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>Then came 9/11 The rising pessimism and negativity since 2008/09 is a global phenomenon. I think it's wrong and very US-centric to attribute that to 9/11. Th

>Then came 9/11 The rising pessimism and negativity since 2008/09 is a global phenomenon. I think it's wrong and very US-centric to attribute that to 9/11. The 2008 financial crisis and the rise of social media has probably more to do with the rise of millennial pessimism and negativity.

panta 5y ago
We had worse crises before that didn’t change societies so deeply. With 9/11 we started renouncing to the concept of freedom that we gained with illuminism and the French revolution. Then we started putting “safety” before everything else.
- fakesheriff 5y ago
  > Then we started putting “safety” before everything else. One caveat. It's safety first, unless they decide to go to war to ensure continued access to cheap commodities (Iraq) or to play weird sociopath power games (Vietnam). It's going to be kind of rich when they ask people from podunk towns in "flyover country" to go fight their next war, after years of ridiculing them and decimating their local economies.
- cygx 5y ago
  We had worse crises before that didn’t change societies so deeply During the Red Scare, loyalty review boards were instituted and civil servants insufficiently 'American' were sacked in the thousands.
  - mbreese 5y ago
    But there isn't a singular date to associate with the Red Scare... that's more a nebulous period of time. It was also a gradual process. The West was already preparing for the oncoming cold-war with the USSR before the end of WW2. The loyalty boards and Hollywood blacklisting were definitely a change is society, but it was so slow moving that I wouldn't compare it to a shift like 9/11. The world wasn't really different before and after something like the hearings of the House Un-American Activities Committee, even though that is what would be a likely event you'd associate with the Red Scare. When I think of 20th century cultural events that had an shift in society, I think more of the Cuban missile crisis, the Challenger disaster, the fall of the Berlin wall, etc... shorter events (not necessarily instantaneous, but well defined times) where you could define shifts in culture to before/after.
    - dTal 5y ago
      Change can still be change without being sudden.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
danielschonfeld 5y ago
I agree with the poster below me. While the financial crisis might be more of a root of all problems in Millenial and generations that followed minds it’s not where it all started (I am a Millenial) Also don’t forget 2008 was the year of the iPhone. The year we started inching towards being an always on society.
artursapek 5y ago
I agree, I think the difference is that in 1999 when he wrote that piece, there wasn't a clear audience in front of him that could react immediately. Nowadays, everything that gets written is immediately posted into social networks to be given instant gratification.
phone8675309 5y ago
I think the 2008 financial crisis showed most millennials that they would never be able to own anything of real worth and value from their work alone, that they would not accrue their own generational wealth but instead inherit from their parents (if they inherit at all), and that unless you're born into the big club, are useful to the big club, or are a massive outlier, that hard work and personal sacrifice will not materially improve your condition in life. At least that's what I got from it as an "elder millennial" (born in the very early 1980s).
ditonal 5y ago
I wouldn’t understate the role of companies like Google that pioneereed “exploiting idealism as a PR strategy.” The IPO listing claimed “Google is not a conventional company and does not intend to become one” and their recruiting tag line was “Do cool things that matter.” They leaned hard into social issues like gay marriage and paid lip service to FOSS and hacker pet topics. But over time they’ve shown willingness to sacrifice any amount of user privacy, willingness to censor and suppress, willingness to illegally collude against labor, and willingness to embrace special rules to protect elites in their club. People nowadays complain that gay pride parades have gotten too corporate, but especially by companies that are willing to exploit people in other ways. But this is simply the playbook Google pioneered, to take good will around certain social issues and use it as a decoy while you pick people’s pockets and put your boot on their face. I don’t think we can understate the extent to which good causes have been infiltrated by bad corporate actors and how much that had undermined our trust in our communities.

panta 5y ago

We had worse crises before that didn’t change societies so deeply. With 9/11 we started renouncing to the concept of freedom that we gained with illuminism and the French revolution. Then we started putting “safety” before everything else.

fakesheriff 5y ago
> Then we started putting “safety” before everything else. One caveat. It's safety first, unless they decide to go to war to ensure continued access to cheap commodities (Iraq) or to play weird sociopath power games (Vietnam). It's going to be kind of rich when they ask people from podunk towns in "flyover country" to go fight their next war, after years of ridiculing them and decimating their local economies.
cygx 5y ago
We had worse crises before that didn’t change societies so deeply During the Red Scare, loyalty review boards were instituted and civil servants insufficiently 'American' were sacked in the thousands.
- mbreese 5y ago
  But there isn't a singular date to associate with the Red Scare... that's more a nebulous period of time. It was also a gradual process. The West was already preparing for the oncoming cold-war with the USSR before the end of WW2. The loyalty boards and Hollywood blacklisting were definitely a change is society, but it was so slow moving that I wouldn't compare it to a shift like 9/11. The world wasn't really different before and after something like the hearings of the House Un-American Activities Committee, even though that is what would be a likely event you'd associate with the Red Scare. When I think of 20th century cultural events that had an shift in society, I think more of the Cuban missile crisis, the Challenger disaster, the fall of the Berlin wall, etc... shorter events (not necessarily instantaneous, but well defined times) where you could define shifts in culture to before/after.
  - dTal 5y ago
    Change can still be change without being sudden.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

danielschonfeld 5y ago

I agree with the poster below me. While the financial crisis might be more of a root of all problems in Millenial and generations that followed minds it’s not where it all started (I am a Millenial) Also don’t forget 2008 was the year of the iPhone. The year we started inching towards being an always on society.

artursapek 5y ago

I agree, I think the difference is that in 1999 when he wrote that piece, there wasn't a clear audience in front of him that could react immediately. Nowadays, everything that gets written is immediately posted into social networks to be given instant gratification.

phone8675309 5y ago

I think the 2008 financial crisis showed most millennials that they would never be able to own anything of real worth and value from their work alone, that they would not accrue their own generational wealth but instead inherit from their parents (if they inherit at all), and that unless you're born into the big club, are useful to the big club, or are a massive outlier, that hard work and personal sacrifice will not materially improve your condition in life. At least that's what I got from it as an "elder millennial" (born in the very early 1980s).

ditonal 5y ago

I wouldn’t understate the role of companies like Google that pioneereed “exploiting idealism as a PR strategy.” The IPO listing claimed “Google is not a conventional company and does not intend to become one” and their recruiting tag line was “Do cool things that matter.” They leaned hard into social issues like gay marriage and paid lip service to FOSS and hacker pet topics. But over time they’ve shown willingness to sacrifice any amount of user privacy, willingness to censor and suppress, willingness to illegally collude against labor, and willingness to embrace special rules to protect elites in their club. People nowadays complain that gay pride parades have gotten too corporate, but especially by companies that are willing to exploit people in other ways. But this is simply the playbook Google pioneered, to take good will around certain social issues and use it as a decoy while you pick people’s pockets and put your boot on their face. I don’t think we can understate the extent to which good causes have been infiltrated by bad corporate actors and how much that had undermined our trust in our communities.