IMO there are two reasons why the 9/11 attacks resonated. The first one is crucial for the second.
The first is that it was spectacle, literally. It is impossible to deny that the image of a large passenger aircraft flying straight into a building and exploding is simultaneously nauseating, enthralling, and “better than fiction” in the emotional response it can get out of anybody. The second reason is that once cable news had that spectacle to get their viewers, it was like for them. Just play it back. Replay it. Play it again. Run that another time. Get the second angle. Get the third angle. Play it again. Play it another time. The ad money coming in at that time must’ve been tremendous. It was really time for the fourth estate to shine. Judith Miller can tell you all about that.
COVID deaths? No spectacle. It doesn’t matter that well over a million Americans died from it, as well as millions more globally (and we still are dying, too). It’s undeniable that COVID had media coverage, but it wasn’t like CNN was sending in camera crews into hospitals to catch people’s last gasps of air before they perished. Abstract reasoning is too hard. We need to see the explosion and the building collapse, not reason about a number.
I was just a little kid when it happened, and in my house the TV was on all day every day. I saw it happen over and over and over and over again, before I could even spell my own name, drilled into my mind forever. :/
Looking back at the live news footage, it’s nauseating the way they show it, like a feeding frenzy of vultures on corpses. I think I know why I had so many violent nightmares as a kid now.
I was in college on 9/11. If you weren’t old enough to know what was going on, it’s impossible to communicate how much of a “spectacle” it was. The closest I can come would be to say imagine if you woke up and aliens landed on earth. It wasn’t just that everyone was glued to their TVs set. It was just this… thing that was happening. In my dorm, everyone just watched it on their TVs alone. Got lunch with my friends and no one spoke hardly at all. Just a completely surreal day that’s hard to describe to anyone who didn’t live it.
Edit: to further emphasize the “spectacle” part, later in the day I had to run an errand with a friend. On that drive he confided in me that “I kinda want to see the number [of dead] go a lot higher”. He wasn’t saying that because he wanted a reason to start a war. And he wasn’t some weirdo. He was a very thoughtful, empathetic person (but brutally honest about things, like Jan Maas in Ted Lasso). I think a TON of people felt that way but didn’t say it out loud. I don’t buy that people were traumatized that day or anything. I think they were captivated by the spectacle and were mad that our collective ego was bruised, and didn’t really care about actual dead people.
That event changed everyone I knew as well. Everything because about America. The nice Syrian family down the street became an object of suspicion, more than they already were.
9/11 wasn’t just that September either, I remember that general unease and media coverage lasting at least until September 2002.
Agreed. Lived it from a Nordic European perspective and we were similarly glued to our televisions.
But I do remember we were actually terrified of what the US will do to the world because of this. Will they start a world war over it. It wasn’t at all about the spectacle of it alone, but mostly the fear of what Bush will do (everyone saw him as unhinged). I remember how we sighed from relief after he did the speeches after it and did not bring about nuclear winter.
This was pretty much the most common reaction in my family and friends. Also the whole way in which the world police finally got to feel a bit of what it does all over sure was mentioned, nobody was honestly surprised.
Sympathy for the civilians of course, but I can’t claim there was any love for Murica the nation at the time or all the warmongering.
And those fears turned out to be completely justified, because the reaction from Bush and the American people was completely unhinged.
And that was over a little less than 3,000 deaths. What frightens me about the US trying to start shit with China is how Americans will respond to losing the entire Pacific Fleet in a matter of days; because all those fancy aircraft carriers that are the backbone the American military are just sitting ducks for hypersonic missles, et al. I worry that if that happens, Americans will demand that every city in China be nuked, even if that means nukes get fired back at them.
Very true. It is scary. It’s scary to think there is a country in this world that could pretty much annihilate anything over hurt pride and as a show of force, on a whim. That day re-revealed this. Not that it was ever really hidded.
I think the vibe from smaller countries at the time was very much “who needs enemies when this is what these gyus are like”. It also showed what people really think, my country tends to be very US friendly thanks to all sorts of propaganda, but on this day and after it the mood was mostly “what will the arrogant unhinged and self-assigned world cops do now”. It was perfectly clear to everyone that this insult on US hegemony was a huge deal, not the lives lost. Up until this point they thought they were untouchable, never any real skin in the game.
I’d like to add that the real scary part was all the people who thought Bush might do something unhinged, but that it’d be okay because the bad guys deserved it.
There was also that odd time between the first plane and the second. You hear “a plane hit a building in New York” and you think it’s a tragic accident. Then a little later you hear about the second and you realize immediately it’s something else.
IMO there are two reasons why the 9/11 attacks resonated. The first one is crucial for the second.
The first is that it was spectacle, literally. It is impossible to deny that the image of a large passenger aircraft flying straight into a building and exploding is simultaneously nauseating, enthralling, and “better than fiction” in the emotional response it can get out of anybody. The second reason is that once cable news had that spectacle to get their viewers, it was like
for them. Just play it back. Replay it. Play it again. Run that another time. Get the second angle. Get the third angle. Play it again. Play it another time. The ad money coming in at that time must’ve been tremendous. It was really time for the fourth estate to shine. Judith Miller can tell you all about that.
COVID deaths? No spectacle. It doesn’t matter that well over a million Americans died from it, as well as millions more globally (and we still are dying, too). It’s undeniable that COVID had media coverage, but it wasn’t like CNN was sending in camera crews into hospitals to catch people’s last gasps of air before they perished. Abstract reasoning is too hard. We need to see the explosion and the building collapse, not reason about a number.
I was just a little kid when it happened, and in my house the TV was on all day every day. I saw it happen over and over and over and over again, before I could even spell my own name, drilled into my mind forever. :/
Looking back at the live news footage, it’s nauseating the way they show it, like a feeding frenzy of vultures on corpses. I think I know why I had so many violent nightmares as a kid now.
I think it contributed to my fear of flying. I have flown plenty of times, but I hate it.
I was in college on 9/11. If you weren’t old enough to know what was going on, it’s impossible to communicate how much of a “spectacle” it was. The closest I can come would be to say imagine if you woke up and aliens landed on earth. It wasn’t just that everyone was glued to their TVs set. It was just this… thing that was happening. In my dorm, everyone just watched it on their TVs alone. Got lunch with my friends and no one spoke hardly at all. Just a completely surreal day that’s hard to describe to anyone who didn’t live it.
Edit: to further emphasize the “spectacle” part, later in the day I had to run an errand with a friend. On that drive he confided in me that “I kinda want to see the number [of dead] go a lot higher”. He wasn’t saying that because he wanted a reason to start a war. And he wasn’t some weirdo. He was a very thoughtful, empathetic person (but brutally honest about things, like Jan Maas in Ted Lasso). I think a TON of people felt that way but didn’t say it out loud. I don’t buy that people were traumatized that day or anything. I think they were captivated by the spectacle and were mad that our collective ego was bruised, and didn’t really care about actual dead people.
That event changed everyone I knew as well. Everything because about America. The nice Syrian family down the street became an object of suspicion, more than they already were.
9/11 wasn’t just that September either, I remember that general unease and media coverage lasting at least until September 2002.
Agreed. Lived it from a Nordic European perspective and we were similarly glued to our televisions.
But I do remember we were actually terrified of what the US will do to the world because of this. Will they start a world war over it. It wasn’t at all about the spectacle of it alone, but mostly the fear of what Bush will do (everyone saw him as unhinged). I remember how we sighed from relief after he did the speeches after it and did not bring about nuclear winter.
This was pretty much the most common reaction in my family and friends. Also the whole way in which the world police finally got to feel a bit of what it does all over sure was mentioned, nobody was honestly surprised.
Sympathy for the civilians of course, but I can’t claim there was any love for Murica the nation at the time or all the warmongering.
And those fears turned out to be completely justified, because the reaction from Bush and the American people was completely unhinged.
And that was over a little less than 3,000 deaths. What frightens me about the US trying to start shit with China is how Americans will respond to losing the entire Pacific Fleet in a matter of days; because all those fancy aircraft carriers that are the backbone the American military are just sitting ducks for hypersonic missles, et al. I worry that if that happens, Americans will demand that every city in China be nuked, even if that means nukes get fired back at them.
Very true. It is scary. It’s scary to think there is a country in this world that could pretty much annihilate anything over hurt pride and as a show of force, on a whim. That day re-revealed this. Not that it was ever really hidded.
I think the vibe from smaller countries at the time was very much “who needs enemies when this is what these gyus are like”. It also showed what people really think, my country tends to be very US friendly thanks to all sorts of propaganda, but on this day and after it the mood was mostly “what will the arrogant unhinged and self-assigned world cops do now”. It was perfectly clear to everyone that this insult on US hegemony was a huge deal, not the lives lost. Up until this point they thought they were untouchable, never any real skin in the game.
I’d like to add that the real scary part was all the people who thought Bush might do something unhinged, but that it’d be okay because the bad guys deserved it.
There was also that odd time between the first plane and the second. You hear “a plane hit a building in New York” and you think it’s a tragic accident. Then a little later you hear about the second and you realize immediately it’s something else.
It is still wild to me that the port authority did not immediately order the evacuation of the south tower after an explosion in the north one.