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'm not a millennial as in my late 40s but the news that really affected me was the tsunami on Boxing Day. That gave me the shivers and nightmares, and still does.

Btw Berlin wall fell in 1991

The Berlin Wall fell in 1989.

the summer of love was in the 60s but i don't think that poster is interested in letting facts stand in the way of her story.

I do feel very sorry for the generation who 'graduated into' the 2008 recession

I graduated into the recession of the mid 70s. Your point?

Since then I dont remember anything on a par in a positive vein.

How about a little event called the 'London Olympics' in 2012?

The media managed to provide overwhelmingly positive news during the Olympics and Paralympics. So they can do it.

What many Millenials have is no sense of history at all

I don't think it's useful to lump any generation together and make a generalised statement. I'm a millennial and have plenty of sense of history!

@wheresmymojo Yes I guess you are right. But I do keep seeing comments on MN from people who say they are Millenials and have no understanding at all of recent history.

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

I’m just about millennial, nearly too old, but this made me laugh. You don’t have to live through all the good and bad of the past to recognise the impact it had on modern day life. Some people here are posting about events they didn’t even experience themselves!

There’s a lot of patronising crap on this thread. We millennials were lucky enough to have a good education and this includes history. It’s possible to be empathetic to events we weren’t alive for, you know.

<strong>*@itwouldtakemuchmoreofthis</strong> Pray tell me, which Jewish people’ own which press

Reuter’s?
Saatchi?

Not really my sort of take on things but I don’t think Jewish people are particularly under represented in the media???*'

I find it pretty horrifying that in reply to a post about the rise of violence towards Jews you respond with the old anti-Semitic trope that `Jews-run-the-media but then can only come up with Saatchi, a rather past it ad agency and Reuters.

Surely you can do better than that? And even if some Jews are represented at some newspapers, even if they own them all (which they don’t) you seem to see this as a sort of `oh they can take care of themselves so who cares if their kids schools are under armed guard and they can't walk down the street without being harassed ’.

@ScreamingValenta crap! uSSR! uSSR fell in 1991!
Sorry. i am going to go back to my hole of shame...
But that was a good thing too.

I'm slightly embarrassed I said the wall fell in the last 25 years. In my defence I was at a special event to commemorate 20 years and it seems like it wasn't that long ago. Can't believe 10 years have gone since then

I think many people feel like we are on the brink of something big; climate change, Trump, right wing politics in general etc....
I think it will get worse before it gets better unfortunately.
It does annoy me when baby boomers call millenials snowflakes when they vote for Brexit and go for the 3rd foreign holiday that year whilst slagging them off for not saving for a deposit.
It is the attitude of boomers that rubs do many up the wrong way. My father for example had a job for life and thinks that i work zero hour contracts as i am too crap to find a permanent job...that pisses me off.
His generation are more pampered than anyone; didnt see the war or huge hardship and wont feel the brunt of Brexit/ climate change.

Jaxhog your medal is in the post

No I don’t think as Gen Z (born 1997) that horrible things happening have affected us more than horrible things have affected previous generations. I think having access to the internet/social media has meant children lose their innocence a lot younger than previous generations did, they only seen what was shown in the news/newspapers, I have already seen footage from inside the shop of the Texas shooting from the weekend, I have seen footage of inside the Ariana grande concert people running because they thought they where going to die, and I’ve seen so much more I couldn’t even list it all. 9/11 I feel was the start of people seeing all these videos and pictures that previous generations never seen (adults and children) because there was no way for people to film them. Technology and the internet are the crux of the problem not the incidents themselfs as terrible incidents have always happened .

I was a teenager in the 80s. We were terrified of nuclear attack lots of conversations about what will you do one more time if the siren goes off, one of my friends used to go to greenham Common.
I also saw the beginning of HIV, the Falklands war, race and poll tax riots. The miner's strikes.
All these seemed far more scary to me than 9/11 which seemed a bit unreal, and a long way away.
Unfortunately I think that all of these will be small and insignificant when the impact of the damage to the environment really begins to hit us.

@Nomoremilk

Overwhelmed, needing time to themselves sound like mental health issues. Sore stomach needing blood tests... Yes? So?
As a health care professional I find your repulsion at these valid health concerns rather worrying, if you want to be a martyr get on with it but millennials actually seem to look after and speak openly about their mental health.

Sorry maybe that came across the wrong way.
I'm not a martyr by any stretch, but I have enough resilience to deal with life's challenges. Failure, disappointment, upset all seem to be things that millennials struggle with. And I've seen first hand where people cite mental health issues as a reason not to come to work.
I suffer crippling anxiety, and go through bouts of awful depression. But I take responsibility to make sure my mind is clear and strong.
I've seen these young people repeatedly unfit for work for a few days bc they've snorted that much crap up their noses that they can't deal with the come down.
The sore stomach example was actually that. They had nausea and because they weren't vomiting, they went straight to the GP.

I just really believe that these guys must grow a thicker skin

We were made to watch films in surviving a nuclear holcust at school in the 80’s. That really weighs heavy in a teens mind.

I was in my late 20’s for 9/11 and I went to bed thinking that was it.

I woke up and thought wow I’m still here.

But we can’t live our lives in fear of what ifs. I now refuse to worry about war (and brexit) until it’s actually here.

I used to go to Greenham - wonderful memories of that place - despite the abuse we received

@ofjoseph1 younger generations need to grow a thicker skin really? Why? Because we look after ourselves? Because we openly talk about mental health ( you do know that’s a positive thing there’s big campaigns to promote it)? Because we go to the doctor when we feel ill? Because we get blood tests if told to?
As for you comment about “snorting crap” way to stereotype a generation.
If you where my boss I would hate to have a medical issue or have to get a sick note because of your attitude, your attitude towards younger generations is horrible.
You have used a couple of personal experiences to form a inaccurate and incorrect judgement of a whole generation.
I’m Gen Z so younger than a millennial I can only imagine what you think of my generation.

"And I've seen first hand where people cite mental health issues as a reason not to come to work."

You do realise that mental health are very real and very legitimate reasons though don't you?

There is a difference between the trauma of watching 9/11 on TV as a child (which I am not disputing) and the lived experiences of children of the 70s and 80s.

I think that the point that the tweeter has missed was that there was very real fear of violence and disaster happening in the UK because we saw more of it. Millenials have not experience war or political turmoil in the way that the preceding generation has.

And yes, being a child watching 9/11 was horrific. But so was coming back from a school trip to find that a plane had been blown up and landed just down the road.

It was terrorism, just like 9/11. But it was terrorism that touched a neighbouring community.

I used to go to sleep at night in the early 80s with an, as it turns out, entirely justified terror of being incinerated by a nuclear bomb. To be honest, that tweet just reinforces to me the stereotype of millennials being impossibly self-absorbed. Do you seriously think you are the first generation in history to feel fear and horror at world events?!!!

I suffer crippling anxiety, and go through bouts of awful depression. But I take responsibility to make sure my mind is clear and strong
Wow..

I graduated into the recession of the mid 70s. Your point?

Jaxhog I think a major difference between the two situations is that in 2008 you had many, many more people in higher education, so competition was much higher. I graduated in 2009. I remember my mum (a 70s graduate) telling me that a good degree from a good university, any degree, was a jumping off point to a better job than you’d get without one. She was talking about Arts/Humanities degrees. That is absolutely not true now.

I wanted to go into academia but changed my mind. I still work in HE but in a different capacity (and it took me about 5 years to get a permanent post). A couple of our academics were saying the other day that they wouldn’t want to be coming into it now, when you need years and years of fixed term contracts, monographs, posts all over the world, to get anywhere near a permanent job in arts academia. They wouldn’t want to go for years not getting paid for the summer holidays. Almost all of the lecturers at the (very well known) art school where I did my undergrad are on zero hours contracts. That was not the case 20 years ago.