AIBU to ask you your opinion on 9/11 and millennials?

[CorianderDestroysFamilies]

I read a tweet this weekend that went - why do millennials complain all the time and the answer is basically because we saw 2000 die on tv when we were 10 and the world has got worse ever since.
Reading the following tweets made me realise that actually it must have had a massive effect for the mindset of that group, myself included, and I’ve never really thought about it - obviously more so for those in the US but even in the UK I remember seeing it happen and then it does feel like everything has just got worse. The war in Iraq, the demonisation of Muslims, so so many mass shootings and terrorist attacks, it sometimes feels like we’re sitting on the edge of the abyss. I know a lot of this is to do with non stop news and how small the world has become but it just struck a nerve with me.
One thing I read that I’d never heard about before was that Nick Jr and PBS in the US played cartoons all day to basically distract the kids whilst the adults took in what had just happened and that alone made me want to cry.
Anyway I’m not putting it very well but hopefully it’s makes sense as I just wondered what other people thought because I can lose myself in MN debates and there’s always angles that I’ve not thought about.

I don’t think there have been many who’ve called a whole generation twats

Just whiners, snowflakes etc etc.

I agree with op. Of course terrible things have always happened, but now they are constantly in our faces, with video footage, 24 hour rolling news, along with the constant temptation to look at our phones and read more. It really was more optimistic in the 90s, a feeling that things would continue improving, and also I suppose an ignorance is bliss type feeling. I feel sorry for my kids growing up in 2019, I hate saying that but I do.

When I'm knocking my pan in every day it's hard to watch others come and go when they 'don't feel like it'

Every generation has their shirkers.

You literally can't escape the news.

You literally can.

@ofjoseph1 that's not exclusively a millennial thing (the examples you gave,) those are all "employing people " things.

I've employed many many people over the years from all different ages and walks of life. Some of the bizarre excuses people give for not coming in range from blatant lies to all out bizarre. People who have ranged from 17 to late 50s!

That's all part of employing people unfortunately.

Closer to home, I do feel very sorry for the generation who 'graduated into' the 2008 recession, austerity, then, just when things were starting to pick up again (depending on location and sector), the Brexit vote. It has been, continues and will continue to be a looong period of economic difficulty and political loss-of-the-plot. For sheer 'leaders' shooting-selves-in-feet avoidable idiocy, I can't think of a more frustrating period to be young.

Not that it's the worst time, economically, or in any other terms. All in all, it's really not bad. It's just most reletlessly stupid time (that I can think of).

Quite frankly I find that tweet offensive. My childhood saw IRA bombings, waking up to someone else being shot going over the Berlin Wall, Images of Romanian orphans, starving children in Africa, AIDS when it was a death sentence, what seemed like almost weekly riots, watching people being crushed or burned at football matches.

My dad grew up hearing about his brother being torpedoed in ww2 not once but twice, knowing so many families suffering the grief of losing children, neighbours coming back from wars where their insides had been mutliated by the Japanese with fast growing bamboo.

My grandad grew up in a generation where there saw young boys going off to war, never seen again, coming back with terrible physical and mental traumas, many taking their own lives.

So the person tweeting needs to get a grip. People have always witnessed suffering, suffering that historically happened on such a large scale you didn’t need a tv to see it, you looked out your front door.

@kidsdoingmyheadin I imagine shopping habits change every generation. Rationing during the war, and for some years afterwards. 1950s, kids started to get pocket money and be able to buy things and start going out - the start of youth culture. Suddenly being able to get everything on tick. Fridges meant you suddenly didn't have to buy milk every day. Mass cheap imports from abroad. Freezers meant you could stock up nearly for ever. Supermarkets, followed by out of town superstores. Home cooking inspired by all the tv chefs. Internet shopping. Self service.

Of course they do Snidpan, I was referring to weekly sales pattern changes, so monthly peaks & troughs.

I think people get the millennial generation mixed up with a younger generation don't they? Generation Z?

I'm considered a millennial, born 84, and I was starting college when 9/11 happened. For me it was an awful attack, but as a then 16 year old I didn't really understand the vast significance in it as I rarely watched the news and didn't follow politics.

It is only as I have grown older that I realise just how tragic and important it was in modern history and the wars which followed. I thought that as an "older millennial" so I doubt younger millennials really understood the vast significance in it all until they got much older.

Millennials have been fucked in so many ways

I'm a millennial. I think we seriously need to get over this kind of 'message'.

We haven't lived through any major wars that killed hundreds of thousands of people in our country. We haven't lived through rationing. We haven't lived through times where only half of the siblings you had would make it out of childhood alive. We didn't have to work in mines or factories from 8 years old.

Seriously - despite whatever is going on this is still, in the whole history of humanity, one of the best times to be alive in one of the most privileged countries in the world.

This is literally the pinnacle of human experience. We need to stop whining.

Sounds like a load of rubbish to me. Every generation has had its troubles, from 9/11 to the IRA to the Falklands. Access to news is in your face these days....if you are on the tv or the Internet/social media all the time.

And the difference between past wars and tragedies is you didnt have to see them

Eh? You didn't see them on the TV - you saw them when a bomb landed on your house and killed your family.

But let's not let facts like that get in the way of a good pity party.

we did watch TV you know🙄

@Boysey45 I thought a lot of the press was owned by Jewish people’. It’s pretty appalling to dress up your inherent anti-Semitism with the tired old Jews-run-the-media’ racist trope. Pray tell me, which `Jewish people’ own which press? As well as racist, it’s not even true.

Violence against Jews is at an all-time high; their schools and synagogues are installing extra security, their graves are being defiled and more Jews than ever are emigrating to Israel… and it is partly because of snarky, racist posts like this that just embolden anti-Semitism.

Oh, but Jews only account for `less than 1%’ of the population, says another poster … well it's hardly surprising given the views of posters like these that so many are leaving.

What I meant was...children in the 40's didn't see wars on TV, they saw bombs rip through the houses of their neighbours.

...and yet several people on this thread are arguing that we (millennials) have it worse than that because we saw it on a screen

I'm a millennial. The housing situation gets me down. I'm a well-paid professional and spend little on myself but owning a house similar to that my less-skilled parents owned feels unattainable.

As to whether it's been a particularly hard time to live through, I'm sure the negative news pales in comparison to what other generations have lived through. It does strike me, though, that for the majority of millennials (who are left-leaning politically), there has been very few reasons to feel hopeful or inspired. Right-wing (and more recently, nationalist) politics have dominated the past 10 years or so.

As a generation who have generally been raised to see virtue in diversity, the current state of British and world politics feels bleak. With Brexit imminent, there are few reasons for hope for a better future.

in the last 25 years there seems to be little positive to occur.

How about the fall of the Berlin Wall, peace in Ireland/Northern Ireland, the expansion of the opportunity for the average person to go into higher education and to travel.

I don't know what people want? We have such a good life - even those of us in this country struggling to make ends meet still have a lifestyle that would be a dream compared to people 100 years ago or people now in other countries.

I'm not saying we should stop trying to get better and better but...honestly...

@bahlindah You were raised in the middle of an economic boom and a rise in liberal views. Economically we are going through a downturn and the rise of the right wing. So yes it is worse, but it does affect everyone. If you are jewish it does not matter if you are a millenial or baby boomer, you will be experiencing more anti semitism.

What many Millenials have is no sense of history at all.

This.

I was brought up with the stories and scars of my family members who survived the WW2 camps and the hunger and torture (literally) that they went through. I am thankful that I have never been in a war myself.

Every generation has it's tragedies. The older generations just don't tweet as much about it.

@Itwouldtakemuchmorethanthis And do you also talk about Christian people who own the press?

the 40's you had the end of the war, the 50's there was so much positive going on, the 60's the moon landing, the 70's was hippies and the summer of love, the 80's was Mandelas freedom and the fall of the Berlin wall. Since then I dont remember anything on a par in a positive vein.

such a dim-witted simplification of modern times, its frightening in its stupidity.

the 40's you had the end of the war, the 50's there was so much positive going on, the 60's the moon landing, the 70's was hippies and the summer of love, the 80's was Mandelas freedom and the fall of the Berlin wall. Since then I dont remember anything on a par in a positive vein.

😮 Really?