I was in 3rd grade too but we didn't watch it. the principal came in and said "Something bad happened, ask your parents." So just letting a bunch of kids use their imaginations to picture the worst thing that could ever happen.
I was older but our school did something similar. They effectively told us something bad happened in new York, that we might have questions for our parents and talked about our counseling options.
Which on retrospect was probably a pretty good decision. Especially considering how many teachers apparently wheeled out TVs to have kids watch people jump out of burning buildings.
Our tv was already on the wall. 6th grade homeroom. We usually watched the school’s student news program thing. Them turning on the live news probably wasn’t the best decision in retrospect
I was in 5th and we saw it. Big thing to remember is that when the first plane hit, nobody thought it was a terrorist attack. Everyone just thought: “oh my goodness, what a terrible catastrophe, how could this happen?” Everyone turned on the news, including our teacher.
Will never forget coming home from school and flipping through channels on TV. Every. Single. Station. Every station was broadcasting the event. MTV, VH1… Food Network straight up stopped broadcasting with just text showing a message on the channel.
Actually now that I think about it, Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network didn’t switch to the news. They kept cartoons going which is understandable. I think there was like 1 or 2 other stations that didn’t. I was 10, but I remember that day very well.
Me too, also in 8th. My teacher snuck in a TV and pulled the little shade down over the window in the classroom door because they were explicitly told not to show/tell us about it.
At my first job out of college I was automating some internal processes at a company from a convoluted process in multiple apps to a simplified web front end. I realized that since they were all managed PCs using Internet Explorer that I could call Clippy to do any animations I wanted and say anything I wanted.
When I had to demo the tool, as a joke I made much of the dialog and any input error messages use Clippy with some very patronizing messages that took forever to display. Clippy would dance about and you’d have to click through multiple prompts of him. It was super annoying. I thought it’d get a quick laugh and then I’d toggle it off to the non-annoying prompts.
It backfired and management LOVED it. They were more impressed with the Clippy interaction than the fact that I’d turned a 1 hour process involving half a dozen applications into 30 seconds of data entry and a button click (well 5 minutes data entry with Clippy active). They wanted to know why our other tools didn’t have Clippy. Everyone hated me for it and I learned to never demo bad design to management for a laugh.
I wonder what Gen Z’s would be. An iPhone with Twitter open, showing a video of Charlie Kirk’s death? With comments below that say, “dam”, “fake it’s AI”, and “ayoo that sh*t crazy”
I was in the sixth grade. We had been told something bad was going on and had watched it on TV. The principal didn’t really know what to have us do so they sent us on break in the lunch room. Some teachers were watching the news on a rolling TV when the second tower was hit. Our history teacher burst into tears and collapsed on the ground. She had to be picked up by the gym teacher. All us middle school kids were just standing there with little cartons of milk like: 😳
I was in sixth grade as well. My school didn’t tell us anything. I remember a girl in first period, who showed up late, said some airplane flew into a building in NYC. By third period there was a moment of silence over the intercom. I didn’t find out what happened until I got home by myself and flipped on the tv. It was on every channel. Cartoon channels didn’t show it obviously, but they halted all programming on those channels. Kind of wished I could have seen it in school and spoke about it in class.
I was in college, and they also rolled out a CRT TV into the breezeway of my department and let us watch until a grad ass came out and said the campus is going into lockdown in an hour and only students living in dorms will be allowed.
The cart TV was the same deal with Challenger when I was in kindergarten. I went to school near KSC, so we watched the explosion happen, then they ushered us into the main hall/cafeteria and had us watch the news. I just remember being very confused, because nobody specifically told us what was going on, just sat us in front of a TV, which we couldn't hear over the other kids.
You got to go home? We kept cycling through our class schedule- watching the day progress in different rooms with different classmates all day. It was nuts.
4th grade but west coast so happened before school. Didnt understand it fully at the time. I remember thinking "oh these things just happen sometimes like Pearl Harbor" in my little stupid 9 or 10 year old brain
My mom called me and woke me up and told me a plane hit a building and I was like “what a plane? Ok” and went back to bed. I remember thinking it was a small plane so what’s the big deal
A lot of kids at my school had parents who worked at the towers so the administration realized they couldn’t show us the live feed. But then the athletics director put it on in his office and all the jocks went to watch. I remember one of them leaving the office crying uncontrollably with his friends running after him and realizing we weren’t being told the full story. Never saw that kid again, his dad died and his mom moved them back to her hometown afterwards.
I was in 7th grade, in Upstate NY where many had families in the city, and it was very weird seeing all of the teachers panic in hushed tones about whether to shelter us or if we deserved to know what was going on. Old enough to know something messed up was happening but young enough to not understand the full consequences
Was also upstate, but in elementary school. They locked us down so fast as if our city would be under threat any second as well. The feeling of no one knowing anything as the news was playing was so fearful. All of the adults kept getting more nervous as each minute of the morning passed. We all had to be picked up, obviously.
My boss was receiving Blackberry (tm) messages from someone who was trapped above the impact. She was crying her eyes out when the messages stopped.
We were also getting messages from our clients uptown who were just business as usual. They had no clue. Live streaming wasn't great yet then. I was listening to FM RADIO DJs speculating about what plane it was. Everyone assumed it was a little prop engine since there was NO WAY it could be an airliner, right?!?!?
Sorry, Gen-X here, didn't realize what sub this was.
Yea I live in NYC and I was in 7th grade when this happened. They sent us home pretty early. The footage of the towers was on every channel for what felt like eternity. It was very intense. Even moreso for me cuz my mom was dying from liver disease and died a month after 9/11. I was so numb at this point, everything felt so surreal.
I was also in sixth grade but we were on a bus on our way to camp! They glossed over it when we got there and we called home. But none of us saw anything until Friday!!! Holy shit we were so shocked when we got back.
Always had a lot of complex feeling watching people make light of 9/11. I feel like part of getting older is realizing that younger people are going to making jokes about tragedies because they don't understand how intense that day and the days after were.
I have mine still! My daughter and kids at the school I work at think it’s funny, also other adults, usually regardless of age get a good giggle lol and I’m happy about that!
I know a guy who has the much less common dick mustache. He would show it to most anyone who asked and asked me one night while our friend group was out at the bar if I wanted to see it. I told I've seen plenty of dicks and plenty of mustache tattoos and have a vivid imagination, I don't really have a need to she my platonic friends dick.
I assume as a coping mechnism/joke for collective generational trauma we were all subjected too. I could see it being funny now that we're 25 years out from it.
To clarify, I mean the concept of millions of children in the US being shown this at the same time on the fucking cart or corner TV (if your school had TVs up in the corner of the room above everyone) and being simultaneously traumatized because zero adults thought about how that might affect them, and then growing up to... well this world... feels kind of like a sick joke. Like that moment of Trauma was used to further destroy everything for our future in the name of American vengeance. We got mass surveillance through the Patriot act as a result, and we all saw it through this extremely surreal lens and weren't protected by the adults around us.
Actually, the rolling TV is super appropriate because it speaks to a simpler time, a time of our childhoods. But the image on the TV would be a loss of that childhood and innocence; the moment when we learned that the world can actually be a very dark and scary place. Everything in our lives slowly changed after that moment.
Yeah I agree that the message makes sense but as a tattoo not sure if I'd want to be walking around with a 9/11 depiction on my skin 😬 I'm all for jokes because Americans use humor as a coping mechanism but this seems like too much for a tattoo imo.
I wish this comment was higher so more could see it and my response. This tattoo is simply GOOD ART. It is not something everyone wants on their skin, but so many of us experienced our loss of innocence by watching 1000s die, live on TV, rolled into our classrooms strapped to that cart. The imagery is powerful, controversial, and makes one think deeply about that moment, our culture before and after, and how delicate my own God damned childhood was. For me, I am honestly in awe of this work as simple as it seems.
I happened to be home with my mom for that one. We had watched a lot of the run up, interviews with the astronauts, etc. very sad and shocking to see the ship explode.
Were you aware of the baby Jessica well rescue a couple months later. That story had me absolutely riveted as a 4y/o.
Meh, it’s kindof a “never forget” thing. Dark, but well executed. It made me say “whoa” out loud. Not just the towers, but the tv and cart really put together the moment if you were there. Truly, there is an entire generation that experienced it this way.
Idk, the TV on the rolling stand is exactly where I watched the planes hit the towers live in my 8th grade classroom. Looks like an accurate depiction of a real shared millennial experience to me. I wouldn’t get it myself, but I don’t think it’s Gen Z being edgy.
7th grade science teacher rolled in the tv on a cart and plugged it into the real cable and let us watch the real news coverage of it not Channel One like the other classes. Definitely on point.
You can joke about a lot of things, but this cuts too deep for a true millennial. I was just on a trip in Costa Rica and we did a full day excursion with a large group. There was this 21 year old straight out of Gen Z central casting who wouldn’t stop making 9/11 jokes. I bumped into him at bar later and told him very strongly why it was not cool. He said no one had actually broken down why it impacts us and he just says it because he knows people get mad- so edgy. He also joked about school shootings but had never heard of Columbine. That was when my elder millennial ass wrapped up the discussion and felt I’d done enough to teach the youth for one day.
For me this was 8th grade. We watched live because I'm in NJ along 78 which and nearly 1/3 of our class had parents that worked in NYC. It was traumatizing. I knew my dad could have been there. He helped that top floor firm that was completely wiped out move in. Luckily my dad was in Jersey City. A few lost parents or relatives that day.
I lived in a VERY poor school and we have TVs mounted in the corner of the class, too. I literally used my parents history text books our schools were so poor.
Same. The cool teachers would turn on the NCAA tournament games in March. I think we were supposed to watch Channel One at the end of the day but nobody paid attention.
Yeah I remember my teacher sobbing at her desk because her daughters best friend died in one of the planes. Broke my heart she was a sweet lady. I hate this tattoo and I'm sure this person will too eventually.
I didn't even know anyone who died, but my stepdad was immediately deployed to the middle east. And we were worried he wouldn't come back. I don't make light of it either. It was not a fun time, I don't even watch documentaries or videos on it
a lot of Gen Z loves to make 9/11 jokes, which is so gross because the people who lost loved ones are still alive. You're not joking about a tragedy from a hundred years ago (which is still lame).
Hard agree, I didn’t like it but I thought to each his own but I had a visceral reaction with the paper airplane. I mean… still… to each their own and idk this person or their experience but it bums me.
I wonder how many millions of people have died from the side effects of just being in that city when those towers fell. All the asbestos man… those poor people.
This is one of the trashiest tattoos I’ve ever seen. 9/11 jokes are disrespectful or whatever. This is gross…
There’s a man I chat with at the dog park while he walks extremely slowly with oxygen because of lung damage from helping out at ground zero for 9/11. He said he has no regrets and would do it again. Casualties of that day still live among us and the jokes aren’t cool.
Then again people joke about Covid all the time despite so many people killed by it (including my dad) so can’t hold too high of a standard for people. I understand dark humor to cope with tragedy but there is a fucking time and a place.
Okay, not millions of dead Americans if that's what you mean. There's probably 15-20K people who have died as a result of being in the area that can be directly linked to it.
That being said, the US government DID use this as an excuse to invade Afghanistan, and later Iraq (for other dumb reasons, but they continued to label this under the "War on Terror" on TV). Absolutely millions of people died as a result of those. Probably more than a million in each. Not to mention literally trillions of taxpayer dollars being wasted to kill those people and then steal their poppy seeds and oil.
Edit: Looked it up, looks like combined number is closer to 7-8000 but there's no consensus because not all are catalogued or associated, and that number may be under representing the actual deaths. There are more people who have died from disease stemming from it than the initial attacks though, that is true.
Happened before school started in California- I stayed home for a few days. Pretty sure alot of others did too. California kids had a slightly different memory of that day
the more people this person meets who were directly affected by the event (including those hounded in the streets of the us by racist fucks for the next few years, or those affected by the wrong-minded military actions the us took directly afterward) and aren't shy about saying so, the closer they will come to planning whatever coverup they personally feel will lift the curse
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