What was life like before 9/11? Calling all oldfags. Hi I'm a degenerate zoomer (no cap fr fr) who was born in 2000...

What was life like before 9/11? Calling all oldfags. Hi I'm a degenerate zoomer (no cap fr fr) who was born in 2000. Most of Gen Z was either very young or not born yet when 9/11 happened. So to us 9/11 is just something we learned about in school every year. I've heard that there was a huge shift in the world after 9/11 which is completely understandable. But, sometimes I read about people reminiscing about how nice things were before. It sounds so weird to me because post 9/11 is all we've ever known. What was it like "back in the day?"

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Traveling to third world countries like Cambodia and Thailand,Vietnam was less hassle, no customs or airport security with weapons or scanners.
Alot lower quality drugs but easy to move around the globe.

Less global surveillance via tech,

after 9/11 americans became more paranoid and stayed that way. people used to socialize more back then in person, techknowledgy is making everyone shy, lonely and autistic now because they only know socializing on apps or tiktok and act awkward in real life. i'm just young enough that i got a taste of life before all this and was one of the early kids to have internet back when others thought it was nerdy. now everyone is becoming like i was.

oh yeah, the surveillance and having to strip naked or get radiation shot through you at every god damn governemnt building or airport is annoying. the terrorists made sure our lives stay miserable

The 90s were cool, I was a kid but damn cartoons were sweet back in the 90s as were the toys. Traveling on planes wasn't terrible. People were respectful of each other, even in politics. It was good

People like to reminisce about "the way things were" and use major events like 9/11 to separate the "before times" from everything after. I definitely remember life being different growing up in the 1990s compared to the 2000s and mostly because of info tech. Socializing, working, consooming media, shopping and more were all different. Politics changed after 9/11 and so did air travel obviously. Terrorism became a greater concern in cities. But I don't think 9/11 itself changed everything all at once. Change would have happened anyway. It's just a convenient divider between before and after for millennials.

Drugs were a lot easier to cross borders with. I used to straight up bring joints/bags of weed/acid etc across borders. These days I wouldnt risk it. Also you had to pay for porn. Imagine paying for porn? Also the internet was so trash a majority of people didn't use it/have access to it in a reasonable way.

1983 here. Sometimes I weep thinking of how much civilization was lost. Fuckign stupid Americans, and fucking stupid us Europeans for having allowed ourselves to eat from your cursed hand for more than 50 years.

Sorry for the rant. Yeah, pre-9/11 was good. In many ways, but just to give you an example, we used to own our hardware and videogames. As in, you could buy a game, put it on a storage medium, and hand it over to a friend at school, who could copy it and install it on their computer.

Yes, I know you can do it today as well, but back in the time everyone was doing it, now you need a PhD from the haxx0r University.

Yes, this example is really a consequence of 9/11. Might seem a long stretch but I chose this one exactly because another consequence of 9/11 is that talking about less "pragmatic" consequences, like freedom of speech or expression, to a Zoomer, today is pointless. Having idealistic or philosophical attitudes today means you're a weirdo/loser.

Not picking on OP specifically, that's just a statistical reasoning. I admire OP for the inquiring mind. But yes, I think pre-9/11 was good, in a way substantially *different* from our fathers' and gradfathers' "ah ye good'ol times". I witnessed Western civilization going downward since that cursed day. I have an instruction, a family, a job, I consider myself among the super lucky ones. But, oh boy, were the 90's the apex of human civilization, at least for the West.

I totally feel that way about this upcoming generation. My dad was super into computers so naturally I followed. I touched my first computer at 5 and never stopped. It didn't help that it was a coping mechanism for some spicy childhood stuff. I grew up dependent and now have all the fun autistic social anxiety challenges that come with that. Back then, I was the exception and *most* kids weren't exposed to technology as much as I did so early. I always felt like it was just me and a select few people.

But as soon as I heard about iPad kids, my heart sank. They've been exposed to it at such high volumes so early. The pandemic and remote learning didn't help and I think its just going to get worse. Those kids are going to be so dysfunctional its kinda sad.

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I honestly don't get the impression that 9/11 really changed all that much.

No I totally get it. One of the big stereotypes is that we're all bitter and don't care if the world burns. In my experience that's very true. The past 20 some years have been so bad and keep getting worse. So much so that it's so weird for us to hear about times when most people were optimistic.

We were born into 9/11, grew up with the Obama administration and the great recession, went through high school with the Trump presidency, graduated with COVID, and now we're trying to establish ourselves in the Biden administration and another economics collapes. Lots to be optimistic about. I mean but hey, we got Facebook, the iPad and now TikTok. :D

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republicans used to be almost sane before 9/11.

Now, they're traitors.

>What was life like before 9/11?
they used to let kids into the cockpit mid flight

Congress didn't vote among party lines nearly as much. There were no "rinos". In fact, there weren't a lot of republicans making up new vocabulary ala Orwell's 1984.

there was no huge shift, thats a lie.
people were judgemental assholes before 911, and still are after. nothing changed. dont listen to liars.

We had hope we could change the world before 2000, but republicans only wanted tax cuts for the rich and packing the supreme court. The country is a scorched hellhole, but republicans got their way.

Many of the places where you see strip malls, housing communities, and mega apartment complexes were unspoiled forests we used to play in.

Big oil paid off the republicans to deny the existence global warming.

eh pretty much this. it's just junkies whining that it became harder to smuggle drugs.

I used to be able to buy airline tickets off people and fly no problem, I could walk through an airport smoking a cigarette and carrying a riffle in a case and not have anyone look sideways.
When you got off the plane your whole family could be there to greet you. You could run from the taxi straight onto the plane as they were closing the door.
and thats just airplane shit.
I used to get in fist fights at bars and not have to worry about being shot or even arrested by a cop.
You could literally reinvent yourself in another town as long as there wasnt a Papertrail.
I remember even before mothers against drunk drivers M.A.D. started their bullshit and when they pulled the DARE shit out their ass. Nothing but straight-out hard crime would get you jail time. but Biden's crime bill really started fucking shit up.
I basicly think once people let the government get away with their little inch by inch bullshit it just got quicker.

I feel sorry for you guys and the lack of any real free childhood memories like I had. people were just less stressed out about shit.
The only chance you have of getting anywhere close to that is by rounding up all the assholes and making them walk the plank.

Yeouch. While I was reading that I was thinking "wait I had some good childhood memories." But thinking about it again, politics have always been looming in the background. There was always some shit going on that stressed people out. Damn.

Got a wii? Luckily your family wasnt hit with the recession. Going to school? Make sure you do your active shooter drills every once in a while because that's a thing. Playing games on the computer? Make sure you learn about all the horrible things people like to do to kids over the internet. I dont know, I might just be jaded but everything good came with a political asterisk.

There was a time when there wasn't endless online porn. Just mags and videotapes.

Peak Western culture. Probably never happens again.
If you would like to get a feeling, I'd recommend reading the beginning of Snowden's autobiography. He describes it rather nicely. It's super comfy and hull of potential, creativity, and hope.

Before pilots on commercial aircraft would sometimes allow people into the cockpit, as a kid I went in and had a look which was incredibly cool. These days the door is locked all flight and the pilot would lose their job if they let a kid into the cockpit.

It definitely did. People everywhere became paranoid and surveillance was put on max. Everyone tended towards safety vs freedom. And that was exactly what the terrorists wanted. "You will never feel free again in the West".
Funnily, two weeks after 9/11 the EU had scheduled a meeting to discuss the older Echelon system and wanted to cancel the espionage, which they found out was also used for industrial espionage. That was completely canceled thanks to 9/11.