I don’t think I could have been born at a better time…

I feel good about my childhood as well. Though I was born almost a decade later in 86, my early childhood did include experiencing part of that arcade scene of the 90s. Those were some of my favorite times. I just loved everything, especially the atmosphere in being in one of those places. LA was just filled with arcades everywhere you went. The coolest things I can remember In my kid years were cartoons, roller skating, and those ice cream trucks that passed by all the time. I did grow up in the poor areas of LA, filled with a lot of gang crime and violence. But none of that had much of an effect on me.

The console side was pretty awesome too. Having a Genesis as a kid, and then getting an N64 in my pre-teen years made for some good times. I didn’t have a Playstation because I thought the N64 was better. Thanks to game magazines, I was aware that there were plenty of good titles on the PS1, and even some on the Saturn, but most of those titles didn't do much for me. By the late 90s my dad had bought a family computer which introduced me to PC gaming. I was mainly into the FPS, RTS and RPG genre. And some of the best games in those genres came out during those times. I was also able to find some free internet providers and able to play games online. It was around that time I discovered porn again by accident...

High school years is where things started to change, I played football in my freshman year but got pretty lazy afterwards. Up until that time, I was always doing some sport. Don't know what it was but I never really had much interest in them. I was in my sophomore year in high school when 9/11 happened. That's when everything seemed to change. Everybody was more guarded. We were in alert, people were afraid. They elected bush and decided to let his staff just run wild with all these crazy policies. Before that time, it seemed that we were at peace for the longest time. The Iraq war was a decade ago, and I didn't really have any recollection of it. So having the nation declaring war with Afghanistan, then shift focus to Iraq was kinda scary to me. I actually thought they were going to reinstate the draft and I was going to participate in a war I did not want any part of.

After high school, I got a job, went to school, and probably gamed way less than what I wanted to. I think around that time the Xbox 360 was being released, PS3 and Wii were on the horizon. Those consoles did way more to distant me from gaming. I did keep playing on PC but there was also a drop of in quality in those games. Broadband internet was taking off. This is also around the time when cell phones were starting to become even more ubiquitous.

There was the big crash of 2008, which hit a lot of people pretty hard. Even now we are still recovering from that event. The entire world felt that event. The country as a whole has more people working, but advances in wages seem to be at a halt. Maybe I didn’t pay a lot of attention when I was younger, but there just seems to be a lot more issues in today’s world than there was 20 years ago.

You bring up a real good point about 911, because it really did change this country- in my opinion only for the worse. Such as:

- Rather than reducing the influence of radical Islam, in the last 14 years not only has radical Islam flourished, but the influence and perceived 'importance' of Arab and Islamic people in general has never been higher! The September 11th attacks did nothing but promote and grow both radical Islam and the anachronistic cultural influence of the Arab world.

- 911 transformed an already fearful, media-driven culture into a slobbering, hyper-reactive melting pot of irrational morons who wildly overestimated the actual threat represented in the wake of September 11th. I said it from the get-go, the people of the islamic extremist world are NOT some kind of James Bond style capable super villains with cutting edge super technology. They are a bunch of backwards ass yokels that are hardly different from American 'militia groups'. The World Trade Center coming down was- as I said when it happened- a fantastic stroke of luck that outstripped the terrorist's wildest expectations. It was a massive sort of coincidence that we had our pants around our ankles to the extent we did. We were piss drunk on the largesse of the fat 1990s tech boom, asleep at the wheel. It was half or a third of America's own fault the attacks happened due to how lax and out of it we had become.

- The world's reaction to the horror and spectacle of 911 made me realize just how much I had overestimated the capabilities, potency and even the intelligence of individuals and organizations in charge, especially here in the US. We stumbled into the 2nd Iraq war like a bunch of blind hillbillies looking for a stolen batch of moonshine instead of weapons of mass destruction. And in the process created a stealth-nevaux-riche class of people who made an avalanche of money they did not deserve. These contractors and other homeland security types sucked a criminal fortune off that beyond stupid, unnecessary war. And they took that money and invested the shit out of it and turned it into real fortunes, while the deluded left rails against the mythical, non-existent 'one percent' of evil oligarchs who rule the world.

neobuyer said:

The World Trade Center coming down was- as I said when it happened- a fantastic stroke of luck that outstripped the terrorist's wildest expectations. It was a massive sort of coincidence that we had our pants around our ankles to the extent we did. We were piss drunk on the largesse of the fat 1990s tech boom, asleep at the wheel. It was half or a third of America's own fault the attacks happened due to how lax and out of it we had become.

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IMO The American government wasn't ignorant. From what reports said they had the information that this threat was going to happen. I might be looked at as a conspiracy theorist, but it makes a lot of sense that the government allowed it to happen. they were just too stupid to realize the implications of what actually happened.

1. If you look at the 80's Islamic Radicalists taking over planes is nothing new. None of them in the past seemed hellbent to crash it into anything. At worst they negotiate for something, or kill all the passengers. 100+ lives lost might seem acceptable risk (considering most would think it would be negotiated down) compared to the thousands lives lost at 9/11

a. Everybody hated Bush. A lot of people thought Gore won. His popularity was in the toilet. One thing that brings America together is a crisis where a leader comes and saves the day. If this was something they thought they could control, then I could see them using it as a sort of publicity stunt.

b. If they executed the hostages, well the loss of life is terrible, but 100+ lives compared to the war on terror that they probably knew they wanted to accomplish because war against a vile enemy brings Americans together.

Now I don't think it they would have gone to the extremes they did taking away rights with stuff like the patriot act or the torture camps, but I do think the Iraq war was on their agenda. If not North Korea posed a bigger threat, and Iraq had some Radical Islamists, true, but it was hardly worth invading especially since no one even found weapons of mass destruction. It would be like invading Pakistan because the terrorists have a few cells there and the government didn't roll over and let us anal probe their country looking for them.

Part of my making this thread was based on the reality of post 9/11 America.

I do not know how the US/world felt after Pearl Harbor and WWII...but I do now the red scare/Cold War put a deep sense of fear into the American people. A fear that drove politics, policies, laws and haunted citizens for decades. It really wasn't until the 80s when the US finally came out of the fear. I really think this drove the more lighthearted public attitude of the late 80s/early 90s.

I've seen some mentioning of Reagan and the spending of the 80s...while I do not agree with much of what Reagan did, his Cold War arms race was a huge part of why the Cold War came to an end. He had to do it. Read the memoriors of Gorbachev...even the bullshit smoke and mirrors Star Wars program effected the USSR. Once the USSR saw we could out arm them...it opened the door to negotiations for more civil government policies.

Not to be offensive, but many young people either don't know about this, or don't understand this. The Reagan administration isn't some sort of reckless spending body that plunged us into debt needlessly. None of them seem to understand the severity of the Cold War and how important it was that we ended it peacefully...which they did. Having all of the information we now have available to us, the arms race was effective and brilliant...to read both sides of the story it really is amazing how it came out.

Either way, like the red scare in post WWII America, we once again live in fear. Fear of the outside world, fear of our own government. This is something American citizens haven't felt in our lifetimes.

The civil movement of the 60/70s shook America out of the red scare 50s...I wonder if this will happen again...

It won't happen again, this new generation is worse than the Baby Boomers, it's just far too complacent.

Mr Bakaboy said:

IMO The American government wasn't ignorant. From what reports said they had the information that this threat was going to happen. I might be looked at as a conspiracy theorist, but it makes a lot of sense that the government allowed it to happen. they were just too stupid to realize the implications of what actually happened.

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Wouldn't be the first time. (Pearl Harbor?)

I'm one of those guys that believe it was all worked from the inside. Look at the end results, who's benefitting from all of this? In every conflict there's always someone banking in.

ElectricGrave said:

I'm one of those guys that believe it was all worked from the inside. Look at the end results, who's benefitting from all of this? In every conflict there's always someone banking in.

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Yup, follow the money.

I really do believe the media is the most powerful tool when it comes to controlling the perspective of the masses. As kid I watched a lot cartoons and paid no attention to anything else. Even back then they had shit on lock down, bombarding us with ads of crap we wanted our parents to buy. Of course I wouldn't get anything but I’ll be damned if their brain washing tactics didn't work.

It wasn't until the elections of 2000 when I started realizing how powerful they were during the whole Bush and Gore campaign. How did Gore even manage to win the popularity vote against Bush? Next big thing after that was 9/11 and everybody was replaying the same footage of the planes crashing into the towers. Weird thing was that the majority of the country was in total agreement that we needed to attack Afghanistan. Well at least that’s what it seemed like on the news because they would never show anyone against the war. In the rare instances they did show someone that was against war, they would make them out to be unpatriotic pussies.

After that the media just became even more extreme. The entire war campaign they acted as cheer leaders while our government was actually committing some pretty serious war crimes. It was serious enough that several members of the Bush administration could actually get tried and sentence to death. Sadly no one will be held responsible and face any sort of consequence.

The financial crisis of 2008 was another milestone event that should have changed things for the better but instead we keep heading towards the wrong direction. At this point I stopped watching major news media and can’t really tell how the coverage of how that went. But I imagine they were working damage control for all the banks. We know the people that were responsible for the crash and the practices that were going on that lead to such an event. The result of this thing is that many of these executives faced absolutely no consequences whatsoever and our leaders bailed them out.
I won’t go much more into all the other stuff that has happened because we can go on forever. The point I’m trying to make is that the media has really skewed the perception of the people and that they are really, really good at doing their thing.

Part of the problem is that people have become complacent. But that is not always the case. A good recent example is the St. Louis incident. The people were outraged and took to the streets. They were out there protesting for weeks, sick and tired of how the police were treating them with prejudice. And the media being really good at what they do was able to make the protesters look like irrational ticking time bombs. Did the militarization of the police force ever come into question?

I don’t know if we will ever see any sort of revolution in our life time in this country, but we do need one.

About the 911 conspiracy theories: while I understand how there is a whole universe of information out there seemingingly supporting the notion that the September 11th attacks were an inside job- it just totally couldn't have been one. I respect the intelligence of people who have strong suspicions, especially when you are bombarded by a relentless barrage of people claiming there is "overwhelming evidence" supporting such theories. I get that it's easy for be swayed by them. It is only once you get deep into the 'macro' psychology of people and human nature that these conspiracy theories break down.

1) people are too stupid in general to make such a complicated plan possible. I know that sounds harsh, and by stupid I don't mean you, the people reading this. It's just that through out my life as I have matured, I have been repeatedly horrified by how dense and ignorant are the people that hold jobs of prestige or high office. Judges, lawyers, professors, medical doctors and specialists, and other supposed 'experts' are often surprisingly uninformed and not-in-the-know. This applies to politicians and military people as well. Regular, even above-average and driven people will make mistakes that would have revealed an inside job for what it is.

2) people cannot keep their mouths shut about dark secrets as huge as this. Someone involved, likely many someones, would have come forward with damning evidence by now. In our media-hyped attention whore culture, coming forward and being a celebrity would be an irresistible lure to many conspirators (and yes, there would have to have been hundreds of them). Just look at Edward Snowden.

3) guilt and regret: even greedy bad people, assuming they aren't psyco/sociopathic are not going to be willing to commit pre-meditated 1st degree MURDER on the scale of the September 11th attacks. Because that shit is fucking evil to most any rational, non-fanatical human being.

4) this one is simple- pretty much everyone had a camera in their phone and someone at least would have captured footage of guys planting bombs or any other strange or mysterious action.

ElectricGrave said:

It won't happen again, this new generation is worse than the Baby Boomers, it's just far too complacent.

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I kinda feel the opposite. The Furgeson Protests and the NYC "I can't breathe" incident really sparked something. To me I don't think this is going away any time soon because the public is outraged and the police have shown that they have no plans to stop trampling over citizens rights completely because in their opinion it jepordizes their safety.

The reason why I say it's worse is because the public now compared to back then feels a sense of entitlement to their rights. Back then they knew they didn't have the rights and wanted them. Now we feel our rights are being stolen from us. When you steal from people, it tends to get more violent a lot quicker. Hence the many riots.

neobuyer said:

4) this one is simple- pretty much everyone had a camera in their phone

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What? Not in 2001.

LoneSage said:

What? Not in 2001.

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Everyone *could* have had a camera in their phone, except there was a government conspiracy to restrict them until after 9/11. Here is irrefutable proof.

neobuyer said:

About the 911 conspiracy theories: while I understand how there is a whole universe of information out there seemingingly supporting the notion that the September 11th attacks were an inside job- it just totally couldn't have been one. I respect the intelligence of people who have strong suspicions, especially when you are bombarded by a relentless barrage of people claiming there is "overwhelming evidence" supporting such theories. I get that it's easy for be swayed by them. It is only once you get deep into the 'macro' psychology of people and human nature that these conspiracy theories break down.

1) people are too stupid in general to make such a complicated plan possible. I know that sounds harsh, and by stupid I don't mean you, the people reading this. It's just that through out my life as I have matured, I have been repeatedly horrified by how dense and ignorant are the people that hold jobs of prestige or high office. Judges, lawyers, professors, medical doctors and specialists, and other supposed 'experts' are often surprisingly uninformed and not-in-the-know. This applies to politicians and military people as well. Regular, even above-average and driven people will make mistakes that would have revealed an inside job for what it is.

2) people cannot keep their mouths shut about dark secrets as huge as this. Someone involved, likely many someones, would have come forward with damning evidence by now. In our media-hyped attention whore culture, coming forward and being a celebrity would be an irresistible lure to many conspirators (and yes, there would have to have been hundreds of them). Just look at Edward Snowden.

3) guilt and regret: even greedy bad people, assuming they aren't psyco/sociopathic are not going to be willing to commit pre-meditated 1st degree MURDER on the scale of the September 11th attacks. Because that shit is fucking evil to most any rational, non-fanatical human being.

4) this one is simple- pretty much everyone had a camera in their phone and someone at least would have captured footage of guys planting bombs or any other strange or mysterious action.

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I agree 100%. There are too many problems with this being inside.

For 9-11 to be an inside job, 2 things would have to happen:

-The US government would have to be liquid tight on an operation involving a ton of people...and the government is never 100% tight on anything.

-The amount of people that would be required to do such a thing would be massive...and every last one of these people would have to be 100% ok with the mass murder of 1000s of innocent people for the past 14 years. Imagine being involved with an inside job of that scope...tell me it wouldn't bother you.

I keep reading over and over again that this was some money making scheme from an Illuminati type group of people. I don't buy it...look at this:

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/09/08/us/sept-11-reckoning/cost-graphic.html?_r=0

So far, the cost is $3.3 TRILLION and counting. The very people standing to make $$ from the "war machine" effort had their stocks crash and net worth drop substantially after 9-11. Trust me, there are better ways to convince America to go to war rather than killing thousands of people and knocking down the twin towers.

I just don't buy it...never have.

Mr Bakaboy said:

I kinda feel the opposite. The Furgeson Protests and the NYC "I can't breathe" incident really sparked something. To me I don't think this is going away any time soon because the public is outraged and the police have shown that they have no plans to stop trampling over citizens rights completely because in their opinion it jepordizes their safety.

The reason why I say it's worse is because the public now compared to back then feels a sense of entitlement to their rights. Back then they knew they didn't have the rights and wanted them. Now we feel our rights are being stolen from us. When you steal from people, it tends to get more violent a lot quicker. Hence the many riots.

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The Furgeson protests were nothing more than a shitty stunt...and haven't persuaded anyone or changed anything.

There have been protests and riots much larger than this over the years. How about this one:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1992_Los_Angeles_riots

The problem is...and always has been...it is not handled well.

First off, piece of shit:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rodney_King

Piece of shit:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Michael_Brown

You want to protest and use a person as a case of police brutality? Try not standing behind douchebags to do it. Second, try not breaking into stores or burning shit to the ground.

If you want the backing of the US people...backing a scumbag and breaking into your own stores is not the way to do it.

Oh...and don't do this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attack_on_Reginald_Denny

When in the middle of rioting over a police beating...

smokehouse said:

The Furgeson protests were nothing more than a shitty stunt...

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I 100% agree with you that Michael Brown had been proven to be a dirtbag. The reason why I say this situation is different isn't because of the one protest, but because police actions happened at the same time. During Rodney King there wasn't another crazy officer killing or beating another black man so the public passed it off as those LA Cops are corrupt and left it at that.

Now that there was multiple things happening at the same time. Now the public stopped and thought..... hmmm maybe I'm not as safe as I thought I was. On top of that the cops all around the US should have stayed on their best behavior until this blew over, just up and decided..... Nah, we'll go along as business as usual nothing will happen. The problem is the public in general is looking at ALL COPS. When you do that, more then likely you will find some idiots running around like it's a f'n western out there. All it takes is a couple incidents to escalate everything, and just like clockwork the news media gets footage of idiotic cops and now if a cop has to fire at anybody, justified or not, people are ready to riot.

This isn't going to blow over till the cops in general allow this to blow over by looking at their force and crack down on their problem children. If you let knuckleheads walk around thinking their hot shit at this moment in time things are bound to happen. There are too many idiots walking around looking at start trouble with cops in the first place.