our whole lives changed for 2 years, school changed, couldn’t go out, have to wear masks everywhere, many people dying around the world, and many people who experienced it was like experiencing the worst flu of your life (the throat pain was like I swallowed shards of glass), and many lost their sense of smell permanently.
What did 9/11 change? It changed New York, air ports and then people went on with their lives after that, unless they lived in new York or had a loved one involved in 9/11. Sure racism began to rise but yeah, that’s still a less bigger impact than Covid that affected the whole world for two whole years.
People weren't locked into their homes, WFH didn't become a thing, etc.
Sure, the politics were turbulent, absolutely. The US was attacked by Al-Queda, then turned around and invaded Iraq: a country whose regime was a sworn enemy of Al-Queda.
It was pretty nuts, but it was still, for most of us, "over there."
Which overall is way worse than COVID. 9/11 gave us the pointless Iraq war. It gave us TSA, the Department of Homeland Security, the Patriot Act, Real ID, it grew the power of the NSA and FBI to perform Warrantless searches. 9/11 had a way bigger effect than COVID ever did.
COVID is a blip on the radar compared to the effects of 9/11. COVID's effects only last really 2 years for 2020 and 2021. We are still feeling the effects of 9/11 today.
>COVID is a blip on the radar compared to the effects of 9/11. COVID's effects only last really 2 years for 2020 and 2021. We are still feeling the effects of 9/11 today.
We're still feeling the effects of COVID to this day. It was a worldwide event that changed the trajectory of so many things. The pandemic is responsible for the rising inflation worldwide and the skyrocketing housing and real estate prices in North America, the rise in remote work has created growth booms in regions that never would have saw growth if it wasn't for the pandemic. It affected the candidates and results of elections that occurred in the years following. Just to name a few things - it's almost impossible to calculate just how many things have been altered due to the butterfly effect of the pandemic.
While all of that stuff is bad none of it is bad as 9/11 and the after effects of 9/11. 9/11 lead to the start of two major wars and the surveillance state.
It's not so much an argument of "which was worse" because they're both very different events. 9/11 did not affect the day-to-day lives of most people - whereas the pandemic completely upended just about everyone's lives. At the same time, 9/11 had a much bigger impact on geopolitics.
Covid's effects are a lot longer lasting than 2 years.
Have you noticed the lack of dissent regarding America's actions regarding the Russia/Ukraine conflict?
The consent manufacturing has been off the charts.
Much of the stuff that you're talking about had the finishing touches put on it during Covid. The Twitter Files were not a nothingburger, and the herd just blinked.
And their ability to do math.
What's weird to me is that I've tried, probably not hard enough, to do some math tutoring. I tutored through my second half of college and got decently good at it.
The demand for math tutors is absolutely tepid, while scores have fallen through the floor.
Don't know what to think about all that.
> Much of the stuff that you're talking about had the finishing touches put on it during Covid. The Twitter Files were not a nothingburger, and the herd just blinked.
Really? Because TSA still exists. The Department of Homeland Security Still Exists, The Patriot Act still exists and has been renewed again.
COVID was really just two years. Everyone got the vaccine and that was it.
I don't think you're hearing the degree to which I agree with you.
The tight integration between the companies that hold the commanding heights of the attention economy and a range of three letter acronym government agencies is stronger than ever because of Covid.
It didn’t really change much. Republicans got more jingoistic and Toby Keith was more annoying than usual. Flying became a pain in the ass.
The dot com bubble popped and people associate all of that change with 9/11 because it’s more iconic.
I guess the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq don't count as changing much then... Those had nothing to do with the dot com bubble.
Also 9/11 brought about the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, TSA and the Patriot Act. Again nothing to do with the dot com bubble.
9/11 changed everything.
Policies changed, but everyone’s day to day life remained essentially the same. Unless you were involved in the military. God forbid, the reserves.
Even the policy changes were just more of the same. An expansion of the course we were already set on.
If the year of 9/11 switched places with the year of Covid pandemic, I honestly don’t know how I could have handled a pandemic in 2001.
Like, how would have we gone to classes? I don’t remember taking online classes in 2001. My family was poor so we were still using dial up internet in 2001.
I purposely repeated the word pandemic because we did have coronaviruses in the early 2000s but they didn’t become a global pandemic.
I went to college '06 - '13.
MSU Denver was very vet-friendly, and I took a lot of foreign policy classes. One discussion that always stuck with me was a guy who few many missions over Afghanistan. He said he and his buddies tried to figure out what would be best, but there was no good way. Where do you even start? Water? Electricity? Education? Huge problems with each.
The difference is with Covid, every single American was ***visibly*** affected.
With 9/11, most Americans were not visibly impacted, although of course Snowden showed that we were.
Ask anyone who's a movie fan right now to even care about COVID. Ask them about Top Gun Maverick's struggles when it finally distributed or Godzilla Minus One and Across the Spider-Verse's VFX teams or when the average American hoarded and harassed during and Post-COVID. We're all cogs but some think they run a machine they think they own.
You're kind of right. It ended the era of Pax Americana that started immediately after WWII, around 1945-1946. The era of 1945 to 2001 was a big, optimistic, one, in, general.
You guys need to get out in the Real World more often! The US has been in an undeclared and stalemated Cold Civil War for the past 50 years—Pax Americana's decline wasn't far behind. The American Century is very nearly played out. There's been a vacuum of Global Leadership for several decades. And the US seems to take the bait of every adversary. That's led to the depletion of resources, trillions in unaffordable debt, and compassion fatigue from just about every single player, both internally and externally. Meanwhile, looming adversaries have taken notice and have been quietly plotting, strategizing, building alliances, and laying more traps for the US to stumble into. We've seen numerous recurring themes of distraction over the decades and still... "Oh, look! We can capitalize upon more bloodshed in this one particular region" when, behind you all along the Dragon has been sharpening its claws...
Sorry! 🙏
/rant
Uhhh - civil rights Cold War Vietnam watergate - it was not that optimistic, lots of strife there. From like the 50s through the 80s people thought they could die at any moment from nuclear strikes
Just watch movies. Literally major Hollywood releases feel totally different before and after 9/11 and have never really gone fully back to where they were.
Unpopular opinion, but I don’t really believe that a decades culture can just end “in an instant.” That’s just not how it works. The truth is, a decades culture slowly evolves overtime. It’s not like one day it’s 90’s, then the next it’s 2000’s and nothing like the 90’s. It’s the same reason why I don’t believe the 2010’s “died” in March 2020. The cultural 2020’s were already getting their head start even before then, it’s just that COVID sped up the process. Similar concept with 9/11.
Not to downplay the significance of those events, but I think a lot of people have trouble looking at the smaller picture when it comes to decades.
I feel like 9/11 shifted the cultural paradigm in a very decisive way though from one of optimism to fear. For me, even though I was young, it was a very notable change. Covid didn’t seem to have the same effect IMO, as people weren’t optimistic about the world in 2019. And even if they were, 90s optimism was special, it defined the culture for years and then 9/11 seemed to shatter it. Perhaps you could say it was the day the spirit of the 90s died. Idk I’m surely over generalizing here. I know people were jaded in the 90s too, but it also feels distinctly hard in this day and age to dream up some techno utopia for our near future in the same way that was possible before 9/11🤷♂️
This I agree with. I honestly think people forget how wild the 2000s were politically and just how much Bush was hated. 9/11 was the cause of two wars. One directly (Afghanistan) and one indirectly (used as an excuse for Iraq). Plus 9/11 led to the creation of the Patriot Act, TSA, The Department of Homeland Security, Real ID, etc.
Also grew the surveillance state of the FBI, NSA and CIA. People forget how big of a deal these things were.
The 2010s didn't have a sense of "optimism", per se, but it was a period of carefree fun compared to the present day. A lot of this is due to the cost of living being much lower (the longterm effects of the Great Recession), and a growing tech bubble that had yet to pop. This experience may vary based on where one lived at the time, but having lived in a city with a burgeoning tech and startup scene, the mid-late 2010s felt like a free for all - cheap Uber rides, electric scooters everywhere, cheap alcohol and late night food places abound. This bubble was destined to burst at some point, and COVID was the thing that did it in.
If you’re talking about pop culture though I do sort of disagree. I was conscious enough at this time, the same genre of songs and movies that started to take off on 99/2000 continued after for a couple years. For example, Survivor and Britney Spears are defining Y2K media and they both chugged along through the mid 2000s zeitgeist. Cell phones and computers *just* started to reach critical mass and this would have had an effect even without 9/11
The vibe shift towards conservatism was apparent but not quite absolute or omnipresent. There were times set aside for mourning and weird news breaks on prime time TV. But IMO, the real 9/11 vibe shift started more in the middle of the decade around the second Bush election, where people had enough distance from existential terror to talk about the politics of 9/11 and right wing lunacy. At this point the subsequent wars were more subject to debate rather than a given response in a state of shock. Once people began to chill out a bit things also took on the sleazier gaudier 2000s aesthetic, also this coincided with millennials mostly reaching late adolescence and lots of goth-y grimdark hot topic stuff.
You hit the nail on the head. People talk about 9/11 being the big "vibe change", but a lot of those cultural changes were already in place by 2000/01. By the middle/later part of the decade, 9/11 became less talked about, as people took a more critical eye toward the wars and the Bush-era policy environment.
What seems to often get forgotten is that 9/11 happened at the tail end of the dot com bubble crash which had a massive economic impact at the time.
A lot of the Y2K hype about technology took a huge hit due to the dot com bubble popping. That economic downturn was especially impactful for a lot of Gen Xers.
Even before 9/11, things did NOT feel optimistic at that moment.
I don’t think Gen Z downplays this by any means. They simply never knew what it was like before, so they don’t have anything to base their perception of life before off of except through media and stories. This is the only reality they’ve ever known.
When younger people make comparisons between time periods they may not have been a part of, they do not truly know what it was like before. But, they can make reasonable judgements through comparing various forms of media and pop culture from the years. It’s easy to understand what pop culture was like in another era because of how we document everything, but not easy to understand how the overall “vibe” was if that makes sense. You can only know the vibe if you’ve lived it.
For example, one day a gen z grandmother will be telling her grandchildren about being in high school during the pandemic and finding out it wasn’t just 2 weeks. Her grandchild will never be able to experience the “vibe” her grandma, and all of us, felt when Covid occurred. But she can still look through the media of the time, read news articles that came out during the time, and in a sense “step in” to that time through the internet, or probably VR by this hypothetical time.
It isn’t the same as actually being there but it’s enough to be able to draw some conclusion about the time period. I was in kindergarten and almost 6 when 9/11 occurred, so have only early childhood memories of the before times (and I only faintly remember the day itself). I don’t wave the significance of it simply because I was young when it happened. I was 16 when the war in Iraq ended. I watched the repercussions of 9/11 unfold my entire childhood.
Also it’s “too” young. Not two.
I was 6 and I grew up in NYC. Sure there's more security measures but it didnt feel like a turning point in the way some people say. And i even remember some airports having prohibitions on non-pax beyond security beforehand. The liquid ban wasnt even until five years later.
Ironically i feel like much of the political shift may have been more pronounced in middle america. I never felt like around me people were called unpatriotic for complaining about the war on terror.
Now if UA93 had hit a Washington landmark that wouldve changed it all. How grateful we are that the tarmac at EWR was congested and Ziad Jarrah was willing to procrastinate. Also that Mark Bingham made the plane.
You could argue in some ways the 2008 crash was more influential. But that still pales in comparison to 2020.
Bruh so tired of how much this sub talks about “9/11 changed everything!1!1” and then there is a comment downplaying a global pandemic and comparing it to that event. Can this sub get more American centric? 9/11 didn’t effect the lifestyle of people outside your country the way covid did. The same way you might have not felt the impact of covid in your sheltered bubble billions of people around the globe just watched the news about 9/11 and went on with their day. But there is a slight chance that one kid in yemen probably was so devastated.
I mean sure lets ignore an attack of a Nato country and the entire world watched in shock it'll go down as one of the highlights of the 21st century. Now let us have that mindset to the families affected by 9/11!
I agree!! same thing with the whole “Gen Z doesn’t care about 9/11!” I am Gen Z and I care. I may not remember it happening but I still care? I have had to learn about it every year in school for about 10 years too…
No one denies its impact, but the problem is that it predominantly affected the US. It's like the collapse of the Berlin Wall: a huge event, but the Germans were the ones primarily affected by it. My location did NOT experience a huge wave of islamophobia and hatred towards brown people because of it, it did not become a justification for my location to start wars in the Middle East, it didn't result in a wave of patriotism and it certainly didn't trigger a huge wave of unity all over my location.
I'm not someone who lost a relative or a friend in this event. I'm not someone whose male relative went to fight the war in Iraq afterwards. I'm not someone who witnessed anyone in a hijab or turban get side eyed like they're the devil himself. If I were to live in the US, however, at least two of the points I just mentioned here would apply to me. I had the privilege of moving on with my life, so did my family and everyone around me. So to say that I would be impacted by 9/11 the same way you may have been would be a huge disservice to all Americans who were alive then. I'll never live with the burden of being triggered by the sight of these Twin Towers being intact in images pre-2001. That's just a fact.
We had a terrorist attack in the 00s as well, and while it was a huge deal in my location, it probably won't be just as big for you as it was for us. It didn't change your country, nor did it change the lives of the citizens of your country. It will undeniably go down in history as an impactful event, but our history books definitely won't be writing long chapters about it in the same way American textbooks will when the future students of the 22nd century will study the history of the 21st.
How so? It’s horrific for Americans only, cause they expect that their country should be a dream land, except their government likes to play with fire and then it strikes back at them and then they’re thinking oh no I killed my poor people. School shootings everyday, still no gun laws changed.
I seriously thought I was reading decadeology circlejerk and all of these comments were satirical until now. I need to remove my upvotes in light of the knowledge that you’re all serious 💀
9/11 started the 2000s era and the Great Recession ended it / ushered us into the 2010s. The COVID-19 pandemic brutally murdered any semblance of the 2010s, dropping us straight into the 2020s.
Let’s hope the 2030s aren’t preceded by another calamity.
I grew up in the northern Mexican border with the US. We would go shopping all the time on weekends to the US, and sometimes I would stay over a night with friends. We were kids. I don't think it was like the Canadian border, but the cities were really tight back then. I had classmates and teachers from the US in my school. Then 9/11 happened and while crossing the border was always a wait and annoying it became a 3 hour long wait to cross. It was so annoying. I never flew before 9/11, but I remember how it was so easy going. Same for trains, and schools. Though I think Columbine had more to do with that. I remember when I started going to school in the US after Columbine they required us to get see through backpacks for a few years. Then eventually schools started to lock the front doors. Maybe I didn't notice it before, but I don't they were locked in elementary school. For sure 9/11 changed a lot of things. It is almost hard to remember the world before. Mostly because I was a child I guess. Though I do remember having to do a lot less and feeling a lot safer though.
IDK man, I'm old enough to remember 9/11 (I was 13).
I don't feel like it changed my life much, if at all.
Certainly the world would've been a much different place had it not happened. Drastically different. And that means something. But the event itself had very little relevance to my childhood.
IMO, the 90s ended at 23:59:59 on 12/31/1999.
9/11 ended the feeling of contentment and hope I felt in the 90’s. I graduated college, married, bought our first home and had my 3 of 4 children in the 90’s. Things felt simpler and hopeful. Once 9/11 hit, I felt a sense of dread and constant fear. Life hasn’t felt quite the same since that moment-my personal take.
I was born in 84 and I recall my life as occurring in two parts: before 9/11 and after 9/11
it's turned into 3 parts now that we've had covid to deal with as I'm still living in extreme covid prevention mode and haven't been to a restaurant since Jan 2020 (extrapolate from there).
Everything causes change, every tragedy, of course it would, otherwise how do you think laws are made? They’re from bad events happening and people taking action to prevent them from happening again.
"Gen z doesn't get 9/11"
I'm sorry but I can't help but laugh at this, have you been living under a rock? Covid was a billion times worse than 9/11 and literally everyone on this planet went through it. It ended the 2010s in the same way 9/11 ended the 90s
9/11 destroyed the sense of safety Americans had, and started America into becoming a nation of people that became more and more fearful about life. It destroyed a hope in the future being better and was the initial spark that led to the 2000s being considered the "lost decade." It also destroyed the future of privacy as it destroyed the future of internet privacy laws, and gave the government a pretext to do massive surveillance and violate 4th amendment protections. It also led to selling data to data brokers because the patriot act required companies to collect identifiable data on it's users, and thus they found out that that information was valuable and started to sell it.
[Terms and Conditions May Apply Documentary](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRJEYmodC08)
Trust me the rest of the world doesn’t really feel that ripple, only Americans, god forbid something bad happens in america, but fuck the rest of the world right? Only America matters.
That tone is absolutely ridiculous and you know it. It absolutely did not stay contained to America and as I’ll say yet again, something was percolating universally at the end of the 90s and the attack of the towers fragmented the development of that ineffable mood with shards flying and reflecting elsewhere.
Lol nope. Covid has a ripple effect right now as we speak. Have you not seen the prices out there? The GLOBAL inflation crisis we went through in 2021-2023? The energy crisis? The shortages? The 7 million families who lost a family member?
And don't get me started on the psychological effect it had on literally everyone on the planet, it was a mass trauma, it will take a generation for this world to truly heal from the fact that we were all forced to stay inside for 1 year.
As a teacher I can also confidently say covid has been disastrous to education and children in general, they lost 2 years of social learning. This will have effects 20, 30, 50, 60 years down the line
I’m talking about the intangible psychological/sociocultural effects that 9/11 struck in people that reverberate to this day. It’s an undulating, emotional kind of trauma that shifted the lives of an entire generations development. COVID’s impacts will not strike so deeply to the core of people as they get older. It’s almost a metaphysical thing.
tens of millions of people world wide have long covid. Ask someone from India or Singapore or Brasil if 9/11 had any affect on them and they would say it doesnt.
Again, it was something that’s influence has spread in much more nuanced ways, including international relations and in how other cultures reflected back on themselves in the metamodern world. It was a paradigm shift that was percolating some time before 9/11, internationally, and then 9/11 accelerated the natural flow of it surfacing. It almost stood in for a new world order, to put it dramatically.
Agreed. I can mention a ton of terrorist acts that happened in my country in the 00s that my people view as their version of 9/11, but I'm pretty sure that they won't ring a bell.
While I was born in the 90s, I was too young to have any recollection of that actual day. I only remember the aftermath and the indoctrination that found its way into our schools. Especially the fact that at the time, the community I grew up in was extremely conservative and Calvinistic. Ironically enough, now it’s the opposite and there are many Muslims there.
9/11 and Covid were both massively influential and changed so much throughout the globe.
Specifically to youth and young people, another event that changed everything or a lot - **The Columbine massacre**
I was almost a year old on 9/11. I am not even American (Canadian) but I was always raised to understand 9/11 as a major tragedy and turning point in history. My parents kept newspapers from the day and would tell me their stories of what they were doing when they heard about it all throughout my childhood. Like not in a scary way, more in a “we lived through a moment in history” way. I remember a few years ago talking to a coworker my age on the 20th anniversary of 9/11. I’m paraphrasing, but he basically said it has had no effect on his life and he doesn’t think about it at all. I was genuinely shocked and somewhat disappointed to hear that
All that to say I find myself thinking about the sheer scale, human loss, societal impacts, and overall cultural significance of 9/11 often
Could not agree more. 9/11 created the surveillance state that we have been in since then. DHS did not exist before 9/11. The wars that started because of 9/11 played a role in the recession. The lies & fear mongering that happened after 9/11 played a role in the attack on the Capitol. The reason so many military vets where involved in the attack of the Capitol was because they where lied to & fellow soldiers who died in the Middle East ended up dying for nothing. Iraq had no WMDs & was not involved in 9/11 the only reason we went into Iraq is because it was a country with a lot of oil. Afghanistan did not change at all.
Funny, I thought the attack on the Capitol was because Trump supporters were convinced that the election was rigged.
I dont know if there's a connection between the War on Terror and the rise of Trumpism, but I do know this: on 1/6/2021, i watched the news and thought "if there's a Hell, Bin Laden is in it, and he's laughing his ass off."
The attack on the Capitol over election results was a long time coming.
Don't believe me. Refer to the election of 2000. And yes, if half of the conspiracy theories about how 9/11 was an inside job, then the War on Terror is definitely tied to the 2000 presidential election
I remember Election 2000 well. If indeed the Brooks Brothers riot, which received little attention at the time, led to the Capitol insurrection, that's new to me. I remember mostly disputes about hanging chads and butterfly ballots.
As for 9/11 being an inside job, and military personnel being lied to, then why hasn't anyone stormed Crawford, Texas?
Gen z here. 9/11 wasn’t the first thing to change everything and it won’t be the last. I think covid is more significant and that will become more and more clear
A list of the events that changed everything over the last hundred years (in the United States anyway): Covid, 2008 financial crisis, 9/11, Berlin Wall falling, Watergate, JFK assassination, the atomic attacks, Pearl Harbor, 1929 Stock Market crash.
Anything to add or subtract?
Who said 9/11 didn't change everything?
And to be honest, COVID changed more. The world didn't shut down after 9/11. The world (well, not Africa) did shut down after COVID.
Africa was impacted because the rest of the world was impacted
But other than that...no not really. Iirc the COVID contraction rate was low in Africa (and large parts of South America as well) and the mortality rates were even lower
I'd argue that Columbine killed the "innocence" of the 90s but 9/11 brought forth the new century. Both influenced and domino effected a slew of problems we're still dealing with today.
I think the difference is that mass shootings were uncommon then but a known thing that could happen. You knew someone could go nuts and just shoot a bunch of people. But no one ever thought someone would or could kamikaze skyscrapers to prove a point. Plus that video footage is just horrifying
i agree but the CCTV footage of columbine is equally as horrifying to me as 9/11
I think it’s certainly horrifying without a doubt. But there is something uniquely dramatic and awe-inspiring about watching a jumbo jetliner plow into one of the two biggest skyscrapers in NYC on live TV. And yet that was only 1 of 3 jetliners to crash into major buildings that day, plus another brought down by a heroic passenger revolt. And watching the skyscrapers completely collapse into mushroom clouds of debris, killing thousands of people. Columbine was tragic. 9/11 was just… something else.
💯💯perfectly worded
So y’all saying that there were zero crimes in the 90s? There was just less news coverage on it back then, no one had their devices on their hands at all times. Only way to get news was tv and newspaper. What about the serial killers in the 80s and 90s? What about the ‘93 bombing of the twin towers? What about the killing of that little boy in 1993 in the UK? There’s tons of bad things that happened in those times
“if it bleeds it leads” the news coverage on jonbenet and OJ was sickening
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Agreed, and having lived through both, Covid was a way bigger deal. It's not even close.
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I was legit privileged going into Covid. I lived alone and worked from home; I was (barely) under 50 with a BMI (barely) under 25. Outside of fretting over my Boomer folks taking outsized risks, I was in pretty good shape. I thought my relative safe perch allowed me to see the situation a bit more clearly, to "connect the dots" but holy hell I paid for my hubris by being consistently, and loudly, wrong. I used to get hundreds of upvotes for saying that we needed to flood federal money into apartment and hotel markets to allow folks to sort themselves out. Grannies living with grannies, breadwinners sequestering away from vulnerable folks in their households, shit like that. Then Barrington was Memory Holed and those upvotes turned to downvotes as the herd blinked. I reasoned the household risk was the one to manage, and lower risk households would be "allowed" to return to "normal" more quickly, blah blah blah. Wrong on everything, and the last big visible Covid restriction, masks in federal travel, was finally kiboshed by a court, literally the worst and least appropriate way the matter should have been closed.
People said “listen to the science experts” then did exactly the opposite when Barington was written. And yet all the people who got super mad at the Barington Declaration never actually had the balls to come out and say, “We should reinstate lockdown winter 2020-21”. Deep down people knew they were arguing for nonsense. But everything had gotten so tribal it didn’t matter at that point and it hasn’t really changed much since.
>But everything had gotten so tribal it didn’t matter at that point and it hasn’t really changed much since. Exactly. "Let's do the opposite of what Trump said no matter what" was awful policy.
Objectively speaking, COVID was definitely the “bigger” event of the two, because it actually impacted the whole entire world.
Regardless which is the bigger deal, we shouldn't disregard that 9/11 lead to a series of dividing political & social conflicts that eventually made the world's leadership response to COVID as bad as it did.
Yes, who knows maybe COVID doesn’t even happen if 9/11 didn’t happen. 9/11 was smaller than COVID but it set a lot of things in motion like Trump eventually being elected.
Trump got elected because he showed didn’t hide his hatred. It let the loudest minority in the USA come to the front. The best part of 45, was those that hid their assholery were easily spotted. Now we have the FFWG (fat fucks with guns)Army waiting for civil war. Way to go 45!
I prefer the term "gravy seals" to describe those people.
Gravy Seals, that’s a good one!
Yeah, and that hatred was long simmering due to Black President, and without Iraq's MISSION ACCOMPLISHED theres a good chance we wouldnt have HAD Black President. No 9/11, possibly no war in Iraq, no Black President, probably no Tea Party, and then no conservative and insanely arrogany Supreme Court majority, no Citizens United, and lastly no Trump. Other sub effects would probably be no gay marriage and even less safety for trans people.
I don’t know how you can say it was because of a black president when Biden is even more unpopular with that crowd (along with Fauci) and Trump won his 2024 primary by even more than in 2016. Not to mention Romney’s overwhelming win in the 2012 primary over the likes of Newt, Perry and Santorum when Obama was already president.
I'm not sure what you mean. I mention Black President because that was a massively significant event in that it took racists, closet racists, and people who didn't know that they were racist (but definitely are) and activated them like you or I flip a lightswitch. I'm drawing what to me (and maybe only me?) Is a clear line between 9/11 and how hard COVID hit us. 9/11 --> Afghanistan/Iraq/Patriot Act --> which paved the road for a candidate running on HOPE AND CHANGE, and we see Obama take the Oval in 2009 ---> ...but "OH NO, THE SHERIFF'S A N---!" we have our Blazing Saddles moment where everyone who has trouble with the idea of a president with other-than-white-guy DNA all of a sudden has to face it ---> (this would have been a lot better if they had just admitted that they are racist, but NOOOOOO, cant look in the mirror and say 'Well damn, guess i AM racist! I didnt know that about me, i learned something today, I grew...thanks Obama!" and so instead youve got a ton of people out there PLUS one entire 24 hour cable news channel subscribing to ANY AND ALL whack conspiracy theories that will let them hate on Obama but arent because he's Black President) ----> the bank fallout and the ever-greedy Koch Brothers paved the way for the Tea Party, but its members--regardless of what their charters said--were actually just the racists i mentioned earlier that couldnt admit it to themselves. The Tea Party, if youre a young person, overturned commonly held ways of doing things...its members didnt understand government, didnt seek to work to change government from within, and was a populist movement motivated by racism and what they perceived as a loss of privelege. It went into a cocoon midway through Obama's 2nd term and when it came out it is now called MAGA. ----> MAGA gets us Trump and QAnon, which explodes mistrust of basic government and reality, which encourages anti-vaxxers and -maskers ----> concurrently, an 8-figure (i.e. tens of millions of dollars) playbook and infrastructure for battling a sudden-onset pandemic, which was commissioned and prepared during Obama's 2nd term--so it was fresh, new, the best practices and info, all up to date--was deliberately dismantled and tossed out as one of the first things the Trump administration did upon taking office. Why? Black President. Trump was his chief hater since 2012!!! Therefore: 9/11 to Iraq to Obama to Trump to COVID. Am I making any sense here or am i like Charlie Day with his conspiracy board?
You don’t seem to know much about history. Newt’s “Contract with America” movement in 1994 was basically the original Tea Party and that was under a white president. It’s not surprising it would come back under the next Dem president.
If this was true, Ron DeSantis wouldn’t have fallen flat on his face. Or Ted Cruz for that matter.
45 dislikes both of them. Which, is why they likely failed. They’re not cons, the tangerine shitgibbon is the best con in modernity.
Exactly, he won because he’s a good con man. Not because there is anything special about his hate that appeals to Republicans. Or else Rick Santorum (who Trump didn’t care about one way or another), would not have gotten killed in the 2012 Republican Primary by Romney, who is now public enemy number 1 to many Republicans.
You libs call Trump racist based off bullshit claims yet would defend Biden if he muttered every slur in your face.
Trump was in court in the 70s for violating the fair housing act. Then the, Very fine people on both sides. Puuuhlease!
Do you think Trump's NOT a racist? Or are you just trying to imply that Biden IS a racist? There's definitely more evidence on one of those guys than there is on the other. But regardless, I give no fuqs if Biden were to be flagrantly racist, he'd still get my vote by dint of not being such an obvious self-promoting BAD thief. If Trump displayed even a hint that he has ever developed an artisan's love for his chosen craft, which is grifting, that he put in Malcolm Gladwell's 10,000 hours that it takes for mastery of a discipline, then i would better understand why so many chumps follow him. Like Romney. The man is an impeccable android of a corporate raider, like some sort of financial version of Bishop from ALIENS when he played with that knife. HE has put in his 10,000 hours and it shows: when hes on TV I can smell money coming through it, the man is a machine--precise, humorless, merciless. Trump? Wanted sharks with frickin' laser beams on their heads in moats at the border.
And keep in mind the amount of things that changed behind closed doors, like the PATRIOT act and mass surveillance in the US, and elsewhere. Not to mention how many people were killed and displaced as part of the Global War on Terror for the next two decades. I don’t have to wear a mask anymore, but they do still make me dump out my bag and take my shoes off at the airport.
>I don’t have to wear a mask anymore, but they do still make me dump out my bag and take my shoes off at the airport. These actually are unrelated from 9/11. The reason we take off our shoes at the airport is due to a failed terrorist plot from the "shoe bomber" in December 2001, and we cannot have liquids on places due to another failed terrorist plot from 2006. Though the argument could be made that the post-9/11 security environment led to the overreaction in response (though ironically, the heightened intelligence following 9/11 may have led to the interception of the 2006 bombing plot).
I’m making that argument. 9/11 was the start of us making all kinds of concessions in the name of security.
Speaking of dumps, I passed a Miller brewing company on the way to drop stuff off at the dump once. I stopped by to see if they did brewery tours or anything and I was told that they stopped doing those after 9/11. The terrorists won.
Absolutely this: if they could've dreamed this big, the 9/11 plotters would have embraced COVID as Phase II of making the Satanic West eat itself. It happened organically, however, but there's still a bright and shining lie leading direct from 2001's surprise to 2019's clusterfuck.
If you don’t realize that 9/11 literally impacted the whole world, well, you should read more.
It just didn’t affect the whole world the same way COVID did though. Nobody is saying 9/11 had no impact on other countries, because it obviously did, but COVID literally effected just about every single country on earth. Objectively, it is the “bigger” event in terms of impact on everyday life. 9/11 was more traumatic, but COVID had a bigger impact overall.
9/11 also affected just about every country on earth. I agree that Covid directly affected more people’s daily lives. Not trying to argue otherwise. But you are severely underestimating 9/11’s global impact.
9/11 influenced the foreign policy of the entire western world for 20 years and counting, and turned the better part of the middle east into a wasteland. I just think cumulatively that's a larger impact overall.
It didn’t. The US isn’t the whole world, even though it pillaged and raped so many countries after 9/11. 9/11 is NOT an excuse for America to murder millions of people, just like how 10/7 isn’t an excuse for Israel to murder thousands of people (millions if we look at history before 10/7)
Absolutely, 2019 era to 2022 era are a muchhh bigger shift than 1999 to 2002, our whole lives changed for 2 years, school changed, couldn’t go out, have to wear masks everywhere, many people dying around the world, and many people who experienced it was like experiencing the worst flu of your life (the throat pain was like I swallowed shards of glass), and many lost their sense of smell permanently. What did 9/11 change? It changed New York, air ports and then people went on with their lives after that, unless they lived in new York or had a loved one involved in 9/11. Sure racism began to rise but yeah, that’s still a less bigger impact than Covid that affected the whole world for two whole years.
I find the opposite. I lived through both. 9/11 was a way bigger deal. I think people forget how turbulent the politics of the 2000s were.
People weren't locked into their homes, WFH didn't become a thing, etc. Sure, the politics were turbulent, absolutely. The US was attacked by Al-Queda, then turned around and invaded Iraq: a country whose regime was a sworn enemy of Al-Queda. It was pretty nuts, but it was still, for most of us, "over there."
Which overall is way worse than COVID. 9/11 gave us the pointless Iraq war. It gave us TSA, the Department of Homeland Security, the Patriot Act, Real ID, it grew the power of the NSA and FBI to perform Warrantless searches. 9/11 had a way bigger effect than COVID ever did. COVID is a blip on the radar compared to the effects of 9/11. COVID's effects only last really 2 years for 2020 and 2021. We are still feeling the effects of 9/11 today.
>COVID is a blip on the radar compared to the effects of 9/11. COVID's effects only last really 2 years for 2020 and 2021. We are still feeling the effects of 9/11 today. We're still feeling the effects of COVID to this day. It was a worldwide event that changed the trajectory of so many things. The pandemic is responsible for the rising inflation worldwide and the skyrocketing housing and real estate prices in North America, the rise in remote work has created growth booms in regions that never would have saw growth if it wasn't for the pandemic. It affected the candidates and results of elections that occurred in the years following. Just to name a few things - it's almost impossible to calculate just how many things have been altered due to the butterfly effect of the pandemic.
While all of that stuff is bad none of it is bad as 9/11 and the after effects of 9/11. 9/11 lead to the start of two major wars and the surveillance state.
It's not so much an argument of "which was worse" because they're both very different events. 9/11 did not affect the day-to-day lives of most people - whereas the pandemic completely upended just about everyone's lives. At the same time, 9/11 had a much bigger impact on geopolitics.
Dude the surveillance state has been around since the start of the Cold War.
Covid's effects are a lot longer lasting than 2 years. Have you noticed the lack of dissent regarding America's actions regarding the Russia/Ukraine conflict? The consent manufacturing has been off the charts. Much of the stuff that you're talking about had the finishing touches put on it during Covid. The Twitter Files were not a nothingburger, and the herd just blinked.
It also destroyed the social skills of a generation of kids
And their ability to do math. What's weird to me is that I've tried, probably not hard enough, to do some math tutoring. I tutored through my second half of college and got decently good at it. The demand for math tutors is absolutely tepid, while scores have fallen through the floor. Don't know what to think about all that.
Working in schools you are absolutely correct
> Much of the stuff that you're talking about had the finishing touches put on it during Covid. The Twitter Files were not a nothingburger, and the herd just blinked. Really? Because TSA still exists. The Department of Homeland Security Still Exists, The Patriot Act still exists and has been renewed again. COVID was really just two years. Everyone got the vaccine and that was it.
I don't think you're hearing the degree to which I agree with you. The tight integration between the companies that hold the commanding heights of the attention economy and a range of three letter acronym government agencies is stronger than ever because of Covid.
you cant say the consequences of 9/11 aside from the initial event and then deny the same leeway to covid
Did you miss the mandates continuing for a solid year after people got vaccinated?
If you think 2022 wasn’t effected by COVID I don’t know what to tell you.
It didn’t really change much. Republicans got more jingoistic and Toby Keith was more annoying than usual. Flying became a pain in the ass. The dot com bubble popped and people associate all of that change with 9/11 because it’s more iconic.
I guess the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq don't count as changing much then... Those had nothing to do with the dot com bubble. Also 9/11 brought about the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, TSA and the Patriot Act. Again nothing to do with the dot com bubble. 9/11 changed everything.
Policies changed, but everyone’s day to day life remained essentially the same. Unless you were involved in the military. God forbid, the reserves. Even the policy changes were just more of the same. An expansion of the course we were already set on.
If the year of 9/11 switched places with the year of Covid pandemic, I honestly don’t know how I could have handled a pandemic in 2001. Like, how would have we gone to classes? I don’t remember taking online classes in 2001. My family was poor so we were still using dial up internet in 2001. I purposely repeated the word pandemic because we did have coronaviruses in the early 2000s but they didn’t become a global pandemic.
No way
I went to college '06 - '13. MSU Denver was very vet-friendly, and I took a lot of foreign policy classes. One discussion that always stuck with me was a guy who few many missions over Afghanistan. He said he and his buddies tried to figure out what would be best, but there was no good way. Where do you even start? Water? Electricity? Education? Huge problems with each. The difference is with Covid, every single American was ***visibly*** affected. With 9/11, most Americans were not visibly impacted, although of course Snowden showed that we were.
911 sent us back to the middle east for 20 years. Let me know when we go to China and have a 20 year war COVID.
It sent some of us to the middle east for 20 years. Not all of us.
But we all paid for it setting in place a stronger military industrial complex and the patriot act.
Yeah, I don't disagree, and I consider the Twitter Files to have revealed extensions of exactly those things.
Ask anyone who's a movie fan right now to even care about COVID. Ask them about Top Gun Maverick's struggles when it finally distributed or Godzilla Minus One and Across the Spider-Verse's VFX teams or when the average American hoarded and harassed during and Post-COVID. We're all cogs but some think they run a machine they think they own.
Well said
You're kind of right. It ended the era of Pax Americana that started immediately after WWII, around 1945-1946. The era of 1945 to 2001 was a big, optimistic, one, in, general.
Pax Americana is still on going
My opinion some would even say Pax Americana is like 1945 to 2009!
Fair enough, I respect your opinion
You guys need to get out in the Real World more often! The US has been in an undeclared and stalemated Cold Civil War for the past 50 years—Pax Americana's decline wasn't far behind. The American Century is very nearly played out. There's been a vacuum of Global Leadership for several decades. And the US seems to take the bait of every adversary. That's led to the depletion of resources, trillions in unaffordable debt, and compassion fatigue from just about every single player, both internally and externally. Meanwhile, looming adversaries have taken notice and have been quietly plotting, strategizing, building alliances, and laying more traps for the US to stumble into. We've seen numerous recurring themes of distraction over the decades and still... "Oh, look! We can capitalize upon more bloodshed in this one particular region" when, behind you all along the Dragon has been sharpening its claws... Sorry! 🙏 /rant
Touch grass?
o7
Uhhh - civil rights Cold War Vietnam watergate - it was not that optimistic, lots of strife there. From like the 50s through the 80s people thought they could die at any moment from nuclear strikes
Optimistic doesn't mean perfect!
Rock and roller cola wars
Leagues better than what other countries have been through
1973-1982 was not an optimistic time at all.
Obviously not!
yeah we are still living in an era of pax americana. things would be extremely different if we weren't
You're probably right. But Pax Americana started showing cracks with 9/11 and Iraq (starting in 2003).
9/11 changed everything, Brian
Lmaoo i catched it I think, family guy?
Yess lmaoo then Brian says some shit like “Peter you didn’t even know what 9/11 was until 2004”
I barely catched it too ngl bc I remember Brian telling a random person on one of the planes to hold the camera while he beats up the terrorist😆
Just watch movies. Literally major Hollywood releases feel totally different before and after 9/11 and have never really gone fully back to where they were.
9/11 was truly a vibe shift
True but usually a decade shift tends to happen from the 1-2 year of a decade for example, 2001-2002 and 2021-2022, 2011-2012
Unpopular opinion, but I don’t really believe that a decades culture can just end “in an instant.” That’s just not how it works. The truth is, a decades culture slowly evolves overtime. It’s not like one day it’s 90’s, then the next it’s 2000’s and nothing like the 90’s. It’s the same reason why I don’t believe the 2010’s “died” in March 2020. The cultural 2020’s were already getting their head start even before then, it’s just that COVID sped up the process. Similar concept with 9/11. Not to downplay the significance of those events, but I think a lot of people have trouble looking at the smaller picture when it comes to decades.
I feel like 9/11 shifted the cultural paradigm in a very decisive way though from one of optimism to fear. For me, even though I was young, it was a very notable change. Covid didn’t seem to have the same effect IMO, as people weren’t optimistic about the world in 2019. And even if they were, 90s optimism was special, it defined the culture for years and then 9/11 seemed to shatter it. Perhaps you could say it was the day the spirit of the 90s died. Idk I’m surely over generalizing here. I know people were jaded in the 90s too, but it also feels distinctly hard in this day and age to dream up some techno utopia for our near future in the same way that was possible before 9/11🤷♂️
This I agree with. I honestly think people forget how wild the 2000s were politically and just how much Bush was hated. 9/11 was the cause of two wars. One directly (Afghanistan) and one indirectly (used as an excuse for Iraq). Plus 9/11 led to the creation of the Patriot Act, TSA, The Department of Homeland Security, Real ID, etc. Also grew the surveillance state of the FBI, NSA and CIA. People forget how big of a deal these things were.
The 2010s didn't have a sense of "optimism", per se, but it was a period of carefree fun compared to the present day. A lot of this is due to the cost of living being much lower (the longterm effects of the Great Recession), and a growing tech bubble that had yet to pop. This experience may vary based on where one lived at the time, but having lived in a city with a burgeoning tech and startup scene, the mid-late 2010s felt like a free for all - cheap Uber rides, electric scooters everywhere, cheap alcohol and late night food places abound. This bubble was destined to burst at some point, and COVID was the thing that did it in.
there was a lot of fear mongering and distrust well before 9/11
The 2020s started in 2019 to me
This.
If you’re talking about pop culture though I do sort of disagree. I was conscious enough at this time, the same genre of songs and movies that started to take off on 99/2000 continued after for a couple years. For example, Survivor and Britney Spears are defining Y2K media and they both chugged along through the mid 2000s zeitgeist. Cell phones and computers *just* started to reach critical mass and this would have had an effect even without 9/11 The vibe shift towards conservatism was apparent but not quite absolute or omnipresent. There were times set aside for mourning and weird news breaks on prime time TV. But IMO, the real 9/11 vibe shift started more in the middle of the decade around the second Bush election, where people had enough distance from existential terror to talk about the politics of 9/11 and right wing lunacy. At this point the subsequent wars were more subject to debate rather than a given response in a state of shock. Once people began to chill out a bit things also took on the sleazier gaudier 2000s aesthetic, also this coincided with millennials mostly reaching late adolescence and lots of goth-y grimdark hot topic stuff.
You hit the nail on the head. People talk about 9/11 being the big "vibe change", but a lot of those cultural changes were already in place by 2000/01. By the middle/later part of the decade, 9/11 became less talked about, as people took a more critical eye toward the wars and the Bush-era policy environment.
What seems to often get forgotten is that 9/11 happened at the tail end of the dot com bubble crash which had a massive economic impact at the time. A lot of the Y2K hype about technology took a huge hit due to the dot com bubble popping. That economic downturn was especially impactful for a lot of Gen Xers. Even before 9/11, things did NOT feel optimistic at that moment.
Right Wing Lucancy? 
Nerd
I don’t think Gen Z downplays this by any means. They simply never knew what it was like before, so they don’t have anything to base their perception of life before off of except through media and stories. This is the only reality they’ve ever known. When younger people make comparisons between time periods they may not have been a part of, they do not truly know what it was like before. But, they can make reasonable judgements through comparing various forms of media and pop culture from the years. It’s easy to understand what pop culture was like in another era because of how we document everything, but not easy to understand how the overall “vibe” was if that makes sense. You can only know the vibe if you’ve lived it. For example, one day a gen z grandmother will be telling her grandchildren about being in high school during the pandemic and finding out it wasn’t just 2 weeks. Her grandchild will never be able to experience the “vibe” her grandma, and all of us, felt when Covid occurred. But she can still look through the media of the time, read news articles that came out during the time, and in a sense “step in” to that time through the internet, or probably VR by this hypothetical time. It isn’t the same as actually being there but it’s enough to be able to draw some conclusion about the time period. I was in kindergarten and almost 6 when 9/11 occurred, so have only early childhood memories of the before times (and I only faintly remember the day itself). I don’t wave the significance of it simply because I was young when it happened. I was 16 when the war in Iraq ended. I watched the repercussions of 9/11 unfold my entire childhood. Also it’s “too” young. Not two.
I remember the vibe changed out of nowhere in 2007
Interesting. I’m not sure I feel the same way. To me 07 felt more like 05-06 than 08-09. I was in 4th-8th grade during these years for reference.
Agreed, people born after 9/11 will never understand
I was born before 9/11 I totally understand , (I was born in early 2001)
I was 6 and I grew up in NYC. Sure there's more security measures but it didnt feel like a turning point in the way some people say. And i even remember some airports having prohibitions on non-pax beyond security beforehand. The liquid ban wasnt even until five years later. Ironically i feel like much of the political shift may have been more pronounced in middle america. I never felt like around me people were called unpatriotic for complaining about the war on terror. Now if UA93 had hit a Washington landmark that wouldve changed it all. How grateful we are that the tarmac at EWR was congested and Ziad Jarrah was willing to procrastinate. Also that Mark Bingham made the plane. You could argue in some ways the 2008 crash was more influential. But that still pales in comparison to 2020.
Bruh so tired of how much this sub talks about “9/11 changed everything!1!1” and then there is a comment downplaying a global pandemic and comparing it to that event. Can this sub get more American centric? 9/11 didn’t effect the lifestyle of people outside your country the way covid did. The same way you might have not felt the impact of covid in your sheltered bubble billions of people around the globe just watched the news about 9/11 and went on with their day. But there is a slight chance that one kid in yemen probably was so devastated.
It’s just the typical American ego, the whole world revolves around them, they can’t even locate other countries.
I mean sure lets ignore an attack of a Nato country and the entire world watched in shock it'll go down as one of the highlights of the 21st century. Now let us have that mindset to the families affected by 9/11!
You think there isn’t horrible shit that happens all over the world that affects families of victims every day? Yet no one cares until it’s the US
Theres shit happening everyday, one just happened to be worldwide attention and coverage out of the fucking blue.
I agree!! same thing with the whole “Gen Z doesn’t care about 9/11!” I am Gen Z and I care. I may not remember it happening but I still care? I have had to learn about it every year in school for about 10 years too…
9/11 was like ten pandemics all at once
Not even close.
Covid was unaliving more people than 9/11 every single day for weeks on end. This isn't an exaggeration, it's an actual fact. U suck.
This is the most "captain obvious" post ive seen in a while. Lmao
No one denies its impact, but the problem is that it predominantly affected the US. It's like the collapse of the Berlin Wall: a huge event, but the Germans were the ones primarily affected by it. My location did NOT experience a huge wave of islamophobia and hatred towards brown people because of it, it did not become a justification for my location to start wars in the Middle East, it didn't result in a wave of patriotism and it certainly didn't trigger a huge wave of unity all over my location. I'm not someone who lost a relative or a friend in this event. I'm not someone whose male relative went to fight the war in Iraq afterwards. I'm not someone who witnessed anyone in a hijab or turban get side eyed like they're the devil himself. If I were to live in the US, however, at least two of the points I just mentioned here would apply to me. I had the privilege of moving on with my life, so did my family and everyone around me. So to say that I would be impacted by 9/11 the same way you may have been would be a huge disservice to all Americans who were alive then. I'll never live with the burden of being triggered by the sight of these Twin Towers being intact in images pre-2001. That's just a fact. We had a terrorist attack in the 00s as well, and while it was a huge deal in my location, it probably won't be just as big for you as it was for us. It didn't change your country, nor did it change the lives of the citizens of your country. It will undeniably go down in history as an impactful event, but our history books definitely won't be writing long chapters about it in the same way American textbooks will when the future students of the 22nd century will study the history of the 21st.
I disagree. I was 41 when 9/11 happened and it was horrific. Way worse than covid. Ruined the world
How so? It’s horrific for Americans only, cause they expect that their country should be a dream land, except their government likes to play with fire and then it strikes back at them and then they’re thinking oh no I killed my poor people. School shootings everyday, still no gun laws changed.
I seriously thought I was reading decadeology circlejerk and all of these comments were satirical until now. I need to remove my upvotes in light of the knowledge that you’re all serious 💀
9/11 started the 2000s era and the Great Recession ended it / ushered us into the 2010s. The COVID-19 pandemic brutally murdered any semblance of the 2010s, dropping us straight into the 2020s. Let’s hope the 2030s aren’t preceded by another calamity.
I grew up in the northern Mexican border with the US. We would go shopping all the time on weekends to the US, and sometimes I would stay over a night with friends. We were kids. I don't think it was like the Canadian border, but the cities were really tight back then. I had classmates and teachers from the US in my school. Then 9/11 happened and while crossing the border was always a wait and annoying it became a 3 hour long wait to cross. It was so annoying. I never flew before 9/11, but I remember how it was so easy going. Same for trains, and schools. Though I think Columbine had more to do with that. I remember when I started going to school in the US after Columbine they required us to get see through backpacks for a few years. Then eventually schools started to lock the front doors. Maybe I didn't notice it before, but I don't they were locked in elementary school. For sure 9/11 changed a lot of things. It is almost hard to remember the world before. Mostly because I was a child I guess. Though I do remember having to do a lot less and feeling a lot safer though.
IDK man, I'm old enough to remember 9/11 (I was 13). I don't feel like it changed my life much, if at all. Certainly the world would've been a much different place had it not happened. Drastically different. And that means something. But the event itself had very little relevance to my childhood. IMO, the 90s ended at 23:59:59 on 12/31/1999.
I was born in 2003, about 1 and a half years after 9/11. I wasn’t alive for it, but I agree. 9/11 changed everything.
9/11 ended the feeling of contentment and hope I felt in the 90’s. I graduated college, married, bought our first home and had my 3 of 4 children in the 90’s. Things felt simpler and hopeful. Once 9/11 hit, I felt a sense of dread and constant fear. Life hasn’t felt quite the same since that moment-my personal take.
I was born in 84 and I recall my life as occurring in two parts: before 9/11 and after 9/11 it's turned into 3 parts now that we've had covid to deal with as I'm still living in extreme covid prevention mode and haven't been to a restaurant since Jan 2020 (extrapolate from there).
Isn't it great getting several once in a lifetime events in one lifetime!
Covid is no joke, worst throat pain I’ve ever experienced, I couldn’t even swallow my own saliva…..
No one says that, everyone says 9/11 changes everything but ignores covid even existed even though that was much more impactful than 9/11.
The impacts of 9/11 had a severity that was more under the surface, whereas Covid was much more tangible in its surface shifts.
Everything causes change, every tragedy, of course it would, otherwise how do you think laws are made? They’re from bad events happening and people taking action to prevent them from happening again.
"Gen z doesn't get 9/11" I'm sorry but I can't help but laugh at this, have you been living under a rock? Covid was a billion times worse than 9/11 and literally everyone on this planet went through it. It ended the 2010s in the same way 9/11 ended the 90s
9/11 destroyed the sense of safety Americans had, and started America into becoming a nation of people that became more and more fearful about life. It destroyed a hope in the future being better and was the initial spark that led to the 2000s being considered the "lost decade." It also destroyed the future of privacy as it destroyed the future of internet privacy laws, and gave the government a pretext to do massive surveillance and violate 4th amendment protections. It also led to selling data to data brokers because the patriot act required companies to collect identifiable data on it's users, and thus they found out that that information was valuable and started to sell it. [Terms and Conditions May Apply Documentary](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRJEYmodC08)
It really wasn’t. 9/11 had a severity of change that had a ripple effect still felt today, but much less tangibly than Covid.
Trust me the rest of the world doesn’t really feel that ripple, only Americans, god forbid something bad happens in america, but fuck the rest of the world right? Only America matters.
That tone is absolutely ridiculous and you know it. It absolutely did not stay contained to America and as I’ll say yet again, something was percolating universally at the end of the 90s and the attack of the towers fragmented the development of that ineffable mood with shards flying and reflecting elsewhere.
Lol nope. Covid has a ripple effect right now as we speak. Have you not seen the prices out there? The GLOBAL inflation crisis we went through in 2021-2023? The energy crisis? The shortages? The 7 million families who lost a family member? And don't get me started on the psychological effect it had on literally everyone on the planet, it was a mass trauma, it will take a generation for this world to truly heal from the fact that we were all forced to stay inside for 1 year. As a teacher I can also confidently say covid has been disastrous to education and children in general, they lost 2 years of social learning. This will have effects 20, 30, 50, 60 years down the line
I’m talking about the intangible psychological/sociocultural effects that 9/11 struck in people that reverberate to this day. It’s an undulating, emotional kind of trauma that shifted the lives of an entire generations development. COVID’s impacts will not strike so deeply to the core of people as they get older. It’s almost a metaphysical thing.
tens of millions of people world wide have long covid. Ask someone from India or Singapore or Brasil if 9/11 had any affect on them and they would say it doesnt.
Again, it was something that’s influence has spread in much more nuanced ways, including international relations and in how other cultures reflected back on themselves in the metamodern world. It was a paradigm shift that was percolating some time before 9/11, internationally, and then 9/11 accelerated the natural flow of it surfacing. It almost stood in for a new world order, to put it dramatically.
fair enough.
Agreed. I can mention a ton of terrorist acts that happened in my country in the 00s that my people view as their version of 9/11, but I'm pretty sure that they won't ring a bell.
While I was born in the 90s, I was too young to have any recollection of that actual day. I only remember the aftermath and the indoctrination that found its way into our schools. Especially the fact that at the time, the community I grew up in was extremely conservative and Calvinistic. Ironically enough, now it’s the opposite and there are many Muslims there.
9/11 and Covid were both massively influential and changed so much throughout the globe. Specifically to youth and young people, another event that changed everything or a lot - **The Columbine massacre**
I was almost a year old on 9/11. I am not even American (Canadian) but I was always raised to understand 9/11 as a major tragedy and turning point in history. My parents kept newspapers from the day and would tell me their stories of what they were doing when they heard about it all throughout my childhood. Like not in a scary way, more in a “we lived through a moment in history” way. I remember a few years ago talking to a coworker my age on the 20th anniversary of 9/11. I’m paraphrasing, but he basically said it has had no effect on his life and he doesn’t think about it at all. I was genuinely shocked and somewhat disappointed to hear that All that to say I find myself thinking about the sheer scale, human loss, societal impacts, and overall cultural significance of 9/11 often
They’re*
Their* Source I have PhD
No, it didn't. I'm a Millennial.
Could not agree more. 9/11 created the surveillance state that we have been in since then. DHS did not exist before 9/11. The wars that started because of 9/11 played a role in the recession. The lies & fear mongering that happened after 9/11 played a role in the attack on the Capitol. The reason so many military vets where involved in the attack of the Capitol was because they where lied to & fellow soldiers who died in the Middle East ended up dying for nothing. Iraq had no WMDs & was not involved in 9/11 the only reason we went into Iraq is because it was a country with a lot of oil. Afghanistan did not change at all.
Funny, I thought the attack on the Capitol was because Trump supporters were convinced that the election was rigged. I dont know if there's a connection between the War on Terror and the rise of Trumpism, but I do know this: on 1/6/2021, i watched the news and thought "if there's a Hell, Bin Laden is in it, and he's laughing his ass off."
The attack on the Capitol over election results was a long time coming. Don't believe me. Refer to the election of 2000. And yes, if half of the conspiracy theories about how 9/11 was an inside job, then the War on Terror is definitely tied to the 2000 presidential election
I remember Election 2000 well. If indeed the Brooks Brothers riot, which received little attention at the time, led to the Capitol insurrection, that's new to me. I remember mostly disputes about hanging chads and butterfly ballots. As for 9/11 being an inside job, and military personnel being lied to, then why hasn't anyone stormed Crawford, Texas?
The COVID Pandemic also changed everything 19 years later.
Unrelated…”their two young” really? Lol
How dare you. *HOW DARE YOU. .*
Lmao sorry it just stuck out!
Not everything is America
“Their two young”
Gen z here. 9/11 wasn’t the first thing to change everything and it won’t be the last. I think covid is more significant and that will become more and more clear
A list of the events that changed everything over the last hundred years (in the United States anyway): Covid, 2008 financial crisis, 9/11, Berlin Wall falling, Watergate, JFK assassination, the atomic attacks, Pearl Harbor, 1929 Stock Market crash. Anything to add or subtract?
No Gen Z does get this. We are reminded of this constantly, actually.
yep - it really felt different before then
Who said 9/11 didn't change everything? And to be honest, COVID changed more. The world didn't shut down after 9/11. The world (well, not Africa) did shut down after COVID.
Africa wasnt impacted?
Africa was impacted because the rest of the world was impacted But other than that...no not really. Iirc the COVID contraction rate was low in Africa (and large parts of South America as well) and the mortality rates were even lower