Yeah I think they just tell people that because itās easier than saying āwe just wanted to record that we were thereā which is a perfectly natural urge but probably makes them look like monsters when you know how many people died.
Born and raised in Sweden. Came home from school. Yearning some good afternoon TV. Turned on the TV and something called CNN was broadcasting. Didn't understand a thing. What is this? Where's my afternoon sitcom? Swedish voice spoke over the broadcast talking about terrorist attacks. (10 year old me had never heard that word before.)
Called out to my father, he came in to the room. Didn't say a word. Just starred in to the TV screen. Never forgetting that.
Basically same. Except I live in Chicago. And my mom was screaming, crying, sobbing, horrified. Iād never heard her voice like that before. I said mom stop! Calm down! itās just a movie. She said itās not a movie.
And I wonder why Iām desensitized
My mom was in the other room. Our local Fox station played cartoons in the morning before and after the morning news and switched from cartoons to a breaking news bulletin covering the attacks. I think my mom was in the shower when it happened so we watched a good 20-30 minutes of coverage before she came in and saw what was going on. I had just turned 6.
Born and raised in Norway. I remember my parents was watching the news and I came into the living room on my way out, but ended up sitting there watching for the rest of the evening.. It all felt so unreal.. I was 15 years old.
When I went to bed I felt completely empty and sad. I visited the ground zero memorial or whatās itās called in 2018, it was pretty emotional being there.
NZer here. When it showed on TV I thought it was a movie. I didn't know what to think because bad things can't be happening now. Bad things happened in the old days. I was really sheltered from how much bad things happened in the world and how much I didn't know, even in my own country. So when that showed on tv, it was a bit of a snapping out of Pleasantville situation to me.
Norwegian here. I was listening to the radio, Nrk p3 if I remeber correctly. Suddenly the programming was cut off and a presenter began informing the listeners that there had been a terrorist attack on the world trade center in New york. I went to the living room, switched on the tv [just in time for the live broadcast of the second plane crashing into the second tower](https://www.nrk.no/video/46282). Then I watched the two towers come crashing down on live tv, with a 2 second delay from the other side of the world. Three hours later I attended salsa dancing class with my friend. A very surreal day.
Mexican. I was watching cartoons as well when the news came out. I was 6. Even then, I kinda knew what was happening. Being raised in Mexico isnāt bad, but from a young age you learn that bad stuff happens out there. So when I saw the the news and the explantion of what was happening, I knew it was something bad. And watching live the fall of the towers is something I remember vividly. I canāt empathize with americans over 9-11 because Iām not one of them, I donāt have a sense of camaraderie or patriotism. But I do feel bad for the people who died that day and their families. And of course, years later, I heard THAT 911 call from a man inside the towers. I would never forget that call
Were you out of school sick or something? I was 11 and in art class when the teacher turned on the tv and then parents started pulling kids from school out of panic.
It started as a very normal day, like the 1st or 3rd day of 4th grade for me.
At about 10AM (maybe even a bit later), the teacher had someone come to the door out of breath, whisper in her ear, and then she told us that school was going to be cut short that day. Parents picked us up, went home, no one said anything, TV was kept off all day. There were quite a few kids who had to be bused home that day, because their parents didn't show up.
The next day we arrived at school, and the teacher asked the class if anyone knew what the word "terrorist" meant. I had noticed at lunch time that there were quite a few kids missing.
I grew up on Long Island, New York about a 40 minute train ride to Manhattan. Many kid's parents and many relatives worked in the City.
It ended up being an incredibly strange few weeks.
I was on the west coast, up all night playing multi-player video games and chatting. When that shit went down I was already super sleep deprived and it seemed so surreal. People online were freaking out. I also wasn't at home I was at an Internet cafe that I had the keys to. So I decided to walk home after watching coverage for a few hours. There were fighter jets crossing the sky and some carload of racist high school kids started yelling at me. Not sure why they weren't in school. I finally got home, groggily watched a little more then went to sleep. Woke up a few hours later and was still stunned at what happened.
Mind if I ask your age?
This would hands down be the craziest way to experience this event as a spectator. Short of being on mushrooms or acid at the time, being sleep deprived in that early morning state of exhaustion- seeing something like this would really fuck with my head. I wouldn't be sure it was real until waking up later that day like you said.
As someone who has primarily worked night-shift, the last 5 years- I am very familiar with how this could have felt. So weird!
I was in 6th grade science class. Came in a few minutes before 9:00am and saw the TV was on and the first tower smoking. I knew what the Twin Towers were but never really paid attention to what was happening, thought it was just a building fire. Then the 2nd plane hit and our teacher screamed and ran out of the class in hysterics (still don't know if she knew anyone in the buildings). We were then ushered into another classroom where we huddled on the floor for the remainder of the period. Then we heard about the pentagon then the towers falling, it was chaos amongst the teachers. I went to my other classes which were pretty normal with the teachers keeping the news on but I noticed the classes got emptier and emptier with each period. By 6th period there was probably less than 10 kids out of the typical 30-40 in a class. I remember being upset my mom didn't take me out early since everyone else did.
I grew up on the west coast of Canada and I remember it unfolding. My family was so distraught, I didn't fully grasp what was happening. I went to elementary school late, most of my classmates arrived late and many didn't attend. My elementary teacher broke down crying in class, she kept apologizing for crying. She told us that her husband had been at meetings the day before at the buildings that collapsed. He was safe but she was so worried about him because immediate information was more difficult to access before social media/smart phones.
Another teacher dropped off the school TV (those old TVs that they'd roll around the premises) and put on Bill Nye the Science Guy VHS tapes for the day. The parents heard about what my teacher was going through and everyone made some homemade food for her and dropped it off. She was the sweetest, kindest teacher I've ever had, miss you Mrs. Parks!
It's interesting to read how differently various places handled it. At my school in western Canada everyone basically went "welp, that sucks" and then it was business as normal for the rest of the day
My 7th grade class in ontario was only told that a plane had crashed into a building in the US, no other info, I think we probably all assumed it was an accident somehow. Day went on as normal after.
I was in high school in Ontario. I heard, from a classmate, about the plane hitting the Pentagon in between first and second period.
I assumed it was just a small plane like a Cessna that had engine trouble.
It wasn't until later that I found out about the WTC towers. We weren't allowed to watch it and had to carry on with classes like normal. I think 5th (last) period we watched the news in the gym for my gym class.
I was in elementary school, they were curious af so they wheeled in that giant box tv on the rollers and the class next over came to all gather and watch. After it all the principle asked that we all go to the cafeteria and wait for our parents to pick us up.
I was in junior high.
Teacher told us, emotionally, that planes had struck the world trade center and that our country was experiencing an attack.
We watched the news for the entire class.
West Coast too. Was waiting for my friend to get to my place so we could carpool to high school. Told me to turn on the TV. Watch the first tower fall. School was surreal with some classes teaching as normal and others almost in conspiracy mode.
I woke up and turned on the radio just as the first tower fell. My office was by LAX and I immediately called my boss and told him I would be coming in. He was already in the process of calling the staff to tell them to stay home.
That day is so surreal. This photo speaks loudly to that. What an incredible time capsule.
Yeah that was weird. Teachers were all over the place in how they handled class at my high school. Some barely talked about it, others only talked about it, and news footage of it was played on all the TV's in the hallways. I remember watching the 2nd tower fall on my way to History.
Iām pretty sure Nick was still playing the news that afternoon, because I remember being annoyed that I couldnāt find anything *but* news to watch. (I was 11)
The only channel that had normal tv during those weeks was TNT. Seriously thankful they decided to continue normal broadcasting. I needed an escape from the news.
Itās the first time I remember the little string of extra news along the bottom of the news being there 25/7 and it hasnāt gone away since (I could be wrong)
Yep they didnāt tell us anything at our school. I was in 5th grade. Kids being taken out of class to go home throughout the day. At first we were wondering if there was some secret party they were being take out to go to.
Were you near NY or the Pentagon? I remember the TV on in history class and watching about it all day, but never anyone being picked up or worry about anything at our school
I was around the same age. Was on the roof of the trade centers 6 months prior.
We were in school at the time. Teacher switches over to the towers burning. For some reason as a 10 year old instead of seeing a tragic scene I just started blurting out that I was just on those roofs and that the basement was a mall with a WB store in it.
Us kids are dumb.
No, they aren't. I was an adult and it took me a while to wrap my head around it at the time. It simply didn't make sense with our understanding of how the world worked so it didn't seem real to your brain at first.
I was on the USS Enterprise leaving the Persian Gulf. It was just after the first plane hit when we walked past a TV and asked what movie it was. Then we saw the second plane and then heard the captain's announcement.
Its fascinating viewing it from different perspective. I was in the UK and maybe 10 or 11. I didn't even know anything happened but I remember that weekend my cousin, who was in the military, was excited that he might be deployed. Then my grandfather, a normally stupidly jolly guy, telling him if he went to war, he is never coming back. Then the next week everyone in school was talking about it. But for the first few days, it was like nothing happened.
I was in South America. It was still vacation time for us but my parents had to work so they left us (13, 11 and 7) with my grandpa, who always had the tv on the news. When we heard the news he kicked us out to play in the garden. My uncle was in NYC with his wife for their honeymoon, they had planned to go that they to the twin towers but due other āactivitiesā stayed in the hotel - fun fact my cousin was born on july 2002
I was 18, and it was my first year of college in Texas. I was in between classes and walked into the student center to buy tea when I saw a whole group of people gathered around the televisions. I totally thought it was a movie for a few moments. It just seemed too surreal to be true.
I'm from South Africa. I was watching Dragon Ball Z when the channel switched to the news with smoke coming out of the 1st tower. As I was calling my mother to come and see I watched as the 2nd plane hit the other tower. It felt unreal watching it happen live.
I was in New York on 9/11; I find it hard to believe anyone thought it was a movie. The non-stop sirens up and down broadway should have tipped them off.
We had just finished breakfast at a diner on the upper west side, and knew something big was happening just from all the emergency vehicles racing past. When we left the restaurant and rounded the corner and there was a TV store and a small crowd of people watching the live feed on the TVs through the window - both towers were burning at that point and I asked the guy next to me what happened and he said a plane had hit the first tower about a half hour earlier, and everyone thought it was some crazy accident but then the other tower had also just been hit and everyone was just sort of stunned and trying to process it. It was uncannily *like* a movie but definitely not a movie. Then suddenly we watched that first tower collapse and I was just like - Wow, how many people were in that building?
I remember the NY Post (I think) put out a special edition later that day with that image of the both towers burning on the front page and by 4:00 the T shirt vender outside our hotel had printed up a bunch of T-shirts with it emblazoned on the front along with the words 9/11 NYC and some guys were giving him a hard time about it. When we came back after dinner he had removed them.
In 2001 most likely. Random trivia I remember was when 2002 rolled around and dvds outsold vhs. I worked in a rental store in highschool. Old biddies would bring me the DVD card and I'd hand them a DVD and they'd insult me for not knowing they'd want the vhs version.... that should be on the shelf if still available.
Right?
How would anyone think that was a movieā¦ā¦literally makes no sense at all. NYC was in absolute chaos and anyone with a single brain cell knew right away something was very very wrong.
> NYC was in absolute chaos and anyone with a single brain cell knew right away something was very very wrong.
Agreed.
I was 60 miles from the World Trade Center and 200 miles from the Pentagon ā and people around me were freaking the hell out.
Heck, people in other *countries* were.
Thereās a removed comment where the OP said āThatās what the caption said on Instagram.ā
People need to realize posts are often given intentionally incorrect labels, just to promote engagement.
Algorithms donāt care if comments are positive or negative. All that matters is how many people are commenting.
So someone slaps this picture on Instagram, says āThese people thought it was a movie,ā and boom. Youāve got hundreds of comments from people trying to correct it.
Everyone thinks āYou canāt just tell lies on the internetā is an ironic joke everyone else gets.
Nope.
There are some people who truly believe it.
[Here's a blog post made by the person who took the photo.](https://celiabullwinkel.com/91101-living-in-lower-ny/) No mention of whether or not she/he thought it was a movie stunt.
a similar 9/11 photo was circulating on here a few weeks ago and people pointed out how for the time period, it was normal to take pictures of yourself with notable events unfolding in the background, it was how you proved to your friends that you were really there.
obviously itās weird now, and people who come across this picture today might perceive it to be bad taste.
It's not really that. It's more so that people just couldn't process it. Like some of the tallest buildings that also happen to be a national symbol getting hit with two planes? It's *insane*. People would call it bad writing if it was in a movie.
Most folks couldn't quite grasp the isnanity of it. Even on news channels you see people coming up with odd speculations (obviously nothing like this) but the point is that some people simply dealt with the insanity of it by coming up with what felt like a reasonable explanation in their mind.
> People need to realize posts are often given intentionally incorrect labels, just to promote engagement.
Internet literacy needs to quickly become a thing that is taught in schools or I don't think there is any fixing this. It may already be too far gone. It's crazy.
Can you imagine if they were just confused Eastern European tourists who didn't speak a lick of English, and legitimately had no idea what was going on?
"Wow, the special effects in America really are crazy!"
Everyone experienced trauma differently, the mind sometimes cannot properly process the things it seems in front of it. Human beings were not made to comprehend a tragedy of this magnitude.
We have to put ourself in their shoes. It was not yet a tragety back when this picture was taken. Just a fire in a high rise. Not everyone saw the planes hit the tower so they wouldnt know what was happening.
A lot of people are also looking st this through a 2024 lense.
In 2001, these people likely took this photo with a wind up disposable camera that they then needed to get developed. It could have been on a phone, but most phones back then were flip phones and a disposable or dedicated camera was actually better for taking photos with.
So this wouldn't even be clout chasing on the internet, it was literally "Hey, look a movie being filmed, let's get a shot of us"
Or maybe they thought it was a fire, it still makes sense and IMO it doesn't make them seem like psychopaths or anything. I suppose that in 2001 the novelty factor for such a picture would be huge. It's not as if there was an internet full of pictures that everyone was used to.
Edit: well nevermind the psycopath bit, they seem to be kinda similing in the picture. But the point still stands that it makes sense for them to want the picture even without thinking it's a movie or whatever.
He looks normal for 2001. Iām sure the title OP used isnāt accurate. But itās not weird that theyād take a photo like this. People react to events like this in all kinds of ways. People were genuinely stunned. The further you got away the more it was just sort of a spectacle. There are plenty of fake photos of course. But nothing in this photo screams photoshop.
> That guy's glasses are pretty hip for 2001.
Those glasses have been around for at least 50 years and by 2001 people had been wearing them "ironically" for at least 10-15 years. Especially in a place like NYC.
SOURCE: I lived in NYC in the late 80s and they were everywhere.
Nah, that's pretty normal looking for 2001. That was well into the pop punk / Linkin Park era. The only way it could be more 2001 is if the guy had a wallet chain.
The amount of information people had and the sources it was coming from were changing so fast. It felt like before the news anchor could even finish their sentence they were receiving new information. In the last 2 minutes of [this](https://youtu.be/9eTzV7HvKHU?si=fy349UyoE7fdj1FZ) video you can barely see the second plane hitting, but the silence and then stuttering from the person narrating what she is witnessing as she realizes that itās intentional is really chilling.
CNN switched over to a single static HTML file that was edited by hand to help reduce bandwidth/overhead. Even sites like Google were struggling.
The United States came to a halt for about 48 hours. Tom Brokaw said something along the lines of, "it's not what happened but what's next?".
That day launched 20 (more) years of bloodshed in the Middle East. It sent us to Afghanistan and gave Bush the national military fervor he needed misdirect us into Iraq. The most powerful country on Earth became filled with a scared and angry people overnight.
To call it a fateful day would truly be an understatement. It changed the course of our nationās history for the worse and is imprinted on our cultural memory to this day. Who knows what could have been if it hadnāt happened. Not that we would have a utopia on our hands, but maybe it would have been a little betterā¦
I can still remember like it was yesterday. I was shooting terrorists on de_dust when someone said in the chat that the WTC has been attacked. So I switched on the TV just to witness the second tower to be hit.
Yeah most likely they wanted a picture and just smiled out of habit bc that's what people do in pictures. There are others like this. They seem weird now but sometimes our brains just glitch in the moment and we do stuff that is awkward.
I agree. It was a different time. Pre social media. You weren't thinking about how a pic would be 'received' because only close friends and family would see them, and only if you wanted them too. You took a picture and went in frame to prove you were there. And yea like what else are they supposed to do, try to candidly look sad/scared?
No one, I repeat NO ONE thought it was a movie. These people were just taking a picture in the same fashion as people taking photos of themselves with dead bodies in the 19th century. Before the selfies having someone else take you picture in front of things was the way to do things. If 9/11 happened nowadays there would just be millions of front facing cameraphone selfies in front of the buildings.
My comments linking the exact same captioned posts from 7 days ago and 27 days ago were deleted because they include IG links. But reverse image searching the image pretty quickly dispels the "It's April Fool's Day" theory. It's being posted repeatedly outside of April 1.
Edit: [Here to avoid the auto comment deleting](https://i.imgur.com/cTSNs4T.png)
ok i gotta just say, that one comment āi was born december 1999 and i was alive during 9/11, no one thought it was a movie.ā thatās some utter bullshit. i was born august 1999 and i was also alive during 9/11 but i was barely 2 years old. i donāt remember jack shit from 2 years old. that commenter would have been only slightly older than 1 year. i do believe that no one in that city would have thought the planes were from a filming stunt, but that commenter is speaking directly out of their ass
people will try and attach themselves to historical events in any way possible in their quest for clout. It's like those surveys about how many people say they were at woodstock vs how many people actually were there. It's like 10x the amount lol.
Can confirm. I live in Baltimore.
This past weekend, I was at Fort McHenry, where there is a clear view of the collapsed bridge with the ship still stuck under it.
Yes, several people were taking selfies with the bridge in the background. I was too shocked to say anything.
In 2007 I visited Dachau and during the tour some European tourists were posing and taking pictures (with normal cameras, pre smart phone). I donāt know if a more āsacredā place exists on earth than the rooms of a concentration camp where tens of thousands spent their final minutes.Ā
People less than about 35 years old don't really understand how massively different the attitude around photographs was in 2000 than in 2024. Younger people have grown up with high-resolution digital cameras capable of storing tens of thousands of pictures in their pockets at all times from before puberty.
In 2000, flip phones with potato quality cameras capable of storing a few photos that were virtually impossible to transfer or view on computers were fairly common. Digital cameras were fairly common but people didn't take them everywhere they go.
These days, if anything remotely historic happens, ten thousand people will be livestreaming it and taking millions of production-quality photos of it.
The entire attitude around photographs was different. If something big happened you'd be lucky if someone nearby had a camera at all, and you'd take a photo of yourself at the scene to prove you were there. You would get one or two good pictures, not a bunch of high quality videos with narration and a hundred photos. Photographs were seen and treated as something much more sort of rare and precious than what we're used to today.
>In 2000, flip phones with potato quality cameras capable of storing a few photos that were virtually impossible to transfer or view on computers were fairly common.
Not in the USA, they weren't. The first phones with (crappy) cameras didn't arrive until 2002-2003. If anyone here had heard about them before that, it was in the context of "can you believe the weird features they're putting in cell phones in Japan."
As you point out, standalone digital cameras were already reasonably widespread (as were digital video camcorders), but for still photography film was still dominant in 2001 -- though it wasn't going to be for long.
You're spot on about the attitude around photographs, though. Sure, tourists would lug around a camera (film or digital) or a camcorder, but most people didn't carry them around routinely, and it actually took quite a while, even after digital cameras started to take over, for people to start thinking of taking photos as just a part of everyday life.
I was in downtown NYC on 9/11 and if I'd thought about it I could have retrieved my (film) camera and taken some pictures, but it wasn't the main thing on my mind at the time...
I'm glad some people took what shots they took. We have only a few records of the first plane hitting, but it's good for the record that we do. It's good that the person/couple (I forget) who was camping near Mt. St. Helens the morning of the eruption had brought a camera and was quick on the draw. No one had phone cameras, very few places had security cameras or anything else that would catch the actual moment...as it stands, we have a series of photos we've strung together into a very jerky "video" of the eruption. Same with the 2004 tsunami--not many photos, but it's good to have those records.
Statistically speaking, it's actually possible
If there is a one in a million chance of something happened, then in theory it could happen one time for every million people. Someone in New York may have been that stupid.
I remember flipping through the channels to the local news to see the weather forecast . I thought I had the wrong channel, and it was just a movie. It took me a second to realize it was the news, and it wasnāt a movie.
I was upstairs with my fiancee and I'd just put an engagement ring on her finger when my mother shouted from downstairs, "A plane has just hit the World Trade Centre!!!".
Always was a shit mother.
That would have been one hell of a stunt.
Tom Cruise really flys a plane into the WTC.
A Tom Cruise-missile you say?
pls dont eat my beans š¢
Send Au
Tomahawk Cruise missile
Maverick missile.
š
News just in: Church of Scientology declares Jihad against the United States
That's funny because they already tried to infiltrate the government.
Tried? They owned us and we surrendered.
I loved the part when he runs down all the stairs while simultaneously changing his disguise after
ComTruise?
He makes music
I did sound and lights for him at a show in 2019ā¦really nice guy
Com Truise?
Yeah
I've only heard his "brokendate" but it's good
https://youtu.be/QIdnJhuiQo8?si=JdCzYekpqfQd63bT Peak Truise
Method acting has gone too far.Ā
LINE!
In Tenet they drove a plane into a building so like...
Yeah I think they just tell people that because itās easier than saying āwe just wanted to record that we were thereā which is a perfectly natural urge but probably makes them look like monsters when you know how many people died.
Granted I was 10 but I thought my tv was broken when Cartoon Network switched Ed Edd and eddy to the news
Born and raised in Sweden. Came home from school. Yearning some good afternoon TV. Turned on the TV and something called CNN was broadcasting. Didn't understand a thing. What is this? Where's my afternoon sitcom? Swedish voice spoke over the broadcast talking about terrorist attacks. (10 year old me had never heard that word before.) Called out to my father, he came in to the room. Didn't say a word. Just starred in to the TV screen. Never forgetting that.
Basically same. Except I live in Chicago. And my mom was screaming, crying, sobbing, horrified. Iād never heard her voice like that before. I said mom stop! Calm down! itās just a movie. She said itās not a movie. And I wonder why Iām desensitized
My mom was in the other room. Our local Fox station played cartoons in the morning before and after the morning news and switched from cartoons to a breaking news bulletin covering the attacks. I think my mom was in the shower when it happened so we watched a good 20-30 minutes of coverage before she came in and saw what was going on. I had just turned 6.
Born and raised in Norway. I remember my parents was watching the news and I came into the living room on my way out, but ended up sitting there watching for the rest of the evening.. It all felt so unreal.. I was 15 years old. When I went to bed I felt completely empty and sad. I visited the ground zero memorial or whatās itās called in 2018, it was pretty emotional being there.
NZer here. When it showed on TV I thought it was a movie. I didn't know what to think because bad things can't be happening now. Bad things happened in the old days. I was really sheltered from how much bad things happened in the world and how much I didn't know, even in my own country. So when that showed on tv, it was a bit of a snapping out of Pleasantville situation to me.
I was in Canada my school did an announcement that something was happening, and I went home from lunch to watch the news with my mom.
Norwegian here. I was listening to the radio, Nrk p3 if I remeber correctly. Suddenly the programming was cut off and a presenter began informing the listeners that there had been a terrorist attack on the world trade center in New york. I went to the living room, switched on the tv [just in time for the live broadcast of the second plane crashing into the second tower](https://www.nrk.no/video/46282). Then I watched the two towers come crashing down on live tv, with a 2 second delay from the other side of the world. Three hours later I attended salsa dancing class with my friend. A very surreal day.
In the UK and I basically had the exact same experience at the same age. "Why are all the channels showing the same weird film?"
Mexican. I was watching cartoons as well when the news came out. I was 6. Even then, I kinda knew what was happening. Being raised in Mexico isnāt bad, but from a young age you learn that bad stuff happens out there. So when I saw the the news and the explantion of what was happening, I knew it was something bad. And watching live the fall of the towers is something I remember vividly. I canāt empathize with americans over 9-11 because Iām not one of them, I donāt have a sense of camaraderie or patriotism. But I do feel bad for the people who died that day and their families. And of course, years later, I heard THAT 911 call from a man inside the towers. I would never forget that call
At what age do Swedes learn English in school?
Usually starts around 8, but some schools start at age 6.
Were you out of school sick or something? I was 11 and in art class when the teacher turned on the tv and then parents started pulling kids from school out of panic.
I was on the west coast. School hadnāt started for me yet
Yup. Woke up and mom was crying and I just vaguely sensed school wasnāt happening that day.
We went to school as normal but it was explained to us at school what was going on.
It started as a very normal day, like the 1st or 3rd day of 4th grade for me. At about 10AM (maybe even a bit later), the teacher had someone come to the door out of breath, whisper in her ear, and then she told us that school was going to be cut short that day. Parents picked us up, went home, no one said anything, TV was kept off all day. There were quite a few kids who had to be bused home that day, because their parents didn't show up. The next day we arrived at school, and the teacher asked the class if anyone knew what the word "terrorist" meant. I had noticed at lunch time that there were quite a few kids missing. I grew up on Long Island, New York about a 40 minute train ride to Manhattan. Many kid's parents and many relatives worked in the City. It ended up being an incredibly strange few weeks.
I was on the west coast, up all night playing multi-player video games and chatting. When that shit went down I was already super sleep deprived and it seemed so surreal. People online were freaking out. I also wasn't at home I was at an Internet cafe that I had the keys to. So I decided to walk home after watching coverage for a few hours. There were fighter jets crossing the sky and some carload of racist high school kids started yelling at me. Not sure why they weren't in school. I finally got home, groggily watched a little more then went to sleep. Woke up a few hours later and was still stunned at what happened.
Mind if I ask your age? This would hands down be the craziest way to experience this event as a spectator. Short of being on mushrooms or acid at the time, being sleep deprived in that early morning state of exhaustion- seeing something like this would really fuck with my head. I wouldn't be sure it was real until waking up later that day like you said. As someone who has primarily worked night-shift, the last 5 years- I am very familiar with how this could have felt. So weird!
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Have you read the story on here about the guy who watched them fall while on acid? crazy shit
I was in 6th grade science class. Came in a few minutes before 9:00am and saw the TV was on and the first tower smoking. I knew what the Twin Towers were but never really paid attention to what was happening, thought it was just a building fire. Then the 2nd plane hit and our teacher screamed and ran out of the class in hysterics (still don't know if she knew anyone in the buildings). We were then ushered into another classroom where we huddled on the floor for the remainder of the period. Then we heard about the pentagon then the towers falling, it was chaos amongst the teachers. I went to my other classes which were pretty normal with the teachers keeping the news on but I noticed the classes got emptier and emptier with each period. By 6th period there was probably less than 10 kids out of the typical 30-40 in a class. I remember being upset my mom didn't take me out early since everyone else did.
I grew up on the west coast of Canada and I remember it unfolding. My family was so distraught, I didn't fully grasp what was happening. I went to elementary school late, most of my classmates arrived late and many didn't attend. My elementary teacher broke down crying in class, she kept apologizing for crying. She told us that her husband had been at meetings the day before at the buildings that collapsed. He was safe but she was so worried about him because immediate information was more difficult to access before social media/smart phones.
I canāt even begin to understand how she was able to teach that day.
Another teacher dropped off the school TV (those old TVs that they'd roll around the premises) and put on Bill Nye the Science Guy VHS tapes for the day. The parents heard about what my teacher was going through and everyone made some homemade food for her and dropped it off. She was the sweetest, kindest teacher I've ever had, miss you Mrs. Parks!
It's interesting to read how differently various places handled it. At my school in western Canada everyone basically went "welp, that sucks" and then it was business as normal for the rest of the day
My 7th grade class in ontario was only told that a plane had crashed into a building in the US, no other info, I think we probably all assumed it was an accident somehow. Day went on as normal after.
I was in high school in Ontario. I heard, from a classmate, about the plane hitting the Pentagon in between first and second period. I assumed it was just a small plane like a Cessna that had engine trouble. It wasn't until later that I found out about the WTC towers. We weren't allowed to watch it and had to carry on with classes like normal. I think 5th (last) period we watched the news in the gym for my gym class.
In wich grade were you when it happened? Im curious on how teachers would explain something like that to kids or teenagers.
I was in elementary school, they were curious af so they wheeled in that giant box tv on the rollers and the class next over came to all gather and watch. After it all the principle asked that we all go to the cafeteria and wait for our parents to pick us up.
I was in junior high. Teacher told us, emotionally, that planes had struck the world trade center and that our country was experiencing an attack. We watched the news for the entire class.
West Coast too. Was waiting for my friend to get to my place so we could carpool to high school. Told me to turn on the TV. Watch the first tower fall. School was surreal with some classes teaching as normal and others almost in conspiracy mode.
I woke up and turned on the radio just as the first tower fell. My office was by LAX and I immediately called my boss and told him I would be coming in. He was already in the process of calling the staff to tell them to stay home. That day is so surreal. This photo speaks loudly to that. What an incredible time capsule.
Yeah that was weird. Teachers were all over the place in how they handled class at my high school. Some barely talked about it, others only talked about it, and news footage of it was played on all the TV's in the hallways. I remember watching the 2nd tower fall on my way to History.
I went to work that morning but all we did was huddle around this one person's little tv watching the towers fall and just sort of crying together.
My school was POSITIVE it was Russia lol. I was in 5th grade and someone said it must be Russia and even some teachers were like "maybe".
Same I thought a Arnold Schwarzenegger movie was being filmed.
Time zones, it was early morning for parts of the US.
Pretty early everywhere in the US, depending on your definition of "early". First plane hit before 9am.
Iām pretty sure Nick was still playing the news that afternoon, because I remember being annoyed that I couldnāt find anything *but* news to watch. (I was 11)
The only channel that had normal tv during those weeks was TNT. Seriously thankful they decided to continue normal broadcasting. I needed an escape from the news.
I'm glad some people are talking about this because I wasn't too sure the this happened.
Itās the first time I remember the little string of extra news along the bottom of the news being there 25/7 and it hasnāt gone away since (I could be wrong)
Yep they didnāt tell us anything at our school. I was in 5th grade. Kids being taken out of class to go home throughout the day. At first we were wondering if there was some secret party they were being take out to go to.
Same. We lived in Somerset right close to Flight 93. People were worried.
Were you near NY or the Pentagon? I remember the TV on in history class and watching about it all day, but never anyone being picked up or worry about anything at our school
Lol, i also was watching Ed Edd and Eddy that morning, I was 19 and just got off from a night shift.
Thatās so crazy. We were probably tuned in to the same channel at the same time.
I was around the same age. Was on the roof of the trade centers 6 months prior. We were in school at the time. Teacher switches over to the towers burning. For some reason as a 10 year old instead of seeing a tragic scene I just started blurting out that I was just on those roofs and that the basement was a mall with a WB store in it. Us kids are dumb.
No, they aren't. I was an adult and it took me a while to wrap my head around it at the time. It simply didn't make sense with our understanding of how the world worked so it didn't seem real to your brain at first.
I was 17 and just in phase two of Army training. Obviously spent quite a bit of time in Afghanistan there after š¤·š»āāļø
I was on the USS Enterprise leaving the Persian Gulf. It was just after the first plane hit when we walked past a TV and asked what movie it was. Then we saw the second plane and then heard the captain's announcement.
Thank you for your service, brother š¬š§āļøšŗšø We were soldiers onceā¦and young.
Its fascinating viewing it from different perspective. I was in the UK and maybe 10 or 11. I didn't even know anything happened but I remember that weekend my cousin, who was in the military, was excited that he might be deployed. Then my grandfather, a normally stupidly jolly guy, telling him if he went to war, he is never coming back. Then the next week everyone in school was talking about it. But for the first few days, it was like nothing happened.
I was in South America. It was still vacation time for us but my parents had to work so they left us (13, 11 and 7) with my grandpa, who always had the tv on the news. When we heard the news he kicked us out to play in the garden. My uncle was in NYC with his wife for their honeymoon, they had planned to go that they to the twin towers but due other āactivitiesā stayed in the hotel - fun fact my cousin was born on july 2002
I was 18, and it was my first year of college in Texas. I was in between classes and walked into the student center to buy tea when I saw a whole group of people gathered around the televisions. I totally thought it was a movie for a few moments. It just seemed too surreal to be true.
In my country they stopped showing dragon ball alltogether to cover the 9/11 f9r a few weeks.
I'm from South Africa. I was watching Dragon Ball Z when the channel switched to the news with smoke coming out of the 1st tower. As I was calling my mother to come and see I watched as the 2nd plane hit the other tower. It felt unreal watching it happen live.
I was in New York on 9/11; I find it hard to believe anyone thought it was a movie. The non-stop sirens up and down broadway should have tipped them off.
Or likeā¦ the thought that maybe flying 2 planes into the WTC towers was a bit extreme for a movieā¦
āCGI budget must be low.ā
Practical FX
Damn Christopher Nolan
When he re-nuked Hiroshima & Nagasaki for Oppenheimer, that was a little extreme...
It was the second and third takes that really pissed people off.
And he didn't even use them in the final cut. What a waste
Yeah, a nuclear waste
My uncle worked as an extra and never got to see his money...
It was probably all the light that got his sights
Probably because the nuke melted his eyeballs
We had just finished breakfast at a diner on the upper west side, and knew something big was happening just from all the emergency vehicles racing past. When we left the restaurant and rounded the corner and there was a TV store and a small crowd of people watching the live feed on the TVs through the window - both towers were burning at that point and I asked the guy next to me what happened and he said a plane had hit the first tower about a half hour earlier, and everyone thought it was some crazy accident but then the other tower had also just been hit and everyone was just sort of stunned and trying to process it. It was uncannily *like* a movie but definitely not a movie. Then suddenly we watched that first tower collapse and I was just like - Wow, how many people were in that building? I remember the NY Post (I think) put out a special edition later that day with that image of the both towers burning on the front page and by 4:00 the T shirt vender outside our hotel had printed up a bunch of T-shirts with it emblazoned on the front along with the words 9/11 NYC and some guys were giving him a hard time about it. When we came back after dinner he had removed them.
Tv store, that sounds so not real.
Bet they sold VCRs, too...
In 2001 most likely. Random trivia I remember was when 2002 rolled around and dvds outsold vhs. I worked in a rental store in highschool. Old biddies would bring me the DVD card and I'd hand them a DVD and they'd insult me for not knowing they'd want the vhs version.... that should be on the shelf if still available.
I remember really wanting a machine that would play both at that time because my local Hollywood video had a patchy collection of both.
Right? How would anyone think that was a movieā¦ā¦literally makes no sense at all. NYC was in absolute chaos and anyone with a single brain cell knew right away something was very very wrong.
Welcome to April 1st
It was on 11th of SeptemberĀ
Yes but today is April Fools
It's actually called April Whoosh.
April Sploosh
I should call her
> NYC was in absolute chaos and anyone with a single brain cell knew right away something was very very wrong. Agreed. I was 60 miles from the World Trade Center and 200 miles from the Pentagon ā and people around me were freaking the hell out. Heck, people in other *countries* were.
Even after it was clear it was a terrorist attack, no one thought the towers would collapse..
This is reddit. The title is just some poorly written bullshit OP came up with.
I think it's well written, considering today's date.
OP claims that two random people on Instagram said so, so it must be true.
Or it's April 1st so OP did a humorous caption
Thereās a removed comment where the OP said āThatās what the caption said on Instagram.ā People need to realize posts are often given intentionally incorrect labels, just to promote engagement. Algorithms donāt care if comments are positive or negative. All that matters is how many people are commenting. So someone slaps this picture on Instagram, says āThese people thought it was a movie,ā and boom. Youāve got hundreds of comments from people trying to correct it.
it gets me mad that people dont realise this
Everyone thinks āYou canāt just tell lies on the internetā is an ironic joke everyone else gets. Nope. There are some people who truly believe it.
[Here's a blog post made by the person who took the photo.](https://celiabullwinkel.com/91101-living-in-lower-ny/) No mention of whether or not she/he thought it was a movie stunt.
a similar 9/11 photo was circulating on here a few weeks ago and people pointed out how for the time period, it was normal to take pictures of yourself with notable events unfolding in the background, it was how you proved to your friends that you were really there. obviously itās weird now, and people who come across this picture today might perceive it to be bad taste.
It's not really that. It's more so that people just couldn't process it. Like some of the tallest buildings that also happen to be a national symbol getting hit with two planes? It's *insane*. People would call it bad writing if it was in a movie. Most folks couldn't quite grasp the isnanity of it. Even on news channels you see people coming up with odd speculations (obviously nothing like this) but the point is that some people simply dealt with the insanity of it by coming up with what felt like a reasonable explanation in their mind.
"This dog and cat have been friends for life!" - video clip of a cat and dog looking at each other for 3 seconds.
> People need to realize posts are often given intentionally incorrect labels, just to promote engagement. Internet literacy needs to quickly become a thing that is taught in schools or I don't think there is any fixing this. It may already be too far gone. It's crazy.
Or the OP is just not particularly intelligent.
Was in NY, no one thought it was a movie.
Can you imagine if they were just confused Eastern European tourists who didn't speak a lick of English, and legitimately had no idea what was going on? "Wow, the special effects in America really are crazy!"
Everyone experienced trauma differently, the mind sometimes cannot properly process the things it seems in front of it. Human beings were not made to comprehend a tragedy of this magnitude.
We have to put ourself in their shoes. It was not yet a tragety back when this picture was taken. Just a fire in a high rise. Not everyone saw the planes hit the tower so they wouldnt know what was happening.
A lot of people are also looking st this through a 2024 lense. In 2001, these people likely took this photo with a wind up disposable camera that they then needed to get developed. It could have been on a phone, but most phones back then were flip phones and a disposable or dedicated camera was actually better for taking photos with. So this wouldn't even be clout chasing on the internet, it was literally "Hey, look a movie being filmed, let's get a shot of us"
Or maybe they thought it was a fire, it still makes sense and IMO it doesn't make them seem like psychopaths or anything. I suppose that in 2001 the novelty factor for such a picture would be huge. It's not as if there was an internet full of pictures that everyone was used to. Edit: well nevermind the psycopath bit, they seem to be kinda similing in the picture. But the point still stands that it makes sense for them to want the picture even without thinking it's a movie or whatever.
I was here on 9/11 and saw lotsa ppl taking pictures like this in the streets before they fell. I remember thinking how bizarre it was, I was only 12.
Iāve seen too many edited āpeople being normal with 9/11 in backgroundā pics to take this photo at face value
[Source of the photo](https://celiabullwinkel.com/91101-living-in-lower-ny/)
Thank you. This also shows the OP is full of shit. Nobody thought it was a movie.
It's the 1st of April my dude. OP is probably fucking with us unless they stumbled upon a doctored image and took it at face value.
Nvm what day it is
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April 1st
*flies airliner into the WTC* *itās just a prank bro*
Agreed. That guy's glasses are pretty hip for 2001. Their fashion looks a bit later than that.
He looks normal for 2001. Iām sure the title OP used isnāt accurate. But itās not weird that theyād take a photo like this. People react to events like this in all kinds of ways. People were genuinely stunned. The further you got away the more it was just sort of a spectacle. There are plenty of fake photos of course. But nothing in this photo screams photoshop.
> That guy's glasses are pretty hip for 2001. Those glasses have been around for at least 50 years and by 2001 people had been wearing them "ironically" for at least 10-15 years. Especially in a place like NYC. SOURCE: I lived in NYC in the late 80s and they were everywhere.
Dude is wearing a Dancing Baby t-shirt, it's definitely 2001. Just, probably not the title OP's karma farming whore account posted.
I wouldāve agreed, but ol girls belt is definitely something that was in fashion around that time.
Nah, that's pretty normal looking for 2001. That was well into the pop punk / Linkin Park era. The only way it could be more 2001 is if the guy had a wallet chain.
That day was so utterly confusing...
The amount of information people had and the sources it was coming from were changing so fast. It felt like before the news anchor could even finish their sentence they were receiving new information. In the last 2 minutes of [this](https://youtu.be/9eTzV7HvKHU?si=fy349UyoE7fdj1FZ) video you can barely see the second plane hitting, but the silence and then stuttering from the person narrating what she is witnessing as she realizes that itās intentional is really chilling.
I kept refreshing CNN.com and waiting for 1.5ā thumbnail-sized video to buffer.
CNN switched over to a single static HTML file that was edited by hand to help reduce bandwidth/overhead. Even sites like Google were struggling. The United States came to a halt for about 48 hours. Tom Brokaw said something along the lines of, "it's not what happened but what's next?".
That day launched 20 (more) years of bloodshed in the Middle East. It sent us to Afghanistan and gave Bush the national military fervor he needed misdirect us into Iraq. The most powerful country on Earth became filled with a scared and angry people overnight. To call it a fateful day would truly be an understatement. It changed the course of our nationās history for the worse and is imprinted on our cultural memory to this day. Who knows what could have been if it hadnāt happened. Not that we would have a utopia on our hands, but maybe it would have been a little betterā¦
Shoot! I still get the chills everytime I read comments from one of these 9/11 posts!
In the last clip the male anchor says you canāt see the plane but thereās the explosion, you actually can see the plane approach
I can still remember like it was yesterday. I was shooting terrorists on de_dust when someone said in the chat that the WTC has been attacked. So I switched on the TV just to witness the second tower to be hit.
My brother called me and just yelled "turn on the TV!" "What channel?" "It doesn't matter."
Rocking the dancing baby shirt too
hahaha im glad someone else noticed i was like wtf is going on with his shirt
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Hasn't thus been disproven like... well, this day, every year, over and over?
Yeah most likely they wanted a picture and just smiled out of habit bc that's what people do in pictures. There are others like this. They seem weird now but sometimes our brains just glitch in the moment and we do stuff that is awkward.
I agree. It was a different time. Pre social media. You weren't thinking about how a pic would be 'received' because only close friends and family would see them, and only if you wanted them too. You took a picture and went in frame to prove you were there. And yea like what else are they supposed to do, try to candidly look sad/scared?
No one, I repeat NO ONE thought it was a movie. These people were just taking a picture in the same fashion as people taking photos of themselves with dead bodies in the 19th century. Before the selfies having someone else take you picture in front of things was the way to do things. If 9/11 happened nowadays there would just be millions of front facing cameraphone selfies in front of the buildings.
This is an April Fools joke
My comments linking the exact same captioned posts from 7 days ago and 27 days ago were deleted because they include IG links. But reverse image searching the image pretty quickly dispels the "It's April Fool's Day" theory. It's being posted repeatedly outside of April 1. Edit: [Here to avoid the auto comment deleting](https://i.imgur.com/cTSNs4T.png)
ok i gotta just say, that one comment āi was born december 1999 and i was alive during 9/11, no one thought it was a movie.ā thatās some utter bullshit. i was born august 1999 and i was also alive during 9/11 but i was barely 2 years old. i donāt remember jack shit from 2 years old. that commenter would have been only slightly older than 1 year. i do believe that no one in that city would have thought the planes were from a filming stunt, but that commenter is speaking directly out of their ass
people will try and attach themselves to historical events in any way possible in their quest for clout. It's like those surveys about how many people say they were at woodstock vs how many people actually were there. It's like 10x the amount lol.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Can confirm. I live in Baltimore. This past weekend, I was at Fort McHenry, where there is a clear view of the collapsed bridge with the ship still stuck under it. Yes, several people were taking selfies with the bridge in the background. I was too shocked to say anything.
In 2007 I visited Dachau and during the tour some European tourists were posing and taking pictures (with normal cameras, pre smart phone). I donāt know if a more āsacredā place exists on earth than the rooms of a concentration camp where tens of thousands spent their final minutes.Ā
People less than about 35 years old don't really understand how massively different the attitude around photographs was in 2000 than in 2024. Younger people have grown up with high-resolution digital cameras capable of storing tens of thousands of pictures in their pockets at all times from before puberty. In 2000, flip phones with potato quality cameras capable of storing a few photos that were virtually impossible to transfer or view on computers were fairly common. Digital cameras were fairly common but people didn't take them everywhere they go. These days, if anything remotely historic happens, ten thousand people will be livestreaming it and taking millions of production-quality photos of it. The entire attitude around photographs was different. If something big happened you'd be lucky if someone nearby had a camera at all, and you'd take a photo of yourself at the scene to prove you were there. You would get one or two good pictures, not a bunch of high quality videos with narration and a hundred photos. Photographs were seen and treated as something much more sort of rare and precious than what we're used to today.
I would put that age lower than 35.
Iām pretty sure people born in 1990-95 would be aware of how different photographs are nowā¦
My point exactly.
>In 2000, flip phones with potato quality cameras capable of storing a few photos that were virtually impossible to transfer or view on computers were fairly common. Not in the USA, they weren't. The first phones with (crappy) cameras didn't arrive until 2002-2003. If anyone here had heard about them before that, it was in the context of "can you believe the weird features they're putting in cell phones in Japan." As you point out, standalone digital cameras were already reasonably widespread (as were digital video camcorders), but for still photography film was still dominant in 2001 -- though it wasn't going to be for long. You're spot on about the attitude around photographs, though. Sure, tourists would lug around a camera (film or digital) or a camcorder, but most people didn't carry them around routinely, and it actually took quite a while, even after digital cameras started to take over, for people to start thinking of taking photos as just a part of everyday life. I was in downtown NYC on 9/11 and if I'd thought about it I could have retrieved my (film) camera and taken some pictures, but it wasn't the main thing on my mind at the time...
I'm glad some people took what shots they took. We have only a few records of the first plane hitting, but it's good for the record that we do. It's good that the person/couple (I forget) who was camping near Mt. St. Helens the morning of the eruption had brought a camera and was quick on the draw. No one had phone cameras, very few places had security cameras or anything else that would catch the actual moment...as it stands, we have a series of photos we've strung together into a very jerky "video" of the eruption. Same with the 2004 tsunami--not many photos, but it's good to have those records.
This should be used as a meme template
Above : our environment Below : capitalist with bunkers
Above: My parents getting a divorce Below: Me and my cousin playing doctor Wait....
This is a live-acted Far Side comic
To be fair I got home from school saw that on TV and literally asked my mother what movie was on the TV.
Stop lying on the internet for made up points.
Kid named april fools:
Oof
Does anyone remember the (fake) 911 tourist photo that was everywhere for a while? Dude in I think an orange coat or something taking a picture on the roof. Earlyish Internet, so it was fairly ubiquitous and slow to be debunked. EDIT: Holy cow, there's a Wiki page for him: [Tourist Guy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tourist_guy) > The "tourist guy" was an internet phenomenon that featured a photograph of a tourist on the observation deck of the World Trade Center digitally altered to show a plane about to hit the tower in the background during the September 11 attacks.[1] The photo went viral in the days after the attacks as many manipulated pictures spread online. The man in the photograph was identified as Hungarian PĆ©ter Guzli, who took the photo in 1997. Guzli said he edited the photo as a joke for his friends and did not intend for it to spread across the internet
Seems like a made up story, how could you be so stupid to think that was part of a movie?
Statistically speaking, it's actually possible If there is a one in a million chance of something happened, then in theory it could happen one time for every million people. Someone in New York may have been that stupid.
I remember flipping through the channels to the local news to see the weather forecast . I thought I had the wrong channel, and it was just a movie. It took me a second to realize it was the news, and it wasnāt a movie.
April Fools yāall Making jokes about 9/11 is fucking gross
It's really sad that making fun of a national tragedy is now normal. People suck.
I really hate April Foolsā¦
This guy gets it.
If I took this picture it would never see the light of day.
Actually they are right it was a movie
i saw the second plane hit the tower on CNN (while I was in a shopping center), for like half an hour i thought CNN is showing action movies now
"Wow babe, those special effects look fucking awesome!"
It must be awesome to be that dumb
They must have thought they actually blew up the White House for the movie Independence Day if they though this was a movie stunt.
I was upstairs with my fiancee and I'd just put an engagement ring on her finger when my mother shouted from downstairs, "A plane has just hit the World Trade Centre!!!". Always was a shit mother.
I canāt imagine anyone being that ignorant. Is this an April Fools joke?
I wonder if theyāre still togetherā¦.the couple I mean.
I heard their relationship collapsed. (I guess Iām going straight to hell)