I feel for you guys that didn’t get to live in the world pre-9/11 and pre-2008 financial crash. The world was just significantly worse in many ways after each, and never got to recover.
Though I will say the rate of these perma-shittening events does seem to be getting worse. Here’s what I consider to be the big ones with related shit in sub bullets (caveat I’m British so a couple of things are more specific to my country):
- 2001: 9/11 and all the pointless war and islamophobia that followed
- 2008: subprime mortgage crash
- 2010: Murdoch successfully blames the above on Labour causing the Tories to get in on an austerity manifesto
- 2016: Trump & Brexit, leading up to this:
- 2011: Alternative vote campaign fails thanks to the propaganda directed by the guy who does the same for the Brexit campaign. We didn’t realise at the time but this was the trial run.
- 2014: Putin tests the water in Georgia
- 2015: David Cameron changes the BBC charter to allow government appointments to the board. What follows is a defanging of the news department and the installation of a load of right wing editors. This is a big contributor to Brexit happening and everything else that follows.
- 2020: COVID
- 2021: failed Coup in the US
- 2022: Putin invades Ukraine
- 2022: Liz Truss gets in and delivers an actual real-deal right-libertarian budget and policy platform, despite everyone with a brain telling her it would tank the economy. She does it anyway and instantly wipes £30bn of our country’s wealth out of existence in a day.
- 2023: the current Israel-Gaza conflict kicks off, quickly turns into a genocide with the support of the western world leaders
- 2025: Trump gets in again and goes mask-off fascist
- 2026: Trump starts invading other countries in an effort to distract everyone from the mounting evidence he is a disgusting human trafficking pedo
This is a pointless nitpick in a meme community but (in my defence, this “meme” was srs to begin with): Liz Truss’s “experiment” never actually happened and the damage to the economy was reversed some time ago already.
It now serves as a useful warning about the Tories and their reliability on the economy.
The damage wasn’t really reversed, rather overcome.
If the world (not just the UK) didn’t see the massive increase in bond yields over the years following the mini budget, we would still very much be in the hole. The Bank of England had to intervene to buy an unprecedented number of bonds at not great prices, if they weren’t able to sell them for profit, we would still be directly facing the consequences.
If the bank didn’t have to intervene, we would be better off today because we’d have that growth without the hit. Most other developed countries got that, so in comparative terms we’re still behind.
But that’s just the point, the mini budget caused a small drop in bond yields that are insignificant now because of their small size relative to background changes. Maybe we’d be better off today - by a tiny, insignificant amount - or maybe part of that background growth in yields was actually everyone saying “oh, it hasn’t happened, it’s fine” and correcting for the sell off. It’s hard to tell which but it doesn’t really matter because of the scale.
1990s:

I’ll be honest, I’m more convinced that this is how it is:

Nah it really has got worse. Its like when you get ill and it starts off with a mild sore throat and you feel like shit, then 2 days later you’re sneezing and coughing your guts out and wishing you could go back to when it was just a mild sore throat
They were still bad days, but more along the lines of “this is the worst year of your life so far”
No thanks. 2016 was where everything really went to shit faster than usual.
I remember 2018-2019 being pretty decent though
Pre 2016 would be better.

You are not wrong. In this graph it seems like 2002 - 2012 was the calmest period in a very long time.
Source: https://reliefweb.int/report/world/conflict-trends-global-overview-1946-2024
Edit:
Actually kind of an interesting graph. Seems like there is a pattern of 10 years of conflict and tension and then a either a hold or another 10 years with a calm period.
I wasn’t really around when the US did their post-9/11 thing… but shouldn’t there be more deaths in that period?
The graph clearly isn’t including deaths of muslims.
Come to think of it, it doesn’t even label who it counts under “battle deaths”…
From a Finnish perspective, the 2010s were a rather peaceful time, world events didn’t really affect my day-to-day life. But from 2020 onward every year has felt like survival.
Idk for me 2013 was shite, surprisingly despite everything getting worse 2026 might end up being my best year so far
I want 2011-2012 on repeat
The year of Call Me Maybe. I get why you would you choose that.
And Avicii.
And We Found Love.
Also Moves Like Jagger, but that somehow feels like it’s… Decades… Ago… Aww. So old suddenly.
I liked 2005 better
According to the graph I posted, it actually seems like 2005 was the calmest year since 1946.
wow! it was a gut feeling, but turns out it was good!
ok boomer /hj

For other boomers like me, so that you don’t have to look it upThank you fellow oldster
guess that makes me a boomer :)
I’m still forgotten, so my generation moniker will never be wrong.










