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Today, Explained — How 9/11 became a meme. Machine-transcribed; use the interactive transcript above to jump the player to any line.
Sean Rommes from today explained from Vox like many of you I lived through 9-11 My memories of that day are of horror and shock and devastation which is why I think 25 years later It's so surprising that my feeds are filled with 9-11 memes that are ironic a reverent and surely insensitive think Pasta stacked up to look like the twin towers with M&M in the background and a caption that reads Never forgetty mom spaghetti Some of you surely know what I'm talking about and some of you surely don't so on the show We're gonna try and get everyone on the same page. Please consider this a trigger warning Bear with us as we try to understand how jokes about the worst attacks in our country's history Have helped a lot of young people deal with it and avoid it. How 9-11 became a meme? Maybe the most popular meme online
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You You're listening to today explained So I'm Whitney Phillips. I am an associate professor of information politics and media ethics in the school of journalism and communication At the University of Oregon and let's be honest Whitney have you ever laughed at 9-11 meme? I Mean I have been so let me I have been Engaging with 9-11 memes since 2008 and some of them are so shockingly So we it's just there's the juxtaposition is so Unbelievably that that will elicit a a giggle often even when you're like I feel very uncomfortable about this laughter When you're talking about tragedy seeing something absolutely absurdist in this really serious context It doesn't mean you're necessarily laughing at the tragedy itself
But there's just something that happens to your body when you see two things that should not go together And that is where a lot of this laughter tends to come from so having said that yes I will admit to having laughed at some of these Names because they just are set up to be You know the kind of essential experience of humor, but for some people Those two things pushed together they do elicit a visceral embodied response, but it's one of discussed You mentioned that you've been tracking these memes since 2008 When did people start trafficking in them because it's not like Everyone agreed that there's some humor to be had or found here on like September 12th 2001 There are Folklorists who were tracking the humor in response to the attacks From the day of the attacks. Okay, so I'm wrong. There were people on day one. Oh
Yeah, there definitely were I mean and there's there there are archives of examples of it from all the way back then What does world trade centers stand for? Welcome to Canada World terrorist convention What trade center Posted September 11th 2001 and it was wordplay like that and and some of these these jokes would be just text like How do you make a big apple crumble and then maybe there would be an image of of the towers themselves Osama been not in an ounce today that he will give up terrorism to become a TV chef for his first program He'll be showing us how to make a big apple crumble Posted September 30th 2001 I remember one from the early days of like this is how they're going to rebuild the twin towers And it was it was five towers like fingers and that you know the the tallest one was slipping the bird to the world essentially Rebuilding New York's skyline new trade center design incorporates a gesture and spirit familiar to all New Yorkers
posted September 13th Yeah, yeah, you would have kind of visual gags Like that and so then as you move into Forchan and something awful There were gifts gifts were possible like Hulk Hogan's smashing the towers the cool aid man Bursting through the towers and then you know flash forward even further and you get to platforms that allow For short form video and audio in particular coming to store soon the mine 11 place it center on The juxtaposition of the either the towers themselves or whatever it might be and then you have you know The overlay of audio that creates this Incongruous kind of experience where suddenly, you know, it's techno music or whatever it is that you're putting over it With each of these iterations of the humor What really shifts is what people are able to do with the platforms and the jokes are are always
Reflections of what people are able to do with these media even if like you have no idea what we're talking about right now with these memes I feel like everyone has probably seen the Literally, I have to say iconic image of George W. Bush In the children's classroom with his assistant whispering in his ear and it's like blank blank blank another Drake this has been dropped by Kendrick or whatever like that version is that the most widely traffic 911 meme Well, it depends on what community you're talking about um The trolls on forechan that I was studying Back in the day the most dominant form of joking was People jumping out of the windows like that's what the humor was based on that it was about the body horror of the day But if you're talking about more the kind of more mainstream articulation of the memes
Well then maybe um that that image of somebody whispering something into to George Bush's ear You could maybe think of it as Rather than framing it as the most popular meme But the most kind of gateway drugie of all of the memes because You're not having to think about what 911 actually was and so that happens to be very exploitable because it's Non-specific right and you can apply it to any any situation and never once have to think about the reality of what happened on that day And I think the latest iteration that I've seen which is essentially this AI 911 sort of recap starring super Mario From like his Mario galaxy era standing there watching the towers get hit it is bananas mama mia On my orders the United States military has begun strikes against military installations of the Taliban regime Have you seen this does it just imply that these memes are going to continue to evolve forever
Along with our technology with AI humor It lowers the bar of participation to basically nothing It is so easy for anybody to just create really intricate kind of joke Visual um and audio jokes around 911 and so that also helps explain Why is there so much more now than there was before well because These tools of creation have been democratized in ways that allow literally anybody to jump into the fray and start participating Is there a political map for how this thing has been memeed or To the best of your knowledge are are the left and right you know sharing memes in in in equal number The memes themselves. I mean that's a it's an interesting question because 911 joking as I see it with my students in my classroom probably are Similar to what I saw with my students in my classroom and the jokes that they would share And engage with about Charlie Kirk's assassination
And when we were talking about Charlie Kirk's assassination Even the conservative students in the room were acknowledging that yes, they shared them Yes, they laughed at them that there didn't it didn't seem to be politics didn't seem to be predictive of whether or not a young person in my class Was doing this kind of joking so I would say that's probably true for 911 Seems to be on the bipartisan side of things. Okay. I'm glad you brought up Charlie Kirk because now these two events feel weirdly Tied together because it was September 10th Of last year and what I remember from Charlie Kirk's death was there wasn't a grace period It was like the jokes were happening as the news was breaking I have we become numb to To the Comedy equals tragedy plus time equation. It feels like there's no more time anymore Social media and especially platforms like tiktok they demand an instant response that if you're not instantly responding to something
You're not going to be able to harness the engagement that you might be able to get otherwise and the more you have a platform That's pushing you towards a short fast response the more likely you're going to start to see this Decontextualizing which then lends itself to appropriately in congruous joking behaviors. So as long as we've had platforms that Push people to respond quickly and to respond pithily And to respond in ways that engage in sort of remix behaviors then you see very fast joking Do you think this is the most meamed event in human history? It probably is because it is one of those rare events that Probably close to everyone in this country and in many parts of the world know something about 9-11 That's a piece of intellectual furniture that most people have inside of their minds that then can become a kind of touchstone for
Different kinds of joking or just Reflection 9-11 wasn't just the event that happened on that day Wasn't just what happened to the friends and family of people who lost someone it didn't Wasn't confined to the first responders or to Afghanistan or to Iraq 9-11 Reverberated and continues to reverberate politically. It is an enormous event that happened in American history When you are just distilling it down to a single pixelated image you're not getting that and so that's why I think it's really important for us to think Reflectively about this idea that comedy is tragedy plus time that for that configuration to work the people Engaging in the comedy have to accept that something is a tragedy and you can only accept that something is a tragedy Really understand what that means if you know what it is that is not what often happens with 9-11 humor that instead it isn't
Tragedy plus time it's somebody's engagement with a single pixel That's content and for many people they're not able or they're not willing to Reduce something so big to something so small and that's where you see a lot of the disconnect between people Think the joking is fine and the people who think that the joking is not When today explain returns we're gonna hear from a young person who Didn't really live through 9-11 take the opposite approach. He's not reducing the attacks to a meme or pixels He's doing everything in his power to relive every tragic moment Support for today's plane comes from quince the seasons are changing I'm told event may make it a good time to assess and refresh that doesn't mean you need to fill your closets with a bunch of junk
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You're listening to today explained Many maraudas personal twitter account isn't terribly exceptional But he's got four other ones that are many runs 250 years ago live 100 years ago live 50 years ago live and most relevant to today explained 25 years ago live on all these accounts He pretends he's a reporter from history reliving the days events as they unfold and we spoke to him yesterday to ask him what 25 years ago live would look like today A little before 846 a.m. I'm going to start reporting the news from the day that occurred besides the September 11 attacks And then at 846 Will come the pivotal um There's been a crash at the world trade center. This we're gonna play and crash This is just coming in there appears to be a major fire on the upper floors of one of the towers of the world trade center in New York City
We have a breaking news story to tell you about apparently a plane has just crashed into the world trade center here in New York City It happened just a few moments ago from there It's going to be a little over 400 posts throughout the day detailing in the most thorough possible manner The timeline of the attacks And I've made an effort to cover everything that is factfully known about the day From the moment of the first plane impact until Midnight on September 12th So it's going to be as complete as possible of our timeline of a record But it's going to be posted in a way that makes it seem like I'm someone learning about this for the first time A second plane has hit the second tower America is under attack The reason I'm doing this is because I want people to understand how it must have felt on that day To live through that terror and that uncertainty So I'm going to be covering the September 11th live if there was twitter on September 11th 2001
Which there was not right How old were you on September 11th 2001? I was two. I was actually three. I was a toddler Um So you're kind of Reliving the experience yourself and and maybe even in a way living through it for the first time by doing this I think that there's a big rift between people who remember the September 11th attacks and people who don't The people who remember it. It's like this big communal Event that occurred. It's a water cooler conversation. Everybody remembers where they were And what happened afterward and what the world was like beforehand For people who don't remember it we only know what the world was like afterward and we don't have an emotional Connection to it. I mean when I was growing up and learning about it in school It was as distant and academic to me something like Pearl Harbor is it was a date in a textbook. That's all it was But for somebody a little bit older even five years older It was a huge Emotional event and they remember the world before and after it
And my goal in running this and in doing this live tweeting and pretending as if I'm there and invoking the feelings of emotion and even terror Will be to reconcile those two generations the people who remember the attacks and the people who don't Has anyone gotten into your DMs or in your replies to say like hey nobody wants to relive this. What are you doing? tons of people in fact just yesterday there was a person who Was asking me kindly don't do this at all. Please just end the account right now And a lot of people leading up to it have been asking in a polite way not in the mean way This is graphic. This is emotional. Please don't do this for for the good of humanity. Don't do this So the compromise that I reached as a result Is that I'm not going to show Especially violent imagery. I'm not going to show jumpers for example Norm are I going to show? I'm an engor I'm not going to describe anything about regard Uh, because I think that that's a good compromise where I can show the event
And have it be something that people remember but not go into really gruesome detail that alienates people that's interesting because like I don't want to see the jumpers on my feet Although I sometimes do But I think the jumpers was part of the horror of that day. So how do you handle this responsibility? You have to capture The totality of the most horrific day in American history Well, I should correct what I said about the jumpers I'm not going to show any impacts or any jumpers faces But I will be showing photographs like the falling man. Yes. Okay. So I find that to be representative of the day But how do I handle the responsibility of showing this? Um, it really is a compromise and I'm not some Hollywood executive in a boardroom With a with a focus group trying to figure this out. I'm one person you're a 27 year old in your Living room with a Twitter account and a computer. Yes. Uh, exactly that And I'm posting all this manually as well
So I I've declined to use automation. I'm going to be typing out everything. Huh manually as it's happening. Why? Because I've always done it this way If I'm posing as a reporter who's live in history, I might as well act like one Uh, which means that I'm going to post immediately. I've seen people online Anticipating Your your accounts posts on September 11th like they're excited about it. What do you think that's about? So we talked earlier about this generational rift between people who remember the event and people who don't Um, and I think that people who don't generally speaking treated both as an academic subject and as a meme of sorts Uh, they're very prone to make jokes about it And you may have seen in all the comments threads people saying Crazy stuff like oh, I have a business meeting at 845 in the north tower or I have a flight from Boston, Los Angeles People think it's funny um, and I see the analytics of my account I know that the demographics who follow it are mainly uh 15 to 24 year olds
And they are recounting it as sort of a meme and certain something that's funny There's nothing I can do about them and I'm very glad that they'll be over with on September 12th Your 2001 live account has 570,000 followers. Do you have any idea how many of those people are just following you to see what you do on September 11th? I can't say for sure, but I can say affirmatively that it's nine times the number of followers that I had at the beginning of this calendar year This gets to the point of my question, which is like it's weird to think that you know you benefit financially or you know commercially from This thing that you're doing this project that you've come up with but you do how do you Think about that intersection of of you know, it sounds in a way like you're trying to provide a Historical service to people a public service to people, but it's also benefiting you Is that uncomfortable at all?
I want to make clear from the beginning that I am not financially benefiting from my coverage of the September 11th attacks this year Um if there is any monetization because I do have sponsors if any monetization comes from these attacks It's getting donated straight away To charity because I've grappled with this question for about two years knowing that the attacks were coming Um, and I decided at the beginning of this year That any revenue that came from the attacks would go immediately to charity. I see it as blood money I see it as wrong to collect it for myself. I see it as profiting off the victims and the event And so I'm not going to profit off it This is going to be an emotional experience. Have you like prepared yourself emotionally for what you're about to do It's been very emotionally difficult to research I watched 240 hours of footage 9-11 footage in preparation for this
I watched about 40 documentaries. I read four books Um, I've become Bayed in 9-11 content I guess in the past year And it has not been a fun experience um yeah at all So I think that it's negatively affected my mental health quite a bit. I've gotten emotionally invested in it And now I'm going to be throwing it to everybody and I have mixed feelings about that morally um and It's going to be tough on me Do you think the emotional response might help you process further what happened on September 11 2001? So some people in the comments have been sharing the stories of their relatives on 9-11 and I really appreciate that I think that it helps um people process the attacks and uh how it affected their families in particular uh and so I'm I'm hoping that people are going to come out and respectfully say thank you for doing this my brother was in the towers he escaped but uh
like Here's the story um and so I'm really hoping that people are going to come out and share their stories because I feel like then it would become a giant uh therapy circle versus a meme fest, uh, which I'm hoping it doesn't become um younger people jenzy in particular see the event as either academic or as uh meme fodder and so my hope in doing this is that they're going to see it as a little bit more that they're going to see it as a collection of stories and events that were horrific and scale and so it's my goal to show jenzy people what happened on the September 11th attacks many maroda once again is at 25 years ago live you also heard from professor wittany philips from the university of organ and we also want to thank professor joshua rovenor from american university for his help with today's show which peter balan on rose and produced jolie mire's edited gabriel d'onatov fact checked and bridger done again and david
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