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.

Once I work out how to use photo editor to delete my Mum's name and DOB I'll post a picture of her ration book from 1953-4 which my grannie had to use to get basic food.

They lived on Marryat Rd in SW1 at the time, could see on to centre court, and my grandfather was a QC, so not short of money by any stretch of the imagination.

Even people with money behind them were struggling for basics nearly 10 years after the war was over.

So imagine how it was without money?

Surely every generation has idiots & people who hoax call 999, it can’t all be attributed to millennials.

The country lost its collective shit when that happened, Twitter went absolutely batshit and the media were carrying on like it was the end of days.

Hardly the attitude of the generations who had to make do and mend was it?

Twitter goes batshit about all sorts of shite though & many who don’t use have no inkling of the various outcry’s. Plus the media run & run with all sorts of asinine shit to fill the constant demand of news.

Plus the media run & run with all sorts of asinine shit to fill the constant demand of news.

If things were worse than they've ever been in previous generations, the news wouldn't need to be created would it?

Once I work out how to use photo editor to delete my Mum's name and DOB I'll post a picture of her ration book from 1953-4 which my grannie had to use to get basic food

It was my Mum who had the ration books for my elder siblings, although I was born after rationing finished. I grew up with that legacy though, as well as with that from the Great Depression when she was a girl and my grandfather had two jobs, my grandmother took in washing and they had a lodger in their rented house (Postcode began with 'E', not surprisingly :)). Eggs, sugar and butter were rationed in our household long after they needed to be and nothing was thrown away. My Mum did Mumsnet chicken before it was fashionable.

I think some people are getting the generations mixed up. A lot of millennials are in their 30s now, a lot lived through the troubles as people keep referencing.
I think as I’ve already said it’s how easy it is to access footage and photos of these events that’s the problem. My DD could be on YouTube watching peppa pig and could so easily hit another video by mistake and god knows what she could be watching.
Kids see way more now at a younger age than they ever did and social media seems to be a massive contributing factor to this.

I was a teenager in the 80s and I really did think we would all die in a nuclear war.
I think there is always something. My children are teens now and it's a really tough world for them to grow up in.

YetAnotherSpartacus my Mum had a really complicated relationship with food and especially indulgence with food because of her early life. Nothing got wasted, everything was used and I still have my Grannie's rationing recipes which are a real eye opener.

I grew up checking under my Dad's car for Semtex thanks to the IRA. The Brighton Bombings, Hyde Park.

AIDs epidemic (before medication).

Bosnia, First Gulf War, Second Gulf War (where a dear friend of mine was killed)

9/11 was a wake up call to the States who were arrogant enough to think terror would never reign on their shores. They were wrong, and because of it more innocents died. Knee jerk - let's get Saddam out. Worst thing you could have done. He at least kept the Taliban at bay.

One thing I will say is that whilst the internet is a great thing, it also makes the world much smaller and allows information to be passed largely unnoticed.

If things were worse than they've ever been in previous generations, the news wouldn't need to be created would it?
Well I never said things were worse but regardless if they were or weren’t the way news is digested is different. So instead of the nightly bulletin & 1 or 2 editions a day you now have 24 hour news channels & online news like the dreaded daily mail which produces hundreds & hundreds of new articles every day. In order to fill that of course you are going to get “Jesus’s face appeared on my toast” or “my husband let a double life & was living as a cat” or indeed “emergency crews are called to resuscitate woman who passed out due to KFC closures”.

Another reason why life was not so much easier in the past than now - they didn’t have access to modern medicine. All those common diseases that killed people, made family’s homeless when parents died, made people beggars - they are gone now. Talking of a hard economic existance nowadays - try being an industrial worker in 19th century Britain. If people really think they have it so very hard now, then yes, they do need to read up on history.

Well I never said things were worse

Many have though, and are busily explaining why their experiences are so much worse, so much harder and so much more challenging. They aren't, so I was responding to that.

Lockerbie, Hillsborough, the Falklands, the first gulf war, the Thatcher years, I remember all those. They weren't much fun either.

But this trying to claim atrocities for your own to claim things are harder now is extremely distasteful and self centred.

We all saw 9/11, irrespective of age. We've all lived through what came next. How is it that it's harder for millennials than anyone else?

That's my issue.b

Oddly enough when people saw Vietnam on the TV they did something for those who were suffering instead of saying 'poor me'.

But many millennials will have experienced the things you are talking about too though. I’ve already said upthread that I’m an older millennial & a Londoner. My parents are Irish republicans but the rest of my family are in Dublin & Belfast. I’m fully aware of the troubles & fortunate enough to not have had to live through what some of my millennial cousins in Belfast had to eg armed men on their route to school, cages over their garden etc. Oh & certainly didn’t watch 9/11 & think “poor me”.

YetAnotherSpartacus I also wonder how many of these people cried for immigrants drowning in the sea, or for the car bomb victims in Baghdad, or Turkey.

But many millennials will have experienced the things you are talking about too though

They're not the ones I'm talking about though are they? It's the ones appropriating atrocities as their own and using it to tell people they've got it harder than anyone had it.

I'm also an older millennial, by a few months. Had I been born 3 months earlier I wouldn't be.

So you've missed my point, I was referring to the ones agreeing with that self aggrandising, navel gazing tweet which implied millennials have it harder than any previous generations. Not anyone born within the catchment for being a millennial.

To be fair, there have probably been people who made it «all about them» and thought they had it extra-specially hard throughout history.

What I think might be special about now is that in times past the whining was confined to their families and the people at the pub. Now social media means we all get to listen to their whiney shite.

What I think might be special about now is that in times past the whining was confined to their families and the people at the pub. Now social media means we all get to listen to their whiney shite.

Completely agree with this.

I agree with that too

It's all relative. I understand that living through wars must have been hard, but I honestly just can't imagine it. It doesn't mean I'm not allowed to call out injustices even if they seem minor compared to what people went through in the past.

The millennial generation is just more vocal about issues, have more platforms to speak about it on and have more access to the information to educate themselves.

I honestly just can't imagine it

That doesn't make it irrelevant, and it doesn't mean you get to tell people who don't need to imagine it that your generation has it harder.

It doesn't mean I'm not allowed to call out injustices even if they seem minor compared to what people went through in the past.

Literally not one person has said that. What has been said is that equating witnessing something on TV doesn't make it your tragedy personally, and doesn't mean you get to minimise and belittle the experiences of others.

My major issue with the internet generation is that so many are so busy shouting about their views, that they can't hear anyone else.

Neatly backed up by ohcanada missing the entire point of responses, while patronisingly accusing others of missing the point. Because they "can't imagine" what it would have been like, and is therefore unimportant.

The millennial generation is just more vocal about issues, have more platforms to speak about it on and have more access to the information to educate themselves

It's not more vocal, how do you think things changed before millennials?

I agree, there are more platforms, yes.

More information? No, it's just more readily available to the masses, mixed in with fake news and bullshit.

A human alive today has less chance of being killed by violence than at any other time in history. Surely that's progress.

I’d say most people alive in this country today have had life easier than they did. People today in the 'west' would not put up with the standard of life my grandparents had (late Victorian and second half of the 20th century) and they were not 'poor'.

@InTheHeatofLisbon
Yes more information - it's called Google darling. Bit easier than going down to the library and scanning old newspapers...