What was life like before 9/11?

[Niobium]

I hate to sound Americentric, but surely it's affected life outside of the US too?

Anyway, I'm asking this as a zoomer born in the early 2000s. I've always heard growing up that things were a lot better, especially in the 90s when the American economy was doing really well and the biggest scandal in politics was Monica Lewinsky sucking Bill Clinton's chode. I've also heard that culture has dramatically changed since then, to a more intense degree than it did in the past (say from the 80s to 90s). Nowadays it feels like we're always living with fear in one way or another, whether it's terrorism, viruses, or tyrannical governments. I mean, I know life back then wasn't always great (OKC bombing, WTC bombing, Columbine, etc), but bad things occurred at a much lower rate and weren't forgotten about within two weeks, like how it is with mass shootings in the US nowadays. It also feels like political tensions have escalated too. Practically speaking, you have to choose between being a tranny nog worshipper or a nazi if you want your political views to feel like they're actually relevant.

Bottom line is: was life (relatively) better than it is today or are the boomers fucking lying?

 

[sasazuka]

Before 9/11, it was much easier to find Sega Dreamcast games in stores.

 

[urr13 account]

9/11 was a definite inflection point, though it'd be difficult to say that it directly led to or caused much of the issues we have today, it does seem like a good dividing line between when things were better and all the gay shit we deal with now be it annoying SJWs, trannys, maskfags, or anything else.

The march of technology, smartphones keeping people connected to the hive mind during all their waking hours probably is a bigger causal factor but things were better before 9/11, at the very least people wouldn't get molested by the TSA whenever they traveled.

 

[break these cuffs]

Things weren't drastically different than they are today. Yes the economy was better, but the murder rate was higher for instance. What different is that you are bombarded by what MSM corps and social media corps want you to see 24/7. You can still live like it's the 90s. I do. I don't have social media. I don't pay particular attention to the news. Most national news doesn't concern me and I can't do anything about it. I pay more attention to local and regional news.

 

[Regenbogen]

nonexistent

 

[Fag Albert]

One thing to always keep mind of during the 90's-early 00's is that the internet was not the monolithic force it is today and the average joe was not nearly as connected. The 24 hour news cycle and fearmongering campaigns has existed long before the internet but it's becoming more of an effort to avoid the constant stream of news as almost everyone has some method of taking pictures/video and posting it to millions of other people.
So you are hearing more and more about little, awful shit from a continent over that you might've not heard about 20 years ago, and I think that really can wear on someone's after long enough.

 

[Daddy's Little Kitten]

No, they aren't lying. Yeah, there was shit, but it was a lot less than now.

During the 90s, people weren't so thin-skinned, the economy was booming, and faggotry wasn't as rampant as it is now. The internet wasn't as prevalent as of now, and people were more wary of it as it was a new thing (yeah, it was invented in the 60s or something, but no normies were allowed). You could voice your opinions without the fear of being "cancelled", and while the winds of PC culture were starting to blow, no one gave two shits whether something was gonna hurt someone's fee fees.

The new Millenium came, and we looked forward to it with a shit ton of enthusiasm, optimism and hope of wonderful things to come.

Then, 9/11/2001 happened. We suddenly couldn't travel without getting raped by the TSA. The fear of another attack was through the roof. Our liberties were slowly being taken away, as information became more valuable than the people. Recession and inflation came and it never went away. The internet became indispensable and that fear of it was gone.

 

[The Magnificence]

If you have ever watched 90's music videos, it was basically like that. Seriously, even just a trip to the grocery store was a whole...thing:

...ok, upon reflection, maybe not so different from now.

 

[Ultrapenguin]

9/11 is a convenient marker but the fact is that most of the ways society have gone are simply natural consequences of expanding population, advancing technology which has enabled greater corporate centralization with simultaneous communal fragmentation, and the post WWII economic boom running out of steam.
So were things better? Yes. Were they better because 9/11 hadn't happened? No.

I'd learn not to listen to boomers, they're an incredibly spoiled generation. Most still cling to a fantasy world where everything they do is great, they got ahead through raw grit, intellect, and determination, and thus the only reason things could be difficult is because of either laziness/stupidity on the part of newer generations or the nefarious actions of outside forces; in reality the reason they were successful is because our grandparents' generation, their parents, went out and got their guts blown out so they could live an easier life, a sacrifice they never made.

 

[White Devil]

It was slightly less gay. Bullying was more accepted and it was the reason we didn't have faggots and troons fucking everything up.
Also, you actually talked to people and learned this thing called social skills.

 

[Agent Abe Caprine]

I don't remember despite being old enough to remember being mad at that plane for interrupting my cartoons.

 

[oldTireWater]

9/11 Fucked some things up, but in retrospect the widespread internet did a lot more damage. In 2001 most people had dial-up if anything, and your average person was just using that for email. Nobody was getting their lunch blown up by a bomb squad. Afghanistan was that place that fucked up the Soviets. Saddam was a dick who we'd put in his place. Three Kings was a contemporary war movie.

You couldn't expect a person to have a cell phone until the early 2000's. Waiting for a call? Better not leave the house. Buddy didn't answer the the phone? Go knock on his door. Need to find someone? Send a runner. Know where the good pay phones are and always carry change.

I REALLY miss hanging around bookstores. Amazon killed those. Going to Borders was a great Saturday night.

Buy a device and it was what it was. No dealing with registering or updating it. If it was in your hand you owned it.

Strip malls used to have interesting stores instead of smoke shops and barber shops.

MP3 players and streaming/stealing music from youtube are one of the very few improvements in the last 20 years. Way better than things used to be in my opinion. So many good bands and albums you had no way of running across. So many CD's I bought only because they had cool album art, and hoped for the best. I always had to have a blank tape ready to go in case a good song came on the radio. Can't leave your tapes in the car because they might melt, or some kid would break your window to steal your Nothing Else Matters single (who cares if you lost Enter Sandman because they'd play it on the radio every 30 minutes anyway). Now you can listen to what you want, when you want, where you want.

In the west the blacks didn't even act like niggers if the town was small enough. They had no easy way of catching that disease, and Arsenio Hall or MC Hammer weren't going to transmit that contagion. The south has always been niggers all the way down.

Faggots were rightfully shamed into the closets.

 

[Skitarii]

Lol zoomer

 

[Troonos]

If 9/11 never happened, the world would be EPCOT by now, like the actual theoretical city, not the theme park. Most of the garbage aspects of today's West originate from the reaction to 9/11. That's when we went into cultural and creative decline. It's when we started accepting tyranny. It led to the destabilization of the Middle East. It's when we became a pathologically divided country. The Anti-Bullying movement started making kids kill themselves and shoot up schools. Social media started. Everything was so much better before that day. Now COVID has made things even worse.

 

[Drkinferno72]

A lot more hopeful

 

[Constellationzero]

Well, for one thing, there was no TSA.

I visited the UK and Europe before 9/11 and the NWO. No idea what it was to pay for everything in euros.
Only time I personally saw armed people with gunzz and ammo was in Heathrow, Nice, and Frankfurt. US airports didn't have that all over and out in the open--even in Newark.
I flew quite a bit as a kid. Big airlines were Eastern, Delta, American, United, TWA, and Pan Am. It was very common for a flight attendant to come up and ask if you wanted to meet Peter Graves and Kareem Abdul Jabar up in the cockpit.
You'd get free shit: Playing cars, a shiddy plastic L1011, coloring book, etc. I still have a few from Delta.
Back then, they served FOOD. Genuine FOOD. Soda. Beer. Liquor store bummage bottles. You received THE WHOLE CAN of soda. Today I hear they give you a look of naked contempt and pour ONCE before sharing your can you paid for with three other passengers. Must be that real communisim I keep hearing about.

They had smoking and non smoking. They had the courtesy phones with the announcements in the terminal that came with. People dressed better and acted better.
They had Sky Mall and the airlines had their own magazines. They were little flights of fancy with luxury hotel ads. Back then, Leona Helmsley was in everything hospitality.

They had headphones in the seats. Depending on the airline, they were free. You didn't have to pay for them. This was my first exposure to Bob Newhart's The Driving Instructor. Hilarious shit. The in flight movie might be shown on the bulkhead if you flew on an older plane. Otherwise no movie, but sometimes there were skyphones in the backs of the seats.

You could move freer between the check in areas and terminals. That's in case you were bored and wanted to explore or shop. Some airports had observation decks. Frankfurt Main had one that I watched planes come and go from. And nobody chimped at you. Nobody died.

Offa my damn lawn!

 

[Dom Cruise]

Speaking as someone who was a kid, the mainstream cultural attitude was profoundly more optimistic, happy and hopeful, there wasn't this narrative of constant boogeymen you should be afraid of and fight against, the attitude was that most of mankind had gotten it's shit together after so long and the new millennium was going to be utopian, stuff like the war in Bosnia was a sobering reminder that the entire world wasn't perfect just yet, but people honestly thought we were on a path to a brighter tomorrow.

However there were undercurrents, conspiracy theory was big in the 90s, a lot of people didn't trust Clinton because of Waco and there was this fear of a one world government being ushered in soon, people could already sense that globalism was maybe not a good thing.

There was also Religious fears that a number as significant as the year 2000 had Biblical significance and that Book of Revelations stuff would happen when the calendar turned to 2000, it all feels very foreign now, but it was BIG DEAL at the time that we were about to enter a new millennium and the fear over the Y2K bug was like a secular version of millennialism, but not many people took it THAT seriously.

In addition to that there was a strain of nihilism in the 90s, because things were going good I guess a lot of people were bored and took the attitude that life was pointless, this manifested in subcultures like goths and also the Columbine shooters' attitude, it was all like a proto-version of today's troonery and Wokeism, miserable people that simply hate living in their own skin.

There was also sometimes a certain sense of suburban boredom and ennui, a feeling of "is that all there is?" if this was indeed mankind achieving utopia, people wanted something more and they didn't know exactly what, the movies American Beauty and Fight Club reflect this, you also had movies like Pleasantville, Dark City, The Truman Show and The Matrix, movies about learning what you think is reality is not and there's a much bigger world out there waiting to be discovered, I think things were going so well that people found themselves restless and bored or they sensed that the 90s was a bubble that wouldn't last (and they were right)

But thankfully all that was all pretty fringe and very easy to ignore, mainstream culture was very easy to tap into in the 90s and it was something that made you feel comforted and happy instead of miserable and afraid, it really can't be overstated how radically different it was, since 9/11 there's been a constant feeling of crisis that just wasn't there in the 90s, anyone that missed it missed out on something great.

But like I said there was also an undercurrent, I think people wouldn't be TOO surprised to learn the 90s was just a particular bubble and the future would turn out to be a nightmare, people would cynically say "figures" and that's the most awful thing is to realize the dream of the 90s really was nothing more than a passing fantasy.

 

[Dom Cruise]

Now I'd like to talk about what daily life was like as opposed to the culture.

Basically when there was less things to do at home, there was more to do outside, there used to be so many more shops that sold more unusual things and knickknacks than what you see today, I remember there was an entire outlet mall that my mom used to take me to as a kid back then that was really, really nice and had tons of cool shops and is now a completely empty, abandoned derelict, which I think says it all about now versus then.

But my local mall also had a lot more stores, the local Wal-Mart was much better maintained, I remember other things like a minigolf course that is long gone and an arcade that is also long gone, basically what the 90s lacked in things to do at home it made up for with things to do outside of your home, more places to shop, more places to eat, less things were as rundown as they are now, less empty storefronts and abandoned buildings, we've traded the niceness of reality for the virtual world and now the virtual world sucks shit too, it was not a fair trade.

There was just so much cool shit to visit back then that is just gone now.

 

[Screamer]

The real, "oh shit" was when they started the propaganda war for Iraq in the aftermath.
9/11 happened, it was freaky. Then a month or so later they started the war in Afghanistan. You're like, that's reasonable I guess. Then all of a sudden they just started lying about needing to invade Iraq. It was clearly all lies. It made no sense at all.
You would literally watch a clip of some US official pointing at Kurdistan on a map going, "Saddam has a chemical weapons facility here." You would shake your head in disbelief at how shit tier the lying was.
You'd be out drinking with friends and it'd come up. You would mention how dumb it was. Then suddenly you have half a dozen people screaming in your face for thinking the war was a dumb idea. You were an idiot and wrong for thinking there weren't WMDs and against the upcoming invasion.
I'm still friends with a few of those people. They now will immediately start yelling if I mention something like the gender pay gap isn't really real. Or that the whole trans thing doesn't make any logical sense.
Yet like with the Iraq war, they know nothing but are extremely passionate in the thing they know nothing about. Can't discuss, reason or debate. They just know and if you disagree you're a bad person.

EDIT: This was the real change after 9/11 that I noticed. Shit like that never happened before.