Not on the scale of 9/11, and probably in different ways.
WI: Pop Culture in a world without 9/11?
- Thread starter woweed
- Start date
It's true that if Bin Landen got killed in 1998 by a cruise misses strike that Al Queda would try to attack the CONUS but on a smaller scale but it would invite the US to aid the Northern Alliance along with Drone Strikes that would chip Al Queda away and cause the Taliban to slowly lose territory leading to Al Queda to eventually abandon Afghanistan and scatter making planning attacks on the US much more difficult. But an interesting scenario is that at some point in the late 00s to early 2010s Al Queda opts to forgo attacking the mainland and instead strike Hawaii in Oahu during the Christmas vacation at night by acquiring a Learjet and loading it with explosives intending it to crash into the USS Missouri at Pearl Harbor to cause a distraction before sending operatives to seize one part of Hickam Airbase where Military Personnel and their families are spending Christmas time and another group of operatives seize a 5 star hotel in either Honolulu or somewhere in Oahu to seize more hostages causing havoc across the island. Basically something similar to OTL's 2008 Mumbai attack.
The thing I've observed about people is that, for better or for worse, we tend to move on from tragedies that don't affect us.
Whether it is school shootings or genocides in remote countries far away, people tend to treat these things as distant affairs until they are affected personally.
9/11 was horrific because it had a deep and visible effect on all of us: countless Americans lost their lives as a cityscape was forever altered.
So would such an attack, in your opinion, have the same deep impact as 9/11?
No. Hell, people seemed to have moved on pretty quickly from the Oklahoma city bombing and that was probably worse then most of what would happen instead of 9/11 if that never happened. Although to be honest I feel like this convo is increasingly moving in the direction of "what if 9/11 had a different target" rather then no 9/11.
The Murrah building wasn't exactly a famous national monument, and people in Oklahoma City knew more about the OJ Simpson trial than that. The Twin Towers were a far more notable landmark to say the least.
But yeah, let's drop it and move on from that.
But what other events in the world could've altered the post-1989 attitude that stretched into the early 2000s?
Continued economic stagnation and such may have ended the "good times" as Americans increasingly came to feel like things aren't working out for them.
So could the 2000s have just been known as the beginning of a "lost era", as Americans started to feel the pinch of the rising cost of living and deindustrialization, especially since 2001 was when China entered the WTO? Would Enron's fall have precipitated this attitude?
While this might be outside of the scope of this TL, could there have been more attention on America's deindustrialization, with even some movies and shows exploring the issue more without the War on Terror taking up people's attention?
Probably. I think American shows are more focused on domestic issues plauging America -- 24 is less popular, while shows like the Wire, the Sopranos and Breaking Bad are seen as more poignant -- not unlikely that in a no-9/11 TL we'd get a movie centered around the Enron Scandal that takes the place of the Big Short.
So, in a world without 9/11, would we take a far more nuanced look at the 1990s and how mirage-like its prosperity would seem? In others, would 90s nostalgia be as prevalent if the 2000s and 2010s were mainly known as the decade of economic stagnation?
I mean -- it would be, I don't see why it wouldn't be.
There would have 100% been more focus on America's domestic issues without the war on terror taking up a large part of Bush's presidency, although we have no way of knowing just what sorts of issues would become most prevalent. It's equally likely US politics would descend into a morass of culture war stuff while the economic consensus remains.
Would these shows really be received all that differently? I'm not sure no 9/11 would change their (already extremely positive) reception.
No, the 90s economic boom was actually quite real, and so 90s nostalgia would very much become a thing in some format I think. Plus you have to remember that nostalgia is rarely based on rational indicators, 90% of it is just people reminiscing about the days when they were children with no responsibility and putting that into the media they work on.
1990s nostalgia likely wouldn't be as prevalent in this alternate timeline.
The main reason why '90s nostalgia became as widespread as it did in our timeline is because it is seen as the last of the "before times" (as in, before 9/11 and the War on Terror).
If there is '90s nostalgia in this alternate timeline, it would probably be focused on being the last decade in which the Internet and cellphones weren't regular aspects of people's lives.
Eh, it would still be widespread imo. 80s nostalgia was all the rage for a while and it didn't really have that going for it. It's just the nature of people aging and getting a rose tinted view of their childhoods.
Did it?, from what I remember, the 2002-2008 period was the peak for edgy and dark video games, movies, and comics, when goth leather spike anti-hero aesthetic was everywhere.
To an extent yes, but it was already well on its way to becoming that during the 90s, and without 9/11 this process would be even faster.
Unless the attack on Pearl Harbor or Hickam Air Base would be like December 7th, 1941, it probably would not have the "rallying around the flag" effect. Correct me if I am wrong, but I don't think AQ would focus on Hawaii when an attack on the CONUS such as in New York and Washington would have a bigger impact than Hawaii. The 21st Century isn't 1941. The defenses around Pearl Harbor and Hickam Air Base would be stronger than it was in 1941. Since Oahu itself is militarized, expect immediate retalation to crush Al-Qaeda attempts to attack it.
90's nostalgia would probably come later. However, I still remember even in 2002-2004, people were being nostalgic of the 90s. For one thing, Nickelodeon still aired their 90's Games and Sports segments.
I remember 80s nostalgia was very strong in the early 2000s. It has seen resurgence again in the 2010s with the vaporwave aesthetics.
If 9/11 happened, people wouldn't have paid as much attention to cable news and television in general, butterflying what I like to call the futurist genre away.
The futurist genre first began with the 2000s Battlestar Galactica show, and didn't really have much in common with later examples of it (to be fair, it's not that cohesive of a genre anyway and I only just recently came up with a name for it) except analogs to real-life events in sci-fi form feeling more real than ever. And then it boomed again from 2007 to 2016. Brink was originally supposed to release in 2009 and that game's ties to realism weren't analogs to the US and its enemies, but addressing issues like sustainability.
Mass Effect came out before and Asura's Wrath came out after, and they share little in common with the other works in this genre other than being inspired by Battlestar Galactica and having early 2000s US analogies drawn at some point in their stories.
This contributed to the sci-fi boom that lasted until Joker did provably better than three Star Wars films on an individual basis and most likely made more money than one. With games like Battleborn and WildStar coming out, as well as true examples of this form of media like Atlas Reactor, Overwatch, and Stellaris. All three of the latter addressed environmental and political issues on Earth to a cinematic, over the top degree, but were more rooted in reality than the games of a decade beforehand.
Suzerain (new DLC coming out tomorrow, yeaaah) could arguably be a part of this genre if Asura is, even though it's set in the past, because some of its political ideologies are more progressive than real life. But I'm not sure how to count this.
Changing CNN alone by not having the crazy events of 2001 would probably have butterflied all of this out of existence. CNN Student News had segments about the usage of technology and its possibilities for the future, which I'm sure were discussed by different reporters on the cable news broadcasts more people watched.
The futurist genre first began with the 2000s Battlestar Galactica show, and didn't really have much in common with later examples of it (to be fair, it's not that cohesive of a genre anyway and I only just recently came up with a name for it) except analogs to real-life events in sci-fi form feeling more real than ever. And then it boomed again from 2007 to 2016. Brink was originally supposed to release in 2009 and that game's ties to realism weren't analogs to the US and its enemies, but addressing issues like sustainability.
Mass Effect came out before and Asura's Wrath came out after, and they share little in common with the other works in this genre other than being inspired by Battlestar Galactica and having early 2000s US analogies drawn at some point in their stories.
This contributed to the sci-fi boom that lasted until Joker did provably better than three Star Wars films on an individual basis and most likely made more money than one. With games like Battleborn and WildStar coming out, as well as true examples of this form of media like Atlas Reactor, Overwatch, and Stellaris. All three of the latter addressed environmental and political issues on Earth to a cinematic, over the top degree, but were more rooted in reality than the games of a decade beforehand.
Suzerain (new DLC coming out tomorrow, yeaaah) could arguably be a part of this genre if Asura is, even though it's set in the past, because some of its political ideologies are more progressive than real life. But I'm not sure how to count this.
Changing CNN alone by not having the crazy events of 2001 would probably have butterflied all of this out of existence. CNN Student News had segments about the usage of technology and its possibilities for the future, which I'm sure were discussed by different reporters on the cable news broadcasts more people watched.
Bingo. I remember one of the first things from here when I was doing alt history stuff was on the Enron scandal. With no 9/11, Enron would be the main focus. In fact, it would put the focus on alot of the economic madness going on at the time, which would begin a period of economic anxiety that would be topped off with the Great Recession, serving as the crescendo for all of this, beginning a new period of frustration and turmoil.
And what happens after depends on who’s in charge.
Bush Jr could win in 2004, though it’d only be slightly better margins than his 2000 win. This would make the backlash against the GOP more painful in 2008 though we’d end up in a similar situation as OTL with a neoliberal like Obama or Ms Clinton serving to disappoint and radicalize. That said, with no 9/11, this is no external target to lash against so culture wars may get uglier earlier than OTL.
If Bush loses in 2004, depends who beats him. Dean’s fiscal policies would cost him victory unless he adopts an aggressive stance on big business and target them. Kerry may still win then.
Kerry would probably do fairly well in 2005-2009, but how he’d handle the Recession is a massive wild card. I don’t know if he’d be able to do anything major, both from his stance and Congress. That said, he might have enough folk to try and push for something. If he wins in 2008, then also depends on what happens next, but I still see stuff for the banks, growing disappointment and so on. GOP may go in 2012.
Alternately, the GOP wins in 2008 by a close margin, but would screw up the financial recovery and with the memories of Enron and so on in mind, may swing the populist energy to the Dems. Something like Occupy Wall Street becoming bigger and then coalescing with a potential Sanders 2012 campaign.
People forget the 1990s were the decade when America's neoliberal love affair REALLY took off. It was prosperous partly because the anti-plutocratic provisions of the New Deal were still in place before Clinton wiped them away. I think it's ironic that Richard Shelby, a Boll Weevil Democrat turned Republican, supported financial regulation more than a Democratic President.
It's not surprising that after 2000, America's economic calamity really began.
But with no 9/11 to take America's attention away from those issues, would you see greater focus on America's increasingly unstable and unequal economy?