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Jesus, that's a depressing way to think about it  "Look, you can attack people, but make sure it's the RIGHT people."
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Oct 6, 2015 15:53
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:Lots and lots of muslims got beat up too, the heavy reporting of the Sikhs was mostly really lovely "and he didn't even deserve it! that is the weird thing about this!" type stories that had a really dark undertone. Like those were the sum of the ones that outraged people, not the sum of the attacks that happened. I don't remember any of that about muslims. I wouldn't be surprised if a few assaults happened, but not "lots and lots". I do remember one Sikh that was killed. I got to work that day right at 9AM, sat down in a common area, opened my laptop, and somebody popped their head in and said "a buddy of mine just said a plane hit the world trade center!" We all scrambled online to see the news, of course most of the sites were getting hammered. Smart people wouldn't go to https://www.cnn.com but robots.cnn.com which was for search engines and worked better. I believe I lurked on SA and followed the thread. Shortly thereafter we learned that TWO planes had hit -- obviously no accident. Then a plane that hit the Pentagon, and we all knew people who worked there. At one point someone came by and said "I just heard San Francisco was hit". I had a feeling we were getting into a phase where rumors would be passed off as fact, but I didn't know for sure. By that point anything was plausible. We worked under the Dulles flight paths, and it was eerie not seeing any planes in the air (they'd all been grounded by mid morning). Though actually seeing a plane might have been worse. At some point I was outside or something and all my co-workers got together and went to a nearby restaurant that had a TV so they could keep up with events. I walked back in and no one was around. I emailed my girlfriend and called my parents to let them know I was ok since I sometimes flew to or from Boston and Dulles. Finally around 2pm I just left. I put a tape in my VCR and just recorded the news for 6-8 hours. I was totally mind blown for three or four days just trying to process all the events.
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Oct 6, 2015 17:40
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paperchaseguy posted:I don't remember any of that about muslims. I wouldn't be surprised if a few assaults happened, but not "lots and lots". I do remember one Sikh that was killed. There were a TON of its members gathered outside doing a candlelight vigil, holding the U.S. flag and a bunch of pro-U.S. signs. I was kind of touched, and then saddened because I realized they probably were scared some nut would try to gently caress up their place of worship. I thought that the country was going to go to some lovely "No Browns/Sandpeople" poo poo for a while. Also, no one's mentioned how pro-Cop/Firefighter/EMT everyone was for like 2 months. To the point you wanted to wave or give a thumbs up if any of them were driving by and poo poo.
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Oct 6, 2015 18:47
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 GWBush met with some Sikh organization to show support (both ways) a couple weeks after 9/11.
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Oct 6, 2015 21:04
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Honest question: how many Muslims in North America wear turbans on a regular basis? None that I've ever met. If you were an ignorant rear end in a top hat looking to attack people that looked like those folks from Afghanistan you saw on the TV, you were 99% likely to be attack a Sikh person. Maybe it's just because we have a large Sikh population in Canada, but if I saw a man wearing a turban, my first thought would not be "Muslim." To answer the question: I was in junior high at the time. My mom woke me up right after the second plane hit the WTC and basically said, "get out here, you need to see this. The world has changed." Everyone was fairly freaked out and we got to watch TV news coverage all day at school. Being in Western Canada, I don't think anyone I knew then had any connections to New York, but I've since become friends with someone who was scheduled to work that day in one of the buildings that was hit, and didn't. He moved back from NYC to Calgary the following week, he told me.
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Oct 7, 2015 04:10
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I was 10 or so and I went to class that morning and I remember my teacher looking pretty stressed out and I think she told us that some buildings in America got blown up by planes and we were like "that's a shame". I didn't have internet or anything so I didn't get that this was a big deal until a little while later.
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Oct 7, 2015 08:13
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I was 24 and working in Central London (Tower Records in Piccadilly Circus). I was outside having a smoke when the anti-establishment Canadian woman from my department came up with a big grin on her face saying "have you heard the news? The World Trade Centre's been blown up!" This obviously not being normal news, I think my response was along the lines of 'why the gently caress do you think that's a good thing?' and went back down to the Offices to find out exactly what was going on. She would later deny ever saying this, especially given the backlash from me walking back in saying why is little miss smash the system laughing at a plane crash in the US to all and sundry, but gently caress her anyway. At the time there was only our Art Dept mac and the Product Dept main computer with any decent net access, so I arrived to find everyone crowded round ours watching just after the second plane hit on CNN.com or somesuch. Then come the phonecalls and paranoia: stories abounded of a plane headed for Parliament/Buckingham Palace/Canary Wharf, everyone was fielding calls from loved ones about what they'd heard/are you going to be safe in that location etc etc. Most of the backroom staff went to the pub around 1pm and never came back, including myself, we all sat watching BBC news in the bar across the road. Next few days were again filled with stories about what's going to happen next (and nobody could tell you exactly where or what source they got it from) involving more suicide planes/bombs etc, it was...strange. I felt more disconnected as it happened so far away, yet I'm also living/working in a prime terrorist target. Which it then became 6 years later with the 7/7 bombs. Can tell you about that day too if anyone's interested.
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Oct 7, 2015 10:09
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I was 17 and working a full time job as a web designer so I was sitting in the office wondering why Yahoo News wouldn't load for me. It was a small tech company and the CEO called us into the break room and let us know what happened and offered to lead a prayer circle, which I didn't participate in, then let us all go home around 10 in the morning. My dad's a Vietnam vet and worked nights back then so me coming in woke him up and he asked what I was doing home. I told him the WTC was intentionally destroyed and he just kinda blinked and said 'Yeah, so? What's that got to do with you?'. You gotta appreciate Midwestern work ethic like that. He later told me to hit the Navy recruiter's office if there were any rumblings about a draft so I'd be safe pushing buttons on a ship somewhere. I went out for a friend's birthday that night but it wasn't really a happy party to be at. Over all it was a confusing, kinda scary, but ultimately boring day. The feeling I got with my friends and family wasn't 'Let's kill whomever did this' but 'I hope this doesn't change things too much'. I guess we're just naive. The only actually interesting story I have about 9/11 is that I flew out of NYC on 9/10 and visited the WTC the Friday before. Thousands of people did that, I know, but it's interesting to me. I bought a shot glass at a gift shop before leaving and it's just a simple smoked shot glass, nothing special, and it's got the NYC skyline on it complete with the WTC. PT6A posted:Honest question: how many Muslims in North America wear turbans on a regular basis? None that I've ever met. None of the Muslim dudes I've known wear turbans and I live near the biggest Arab-American 'enclave' in the US. BlackIronHeart fucked around with this message at 10:37 on Oct 7, 2015 |
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Oct 7, 2015 10:33
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 Got one of these at home (not my photo) and I think it's spooky every time I see it.
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Oct 7, 2015 10:39
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Goldskull posted:I was outside having a smoke when the anti-establishment Canadian woman from my department came up with a big grin on her face saying "have you heard the news? The World Trade Centre's been blown up!" This obviously not being normal news, I think my response was along the lines of 'why the gently caress do you think that's a good thing?' and went back down to the Offices to find out exactly what was going on. She would later deny ever saying this, especially given the backlash from me walking back in saying why is little miss smash the system laughing at a plane crash in the US to all and sundry, but gently caress her anyway. BlackIronHeart posted:None of the Muslim dudes I've known wear turbans and I live near the biggest Arab-American 'enclave' in the US.
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Oct 7, 2015 15:30
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I was 11 and our 6th grade English class basically ended at some point after the first plane hit, but before the second one hit. That's when the TV was turned on and we all watched CNN. I remember seeing the first tower fall and thinking that the second one probably wasn't in good shape either, and it wasn't. There was one Muslim student in my grade (and possibly the whole school) and I remember that by the end of that school year he was just hysterically snapping at everyone who approached him. I imagine he had dealt with too much poo poo by then.
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Oct 8, 2015 00:54
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Goldskull posted:I was 24 and working in Central London (Tower Records in Piccadilly Circus). I was outside having a smoke when the anti-establishment Canadian woman from my department came up with a big grin on her face saying "have you heard the news? The World Trade Centre's been blown up!" This obviously not being normal news, I think my response was along the lines of 'why the gently caress do you think that's a good thing?' and went back down to the Offices to find out exactly what was going on. She would later deny ever saying this, especially given the backlash from me walking back in saying why is little miss smash the system laughing at a plane crash in the US to all and sundry, but gently caress her anyway. She sounds familiar. I was at work here in the UK when it happened and we all stopped to watch it on the telly. there was this guy called Billy who was a smug anti astablishment prick, he kept laughing and clapping his hands and whenever we called him an rear end in a top hat he just smugly said 'yeah I know'. That guy really hated Americans and we all really hated him.
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Oct 8, 2015 19:11
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I was in school having morning football practice when the planes hit. Being outside and out of earshot from any announcements, none of us including the coaches knew about it. I think we went inside shortly after the 2nd plane hit. We were all goofing around in the locker room getting dressed for class when our coach came in and told us simply that two planes were hijacked and flown into the World Trade Center. He emphasized that it was intentional and a Big Deal. I didn't know what to think, and not having seen pictures yet I didn't know how significant it was. I still had the sense that it was some far away news event that adults would care about but quickly the other kids started talking about Russia or China attacking and if this means we are in a war now. I remember still joking around while we sat in the gym, it seemed the school day was going to continue normally and there was an announcement made telling teachers to proceed with planned activities and not to watch tv. There was a little comfort in that but that quickly faded as we transitioned to the next class. I noticed all of the other students who seems to know more about it had a sense of panic and I noticed the grim expressions on every adult. My next period teacher was crying and turned on the tv and I saw my first glimpse of the towers burning. I remember thinking it looked bad but not as bad as everyone seemed to think but as reports came in of grounding all flights and some planes still missing I realized that we were still under an active attack. This is when it became scary for me. I don't remember the rest of the school day other than everyone wanting to go home and watch tv. When I finally got home I was glued to the television. By then they were showing so many images of the buildings falling and people running from debris. It all seemed so incredibly spectacular it was hard to accept that this was reality, but during one report they had firefighters talking and you could hear the loud thuds of people's bodies falling from the buildings. That sound made me feel sick. For the next few days everyone was on edge. Now that I think about it, from this point on I started watching the news regularly. There were several scares in the years after what with anthrax and such, but the next time I remember feeling afraid from the news was in 2003 in the weeks leading up to the Iraq war.
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Oct 10, 2015 08:05
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I'm Australian and it was 11pm or so when things went down, my dad was awake but didn't get us up. I remember seeing something on the newsstands as I ran for the train in the morning. But I was playing in the band for someone's final exams so was in a rush. Then when we got to the music building they let us listen to the radio. But later the principal decided to not let us know ANYTHING and I was pissed. All 13 years old of me wrote her a scathing letter about how shittily I felt they handled the situation (with my English teacher parents blessing). We had a meeting about it but it was just bullshit. I was pissed though. I remember being home in the afternoon watching all the replays. Still haunting to watch to this day. I get mad too though, at the still hatred toward Muslims. I traveled throughout the Middle East in 2008 and people still thing I was loving crazy. It was the greatest thing I've ever done. The people were endlessly kind and hospitable, excited I had come to visit their countries, which were beautiful. It makes me so goddamn angry whenever people bitch about Muslims. There are extremists in every walk of life. Now I live in the southern US so imagine the reactions I get when I tell people about my trip. Miranda fucked around with this message at 12:19 on Oct 10, 2015 |
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Oct 10, 2015 12:16
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I was in college but living at home and commuting in NY (western NY, not close to the city) and my boyfriend and the time lived in NYC as a paramedic. It was not a good day. I couldn't reach him on the phone for the longest time because most of the phone lines were too full. He was ok and he helped out in the search and rescue. We broke up about a year later and I ended up dating someone else I was friends with at the time of 9/11 who happened to be in the Army Reserve and because of 9/11 he got sent overseas to Iraq for a year shortly after we started dating at the start of the war. That was also a hard time. I ended up marrying him and we're still together. My late teens/early 20's was a stressful time for me dating-wise.
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Oct 10, 2015 14:06
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I had a meeting at the Pentagon that day at 11 am. It was cancelled. I was at work, and had been outside smoking when some woman came in. Her name was Lannie, and she was really cool. She and her husband had matching Harleys, and they rode them together. Lannie was from Boston, and she called them "Hawgs." She had a picture of her grandson, buck rear end nekkid, arms akimbo, peeing in a lake, back to the camera, that was an awesome picture. She was afraid to enter it into any contest for fear of being accused of child pornography. Oh, 1990s America... Anyhow. She told me some plane had hit the world trade center. I didn't really care, so I said, "Really?" She went on to say that they didn't know if it had been an accident or what. "Hmmm", I thought, enjoying my fine domestic and imported blend of tobacco. By the time I got upstairs, all poo poo had broken loose... The second plane had hit the second tower. About 20 minutes later, another plane crashed into the pentagon. People were losing their poo poo. Their phones were blowing up. Everyone was calling their families, or their families were calling them, or they were freaking that they couldn't reach their families. Et cetera. We all got to go home early that day. I smoked a lot of weed and drank a lot of wine watching the television broadcasts, even the home shopping channel, deal with the tragedy I had barely avoided. I was watching the home shopping channel because it was the only one that didn't have footage of planes slamming into the WTC over and over. I remember the guy was selling knives, and he was saying poo poo like, "Yeah, these are good for killing talibaners" and singing a little ditty that went "gonna take a talibaner, stick him in the eye" in this red necky accent. The next day at work was pretty surreal. Everyone was sending these email forwards around with pictures of wreaths and poo poo until finally the vice president, this hardass militant lesbian, emailed everybody and said basically, "Look, if you want to share that message, at least don't send it to everybody, poo poo's annoying and there's work to do." The thing is, there wasn't much to do because most of our contracts were through the DoD and they were kind of occupied. Anyhow, that's my memory of 9/11, hope you enjoyed it.
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Oct 10, 2015 17:18
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I was a freshman in high school on the west coast. Usually I had an early period that started around 6 am but for some reason it was cancelled that day so I was still at home when the planes hit. I remember my mom woke us up after the first plane hit but we all thought it was an accident or just a small plane and kept getting ready for school. I definitely didn't think it was intentional and I remember the general vibe on the news was "this crazy thing happened, look at this dramatic fire, i'm sure they will put the fire out and everything will be fine...right?". I remember watching the coverage alone when the second plane hit live. It was...just stunning. It didn't seem real at all. This kind of thing just didn't happen, and it especially never happened in America. I remember the news peoples reactions as they tried to process it. They literally didn't know what to say. I remember changing the channels from 2 to like 60 and literally every single channel was the news, even stuff like discovery channel and freaking HGTV were just showing CNN. My mom was a teacher so she had to go to work and my brother and I had to go to school. It was probably the quietest day that high school will ever see. Every single class we just sat in silence and watched the news on TV. I remember my band teacher got some grief for not trying to teach anything that day and he just looked at them like "sit down, shut the gently caress up, this is history on the TV right now". It was really jarring to see Mr. Nice Guy band teacher basically going off on someone. There was just a lot of confusion and misinformation. No one had any idea how many more planes were hijacked or what cities were going to be attacked next. It was strange to see the facade of the news fall off since they were pretty much as clueless as the rest of us. I remember my jackass spanish teacher got bored of watching TV in class all day, walked over to the tv, said "You want to know what those people saw?" and just turned the TV off to a black screen. "That's what those people saw". I knew this guy was a jerk but that pretty much made me lose all respect for him after that. It didn't really dawn on me that someone deliberately attacked the United States or that we were "at war". I even remember thinking "Theres no way any country would openly attack the US like that, we would loving bomb them straight into the stone age in 3 seconds". I remember people were super pissed off and wanted immediate vengeance but it was so frustrating since no one knew anything about why or who attacked us. I kind of knew that once we found out who was responsible that we were going to go ape poo poo on them. I never really thought about how I felt that day or reflected on it. It was just so surreal. Its really sad looking back at all the awful poo poo that happened due to 9/11 like the Iraq war, patriot act and all the ridiculous poo poo we have to do now in the name of "homeland security" but in the aftermath it really felt like "we need to 100% support the government and let them get our revenge".
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Oct 10, 2015 17:21
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I was in the seventh grade in Oregon. I remember my mom waking me up as the first plane was hitting because she was pretty sure some poo poo was going down and she wanted me to not sleep through history. By the time the second plane hit I was already in class and the teachers were trying desperately to have a normal day and pretend like nothing was up, but it didn't work at all. This was before everyone had access to the news in their pockets at all times, of course, but we had enough kids with pocket radios and enough computers in classrooms that word got out pretty quick and some teachers just gave up and put the news on. I think that was the right thing to do. As confusing and terrifying as it was, I'd be pretty offended to this day if they'd totally kept it from me and I ended up missing the biggest news day of my life. The next week was kind of a blur. I was too young to really grok what was going on, the world was suddenly much larger and much more dangerous than it was days before. Older folks talk about Kennedy being the loss of their national innocence, and I know this isn't a new sentiment at all, but that was ours and I see what they mean. I'd never before had to think of my country as more than a flag and a thing to write on a letter to a pen pal, so poo poo got weird for a while there. Real Mean Queen fucked around with this message at 06:02 on Oct 12, 2015 |
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Oct 12, 2015 05:57
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I was 14 at the time. Living on the other side of the world, it happened at around 8 PM and we pretty much got to see the whole thing live. I remember that my reaction wasn't of horror, but rather of disbelief. I must have been looking at the TV with a sort of bemused expression on my face, as though I was watching a movie or a video game, because I couldn't believe that it was real. By the time I went to bed that night I had internalized that it was, but it still kind of bothers me even today that I didn't have a more visceral reaction to it. I had an aunt that worked at an office there, except she called in sick to work that day, and I remember our whole family being relieved when we got word that she was safe. I noticed that CNN started using a news ticker at the bottom, and for some reason the image of Greta van Susteren doing the news has stuck with me. I kept thinking that this 24/7 news with the ticker at the bottom was going to go away after a couple weeks/months, but it never really did. Finally, my country started implementing strict bag checks whenever you go to a public place or heavily trafficked establishment. That was another thing that I figured would go away eventually, but again it never did. It still throws me for a bit of a loop whenever I travel to another country when I can walk into a mall without getting frisked by a guard.
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Oct 12, 2015 12:52
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Dr Scoofles posted:She sounds familiar. I was at work here in the UK when it happened and we all stopped to watch it on the telly. there was this guy called Billy who was a smug anti astablishment prick, he kept laughing and clapping his hands and whenever we called him an rear end in a top hat he just smugly said 'yeah I know'. That guy really hated Americans and we all really hated him. Unfortunately I was kind of that arsehole back in 2001. In my defence, I was a dumb loving teenager, just turned 17 and didn't have a loving clue what I was talking about, but I still think back at what a dick I was with shame. I was in High School at the time, the attacks would have happened around 2pm here in the UK & so I didn't hear anything until about 90 minutes later when I got home and put on the television. I remember that none of it felt real: at first I thought I was watching a movie, and I remember them talking about the towers having collapsed on the BBC but there was no video coverage of it, which at the time I thought was odd, why aren't they showing that but they are showing the planes going into the buildings on a loop? It didn't really twig at the time that people wouldn't have had a chance to be evacuated, that there were still thousands of people inside when they collapsed. I remember phoning a couple of friends and telling them to put on the TV and thinking about what we'd witnessed and a bit of fear about what happens next, though it's fair to say it ended up worse than any of us expected. The other thing that stands out to me was the 12th September because I was going to a university open day with some friends from school, which was just an excuse to get the train to Glasgow and have a day out in the big city. Remember meeting up at about 6:30am at the train station and it was obviously all that we could talk about, the over-riding memory: one friend was terrified that a plane would fly into our train, despite the train line being mostly total wilderness and a train travelling at 55mph not exactly being the easiest target. It's all I really remember of the trip, his irrational fear.
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Oct 12, 2015 13:35
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I was in Junior High at the time and my history teacher turned on the radio after another faculty member came in and a hushed conversation with her. Of course, me being a young teen, I took the opportunity to draw in my notebook and tuned out the radio. I had no connection to New York and didn't even know what the WTC was, so I figured it was just something that happened in another country. It wasn't until I got home and started watching the news that I fully grasped what happened. The hatred in the aftermath of the attack is what I mostly remember. People that I had considered level-headed and intelligent became the complete opposite. My Uncle once told me while we were fishing that he hated Muslims and he wishes he could be the one with his finger on the button that would launch nukes. We only had one Muslim family in our podunk whitebread town and they got their windows smashed regularly. The good-ol-boy, redneck town militia put them "under watch for terrorist activity" and would stand on the family's lawn, staring at the front of their house for hours with their weapons clearly visible. They moved away really quickly after that started. Chip McFuck fucked around with this message at 18:59 on Oct 12, 2015 |
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Oct 12, 2015 18:32
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The tenor of some of the comments is going to reflect the fact that a lot of posters here were, like, 12 when it happened. So take the "we were living in a time of peace and then it was a time of DARKNESS" with a grain of salt.
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Oct 12, 2015 18:38
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porfiria posted:The tenor of some of the comments is going to reflect the fact that a lot of posters here were, like, 12 when it happened. So take the "we were living in a time of peace and then it was a time of DARKNESS" with a grain of salt.
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Oct 12, 2015 19:06
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Came back from school and I went like: "Mom, what the gently caress are you watching !?" She had to convince me it was real changing the channel to serious news. That was the first time in my life I thought there will be WW3. It was good to see people holding together like that. One of the things I like on Americans.
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Oct 12, 2015 19:37
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There were some pretty amazing feelings of national unity after. Until the collective focus turned to getting even, then that more or less went to poo poo in my experience.
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Oct 12, 2015 20:13
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Tendai posted:I don't know, I find that interesting as someone who was an adult and who didn't really know anyone that age when it happened. Hearing the different reactions is pretty interesting; I had the luxury of being able to look at it with relatively adult perspective (well, inasmuch as one can be an adult at 18), and put it in context with the USS Cole and the embassy bombings, but younger kids? Yeah I can see where that would have seemed pretty jarring and unexplained. For what it's worth it felt like it was a pretty big turning point to where my family, and most others I knew, started watching cable news on a pretty regular basis. I also remember it being the time that Fox News became a regular staple on my parent's TV. Before then I pretty much only watched the local news or saw my parents (maybe) watching something like CNN from time to time, but afterwards it felt like something you'd watch at any point in the day. Honestly, the biggest thing I could remember getting a ton of attention before it was the OJ chase and all that drama.
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Oct 12, 2015 23:39
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porfiria posted:The tenor of some of the comments is going to reflect the fact that a lot of posters here were, like, 12 when it happened. So take the "we were living in a time of peace and then it was a time of DARKNESS" with a grain of salt. Tendai posted:I don't know, I find that interesting as someone who was an adult and who didn't really know anyone that age when it happened. Hearing the different reactions is pretty interesting; I had the luxury of being able to look at it with relatively adult perspective (well, inasmuch as one can be an adult at 18), and put it in context with the USS Cole and the embassy bombings, but younger kids? Yeah I can see where that would have seemed pretty jarring and unexplained. I was 12 at the time, and I still remember the USS Cole bombings and the embassy bombings (even being Canadian), although obviously I lacked a certain degree of context regarding exactly who these people were and why they were pissed off at the US. I recall the Taliban had already been in the news for some time before 9/11, though I can't remember exactly why (destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas, I think?). I don't think I was surprised that there were bad people doing bad poo poo in the world, but rather that they would strike against a purely civilian target, and could strike at the symbolic heart of American power so successfully, and I think a lot of people of all ages were surprised by that.
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Oct 13, 2015 00:11
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I'll explain it as best I can remember; I was 16 at the time. It was a scary loving day, if I had to sum it up in one sentence. What was really alarming is that it just seemed to get worse and worse and worse as the day went on. After the second plane hit it seemed like America was getting hit again and again with news breaking of the Pentagon being hit and the towers collapsing, it just got so bad by the time the sun set. You just got this sense you were witnessing history and the world was not going to be the same from that point on. There was just collective trauma and the national unity for months afterwards was intense. Everyone knew it was Osama bin loving Laden after the second plane hit. He was in the news constantly, had attacked America before and if I recall months before the US tried to talk to the Taliban in Afghanistan to surrender him because he was on the FBI's Most Wanted List since 1999. He and his group were the only ones back then who had the capacity and resources to pull off something this big. Everyone wanted him DEAD DEAD DEAD and invading Afghanistan was one of the few times in America society/politics where everyone was on the same page regardless of political stripes. Justin Godscock fucked around with this message at 00:50 on Oct 13, 2015 |
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Oct 13, 2015 00:48
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porfiria posted:The tenor of some of the comments is going to reflect the fact that a lot of posters here were, like, 12 when it happened. So take the "we were living in a time of peace and then it was a time of DARKNESS" with a grain of salt. I was an adult at the time and so were most of my peers, albeit barely (I was in university). Tons of adults in America were not paying enough attention to really know or understand what was happening with the Cole or the Embassy bombings. Even among those who were aware, many people did not really think that the same people who could drive a car bomb into a third-world embassy were going to orchestrate a simultaneous, multi-plane attack on NYC, The Pentagon, and the Capital. People went crazy not because they thought the world was a place of joy and love, but because they never really thought that all the horrible poo poo going down in the world would suddenly land in America's lap like that. Before 9/11 almost every hijacking was a hostage situation - people would hijack a plane, have it diverted to land in some place, and then hold the passengers hostage while making demands. The idea that someone would hijack a plane and use it as a weapon was totally alien. That was why the standard procedure was to sit tight and do nothing, and wait for it to get resolved.
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Oct 13, 2015 01:24
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porfiria posted:The tenor of some of the comments is going to reflect the fact that a lot of posters here were, like, 12 when it happened. So take the "we were living in a time of peace and then it was a time of DARKNESS" with a grain of salt. The 90's was a wonderful decade to be a child.
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Oct 13, 2015 18:41
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I was a sophomore in high school at the time, with the news starting to hit in between first and second period classes. Then by the time we got to 2nd period and got CNN going on the classroom TV, a 2nd plane had hit the towers. For some reason we all just kind of stayed in our 2nd period classes for the rest of the day and played cards until it was time to go home. It was mainly just a quiet day, not overtly emotional or anything. I remember flipping on MTV when I got home and they had the same handful of videos on repeat for the entire day. I think I saw the video for Nelly Furtado's "Turn Off the Lights" like 15 times that day. My parents had left me at the house alone while they went to Key West the week before, so their trip ended up getting extended by another week while they tried to figure out travel arrangements. They decided to just rent a car in Key West and then slowly made the drive back up to Dallas. I skipped school on the 12th and 13th because hey, I was 16 and my parents were gone. No one asked me any questions when I got back (I didn't play it up as mourning or anything, just was my normal self). The school didn't even end up counting those days towards my missed day tally for the end of the year, so I was always curious how many other students just didn't go to class during those days. Being a poo poo heel disaffected teenager at the time, I mainly remember how 9/11 effected my media stuff: Slayer's "God Hates Us All" album came out that same day. On my way home from school I remember picking it up from the CD Warehouse and thinking about how crazy it was that it got released that day (the coming home to message boards to find hundreds of other people thinking the same thing). Going to the movie theater to see Bubble Boy that night. That was the most empty I have ever seen a theater at night (or even during a week day). My brother and I were the only two people in our showing, but hey, that might have happened any way due to the content of the movie. I was pretty excited for GTA 3 that fall, so I remember being really confused when I got my parents to take me to the mall on its release date to find out that they had pushed it back 3 weeks to take out the towers and flying. I was also a fan of the band Live at the time and was excited for their "V" album. Their Overcome song from that album mixed with footage of 9/11 was on the air by September 13th. I know the video/single proceeds were supposed to go for charity, but man, it still feels like a pretty slimey thing to do only 48 hours later. Then after the initial mourning period, Dallas rock stations were filled with dumbasses wanting to "bomb them all". They had Metallica's "Seek & Destroy" remixed with a Bush speech about retaliation and bombing the crap out of the Middle East that must have played every 30 minutes.
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Oct 13, 2015 20:55
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I live on the West Coast (Seattle), and I worked a later than normal shift (11am to 8pm), so by the time I realized what was going on, both towers were destroyed. At first, my dad called me at 7am my time, warning me to not go into work, because of terrorism. I thought this was a bad dream, so I thanked him, and went back to sleep. Then, I woke up at my normal time, turned on the TV, and saw all the destruction. My very first reaction? That there was some amazing new action film coming up. It wasn't until i logged on to some local forums that I started to understand what the hell actually happened. I ended up going to work that day. So did a lot of people. There was a great sense of communal shock; we went through all the motions, but we were definitely zombies for those first couple of days.
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Oct 13, 2015 22:59
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porfiria posted:The tenor of some of the comments is going to reflect the fact that a lot of posters here were, like, 12 when it happened. So take the "we were living in a time of peace and then it was a time of DARKNESS" with a grain of salt. Yeah, everybody always tends to see their childhood as an idyll of peace and certainty. But there is something to be said for the 90s - pre 9/11, but post Cold War.
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Oct 14, 2015 02:50
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I was like 21-23 and was living in a punk house outside of DC. I was on the way to work when it happened, got there, and my boss was like "gently caress it, lets get to work" so we worked all day then went home. I remember taking a long hard look at my roommates and thinking "The FBI is gonna way over-react to this and I gotta get out of here". I did move out, nothing bad happened to the punk kids, but I had a clean bathroom at long last. I was supposed to meet my GF in CA like the week after to drive back to the east coast with her. We got delayed like a week and then took a very weird and depressing road trip back home. I did have a 3way with her and some chick we met in Vegas so 8/10 would 9/11 again.
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Oct 14, 2015 03:39
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Miranda posted:I'm Australian and it was 11pm or so when things went down, my dad was awake but didn't get us up. I remember seeing something on the newsstands as I ran for the train in the morning. But I was playing in the band for someone's final exams so was in a rush. Then when we got to the music building they let us listen to the radio. But later the principal decided to not let us know ANYTHING and I was pissed. All 13 years old of me wrote her a scathing letter about how shittily I felt they handled the situation (with my English teacher parents blessing). We had a meeting about it but it was just bullshit. I was pissed though. I remember being home in the afternoon watching all the replays. Still haunting to watch to this day. Australian too. I was already asleep. Dad woke me up at around 6am as he had shift work (air traffic controller, actually) and said the WTC towers had been destroyed, that they collapsed. I was a fan of tall buildings as a kid so I knew the towers, he said 'proper big' planes were hijacked and flew into them. I got up and had a shower and we watched the news while eating breakfast. All the tv channels here were basically just American news channels playing, cutting back to the Australian news shows every few minutes to inform people waking up of what had happened overnight and returning to CNN or whatever. I went off to school (Year 7 at the time) and when I got to the train station there is a little coffee/newsstand inside the station building, which had a tiny tv up on the wall. Most days you'd have five or six people waiting for coffee or reading a paper while everyone else was on the platform. That day though, about 90 people were inside the tiny sheltered area watching the tv and other people on the platform were crowded around people who had bought a newspaper. When the train arrived it was similar, the normal pretty busy train but everybody was talking to eachother. This doesn't happen. School kids will talk to each other and everyone else will be quiet reading a book or the newspaper (before mobile phones were really super common, plus back then they were just phones) and one guy was reading the newspaper outline, which was one of those 3am 'late printing' special newspapers with the most up to date news. Saw a few friends at the bus stop once I got out of the station and again, a normally quiet bus trip had people talking. We got into school and our home teacher had brought a tv into the classroom and we sat in a circle on the floor for most of the morning talking about what we'd all seen that morning or catching people up on what had happened. We learned that this was big news, most of my class was born a few years before the Berlin wall came down so we didn't remember that but were told a bit about that being a big life changing thing for the world and that this was similar. Essentially a day of counseling, it expanded to other issues just so the class could talk about things until lunch, when most people in the schoolyards were talking about the news too, all our uneducated opinions of something on the other side of the world. One friend had the day off school because he was 'sick' and his parents had left him alone, presumably without knowing about what had happened overnight. He woke up late to watch tv and found it was all just news, on all the channels. So he turned it off and played computer games most of the day until the afternoon when he actually sat down infront of the tv and saw what had happened, because every channel was still news. Funnily enough he lives in Washington DC now.
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Oct 15, 2015 10:55
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Commie NedFlanders posted:The 90's was a wonderful decade to be a child. Was it? It seems like all I hear about is stuff like Hey Arnold and Pete and Pete. I was born in '93 and we didn't have cable. 
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Oct 15, 2015 17:20
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Violet_Sky posted:Was it? It seems like all I hear about is stuff like Hey Arnold and Pete and Pete. I was born in '93 and we didn't have cable. The economy was good, communism was defeated, and we didn't have to worry about terrorists yet.
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Oct 15, 2015 17:26
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freebooter posted:Yeah, everybody always tends to see their childhood as an idyll of peace and certainty. But there is something to be said for the 90s - pre 9/11, but post Cold War. Yeah, this. I mean terrorism is bad sure but those of us growing up in the early 80s were pretty sure the entire planet was going to be turned into radioactive slag and us along with it.
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Oct 15, 2015 20:41
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porfiria posted:The tenor of some of the comments is going to reflect the fact that a lot of posters here were, like, 12 when it happened. So take the "we were living in a time of peace and then it was a time of DARKNESS" with a grain of salt. A good chunk of this forums demographic is middle aged.
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Oct 15, 2015 21:30
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Violet_Sky posted:Was it? It seems like all I hear about is stuff like Hey Arnold and Pete and Pete. I was born in '93 and we didn't have cable. That'll obviously depend on a lot of things but from my point of view it was pretty great. I was born in '82 and when I graduated in 2000 it seemed like everything, especially the economy, was just going to keep getting better and better. I grew up poor as poo poo but even in my garbage rural community there was an optimistic feeling that you could go to a relatively affordable state college and get a more or less guaranteed decent middle class job, and if that didn't appeal to you, you could just go to GM or Ford and work on the line for a decent paycheck. I only lived in the States for 6 of the last 15 years and almost all of that was in Michigan so after the 2001 recession, which never ended there, it feels like everyone expect maybe some IT nerds is doing worse and worse every year. I don't know if middle class communities have had similar sorts of changes but things where I'm from went from "yeah, things are bad here but you can make it if you try" to "about the best you can hope for is stocking shelves at the local Walmart and slowly drinking yourself to death".
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Oct 15, 2015 21:54
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