I couldn’t agree more. Things might have turned out similarly regardless, but there’s a non-zero chance that without it the patriot act, the second bush term, and the following collapse of civil liberties would not have occurred, or at least would have taken more time or a different path. Sometimes you see people say al-Qaeda won that day and though I don’t think anyone really won, sine it and the aftermath were devastating worldwide, they certainly had some of their aims accomplished.

I’m not acting like there’s only one country in the world and nothing in my comment would suggest I think the US was omnipotent and wonderful, unless you think racism and Islamophobia and turning against other countries is somehow wonderful.

If I see a post that talks about how too many parents are giving their kids tablets, my first thought is not “there are so many places where no one even owns a tablet, stop generalizing”. This is a random meme, not a manifesto on global issues. The term millennial isn’t even used globally and often different countries will have different ideas of what a generation is and what to call it. In South Africa some “millennials” would be part of the “born-free generation”, in Northern Ireland you might call them “Peace Babies”, in china “Post 90s”. Terms from the US might make their way abroad, but “baby boomers” certainly was not a phenomenon in every country. Getting upset that someone is using a US made term in a meme in English on a site where the plurality of the traffic is from the US is a weird choice. I don’t know if Ukrainians consider themselves millennials but it seems like people who did at least some sociology have made the following divisions: the Soviet generation (age 60 years and older), who were 30 years old when the Soviet Union collapsed; second, the transition generation (45–59 years old), who were educated and launched in the Soviet Union; third, the post-Soviet generation (30–44 years old), who were educated in independent Ukraine and have little memory of the USSR; and fourth, the young generation (18–29 years old), who have no memory or experience of the USSR.

Again, I don’t know what is the most popular term in Ukraine, but it’s clear that generations mean different things to different people and using millennials in a US centric way is pretty standard. It’s not our place to act like we can use our sociology names for social cohorts globally and have that be reasonable. So if anything the use of the term to describe US sentiments (or other countries that feel like their experience aligns closely enough) is a good way to honor other countries and cultures agency and autonomy.

You ever been through an airport before and after? That shit alone was so different between, say, 1999 and 2003. The othering certainly took place across a fairly broad swathe of the Western world, and the post-millennium paranoia never let up. 1999 was an amazing year to be alive. There really did seem to be a boundless optimism that, God, if you could’ve bottle it it’d sell like hotcakes

Nah let them pop off. Push the red button.

Trump is more like to stir up trouble on the thought he could come in and annex the land after everyones dead/weakened.

US can’t stabilize itself. And we all know how “good” US is at resolving conflicts.

Gen X has entered the chat

I was 1-11 in the 80s. Was super aware of nuclear fallout and the Cold War. But my dad had also been gassed in protests against the Vietnam War and used to joke about running toward the blast of the nuclear war ever happened.

I’m technically the last year of Gen X, but definitely fit more with millennials, and couldn’t drink until the year 2000.

Op also forgot the dot com bubble which burst when I graduated high school.

I doubt they’d take the average American. Wont fit in the tunnels.

And yet, we keep having them.

It had to do with memory and storage limitations on computers back then. It didn’t make sense to store two extra digits for the date when that space could be used for other data. It affected pretty much every system made before a certain date. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_2000_problem

but I would assume that this only applied to a few old systems?

You might be shocked at how much of our infrastructure ran on those old systems. But thankfully, yes, the rest of your comment is exactly what happened. Programmers knew what was up, and jumped on the problem early enough to avoid any major issues. However, this didn’t stop the media from selling panic for ratings, which became the worst part of the entire Y2K experience. If you’ve ever seen the 1995 movie ‘Strange Days’ with Ralph Fiennes (and a great cast overall), it’s only a slight exaggeration of what the media was hyping for Y2K.

I was 18 in 1999, there wasn’t that much actual panic. At the time people already generally knew the media was overreacting.

There was a pretty awesome shoe commercial a few minutes after midnight. It had a guy jogging down the street, presumably on Jan 1st, while in the background ATMs are spewing cash, planes are falling out of the sky, traffic lights are flashing randomly, and other chaos. Then it had a tag about new years resolutions. That commercial made it all worth it