the reason so many millennials don’t take 9/11 stuff seriously is that we took it deadly, terrifyingly serious when it happened, and then grew up watching the people we trusted to guide us through this serious event instead use it to fuel the most deeply unserious 20 years in american history.
I was 11 when it happened and mostly remember just getting a day off school with the news on. I simply had more important things to worry about, like the buu saga.
I was in school when it happened. While I was in class my teacher found out her brother was in one of the towers and died.
I'm fed up with the nationalism but I can't bring myself to joke about it.
Same; my aunt died and it's not just the event itself that I remember so strongly it's everything that comes with it when you're attached to an event like this. Like I'm always down for "laughing through the trauma" but so many jokes forced in my face by people who didn't lose anyone cross the line
I was there and people who were also there and I make awful jokes about it with each other and it's fine, but 'edgy' internet humor from 17 year olds who weren't born yet can entirely get bent.
For real; the "Someone forgot to tell the AI about 9/11" on the fake Barbie Batman cosplay pic makes me laugh, but my aunt's body was never found; if I rolled in online one day to see a gif of her falling out of the building to her death to be used as an edgy meme or something I'd be beyond livid.
I was in NY in elementary school about 40 mins away from it. Had some classmates worried about their parents safety. Saw smoke from the buildings from the schoolyard Feel like I remember papers blowing into our backyard. I didn't totally understand it at the time but it was still scary & ominous
I watched it live on tv on the other side of the world. I was heartbroken for those involved and also for the countries I just knew would be punished for it .
They turned it on the TV's in the classroom, and I didn't really process what I was seeing. I honestly think I forgot about it shortly after. I would have been 10 at the time
I thought it some crazy movie/stunt? Wasn't until I got home and saw my mother crying at the same image on our TV did it click that it was a real event happening in NY. My father was wroking at the airport at the time, he was fine just stuck in traffic, with everyone trying to get home that day.
Ahh got it. My friend I took the bus with ran to our house saying New York City was falling down and my mom and I were like, huh? So I largely learned about what happened on the bus radio.
Making 9/11 jokes is meager payback for suffering through years of forced jingoism. You could not say this kinda shit at the time or you would get obliterated. Cancel Culture was never more real than post-9/11.
This! I was in the US about two months after and it was like being in the Middle East in the 70s: guns everywhere. A friend carried me out of a cafe when a woman told me “you don’t know what it’s like to have terrorists attack your country!” And I was: “I’m British! You lot funded our terrorists!”
EXACTLY. the yanks got to bomb countries that they reckon aided and funded the binladen network, then imagine the RAF striking every last Irish pub, club or copshop on the US eastern seaboard. All this for Halliburton's share price.
The first poll afterward showed like 9% American disapproval of Bush. As part of the 9% I agree the attitude was insane, as I had no idea why anyone supported him even if upset about the attack. The Something Awful Forums made Photoshops within hours, making me a jingoistic buffoon in comparison
I remember reading an anecdote that some critic called 9/11 "The first great artistic work of the 21st century". That I think encapsulates the weird duality of experience growing up during the early aughts. We were victims of our parents unhealthy coping mechanisms.
I was thinking about that after the post. Boomers are completely unable to understand that actions don't exist in a vacuum. Given the choice between reevaluating their complete disregard for human life OR doubling down, they looked reality in the eyes and shit their pants to hold their position.
This goes back to my "trained sociopathy" theory of the conservative mindset. You CANNOT support anything right of Socialism in the US without shedding your ability to emphasize with others. This cognitive dissonance is the exact Doublethink they're so fucking fond of accusing others of.
To this point, yeah. We're elbow deep in the 'creeping dementia' phase of the Great Die-Off, and because boomers are boomers, they express their confusion and distress by hurting the people they have power over. It's a miserable fucking way to die, and they've more than goddamn earned it.
They have but we don't deserve the literal destruction of civility, empathy and humanity that the boomers have brought upon us during their violent dementia, because let's be real, this is NOT a "creeping", this is them dying kicking and screaming while shouting "EXTERMINATE" at us lol
The literal face of the 9/11 response was just indicted for trying to help overthrow the republic (in the most ham-fisted way possible, of course), and the fact you can connect a straight line between these events says everything you need to know, I think.
I was 17 and after the first plane hit I was still expected to give a presentation in English class, while being the only member of my family who remembered exactly how close my cousin lived to the towers. It was my first Millennial lesson in "keep calm and stay productive never mind the disaster."
(My cousin was fine, by the way, but he lived in the evacuation zone - my parents claimed he was nowhere near that part of town right up until he was on the news coverage walking behind a reporter with his son on his shoulders.)
I still can't rule out honest confusion, my mom's sense of direction is terrible and my dad may have wanted to take her word for it. I've always had the best mental GPS of our bunch, especially if subway maps are involved. Surprisingly since I might find myself somewhere that has them once a year.
I really can't convey my mom's ability to get lost without a map or GPS to consult in an amount of words it makes sense to spend on it, so just trust me, it's within the realm of possibility.
I was in high school. They tried to go on like there wasn't a huge pillar of smoke in the distance (my school was in Brooklyn, across the river). Our band teacher (who was clearly an old school rocker who didn't give a shit) was the only one to roll out a TV to try to tune into the news.
