What was the defining historical event for Gen X?

[-]

segerseven@reddit

Didn’t see aids listed. That was really scary, watching the news and people withering away. No one wanted to drink from water fountains, share any food, dating went downhill….the list was long of changes / habits in people and both gay and straight people were paranoid. It was ugly times and our president didn’t appear to be helping matters at all.

[-]

John_Fx@reddit

It wasn’t exactly an event though

[-]

Providence451@reddit

I was a theatre kid, grew up to work in professional theatre. The AIDS crisis was the hallmark of my generation. There is a great play that discusses those years and when a 20 something says to a man in his 50's "If the gay men your age-" and the older character stands up and yells "There ARE no gay men my age!" and I gasped out loud. It felt like a gut punch.

[-]

Sure seemed that way, like he was trying to wipe out a whole section of Americans.

[-]

Sorchochka@reddit

Rock Hudson was a personal friend who asked for permission to get treated in France and the Reagans said no.

shaka

[-]

_WillCAD_@reddit

Shaka Ree?

Shaka Khan?

Shaka Zulu?

Shaka... ille O'Neal?

[-]

dcavanaugh001@reddit

This is what keeps me coming back to Reddit. Bless you all.

[-]

TexGirl8@reddit

gif

Yes!

"When the walls fell"

[-]

W0gg0@reddit

The river Temarc, in winter.

[-]

Zetavu@reddit

Who Shot JR? Where's the Beef? Just say no? Live Aid?

Reagan getting shot

I was in seventh grade. Old enough to understand. Too young to know how to process it.

Sometimes I think we are the only ones who remember it happened.

I was in 6th grade when that happened. Our principal got on the PA, announced that the shuttle had exploded, and dismissed the whole school for the day. I spent the rest of the day at home watching the news.

[-]

Ok-Cauliflower-3129@reddit

Got sent to the principals office when that happened.

I made the comment in class that I know of one teacher it was too bad that wasn't on the shuttle.

Challenger explosion and the fall of the Berlin Wall

FujiKitakyusho@reddit

The fall of the Berlin wall

The Tienanmen Square massacre

The US / Russia cold war

The space shuttle Challenger explosion

The AIDS crisis

The Chernobyl accident

Challenger Explosion - ‘85

Berlin Wall - ‘89

Sounds like I need to back and watch that movie again!

[-]

tauregh@reddit

I mean, yes and no. There was the OKC bombing, the World Trade Center bombing, Waco, Ruby Ridge, the highest homicide rate ever in 1993, the war in Kosovo…. It wasn’t all rainbows and unicorns.

[-]

BigDaddy420-69-69@reddit

Ive been saying that too, especially culture/ pop-culture. There's been very little evolution or innovation since 9/11

[-]

WishieWashie12@reddit

Sites like deviant art, where anyone can put up their artwork and build a fan base. Without having to be turned down by some gallery.

You have self-publishing sites where writers can get their books listed for sale and printed on demand without up front printing costs or the need for a publishers approval.

Musicians can self-publish their works and distribute online. Bandcamp, SoundCloud, Tunecore, etc. Once again, free from gatekeepers controlling the music industry.

Minecraft was originally an indi game but up on a forum by one guy. Other smaller indi games exist and flourish because there are now ways to publish and distribute digitally, with no need for manufacturing or physical distribution.

Youtube launched in 2005. There has been tons of creativity and innovation, but it's all on a smaller, non corporate scale. You had kids making stop motion lego movies, teens singing original songs in their attic. One of those teens singing silly songs made his whole career off of that youtube game. He now has three Emmys and one Grammy from a film done all by himself during the covid lockdown.

The creativity and innovation are there. But you have to seek it out. There are no longer executives deciding for us what we should be reading, watching or listening to.

[-]

BigDaddy420-69-69@reddit

I 100% agree with this. I should have mentioned all of the great indie art, music & video production. It's just what the moguls of industry shove down the mainstream's throat has been very vanilla and formulaic for a long time. Thanks for pointing this out as an independent musician.

[-]

WishieWashie12@reddit

Adding Patreon website. There are many musicians and artists who use patreon as additional funds to stay afloat. There are some local bands i love to support, even if i can't make it to every show. Others that stream some shows on Twitch for their patreon subscribers. I also make it a point to subscribe to their YouTube channels and like/share their videos.

One problem I do see with some of the local artists is they rely too much on Facebook or Instagram, mostly because they lack the computer skills themselves for proper online media management to grow their fan base.

I won a piece of the wall in a contest at school about Germany. It came with a certificate of authenticity and everything.

Keppoch@reddit

This is the more global GenX event than those focused on the states. I think it’s a shared experience that we all grew up worried about being vaporized by a nuclear bomb and the Berlin Wall coming down eased the anxiety.

[-]

singleguy79@reddit

Remember David Hasselhoff singing?

[-]

isittastyorshiny@reddit

Mr. Gorbachev tear down that wall!

[-]

Bernie_Dharma@reddit

Feel the same way. I’m an elder GenX and grew up just expecting that World War III was just a matter of time and we would all die in a nuclear holocaust.

Challenger in HS, Berlin Wall in college, 9/11 as a young married professional starting a family.

Man, 1986 to 2001 had some shit going on. I left out stuff like Tiananmen Square without even blinking.

[-]

Zardozin@reddit

9-11 or the space shuttle

You know the difference?

[-]

BubbhaJebus@reddit

Before that I had only known America at peace. I was too young to understand Vietnam at the time, and later saw it as an utter failure and a lesson of the folly of warfare.

Sure, there was the Cold War, and that caused anxiety, but I thought if real war broke out it would us defending against an inital attack by the Soviets.

Millennials and Gen Z probably have just as much crazy crap happen during their lives. The older millennials had about half the stuff on your list , + their own shuttle disaster.

Shuttle disaster.

[-]

pixelneer@reddit

Star Wars. That is all.

[-]

New-Huckleberry-747@reddit

The Simpsons!

[-]

Shalk-G@reddit

For me it was R. Budd Dwyer shooting himself on live TV back in '87...

Agreed 68 er GenX and while we were latch key kids, we did not know kids could be on milk cartons for being snatched yet. No freeze the moment until Challenger, first WTF are we seeing moment.

[-]

No_Bad2428@reddit

1975 here. I was pretty young when Challenger happened. I remember watching it live in the auditorium and I remember the sheer terror on the teacher's faces, but I don't think the gravity of it clicked for me.

Our phones lit up.

Call after call of people wanting to know if it was real, yelling at us for it being on the air, or just calling because they really had no idea what to do and they were watching tv when they say it so they called the cable company.

But above all, people calling wanting to know if what they saw was real.

[-]

AaronJeep@reddit

I was 30 and old enough to be conical by then. I wasn't shocked. My first reaction was something like, "Well, shit! They will never let us hear the end of this."

I knew it was going to get exploited, and the fallout would last decades. I knew nothing about our response would be proportionate or rational.

For me, it felt like standing in the shadow of a looming clusterfuck. All I could feel was dread.

[-]

CatDaddyWhisper@reddit

The San Francisco Loma Prieta earthquake on October 17, 1989. I was living SF on my way to see my girlfriend. I was about to get on the Nimitz freeway when the earthquake hit. I saw the upper deck of the freeway collapse right in front of me.

I was driving my father's convertible Triumph Spitfire, which was unscathed. The pickup in front of me was also was also equally lucky. The Buick in front of the pickup had its hood crushed by concrete from the upper deck. The cars in front of that were completely buried by debris.

42 people died on that stretch of road when the earthquake hit. I was literally seconds away from being crushed by concrete.

[-]

In_The_End_63@reddit

I was here on the Peninsula driving on ECR. The lamp posts were flailing around like whip antennas.

[-]

spoink74@reddit

Don’t forget the phenomenal coincidence: The A’s and the Giants were playing in the World Series when the quake hit.

Within just a few years the hills burned in Oakland and the Berlin Wall fell.

Library_tart@reddit

The death of princess Diana?

[-]

In_The_End_63@reddit

And her wedding.

[-]

sanddancer08@reddit

Falklands War

AIDS

Berlin Wall

Lockerbie

Dunblane shooting (v significant for UK)

Same. All the more so because it happened a few days after a friend’s suicide.

Same with 9/11. I was an adult, so I have all of the context leading up to that day. Millenials would not.

[-]

verletztkind@reddit

When Princess Diana died.

[-]

mypreciousssssssss@reddit

Challenger. Our class was permitted to watch the launch in the school library and we just sat there, uncomprehending and silent for a few minutes while our teacher cried. I remember thinking how grateful I was that my aunt, a science teacher who applied for the program, was cut in the final rounds.

[-]

WideStreet7125@reddit

Jamestown massacre: InNovember 1978 the world was shocked by the mass murder-suicide of more than 900 members of the California-based Peoples Temple cult. Members of its Jonestown commune in Guyana drank cyanide-laced fruit drink after being ordered to do so by their cult leader, Jim Jones.

I'm right there with you. Of course, I had no idea about the true cause until we deep-dived into NASA's mindset in one of my grad school classes.

The short story (which I've never been accused of exercising brevity) is that there were a few launch delays already, and President Reagans State of the Union address was going to be that night. President Reagan HAD to mention how progressive we were by putting a teacher into space that the shuttle was going to launch...period. All of the rest of the downstream facts of the case were a result of this.

Now, I don't consider myself R or D and quite frankly am disgusted by both, but I'm not attacking or defending the Reagan administration, I'm simply relaying the facts of the incident. There are a ton of downstream issues that, when perfectly lined up resulted in the tragedy. What truly bothers me is how/why nobody went to jail.

[-]

mika00004@reddit

Early Gen X events were Watergate in 72, and King getting assassinated in 68.

But most of us early Gen X (66) were probably still too young to remember these.

[-]

Sea-Talk-203@reddit

As an elder Gen X ('66), Fall 1980 with Reagan getting elected and John Lennon getting killed felt like the end of one era and the beginning of another. My high school and college years were all under rah-rah Republican normativity and U-S-A! mainstream culture, so a feeling of alienation became the norm for me.

wonder-bunny-193@reddit

Agree - I think we were already basically defined before 9/11 went down. Traumatic to be sure, but for most of us I don’t think it changed how we saw the world - it just confirmed a lot about the world we already suspected.

[-]

Ihaveaboot@reddit

Nah.

9/11. Nothing else comes close for me. I had recently graduated from college and worked in an office facing Manhattan. The towers were visible from my desk. I turned around to answer the phone and when I looked back only one was still standing. Then I got a call from a family member who worked at the Pentagon.

Berlin Wall falling? Isn’t that the country where “99 Red Balloons” came from? Cool.

Own-Cable8865@reddit

John Lennon's murder. Reagan's resistance to doing anything in response to the AIDS epidemic. The Berlin Wall coming down.

I remember:

John Lennon being murdered.

Iran hostage crisis.

Reagan getting shot.

MTV airing.

Challenger disaster.

Berlin Wall coming down.

1st and 2nd Iraq wars.

Live Aid, Farm Aid.

[-]

friedguy@reddit

I'm on the youngest range of genX and to me it has to be 9/11.

My college friends and I were all at the phase where we were starting our big boy careers and some of us were working in major cities / high profile corporate towers. It was very easy to see the tragedy of that day and think it could easily be us.

[-]

FlREYWench@reddit

Challenger Space shuttle explosion

[-]

TemperatureTop246@reddit

I was 28 when 9/11 happened...

I think 9/11, the Berlin Wall, the Challenger, Columbine, Chernobyl, Bhopal, the Clinton scandal, and as others have mentioned, AIDS.

I have to say when the Berlin Wall fell. There were a lot of other things, but that is the one that changed the entire world as we knew it. We were the last generation to feel under constant threat of nuclear annihilation.

Proud-Butterfly6622@reddit

There were several. President Regan being shot, Pope John Paul 2 being shot and the space shuttle blowing up. All 3 of these happened within a short time period and really messed me up for a while.

[-]

Bzman1962@reddit

9/11

Lots of good answers. But I'm going to pick one of a different kind.

Most of these don't really have specific dates, yet to me they count as defining moments, and should cover oldest to youngest GenXers. - Late 1970s: Atari 2600 brought the arcade home - 1980s: computers were suddenly everywhere--schools, homes, workplaces - early 1990s: the internet became widely available and the web shortly thereafter - 1999: Y2K. Many say it was much ado about nothing. It was nothing because a lot of us made sure it was nothing. - Early 2000s: Modems gave way to broadband.

[-]

duseless@reddit

The Fonz jumping the shark

[-]

Greasystools@reddit

This is perhaps most appropriate. The economy was booming so hard we were a parentless generation. We kept to ourselves and now about to take over the world, much like the revived career of Henry Winkler

[-]

sallyshooter222@reddit

For me (perhaps not for the whole of Gen X) it was when Kurt Cobain killed himself. I was a HUGE fan and 17 years old, when it seemed like we were all invincible, and it rocked my world.

[-]

Guidance-Still@reddit

Let's not for the technology of the time the apple 2 e , tsr 80, the commedore computers , the IBM PC , the Macintosh.

TheChewyWaffles@reddit

Rocky defeats the Soviet Union in 1985

[-]

Shakes-fist-at-sky@reddit

The news that Kurt Cobain shot himself. As a grunge kid I remember exactly where I was in the high school when I found out. I went home and cried and was numb for days. The collective mourning in the music community was powerful.

[-]

carolinaredbird@reddit

I’m not seeing Jonestown Massacre I was in 6th grade and totally freaked by it. The fact that that parents were poisoning their own children really hit me hard.

[-]

14MTH30n3@reddit

Silly thing, but for me the installation of high speed internet in my apt. It was just starting in mid 90s, but I already knew this will change everything.

[-]

Shawnaldo7575@reddit

Challenger explosion

Berlin Wall coming down

Hmm. I barely remember it because i was only 3 1/2, but Neil Armstrong walking on the moon. Funny story about that; my parents were moving into their first house. there was me, and my parents, mom being about 6 mos pregnant. so I stayed overnight with my grandmother. the memory I had of the moon walk, for YEARS, was my grandmother holding me up to the window, pointing to the moon, and me being able to SEE him actually walking on the moon. What I think actually happened is we had it on tv, I saw it, and she then took me over to see the moon, and I kind of confused the memories.

Boomers started this JFK thing because it was the last time they felt anything in their soul before they proceeded to divide each other and the world, this 'simplification of everything' only served to make their lives easier. Even the labeling of our generation as X was their dismissal of anything that wasn't about them.

We built the internet and were required to absorb more evolution than any previous generation in the history of world, and our identifier is "X"? Sort of crazy when you think about it, but I'll take our X anyday, because X is more about that don't want to be bothered by anyone else's BS while we try to make sense of the next changing 6 months.

[-]

anotherkeebler@reddit

Reagan’s election in 1980 and the release of the Iran hostages on his Inauguration Day in 1981.

Emergency_Ninja8580@reddit

The height of the AIDS pandemic & hate crimes , Challenger, Chernobyl, end of Cold War, internet, recession, MTV, Gulf War, .com, Princess Diana’s car accident…

[-]

FlyingTrilobite@reddit

Star Wars, and its sequels were a pretty powerful positive defining series of events. Changed toys forever.

[-]

koine2004@reddit

Challenger, Berlin Wall, Rodney King

[-]

Sorchochka@reddit

Rodney King and the LA Riots are part of the reason we all cared so much about the OJ Simpson trial one way or the other.

Challenger tops the list.

but also Regan being shot, AIDS, Berlin wall coming down.

[-]

HURTBOTPEGASUS9@reddit

Mt. Rainer

gif

Live-Aid

Challenger

Berlin Wall

[-]

AutomaticStick129@reddit

Watching THE DAY AFTER in school.

[-]

Educational_Cap2772@reddit (OP)

For Americans, Threads if you’re British

[-]

1st_sailonsilvergirl@reddit

When we were teens and children, I'd say the playing of "Video Killed the Radio Star" on MTV because it represented the growth of cable. Cable TV was the beginning toward niche media, and the end of our entire population getting entertainment and information from a very small number of sources. That, to me, is a defining historical event that changes society.

I didn't initially think 9/11. But I'd say as adults, it was 9/11. I'm on the older end of Gen X and was 33 on 9/11. So most of Gen X was in their 20s and early to mid-30s. We were of an age to understand the grave significance of the day and its years-long aftermath.

[-]

Hilsam_Adent@reddit

The issue with "us", specifically, as it relates to defining moments, is that we had so fucking many.

Many Xers are either children of or closely related to 'Nam vets and whilst most wouldn't or won't talk about it directly, it still affected us, even the younger ones that didn't see it in the newspapers or on the TV, like the front half of our generation did.

We saw several huge revolutions in music, the shuttle disaster(s), the Wall coming down along with the ever-looming threat of nuclear annihilation, the fall of Apartheid and so many more.

We were the last generation to be directly impacted by the decisions made during and immediately after WWII. We watched the world "shrink" before our eyes going from "Snail Mail" and Telegrams/Cables to seeing events occurring in real time from the other side of the world on TV. We watched the whole world shift from the Jet Age to the Information Age and were in the trenches of its redefinition to the Digital Age.

We're old enough to have functioned in a world without constant contact and helped invent a fair bit of it but young enough to still be interested in evolving with it.

To sum up, we don't have a "defining moment" because we experienced a multitude of them during our formative years, moreso than any generation before or since.

[-]

JustDropedIn@reddit

Collapse of the USSR

[-]

RevThwack@reddit

Challenger disaster, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Reagan shooting, Gulf War, HIV crisis, Columbine, Curt Cobain, LA Riots....

Nothing really defining happened during our youth.

[-]

MiaMarta@reddit

Columbine was big yes. Mostly in the usa in comparison to Europe but yeah.. that was the start of "thoughts and prayers" era I feel in the usa. Such a mess.

[-]

kibfib@reddit

It was more like multiple smaller, yet extremely significant things, than one big one.

[-]

MiaMarta@reddit

I mean.. the 9/11 was for everyone surely but for Europe a big moment was Chernobyl and the 6 months after it.. nuclear cloud that hung over us, not being able to drink milk as kids because of it, or have much fresh veg for a stretch of time.

Then the Challenger explosion, that was heartbreaking watching live.

Black friday bushfires or any fires ive been through

Ebony simpson murder

Anita cobby murder

Snowtown murders

But a lot of the things have been international; princess diana dying, fall of the Berlin wall, September 11

[-]

NessAvenue@reddit

Princess Diana's death was definitely a moment I remembered well. And yes Anita Cobby, even though I was pretty young, it was everywhere. It made a huge impression on me.

[-]

NessAvenue@reddit

Challenger and the death of Princess Diana.

[-]

techbear72@reddit

Depends where you live and your community.

For me, a gay man, HIV/AIDS, but many straight people didn’t care at all, and some actively cheered it on (which is also part of the defining event).

For straight Americans especially, I suspect 9/11 still.

But if that’s “taken” then, along with other people from the western world, the terror of the threat of nuclear war and the subsequent end of the Cold War is what I’d say. Didn’t happen in one day but defined GenX youth.

Xistential0ne@reddit

So much, Challenger, Regan getting shot, Desert shield then storm, 9/11 for me, Snookie, Berlin Wall, Tiananmen Square.

[-]

Windy1_714@reddit

AIDS.

Berlin wall, Live Aid & Rodney King are up there but to choose 1. AIDS.

[-]

Mount St Helen?

[-]

HeWhoDealtItSmeltIt@reddit

Mt. St. Helens

[-]

supershinythings@reddit

Iranian hostage crisis, Shooting of President Reagan, Challenger Shuttle disaster, invasion of Kuwait followed by Desert Storm.

Columbia shuttle disaster was in 2003 so that was after 9/11, which defines Millennials so I won’t count it for GenX.

[-]

River-19671@reddit

Depends on when we were born. I was born in 1967 and I was in college when the Challenger exploded. I remember watching the fall of the Berlin Wall, the assasination attempts on Reagan and the Pope (I was in a Catholic school)

[-]

a_passionate_man@reddit

German here: For me, it seems as if the „Deutscher Herbst“ 1977 had a big impact on me as it is one of my first memories related social and political life. As explanation, September and October 1977 in the Federal Republic of Germany, were marked by RAF (Red Army Fraction terroristic group) attacks and hostage situations e.g. when a Lufthansa plane was diverted to Mogadishu by hijackers.

I am going to say 9/11 only because as a young adult it was the most memorable and most impactful. I had just bought my first house a few days earlier and boxes were everywhere. I worked at the Sears tower in Chicago. There was no cell phone to watch the video at the time so we were all trying to find out what was going on and then got the evacuate order. 10’s of thousands of people leaving the buildings at the same time walking to the train. I lived within walking distance and just walked home and turned on the TV. The images are still in head.

After that - we entered a war that lasted decades and caused debt to explode. Not only that but it was mostly our generation that fought that war. - security at the airport became much more difficult. There was a time when you could walk to a gate without a ticket. - with the exception of Dec 7, I think 9/11 is the other day that most Americans would instantly know what happened.

There’s not just one for a generation. Even for boomers, Sputnik or Elvis on Ed Sullivan competes with JFK in Dallas.

I’m an elder GenX, so I might choose Reagan getting shot or Challenger. Younger GenX might say Challenger or Losing Kurt Cobain. 9/11 was way too late to be a defining event for us elders.

[-]

A_Thorny_Petal@reddit

When I was a kid, The Challenger Explosion

When I was a teenager, The Berlin Wall coming down/Soviet Collapse

Wrestlemania!!!

[-]