I don't think either of those things would get butterflied away, quite the opposite. With no war in the middle east to remind people of the real cost, that genre could get even more popular. The plotlines wouldn't focus on the middle east so much but they would very much exist.
WI: Pop Culture in a world without 9/11?
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I think the opposite,the whole war on terror changed the setting to more grounded ones and based on 'real heroes ' , before,the most popular console fps were Golden eye, perfect dark (spy genre) and medal of honor (WW2), so more historical wars would be used,the same the spy thriller
I don't see why those trends would continue. While the wave of patriotism that followed 9/11 may have explained some of the push towards more real military shooters, by the time stuff like modern warfare came out, that wave had long since passed. Fact is, no trend can last forever, and there just seemed to be a lot of market demand for realistic military shooters. Not to mention games like counterstrike getting really popular outside of the US in countries with little emotional attachment to the memory of 9/11.
So, people here have been asking about if no 9/11 could have prevented the 2008 crash, and in all likelyhood the answer is no. However, let's say it did. Butterflies flap, someone important enough to get people to listen starts talking about the housing bubble, the government takes action and manages to do...something that averts the crisis. What changes? Well, there is one major change that would happen. Much of the internet as we know it would not exist.
Let me explain. During the 2000s, people weren't too keen to invest into online companies, most venture capitalists being too traumatized by the memory of the dot com bubble. But after 2008, in an effort to get the economy moving again, the government massively lowered interest rates. This meant that it was all of a sudden very cheap to invest, and much of this cheap investment money went into tech and online stuff. You know how a lot of these big companies like Uber or Netflix either never actually made a profit or barely broke even? This is how they have been able to stay afloat, with tons of money from investors banking on the company making money eventually, and this is even more pronounced in the startup sector.
No 2008 crisis, the government has no reason to lower interest rates (or indeed raises them to fight inflation like whats happening now), investors get a lot more stingy with their money and choose to invest in safer bets, all these companies either fold quickly or are forced to start monetizing sooner and cripple their own growth. In short, the internet looks totally different.
Let me explain. During the 2000s, people weren't too keen to invest into online companies, most venture capitalists being too traumatized by the memory of the dot com bubble. But after 2008, in an effort to get the economy moving again, the government massively lowered interest rates. This meant that it was all of a sudden very cheap to invest, and much of this cheap investment money went into tech and online stuff. You know how a lot of these big companies like Uber or Netflix either never actually made a profit or barely broke even? This is how they have been able to stay afloat, with tons of money from investors banking on the company making money eventually, and this is even more pronounced in the startup sector.
No 2008 crisis, the government has no reason to lower interest rates (or indeed raises them to fight inflation like whats happening now), investors get a lot more stingy with their money and choose to invest in safer bets, all these companies either fold quickly or are forced to start monetizing sooner and cripple their own growth. In short, the internet looks totally different.
I wrote a quite long and detailed hot take about how Source Engine games and the whole Garry's Mod/TF2 memes subculture of the late 2000s and early 2010s YouTube would have been affected in a world with no 9/11, but the text is in my broken computer that is currently in repairs, so I will hit you guys up when I post it eventually, I will do the same with everyone that is interested in Half-Life 2, TF2, Gmod, Left 4 Dead, and all Source Games and Mods in general would look like in a world with no 9/11.
It has been quite a while that I do not delve into the making of TF2 IOTL, but from what I remember, a big inspiration for the present artstyle of the game was Pixar's The Incredibles from 2005, so it will depend whenever if Pixar still makes The Incredibles ITTL or not, this would perhaps dictate if the TF2 of OTL would be made or not, because TF2 underwent various drastic artstyle and gameplay changes throughout its 9-year development span (1998-2007).
Hell, in 1999, TF2 was originally a realistic military simulation shooter!, then around 2001-2003 it became a War of the Worlds-inspired steampunk & sci-fi alien invasion thing, and finally, around 2004-2005 it evolved into the cartoony team shooter that we all know and love, the realistic military sim TF2 from 1999 was truly ahead of its time, this was years before the War on Terror started, and thus influenced games such as Call of Duty 4, which made the whole "action-packed and patriotic military shooter where you kill terrorists in the Middle East" genre and gimmick the pop culture colossus of the late 2000s.
At least for me, unlike GTA 3 and Rockstar Games that make specific types of open-world urban crime games, Valve never struck me as a company whose games and development philosophy were that much affected by 9/11, if at all, if you read up information about their game development stages, the seeds for what would eventually become Half-Life 2, Team Fortress 2, and even the Steam online digital game shop service were already planted as early as 1996 before even the first Half-Life game was released, and way before 9/11 happened.
So other than speculation used as an excuse to write fan-fiction for alternate Source Engine games and an alternate trajectory for Valve in the games industry, I doubt that Source Engine games and Valve Software would be that much different in a world where 9/11 never happened, the main thing that would change would have been of course fan-made mods, so for example, it is likely that the Insurgency Mod, which later became the Insurgency franchise, would likely not exist in a no-9/11 Timeline, and also, Middle Eastern/Arabian-themed maps and obvious Islamic terrorists would be way less prominent in Counter-Strike games and its custom fan-made content..
So I feel that thinking that Valve games would have been quite different from OTL, would be like being a DeviantArt artist from 2008 making alternate Source games just for the sake of fan-fiction and fanart fun, rather than it being based on anything about the actual development philosophy of Valve, like describing a Left 4 Dead equivalent where the enemies are aliens instead of zombies, the Engineer from TF2 being a smart and pretentious MIT scientist from Massachusetts instead of a traditional hillbilly/cowboy from Texas (due to the Texan G..W. Bush not being re-elected in 2004, or not being elected in 2000 in the first place), and Half-Life 3 actually releasing circa 2009-2011 because..... reasons.
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If you want hl3 kill steam,once they got money for not making games, that sidelined game development
The Incredibles came out in 2004. Production for the movie started before 9/11, so I assume the movie still gets released.
Ohhh, important catch!, and I just read up that its earliest concept art dates from 1993!
If 9/11 and the 2008 financial crisis never happened its going to have a far more prosperous 2010s leading to a possible baby boom of Gen Alphas.
The film adaptation of Tom Clancy's The Sum of All Fears got fairly negative reviews, in part because critics thought it was 'too soon' after the attacks to release a movie featuring a terrorist attack destroying an American city, and there wasn't another feature film adaptation of a Clancy novel until 2014. Without 9/11 impact critics' reactions, it's possible that additional films in the franchise would have been commissioned shortly thereafter, with a knock-on effect on the career of the movie's star, Ben Affleck.
It reflects how invincible America felt pre-9/11 that terrorism wasn’t treated as an existential threat to civilization.
I've wonder how long would that mindset continue where 9/11 never happened due to Bin Laden's death in 1998? I'm guessing around 2007 when the Recession is starting to brew up and Putin's Munich speech against NATO.
The reason why 9/11 was so devastating was the Twin Towers, the very symbol of American power, being destroyed in a day left a very big scar, both physical and mental, on a lot of people. My dad told me when he heard about the North Tower attack on the car radio; he couldn't believe it was true because a group of fanatics succeeding in doing so much damage to the US wouldn't have been believable pre-2001.
I don't think a recession or Putin's anti-NATO speech would leave as much of an impact. because none of these events would be as big of a blow as two symbols of American might being destroyed.
Perhaps in this TL, the big terrorist attack is in Washington DC. Something like the Capitol Building or the White House getting exploded could leave a similar impact.
A TL where the recession and the 9/11-style attack happened the same year would be really interesting because the combined economic and physical blow would have massive effects on American society and create a historiography in which 1989-2009 are seen as some historical blur. Maybe they'd called it "The Peace of the New Millenium" or something.
In Iwanh's no 9/11 timeline a standalone sequel to Tails Adventure was released for all 3 sixth gen consoles in 2005 but he didn't go to deep into it. But I can fill in the gaps in this one. ITTL dark and edgy stories and anti hero characters didn't really catch on leading to Shadow The Hedgehog being a one and done character which would change the Sonic franchise during the Six Gen era significantly. Sonic Heores would be a much different game. The initial plan for the playable teams didn't even have Shadow and Rouge would of ended up with Team Rose.
Sonic X however wouldn't really change much but it would end with Sonic and friends leaving earth but the 3rd season where they meet an alien girl named Cosmo and go into space never aired instead the concepts from the unaired third season of Sonic X were instead reused like Cosmo being a close ally of Tails and the space adventure story for the Tails Adventure game. The gameplay would be something like an action adventure RPG with Tails using his gadgets to take on enemies and bosses.
Sonic X however wouldn't really change much but it would end with Sonic and friends leaving earth but the 3rd season where they meet an alien girl named Cosmo and go into space never aired instead the concepts from the unaired third season of Sonic X were instead reused like Cosmo being a close ally of Tails and the space adventure story for the Tails Adventure game. The gameplay would be something like an action adventure RPG with Tails using his gadgets to take on enemies and bosses.
Very interesting. Even Mighty, Ray, Fang, Bean, and Bark would have make a comeback and become recurring characters. Plus, with changes like these, that’s gonna leave the rest of the Sonic franchise (Sonic 06 included).
So would other darker shows that appeared in the 2000s, like Billy and Mandy, get butterflied away?
Billy and Mandy probably still comes around. It originally was part of Grim & Evil, which premiered on August24, 2001, which was just a couple of weeks before 9/11. Both The Grim Adventures of Billy and Many and Evil Con Carne will probably still be around.
EDIT: I should note that while the regular run of the show began on August 24, 2001, the pilot premiered on Cartoon Cartoon Fridays on June 9, 2000 as part of the Big Pick event.
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They were actually planned to be in Heroes IOTL but got cut. ITTL they were still likely cut leaving Team Sonic, Team Rose (Amy, Cream Rouge) and Team Chaotix as 3 playable teams but without Shadow they would either get introduced later or in the GBA title Sonic Battle.
If Shadow's game and 06 gets butterflied away then the franchise's reputation would be much better. However, it would never really dethrone the Genesis/Mega Drive trilogy but still a somewhat respected franchise that while good gets overshadowed by other games on the market like GTA which I think it would still be big ITTL.
In Iwanh TL
There's a Battlefield game called:
Battlefield: Iraq
A sequel of OTL Battlefield: Vietnam
There's a Battlefield game called:
Battlefield: Iraq
A sequel of OTL Battlefield: Vietnam