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Comment by hax0ron3 | Hacker News Reader

The late 90s were full of media that questioned reality and authority - like X-Files, The Matrix, Dark City, all sorts of websites about conspiracy theories and UFOs, etc. The zeitgeist was full of speculation about hidden truths. The cultural mood was defiant and sardonic. There was rap, rap-rock, Beavis and Butthead, Fight Club, Office Space... One of the most popular pro wrestlers in the world played a character who beat up his boss and gave him the middle finger. Then after 9/11 it kinda seemed like suddenly the TV shows were all about cops and soldiers. Admittedly, my memories might be somewhat deceiving me. But I do feel that the mood suddenly shifted, much more than the actual damage done to America by the attack should have justified.

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The late 90s were also a time of Law & Order, The West Wing, Apollo 13, and Saving Private Ryan.

And today is a time of Andor and Succession....

To be fair, West Wing, Apollo 13, and Saving Private Ryan all have very strong counter-authority veins.

Gen-X was making the popular new art at the time. It was a strong reflection of the feelings of our generation. We were (maybe still are?) known for not liking authority.

> Gen-X was making the popular new art at the time. It was a strong reflection of the feelings of our generation.

I posted this in a thread about the 90's film 'Hackers'.....

In the 1990's and for us Gen-X'ers, the worst thing you could do was to sell out; to take the mans money instead of keeping your integrity. Calling people and bands 'sell outs' (sometimes without justification!) was to insult them.

With the rise of 'influencers' the opposite appears to be the case; people go out of their way to sell out and are praised for doing so. This is a massive change in the cultural landscape which perhaps many born in the 2000's aren't aware of. (Being aware of this helps give some perspective to Gen-X media and films like Hackers).

BTW: Remember the 'product scene' in the film Waynes World?

Ethics are easy when you can afford food.

Post 2000s there has been a pretty fundamental change in the US economy. Things like rent and food were far cheaper. There was also a lot of potential income to be made by individuals by connecting buyers and sellers. Typically if you wanted to sell something like a car, you either went to a dealer that screwed you, or you put and ad in the local paper. If you watched around you could quickly buy cheap cars and turn them quickly for more than enough profit to make it worth while.

The internet quickly flattened this. First by pulling all the buyers and sellers on one advertising site it quickly turned into the fastest with the most capital won. Then the sites themselves figured out they should be the middle man keeping buying up the stock and selling it.

There has also been a huge consolidation to just a few players in many markets. This consolidation and many times algorithmic collusion has lead to the general ratcheting of prices higher. When you start adding things in like 'too big to fail' the market becomes horrifically unbalanced to large protected capital with unlimited funds from the money printing machine.

It's no wonder we quickly dropped ethics, most of us would starve to death in the system we've created.

> Post 2000s there has been a pretty fundamental change in the US economy.

American centrism strikes again.

I'm not American.

Reality Bites captures the zeitgeist well.

I think the money craze that came with dot.com, War on Terror spending, housing bubble, really flipped people into money at all costs.

As Gen-Xer I fully agree, I don't get the way things are with obedience, the rediculous situation that American families can lose their kids by having them playing alone in the garden, how everyone sells out for money (Punk would not happen today), the always smile and say no negatives at work being rediculous false (this one really drives me crazy),....

And yet Gen X is the demographic that fell hardest for Trump.

This is not true:

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-elections/exit-polls

I'm confused. The poll shows ages 45-64 had the highest percentage of Trump voters (54%).

Is that not confirming that Gen X (1965-1980, so ages 44-59 in 2024) was the most pro-Trump?

Was it? I am not on US.

If anything it is all about boomers, gen z and rednecks on YT and TikTok when going over MAGA and Project 2025 videos.

As far as I am aware, the people that didn't gave a damm to elections and ignored their right to vote, are the main reason.

this isn’t true either, 2024 election saw the highest number of people voting - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_turnout_in_United_States...

So what happened to those 34.7% voters that had better things to do than cast a vote?

https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2025/2024-pre...

The exercised their rights not to vote. The “losing” side always thinks that higher turnout would have led to them “winning” which of course is a cry of a sore loser. The fact remains, 2024 election had the highest voter turnout ever and people have spoken (till the next one when we might get a chance to elect some adults to fix this shit)

There's a next time? I wouldn't bet on it.

every year we hear the same thing but wheels keep on turning. we will vote again, we will make more mistakes in 2026/28/30... this "there will be no election" comments are quite silly in my opinion, America gets stupid from time to time but we get the fuckers out and try something else (which inevitably leads to some progress followed by more failure followed by...).

Just remember it always comes down to - "it is the economy, stupid" - and economy is in absolute shambles and will get a lot worse before November and it'll be a massacre for the ruling part much like in 2018

I hope you are right, and that ICE isn't outside polling stations come November, pulling you away (just to "check your ID" for a couple of days, you know!) if you are a registered Democrat or look too brown or gay.

What worries me is that we are seeing unprecedented levels of lawlessness and open corruption in the presidency and a guy who has been open about his desire to be a dictator. Given what he did after the 2020 election I don’t see much hope that he would allow a congress to be seated that would impeach him.

When you don't vote, you're really just voting for "whoever happens to win". So I count the non-voters among (R) supporters, or at least as "OK with Trump". Otherwise, they would have voted.

Abstentions can be the most powerful vote, and with great power should come great responsibility. That's often not taught well enough in schools.

Abstentions can seem the laziest vote sometimes, but that doesn't diminish their power nor their responsibility. It is a freedom to be allowed to cast an abstention. Real democracy needs to allow for abstentions, especially explicit abstentions.

(In recent primaries there have been races where I have explicitly cast an abstention. No one will have read my "I don't care who wins this primary, I care who wins the general election" statements, but they are statements to be made. Right now some of the "strategy" in the US two-party system is one-party poisoning the primary vote of the other party by inflaming it with in-fighting in ways that leak into the general election. You have a harder time to win general elections when your candidate is already on fire coming out of the primary. "It doesn't matter who wins, let's stop in-fighting," is a message I can try to write on the ballot, even if not enough people hear it, it feels like the more powerful and responsible vote.)

The goal shouldn't be to get to 100% of people voting in every election, the goal should be to educate people that not voting is tacitly accepting the results of other people's votes. The goal should be teaching people that abstentions are a freedom, a right, a privilege, and should be treated as powerful and treated with responsibility.

I don't think that makes sense. If Harris had happened to win through some minor change in the timeline (she came very close after all), would those people whom you call R supporters instead somehow be D supporters, just because of that minor change in the timeline?

As for "OK with Trump", I think that describes some non-voters. However, there are also non-voters who are more accurately described as "not OK with either side, indeed dislike both sides so equally that neither one seems like the slightly better option".

There is also the factor of swing states. In most of the US, your vote for President pretty much doesn't matter. You almost might as well just put it in the trash. The vote in your state is, barring a massive political shift, locked in for one of the two major candidates. Now, yes, you can still send a message by voting in a non-swing state. But it's understandable why some people would just not bother to vote in a state where the outcome is almost predetermined.

> would those people whom you call R supporters instead somehow be D supporters, just because of that minor change in the timeline?

Yes.

See also: support; passive/active

Gen X is the demographic that doesn't believe that elections are anything else but a clown show.

Based only on lived experience.

No, you're right, and I distinctly remember the conspiracy theorists and counter culture thinkers immediately circling around "this is going to be used to restrict our freedom." And of course they were absolutely right.

I also remember it was the worse possible cultural faux paux to indicate you thought invading foreign nations wasn't a good response to 9/11. I mean go look at the votes for invasion of Iraq, damn near 2/3 of both the house and Senate in favor. Every radio blaring patriotic songs, every school doing patriotic projects, every brown kid living in hell.

It sucked, bad.

You're right.

And the military in movies used to be depicted as inflexible, stubborn, paranoid, incompetent, and usually either "the bad guys" or authorities that impeded the progress of the main characters. (With exceptions; I'm not forgetting about Top Gun).

Then there was a sudden switch, with the military shown with cool gadgets, airplanes, tech, heroics, and generally being glorified. The transition must have happened before the first Transformers, but it was in full swing by then.

Were one of a conspiratorial mind, one would guess massive amounts of money were spent in changing this image.

No conspiracy necessary. The CIA bought the rights to the 1954 film Animal Farm, modified the ending to fit propagandist ends, and it went undiscovered for four decades. The original Top Gun was intended to recover the image of the US Navy after the Vietnam War. Etc etc etc.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military%E2%80%93entertainment...

Please lets also not forget computer games. Call of Duty, Battlefield, Medal of Honor, oh what a glorious thing to be an american soldier...

America's Army would like to have a word

Press F to pay respects

> No conspiracy necessary. The CIA bought the rights to the 1954 film Animal Farm, modified the ending to fit propagandist ends,

yea, I remember reading the book and then watching the movie and it had differences iirc, its available on youtube for free and I remember some comments talking about the different ending.

IIRC, in the movie, the animals finally kick the pigs out and everything. It was a good ending.

but in the book, there was not a good ending, the humans and the pigs were celebrating together and then ended up fighting in between each other

> Twelve voices were shouting in anger, and they were all alike. No question, now, what had happened to the faces of the pigs. The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.

This is the last paragraph I found from the book (had to download it via archive.org to find the last para)

So am I correct or is there more to the story?

Confirmed, that's the last paragraph in my 1996 Signet Classics copy.

So, no conspiracy theory necessary.

It's all straight up conspiracy practice since long, to much cheerful bleating how it isn't.

Just rewatched Buffalo Soldiers with Joaquin Phoenix. Really don't think that movie could be made today.

Such a great and underappreciated movie.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military%E2%80%93entertainment...

I was absolutely disgusted by stuff like 24 and zero dark thirty when it came out. "If you cut the throat of the terrorist's son he'll break down and tell you where the bomb is" - they expected the audience to treat that as plausible narrative, and a lot of them clearly did.

A lot of the war propaganda from back then is also depressingly similar to what gets pumped out now: you can't argue with success, you don't want to be on the losers' side do you?

To give 24 some credit, it showed some Americans as complicit in the terrorism or corruption in the story. ZDT also touched on how torture wasn't as effective as assumed. I agree that the broader themes often feel biased/propagandized, framing the anti-hero, who's basically acting as a proxy for the government, as justified at almost any cost.

Similarly in the pilot episode of Designated Survivor. "Let's nuke Teheran" was seen as a valid, and brilliant, tactical move in order to get negotiations with Iran to go Kiefer Sutherland's way.

  > Beavis and Butthead, ... Office Space

Mike Judge still does. Serendipitously there's a show called Silicon Valley... I also enjoyed the more recent Common Side Effects. But you even see it in King of the Hill and it's hard to miss in Idiocracy.

Add The Thirteenth Floor and eXistenZ to the initial list of movies.

> Then after 9/11 it kinda seemed like suddenly the TV shows were all about cops and soldiers.

There were some rare exceptions like Veep

The release date of the show 24 is fun.

My pet theory is that NYPD Blue and 24 paved the way in the American public mind for authoritarianism via the "good guys bending the rules and using violence because they know this guy did it" theme.

CSI and Law and Order as well contributed to the perception that the majority of police officers spend their time diligently and righteously investigating real crimes (usually resulting in finding the culprit) instead of spending their days watching traffic in pursuit of pretextual traffic stops, and solving less than 50% of violent crime cases.

Ever heard of Dirty Harry? This is a very old trope.

What is Nov 6 2001?

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