this post was submitted on 14 Dec 2023
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Millennials are ignorant of Rodney King Riots, Desert Storm, Waco / Oklahoma City Bomber (far right domestic terrorism), Newt Gingrich's rise of the 'Party of No', and other such political events of their era. Pop quiz, what is the Cranberries's Zombie song about?
Gen Z however is keenly aware of the problems occurring around them.
I remember the politics of the 90s. It wasn't as happy as others point out here. We really didn't start the fire.
Columbine happened under our childhood yo. And the 1980s going Postal craze was a different brand of public mass shootings. 9/11 was the SECOND attack on the Twin towers after all.
What an idiotic take.
Mate we were literal children during these events.
Much like Zoomers are young adults or teens today, look at our teenage years and young adulthood and focus on those events. No Zoomer was politically motivated at 4 years old nor was I during the Rodney King Riots.
We fucking had global protests with hundreds of millions standing up against the 1% and American wars.
We were and still are well aware of the problems around today as well.
My literal 7 year old niece knows about both the Israel-Hamas War and the Ukrainian War.
I duno how old you were, but lets say 3 years after the Rodney King riots of 92? So lemme pick a random 1995 event. Were you aware that Israel Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated when you were 7? Something I do remember was the USS Cole bombing. Do you remember that? That happened a bit later, Wikipedia says 12 October 2000.
The issue isn't "we were children". The issue is that research and information was far more difficult back then. Newspapers cost money and required manual reading. (Though I was able to pickup a few Newspapers when I was waiting for a haircut or other such events). We didn't have online forums (well, ignoring BBS and USENET)... or at least online forums weren't popular. And internet was very expensive and slow back then. So we didn't get information anywhere as quickly as children today get information.
Secondly, it wasn't "cool" to be politically informed before 9/11. That was just nerd shit back then. 9/11 changed our collective mindsets and everyone became more aware of world events.
I think this ties back to the original question. Gen Z is way more exposed to social media and therefore world news including propaganda at levels millennials never saw until adulthood. In the 90s you needed to watch the news or read the newspaper to know what was happening and if you missed it you would only know about it if it was broadcasted again. Nowadays we’re bombarded 24/7 with all kinds of news in the same place where you watch funny dog videos.
Yup. Its nothing about "better" or "worse". Its about the technological differences of today's children vs myself as a child.
Here's a memory for yall who are too young to remember how dumb we were in the 90s. On 9/11, bullies were blaming China (and me, being a slanty-eye Asian) for bringing down the Twin Towers. I think people don't grasp how unfathomably ignorant pre-Internet and pre-9/11 people were. Such a mistake wouldn't happen today.
Nothing against those bullies. Everyone was that dumb back then.
9/11 was a big wakeup moment. Society collectively decided that paying attention to world events was important, and we got smarter. Technology improved as well, so it became easier to look up news events after that. But deep down within our collective psyche was a turning point in foreign-policy mindset. I'm seeing that Gen Z today is far more anxious and worried about world events (both good, and bad, associated with that). The 90s "peaceful" era of my youth was an illusion, it was created by my (and my peer's) collective ignorance about the world.
I look at my ignorant Youth vs what GenZ grows up with today, I see pros/cons with both. I think knowing more about the world is a better thing overall though.
Where did you live that has people who blamed East Asian people for 9/11?
The ignorant people here were blaming Indians and other South Asians, and that was the limit of ridiculousness where I grew up