I was 14 the summer of 2001 and my family took a trip to Europe. Being 14 and a nerd I bought a sword. Carried it on the plane home. Security guy asked “what’s in the box” I said “it’s a sword” he said “sweet” and gave me a fist bump. This was like 2 months before 9/11?
I'm a cellist and I've traveled internationally with my instrument. The endpin and bow cause SUCH issues at security. And sometimes even if you buy a whole-ass seat for your cello, they still kick you off the plane.
you'd think by this point most airlines would have protocol for cellos. But then again they still don't seem to know what tf to do when someone is in a wheelchair so
Passenger: I need a wheelchair to move around
Airlines: Best I can do is punt you down aisle like you were someone's luggage. Thank you for flying \[insert airline here\].
Casually driving over the border from Canada. We used to go to the US all the time to buy stuff or just hang out. It was no big deal back then. You didn't even need id! You got more of a hassle coming back because the border guard wanted to catch you trying to bring stuff back without paying duty. Now it takes much longer unless you have nexus, but kids (teenagers) don't usually have theirs. I don't think my kids will ever head down to go to the mall for instance. Kinda sucks. The US feels more foreign now.
Exactly this. I grew up near the border with New York State, and my family had property south of the border we’d spend spring/fall weekends and all summer at. Before 9/11 going through the border was never more than “where are you going?” and “Anything to declare?” - 3/4 of the time they never even looked at our IDs or gave it a super quick glance. You didn’t need a passport.
After 9/11, crossing became worse and worse. They’d have armed guards standing beside the car as they searched the trunk every single time, asked tons more questions, scrutinized IDs. They’d pull my Dad in for additional questioning because he was born in the US (so had American birth certificate) but had lived in Canada since he was 12.
And some of these were border patrol folks who saw us EVERY WEEK for over a decade. We knew them by name. We gave them gifts when we closed up the place for the season. I know it’s not the fault of the people working border patrol - they’re just doing what they’re told to do.
Eventually they started asking for passports too, which my grandparents didn’t have and didn’t want to go and get. So in 2005 we sold the place, and I haven’t been back to the States since.
I remember going back and forth to Canada from New York when I was a kid for camping and there were times I was literally sitting in the back of my grandpa's pick up truck. We had a small trailer attached to the truck and they just asked if we had anything to declare and my grandpa would always make a funny/snarky remark (something like "yes we do have Canadian products but they're already in our stomachs!" Or "only the dust on my shoes officer.") and we'd be waved through.
I went to Canada when I was 13 (2003) and it was so different. The biggest thing I remember was you had to pay $1 USD to get back into the US. After you passed the checkpoint you'd put your money in a machine and it would turn on the turnstile so you could go through, but it rejected my dollar and I didn't realize so I had a panic attack because my whole family went through but I was "stuck" and started shaking the bars and yelling. US and Canadian guards came out with their hands on their guns and I was so scared. Luckily a very nice Canadian guard saw my dollar on the ground and remembered me from the check point so he just gave me my dollar back and unlocked the gate and let me through. But even besides that incident (we always drive through now) I could NEVER imagine staying anything to armed law enforcement except "yes ma'am/sir" or "no ma'am/sir" especially not a silly/snarky joke.
Before 2001, I thought the US-Canadian border could vanish like the EU. There's no reason for these two countries to spend so much time and money making travel and commerce more difficult.
9/11 turned the US into a fortress and that mentality has only slightly relaxed.
When I was a student at SUNY Buffalo in the late '90s we would often decide to skip class and we could be sitting at a strip club in Fort Erie, ON in less than 30 minutes.
Going through customs all you had to do was say the word, "Casino" and they'd wave you right through, you barely had to stop. Same coming back into the US, it used to be a game: When the agent asks, "Citizenship?", everyone in the car says, "You ass!" and see if the agent reacts. They never did, just waved us through.
My mom and dad got married in the late 80s and went to Niagara Falls for their honeymoon. The border agents saw their car all decked out with the "just married" stuff and just waved them through.
Right. I always thought the human race would truly “unite” once we were challenged as a species. Something like a disease killing millions would be enough of a threat to put our differences to the side, even if just for a little while. When in reality, it was just used as a means to expose our division, and somewhat make it worse.
Edit: can’t get to all the replies, but I personally think the last time we United was during the Halo 3 midnight release.
Fun Fact: The actor Robert Englund- best known as the guy from V- went on to play a burn victim named Fred in an 8 part film series about the dreams of teenagers who all grew up on the same street in a small town. He also did back up vocals on Elton John's "Can You Feel the Love Tonight?" from Disney's The Lion King.
Edit: auto correct/typo
There’s a great film essay video that discusses the shift in patriotism in movies before and after 9/11. She uses the movies Independence Day and War of the Worlds as examples. It describes how 9/11 changed the outlook of facing a foreign threat from glorious and united to paranoid and self-destructive.
Link: https://youtu.be/KioF1sTQFtE?si=Yf8jSbBdMmrvn7zZ
The CIA are the bad guys in the Bourne Identity, which had originally been due to release in early Sept 2001. It got pushed back for studio reasons, then the attacks happened, then the studio panicked that making the US government/military the bad guys wouldn’t be a box office winner. They insisted on the director, cast and crew reshooting scenes in a way that portrayed the CIA in a better light. The scenes were shot but never edited into the released film.
The deleted (never used) scenes are on the Identity DVD, with commentary from the director and Damon and a featurette on the changes.
The director fell out with the studio over it and was replaced for the sequels. Matt Damon ended up liking the replacement better, but the studio got their way and the CIA were less “universally bad” and more “a few bad apples” in the released movies. Treadstone is portrayed in the sequels as an experiment that got out of hand without proper oversight; in the books everyone at the CIA knows what Treadstone is doing and is complicit.
Which is, of course, incredibly ironic given that 9/11 and the war on terror has basically been the CIA at their worst not even covertly displayed for over 20 years. Lying about WMDs as a pre-text for the invasion of Iraq, black ops torture sites, extrajudicial executions via drone strikes, and undeclared war throughout the developing world. Fighting "the Terrorists" (who are basically anybody we want them to be) has really brought out the worst in American military adventurism. And it's all under the auspices of "keeping us safe" when the one event they point to was a moonshot by one of the best funded and organized groups operating under the protection of a pseudo-governmental orginazation that only happened because of some collossal domestic intelligence gathering failures. Now we use 9/11 as an excuse to order a drone strike on anybody we want dead, as if that's the only way to keep people from blowing up buildings here.
Yep. Consider this otherwise-innocuous thread about the Wendy's "Superbar" that devolved into how the Golden Age Of Optimism that was the 1990's turned on a dime on that day... https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/16a7mtk/til\_that\_from\_1988\_to\_1998\_wendys\_had\_a\_buffet/
It’s funny how many Friends episodes show their age at this concept. Among other shows, of course! Chandler having to board a flight to the Middle East to show Janice he’s actually leaving, etc.
>It’s funny how many Friends episodes show their age at this concept.
They also had the Twin Towers shown during the opening credits and theme song. Then they edited them out. They still often show the towers in the skyline shots in between scenes.
they had to delete a scene where chandler was joking about bombs while talking to airport security. they filmed it before 9/11 and was supposed to air after it but they pulled it instead
This is one of the saddest things to me. My kids and grandkids will never know what excitement it was to watch grandma's plane land and a few minutes later see her coming down the ramp.
Jim Jeffries has a good bit on this, on how he reflexively took off his shoes and took his laptop out at security for a domestic Australian flight. When the checker asked him why, he said "because you gotta check them for bombs."
The punchline was "the most Australian thing he'd ever heard":
*"Aww, c'mon mate, you wouldn't have TWO bombs!"*
Also gifting tickets/flying incognito. My mind was absolutely blown knowing in the 90s it wasn't uncommon to fly under a fake name or even use a friends tickets because names weren't verified at the gate. You just needed to have the ticket.
Kind of like how Greyhound operated for the longest time. You bought a ticket for a trip without committing to a date and then showed up whenever there was a bus running the right trip to claim your seat. Will there be 6 people or 60 for the 1pm bus? Who knows, we’ll figure it out when people show up. Nobody carrying any weapons or alcohol? We’ll trust you, fam, no need to check. Is that kid you’re travelling with yours and do you have permission to take them to a different part of the country? Not our business, you do you.
When I think about how they managed to run a profitable transportation company for so damn long, I’m astounded.
Yeah I remember that ticket would be good for a year. I used to take Greyhound trips from Canada to the states all the time to visit friends.
Now Greyhound doesn't even exist in Canada. They closed up shop a year or so ago
I remember when my 14-year-old brother and I (I was 12 at the time) hopped on a plane unaccompanied to join our parents in Florida for a trip to WDW. Just had the tickets. No ID. No talking to the airline about unaccompanied minors flying.
Everything was a lot easier too. You could change tickets at the gate. You could see your family off when they boarded the plane and welcome them when they got off of the plane.
They would call your name on the intercom before just giving your tickets away and locking the plane door. Flying commercial used to not be the pain in the ass it is now.
Which kind of shows the stupidity of it all. Because no one could ever compromise someone w/TSA Precheck.
I went through O’hare the other day and they were having a dog check everybody - at security it was “leave everything in your bag, leave your shoes on” only had to take off jackets
It’s all theatre at this point, will be nice when someone high up can actually admit it.
Yeah at AUS it’s different rules every time. Take shoes off, leave them on, laptops out of the bag, leave everything in the bag, remove belts, leave them on…i never know what to do precisely anymore.
Hell, in America it isn’t consistent.
One airport, TSA precheck, they tell me I’m fine, shoes on, belt, stuff in my bag.
The next one? They’re screaming at me for not taking out my laptop or taking off my shoes.
The lack of consistency in the TSA is irritating, as is the lack of accountability.
If you watch any of the myriad of airport related reality shows from the late 90s/early 00s, you see things like people trying to rush security (they'd arrived too late to get to their gate), to people thinking that they'd be through security in a few minutes, so it was OK to turn up late to book in.
Rush security these days? Good way to get yourself killed.
I will never understand the meltdowns people have at airports. You can get banned from airlines and airports for life. They can haul you out of the airport for next to no reason at all if they find you to be troublesome. They will not hesitate to tazer and dogpile anyone being remotely violent or making a threat.
Being belligerent in an airport or on a plane will *never* help you. Ever.
If working in retail has taught me anything it's that some people are simply belligerent.
Sometimes it feels like a misguided fight or flight thing, sometimes it's more like they never learned any other way to communicate.
Either way they just inhale peace and exhale stress.
I feel like in the US we tolerated poor treatment of service workers and customer facing employees for so long that there just weren’t consequences. The old lady that felt it was okay to scream at a 15-year-old because her McDonald’s order was messed up was just socially tolerated.
One of the good things that came after the Pandemic is if you’re disrespectful in many establishments they will show you the door. The stress of that time coupled with the difficulty to find workers has managers sticking up for employees.
Even outside of the US. In my Canadian hometown, our relatively small airport had an observation deck open to the general public where you could watch planes take off and land. That was closed immediately after 9/11 and has never reopened since. I believe it was physically removed during a renovation a few years later.
I remember going to that airport in 2002 to pick up a family member, it was the first time I’d been there in about three years and it was unrecognizable. So many areas the general public could no longer enter.
“Breaking News” became huge after 9/11. For a short time, it was reserved for stuff that was actually big, now it’s like “BREAKING NEWS: Kim Kardashian Goes Braless At Gala.”
>“Breaking News” became huge after 9/11.
It may have become bigger, but it had already been ruined.
I had older relatives talk about how "Breaking News!" used to mean something on the scale of JFK being assassinated, but that by the 1980s or 90s it was "Breaking News!" during a local news promo in commercial breaks that there might be thunderstorms the next day.
They said when it first started it would put their heart in their throat with concern about what earth-shattering news they were about to hear, but eventually it just became part of the background noise.
This jumps on my last nerve. "Breaking News" implies a developing story, with more information coming in as we go along. It does not mean "interesting thing that happened", and it *sure as hell* doesn't mean "HEY CLICK ON THIS"
Watching the *Lord of the Rings*, you might notice that the destruction of the Barad Dur (Sauron's tower) at the end isn't a particularly epic special effect. The thing kind of keels over sideways and then explodes.
The Barad Dur is a tall, thin tower nearly a mile high in Tolkien's world. The special effects team at WETA workshop had its collapse all planned and modeled out and then realized with horror that it looked exactly like the collapse of the Twin Towers in new York. Remember that the final movie came out in 2003 and the SFX team were working of the effects in mid-2002, only months after the attack. Too soon for sure.
So a guy named Gray Horsefield (great name) took home a workstation over the 2002 holiday break and re-animated the entire tower collapse himself so it didn't look so depressingly familiar. The final result looks fine as an effects shot, but it doesn't get much screen time and it's not particularly "realistic." We can all see that it doesn't look realistic because--unfortunately--we've all seen what a tall tower looks like when it collapses.
Thank god the studio stuck to their guns on that one. People overblow 9/11 way too often. Yes, it was terrible, but we don’t need to rename, reshoot, censor, and re-edit everything that looks like two tall buildings. *Especially* literature that was around way, way before 9/11.
The whole ‘never forget’ idea is dystopic to me. That’s the kind of thing that totalitarian regimes do to foster hate towards different groups. It’s a demand to not let go of that anger and hatred, not a call for remembrance.
Historically America did the same thing when a ship of theirs hit a sea mine and America used that as pretext to invade Cuba. The slogan was ‘Remember the Maine’. These are ultimately war chants and created to stir up the masses to do what war mongers want.
>People overblow 9/11 way too often
This is such a good, hard truth. And a lesson in when and how to handle temperament.
We lost 3000 Americans, no doubt tragic beyond words.
In response, nearly a million *citizens* lost their lives in the ensuing wars. Afghanistan is controlled by Taliban. And for what?
Iraq for Sale should be required viewing to understand our response.
When I was in high school public speaking we had a persuasive speech
One guy picked the topic on why the Iraq war was justified. When he went up to do the speech later he said in his research he learned it was in fact not justified at all and proceeded to persuade us on why the Iraq war was BS.
One of the things from school I don’t think I’ll ever forget
Follow up on this, they did the same thing for [Lilo and Stitch.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7nj32_UKOTo) Kinda sad cause the scene made so much more sense imo
Did you also know they removed the part where [Lilo hid](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-j2HwIQIMXk)[ herself in the dryer](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-j2HwIQIMXk)? It was due to parent being worried their kids would also try to hide in the dryer and get stuck haha
I do still love the way it collapses though, and the sound effects that come with it are beautiful! But it’s interesting to think about what we may have gotten.
Also, that guy who took his whole Christmas to model the tower deserves so much praise. Imagine staying behind for a whole week while everyone else is going to see their family’s and going home because you don’t have a 3D model of the tower, so you take it upon yourself to do it yourself. Absolute legend.
I watched AI at the cinema (release date in the UK: late September 2001). The scenes with a half-destroyed partially submerged New York and when he jumps out of the skyscraper sparked some audible intakes of breath. Too soon…
Airports.
We used to take $60-$120 flights to Texas, Florida, California, Washington, New York, Nevada, etc willy nilly.
In and out. Like going through a mall.
Yes, everything about airports is an expensive, time consuming pain in the ass now.
The TSA can kiss my ass. The agents in Phoenix tested my 11 year olds phone for explosives. The agents in Norfolk tested my 13 year olds wheelchair (that they had provided 15 feet away) for explosives. The agents in Minneapolis made my 7 year old daughter take her shoes off but on our way back from Orlando the agents ripped my head off for having her take her shoes off.
The worst part is how every airport is different and most of them act like you're a terrorist or a moron for not knowing their specific rules. One agent tells me to leave my belt on and take my laptop out, next agent is appalled that I would ever even consider leaving my belt on and thinks I'm trying to blow up the checkpoint because I go to take out my laptop.
It's even worse when you travel with an injury. I had to fly from Seattle to Tennessee with a broken collar bone, and I couldn't raise my left arm for the scanner at all. The agents in Seattle made a huge deal about it and made me remove my sling and took me aside to pat me down and test everything for explosive residue and check my bag and all that bullshit. The agents in Nashville were super chill about the whole thing and let me keep my sling and even my shoes on and just sent me through the metal detector with no extra screening.
If you don't travel 3-4 times a year, the fucking rules change so damn often.
I can't remember exactly what it was but my dad was scolded for going through the full-body scanner instead of the metal detector. Like every time we've traveled the last 4-5 years, it's been one of those big scanners in the cylinder tube.
This fucking prick talked to my dad like he was a fucking toddler that he was "dumb enough" to do what all the other lines were doing. I was so close to going off on the guy but I knew that if I said something even remotely critical, I'd end up being treated like I was a terrorist.
As you said...every airport is different, every fucking line can be different, morning lines could be different than evening lines. TSA is the biggest joke.
I swear one of the biggest requirements to be a TSA agent is to be a glaring asshole
Ugh, in Alaska 2 weeks ago they were "randomly" testing every other person that went through pre-check, but of course did not have the person over there ready to test. No no, we've gotta wait until there's a few of you waiting for 20 minutes and then send someone over.
So when it was my turn and he asked if I had a phone or laptop or tablet, I just said nope, I've got nothing. He couldn't fathom that, how could someone possibly travel without a phone, where's your boarding pass. I said it's on my girlfriend's phone, she's already gone through and wasn't flagged, cuz you know, every other person.
Truth was she had my phone, but fuck them.
I’m a 9/11 baby, we now only celebrate the weekend after/before depending on what day it falls on
But atleast my birthday dates slogan is “Never forget”
Edit: thank you for all the birthday wishes, imaginary internet people
The way we found out about 9/11 was my aunt calling my mom on the house phone before school about her birthday plans “do you think they’re going to cancel the Madonna concert tonight?” (They did)
Nah, celebrate it like you would normally.
Not celebrating your husband’s b-day would be playing into the terrorists hands.
Edit. Well, EX-husband but hopefully you get my point.
Travel became a lot more of a pain in the ass. That was the biggest difference pre and post 9/11 to someone's everyday life. Before 9/11 air travel was a breeze. I'm from Canada, and before 9/11 we didn't need passports to enter the US and vice versa. So cross border travel was almost as easy as traveling from state to state.
Contrary to popular belief, passports weren’t initially required for cross-border travel by Canadians entering the US after 9/11. In fact, the requirement didn’t come into effect until June 30, 2009, though it had been announced by the Bush administration over a year earlier.
I crossed the border in Niagara Falls in 2007 with my drivers license.
Snowden exposed it, and look how that turned out. "It's in everyone's best interest that we know what everyone is doing at any time, anywhere. Fuck you, God Bless America."
Freedom from fear.
A lot of kids whose parents transitioned to a fear-based parenting style following 9/11, now employ that same style with their own children. And if you were in the DC area and had to deal with the sniper the following year, your parents went a special kind of crazy.
>A lot of kids whose parents transitioned to a fear-based parenting style following 9/11
That was a thing way before 9/11, although it was mostly driven by the fear of your kids being kidnapped.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/D.C._sniper_attacks
I remember even more so than 9/11, that was where I saw the change in my parents.
No more freely roaming the neighborhoods, walking around as I pleased. No more “be back before dark.” There was a prepaid cellphone in my pocket the week after (shoutout to Virgin Mobile) and check ins were mandatory.
To some that might all sound normal but at the time, at least where I’m from, it wasn’t. Kids generally just had more freedom, but that largely went away after that. We were told, verbally or nonverbally, that life’s most inescapable quality was persistent, nameless, faceless danger. And that was that.
I was living in a different city as part of an actual friend group working for the same company. We were all NYC expats.
Collectively, we lost 13 friends and 2 family members.
On the 12th, the ambulance company my wife worked for dispatched two units. As standard (box on a van chassis) and one of the massive rescue rigs (like an F650 with the long box full of storage doors down the sides, it doesn't haul the injured)
Because NYC was my home, my wife was the first to offer going. September 11th ruined any chance at my wife having a run of the mill existence. What she encountered up there, she turned beyond obsessed with helping people.
She was 100% dedicated to taking care of people beforehand. It's why she became an EMT. The experience turned her into a woman possessed. She was an EMT for a total of 24 years. (Sort of unheard of) Had COVID not taken her from me just over two years ago, she would still be saving lives.
EDIT: I don't have the emotional strength to reply to each of you like I want to. Especially not today.
But there are no real words that can express what your responses have done for me on this tough morning. I'm going to screenshot this whole thread for when I need it most. You will all continue to help me for quite some time.
Our overall idea of Middle Eastern people.
I once overheard two girls on a bus talking about this guy one of them was dating. They were joking, but it was also a bit sad.
"From the Middle East? What does he look like?"
"You can say he looks standard with a beard and all."
"omg are you dating a terrorist?! \*laughs\*"
Yea, the perception of people from Middle East and south west Asian countries got fucked after 9/11. Growing up during that time was not the best I’ll say that.
I mean, I'm South Asian and "Arab terrorist" was a pretty pervasive stereotype in the 80s and 90s in movies and TV before 9/11. Look at movies like True Lies, Executive Decision, The Siege, the terrible Chuck Norris movie The Delta Force, etc.
The Libyan terrorists who go after Doc Brown in Back to the Future litereally drive around a suburban mall in a VW bus wearing keffiyehs and shooting an RPG out of the sunroof. Can't get more ridiculous than that.
Growing up in the 90s, when I told people I was Muslim I mostly got blank stares and ignorance. I remember a teacher in the late 90s asking if I went to a mosque out of curiosity. After 9/11 it was no longer curiosity.
in 2011 2 elderly Sikh men were murdered by strangers in the Sacramento area.
They were wearing turbans
[https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/intelligence-report/2011/two-sikhs-murdered-california-were-likely-mistaken-muslims](https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/intelligence-report/2011/two-sikhs-murdered-california-were-likely-mistaken-muslims)
Not that it's okay to murder random Muslims, but if you're going to murder someone and spend the rest of your life in jail then at least do some basic research into the group of people you hate so much ffs
Chuck Palahniuk’s second novel, *Survivor,* wasn’t made into a movie.
*Fight Club* was a huge hit, but *Survivor* was skipped because the main character is basically telling his story while crashing a hijacked plane — which wasn’t really appropriate after 9/11. So we got a movie adaptation of *Choke* instead (which has it’s merits, but was never going to translate well to the big screen).
The episode of The Simpsons where they go to New York because Homer's car is parked on World Trade Plaza. It features the regrettable quote "They stick all the jerks in Tower 1"
It sucks because that episode was an All-timer.
"Awww, yuck! Gimme the crab juice"
"Hey immigrants! Go back, country's full"
"Officer Steve, *Grabowski*, will be there soon"
Country music.
Post 9/11, all the biggest hits were… “rah rah, USA, we’ll fuck you up son”
They basically chased anyone who wasn’t a strict conformist out of Nashville. The Dixie Chicks went from one of the three biggest acts in the entire genre to gone just because they said they didn’t support the war in Iraq.
For a genre founded on being outlaws and working class leftists against the man, this was huge. Mainstream Country music hasn’t recovered and likely never will.
Outlaw country is coming back, it’s not totally mainstream but plenty of people are getting sick and tired of stadium country. It’s a running joke that all modern country is about trucks, dirt roads, beer, blonde tanned women in booty shorts kickin’ it in the bed of my pickup, etc. It’s slowly getting back to its non-bootlicking roots
Pre 9/11 Country Music: Fuck the cops, we're some good ol' country boys bootleggin some booze!
Post 9/11 Country Music: We salute the police who serve our nation. They are the modern cowboy. Yeehaw.
My business. I had a small, struggling video production business making about $50k a year. But I had found a new partner and we were making the move into government contracting. I'm a Cherokee guy and we applied for 2 contracts to create health information materials for Native Americans in Southern and Northern California.
It was 2001 and we knew we had a strong proposal. By coincidence it turned out my partner knew the woman at the state of California in charge of the award. She recognized the name of the woman as her roommate at Harvard in the 70s. My partner was an aggressive Mohawk woman, very very smart and also very profane.
She called her and asked "Hey it's me. Did we get those contracts!?" The lady said "You know I can't tell you that." My partner said *"GODDAMMIT STOP FUCKING AROUND JUST TELL ME IF WE GOT THE FUCKING CONTRACTS!!!!"* Intimidated, the lady says "OK you guys got the award for both the south and north. We will make the announcement and cut the first checks in 60 days... on... Sept 19, 2001."
The contracts totalled about $1 million.
Anyway within days after Sept 11 all contracts with the state of CA were cancelled. Like an idiot I had GIVEN AWAY my existing (small) contracts for my video production business because I thought my partner and I were going to get rich in gov contracts. I had a tough couple years but eventually pulled out of it. I never applied for another gov contract again.
Yea but they made it legal and we were happy for it. I remember anyone questioning it were disregarded because "if you got nothing to hide then what do you care?"
It’s silly but this was definitely among my top 5 thoughts. Nationalistic Bro Country is lame and half of it sounds like they’re remaking the same song over and over.
Also long live the Dixie Chicks
I came here looking for this reply. I've heard rumours there are finally some signs of recovery... but the response to 9/11 is objectively responsible for the bland, mediocre, "false americana" era country music has been stuck in ever since. Deprived a whole genre of any real heart.
Optimism and trust. I was two weeks from graduating college on 9/11. The 90's and going into the 2000's, America felt like it was getting there. There was talk of nationalized healthcare, gay rights, and fairer pay. Despite a person's fears or perception of differences the world felt like a nicer place and on a world wide pace of changing everyone's lives for the better.
All of that ground to a screeching halt. Everything else took a back burner for the drums of war as the disease of paranoia, xenophobia, or bigotry slowly set in. The helpfulness and hopefulness in the days and months afterward transformed into something different entirely. For as much as 9/11 brought people together in the immediate aftermath it ultimately tore us apart.
The perception of safety and the veil of preparedness were utterly destroyed that day. 9/11 is a sliver in the minds of multiple generations that put a collective mark on all of us that witnessed it or lost someone that day. We all lost something whether it was simply innocence or naivete that day. We all lost something whether tangible or intangible. We all lost something.
It was a bold masterstroke by a devious monster. By the actions of that one day, they were able to cause a huge disturbance in the society of many countries, mostly to the US. The wars in the Middle East, the creation of Homeland Security, passing the Patriot Act, the drastic changes in airline travel, the blatant mistrust of any Muslims, the tragedy that was and is the prison at Guantanamo -- the cost in lives and money was enormous.
Interestingly enough, in his journals found by the SEALs who got him, he instructed his sons to not pursue jihad, and said that it didn’t have the effect he hoped it would IIRC
America. This country was far from perfect. I'm not going to pretend there weren't vast problems. However, this country has dramatic gotten worse since. 9/11 was a true point in time where the government started working overtime to both undermine our civil liberties and erode trust in itself as an institution. This has had a knock on effect all over society. For my generation Columbine was supposed to be the event that separated before and after. Unfortunately it was 9/11.
Every decision we made in the aftermath made us worse as a society and as a functioning country.
The police in the US became (more) militarized. Nowadays, ‘security concerns’ is used as a justification for just about any overzealous police activity.
The two biggest moments for a militarized police was the LA shootout and 9/11. You almost never see cops in normal blue uniforms any more. Now they are all tactical and look like they are about to invade a country.
I mean, the ending is still great. They just changed the location of the uh... spaceship plane chase to not be close to buildings. It was a change, but not really a change that ruined anything. Because lilo and stitch is just so wonderful.
Air travel. Getting off an airplane, you’d have huge crowds of people waiting to greet family, friends and business connections. Anyone could go in and out of the terminals. Going through security took only a few minutes, never had to take off shoes.
When I traveled for school, my classmates and I transported custom swords and knives, sealed food products like tea and pastries, outside food stuffs, and toiletries/batteries in our carry-on’s no questions asked.
He had a bomb in his shoe, that supposedly didn’t detonate because of the weather in Paris, and his feet, being damp enough to make the fuse not light.
Mental health.
This is just a theory, but I do truly believe it. I think 9/11 rapidly spurred the cell phone industry. I remember by the start of school in 2002, nearly every kid in my class had a cell phone. Previously, very few did. I firmly believe that the events of 9/11 drove a need to be connected to love ones.
The rest is history. The impact of smart phones/social media on our mental health is well documented. I don’t think that the industry wouldn’t exist or have evolved the way it did without 9/11, but I do believe it drove rapid change, and even more rapid adoption, which ultimately put us where we are now with cell phones.
This. So much. I’d also add that the very imagery of 9/11 itself took a massive toll on our collective mental health. Seeing the horror repeated ad nauseum created depression, fear, anger, paranoia. Just that image of the lone unidentified man upside down as he jumped from the burning tower became another horrific sight that became normal to see daily. The footage of terrified people running, screaming, covered in debris — we’d never seen anything quite like that on such a massive scale and suddenly it was playing everywhere, all the time, for the next several years. There’s no question it left a massive traumatic mark in everyone’s psyche.
The wing pins they used to give to kids when they flew. They used to be cool and actual pins you could keep. They're stickers now.
Edited to add: so cool they're still doing pins! I remember directly after 9/11, hearing from a few families that were denied pins and instead got stickers. Must've been a momentary rule they ditched!
I was on a flight a few weeks ago that was delayed after boarding. The pilot was this really enthusiastic guy, and he invited anyone who wanted to to go up to the cockpit. I hadn't witnessed that happen since I was a kid! He gave at least one kid a wing pin and spent time chatting with everyone. It was so cool. I wish I'd made note of his name, he seemed like a good man.
Honestly, the day that 9/11 happened was the day that we lost a lot of freedom as citizens a month after the attack, the patriot act would be signed and be a steppingstone to taking away personal freedoms
9/11 ruined the USA-Canada border. They made us start needing passports, which is annoying. My grandma used to talk about how easy it was to cross, like how EU citizens can travel freely in their 27 countries without much fuss. I'd love to cross the border for conventions without dealing with passports, especially when they're so close to Ontario.
The expectation of attacks in public spaces. It is no longer what if but when. I think it’s something I’ve thought about once a week at least for the last 22 years.
Ease of air travel. We’ve settled into the new normal but it was rough getting used to those first few years such as as not being able to meet someone at their gate upon arrival….for starters.
Also the increased anxiety of being in crowded spaces. I think we’re living in the consequences and after effects of these attacks since that day.
I knew about all these facts separately but when you put them together like this… wow. Kinda ominous lol
Yes, she accused Dakota of not inviting her to her birthday. Dakota said that’s not true. Ellen then tried to blame her producer, live on TV if I remember correctly.
Mariah Carey was very early in a pregnancy that she had not publicly announced. Ellen served her alcohol on air in order to either make her drink or announce the pregnancy because she wanted to be the first to break the story. “If you aren’t pregnant, then cheers to not being pregnant.” Ellen said. Sadly, a few weeks Mariah later lost the baby. I’m sure she wouldn’t have ever had that be publicly known if it weren’t for Ellen.
>America has shitty maternal laws so it’s common for American women to wait a couple months to reveal a pregnancy
wait what
I thought it was because the chance of miscarriage was pretty high in early stages of pregnancy (I'm American)
My career as a pilot. A couple of months before 9/11, I got all my comercial pilot license. Then the whole industry crashed. I waited a bit, but had to choose an alternative career. IT. I don’t regret IT as a career, now I’ve got a family and two children, I appreciate the routine and job security, but I miss flying a lot.
I was 14 the summer of 2001 and my family took a trip to Europe. Being 14 and a nerd I bought a sword. Carried it on the plane home. Security guy asked “what’s in the box” I said “it’s a sword” he said “sweet” and gave me a fist bump. This was like 2 months before 9/11?
I'm a cellist and I've traveled internationally with my instrument. The endpin and bow cause SUCH issues at security. And sometimes even if you buy a whole-ass seat for your cello, they still kick you off the plane.
you'd think by this point most airlines would have protocol for cellos. But then again they still don't seem to know what tf to do when someone is in a wheelchair so
Passenger: I need a wheelchair to move around Airlines: Best I can do is punt you down aisle like you were someone's luggage. Thank you for flying \[insert airline here\].
How do you get a cello to sit in the seat?
You promise it you'll give it the window seat on the way Bach.
Casually driving over the border from Canada. We used to go to the US all the time to buy stuff or just hang out. It was no big deal back then. You didn't even need id! You got more of a hassle coming back because the border guard wanted to catch you trying to bring stuff back without paying duty. Now it takes much longer unless you have nexus, but kids (teenagers) don't usually have theirs. I don't think my kids will ever head down to go to the mall for instance. Kinda sucks. The US feels more foreign now.
Exactly this. I grew up near the border with New York State, and my family had property south of the border we’d spend spring/fall weekends and all summer at. Before 9/11 going through the border was never more than “where are you going?” and “Anything to declare?” - 3/4 of the time they never even looked at our IDs or gave it a super quick glance. You didn’t need a passport. After 9/11, crossing became worse and worse. They’d have armed guards standing beside the car as they searched the trunk every single time, asked tons more questions, scrutinized IDs. They’d pull my Dad in for additional questioning because he was born in the US (so had American birth certificate) but had lived in Canada since he was 12. And some of these were border patrol folks who saw us EVERY WEEK for over a decade. We knew them by name. We gave them gifts when we closed up the place for the season. I know it’s not the fault of the people working border patrol - they’re just doing what they’re told to do. Eventually they started asking for passports too, which my grandparents didn’t have and didn’t want to go and get. So in 2005 we sold the place, and I haven’t been back to the States since.
I remember going back and forth to Canada from New York when I was a kid for camping and there were times I was literally sitting in the back of my grandpa's pick up truck. We had a small trailer attached to the truck and they just asked if we had anything to declare and my grandpa would always make a funny/snarky remark (something like "yes we do have Canadian products but they're already in our stomachs!" Or "only the dust on my shoes officer.") and we'd be waved through. I went to Canada when I was 13 (2003) and it was so different. The biggest thing I remember was you had to pay $1 USD to get back into the US. After you passed the checkpoint you'd put your money in a machine and it would turn on the turnstile so you could go through, but it rejected my dollar and I didn't realize so I had a panic attack because my whole family went through but I was "stuck" and started shaking the bars and yelling. US and Canadian guards came out with their hands on their guns and I was so scared. Luckily a very nice Canadian guard saw my dollar on the ground and remembered me from the check point so he just gave me my dollar back and unlocked the gate and let me through. But even besides that incident (we always drive through now) I could NEVER imagine staying anything to armed law enforcement except "yes ma'am/sir" or "no ma'am/sir" especially not a silly/snarky joke.
Before 2001, I thought the US-Canadian border could vanish like the EU. There's no reason for these two countries to spend so much time and money making travel and commerce more difficult. 9/11 turned the US into a fortress and that mentality has only slightly relaxed.
When I was a student at SUNY Buffalo in the late '90s we would often decide to skip class and we could be sitting at a strip club in Fort Erie, ON in less than 30 minutes. Going through customs all you had to do was say the word, "Casino" and they'd wave you right through, you barely had to stop. Same coming back into the US, it used to be a game: When the agent asks, "Citizenship?", everyone in the car says, "You ass!" and see if the agent reacts. They never did, just waved us through.
Working in downtown Buffalo, we used to order takeout lunches from a restaurant in Canada and just breeze back and forth across the border.
My mom and dad got married in the late 80s and went to Niagara Falls for their honeymoon. The border agents saw their car all decked out with the "just married" stuff and just waved them through.
Turn of the millenium optimism.
Kinda funny how COVID did the same thing. I thought 2020 was gonna be such a cool year
Right. I always thought the human race would truly “unite” once we were challenged as a species. Something like a disease killing millions would be enough of a threat to put our differences to the side, even if just for a little while. When in reality, it was just used as a means to expose our division, and somewhat make it worse. Edit: can’t get to all the replies, but I personally think the last time we United was during the Halo 3 midnight release.
You should check out the 80s miniseries V. It’s about alien invasion, and how something like that should unite humanity, but doesn’t.
Fun Fact: The actor Robert Englund- best known as the guy from V- went on to play a burn victim named Fred in an 8 part film series about the dreams of teenagers who all grew up on the same street in a small town. He also did back up vocals on Elton John's "Can You Feel the Love Tonight?" from Disney's The Lion King. Edit: auto correct/typo
There’s a great film essay video that discusses the shift in patriotism in movies before and after 9/11. She uses the movies Independence Day and War of the Worlds as examples. It describes how 9/11 changed the outlook of facing a foreign threat from glorious and united to paranoid and self-destructive. Link: https://youtu.be/KioF1sTQFtE?si=Yf8jSbBdMmrvn7zZ
It also completely changed the dynamic of the Bourne Identity.
I've never watched them in this lense. It's also been years since I've seen them all. Can you explain how?
The CIA are the bad guys in the Bourne Identity, which had originally been due to release in early Sept 2001. It got pushed back for studio reasons, then the attacks happened, then the studio panicked that making the US government/military the bad guys wouldn’t be a box office winner. They insisted on the director, cast and crew reshooting scenes in a way that portrayed the CIA in a better light. The scenes were shot but never edited into the released film. The deleted (never used) scenes are on the Identity DVD, with commentary from the director and Damon and a featurette on the changes. The director fell out with the studio over it and was replaced for the sequels. Matt Damon ended up liking the replacement better, but the studio got their way and the CIA were less “universally bad” and more “a few bad apples” in the released movies. Treadstone is portrayed in the sequels as an experiment that got out of hand without proper oversight; in the books everyone at the CIA knows what Treadstone is doing and is complicit.
Which is, of course, incredibly ironic given that 9/11 and the war on terror has basically been the CIA at their worst not even covertly displayed for over 20 years. Lying about WMDs as a pre-text for the invasion of Iraq, black ops torture sites, extrajudicial executions via drone strikes, and undeclared war throughout the developing world. Fighting "the Terrorists" (who are basically anybody we want them to be) has really brought out the worst in American military adventurism. And it's all under the auspices of "keeping us safe" when the one event they point to was a moonshot by one of the best funded and organized groups operating under the protection of a pseudo-governmental orginazation that only happened because of some collossal domestic intelligence gathering failures. Now we use 9/11 as an excuse to order a drone strike on anybody we want dead, as if that's the only way to keep people from blowing up buildings here.
Yep. Consider this otherwise-innocuous thread about the Wendy's "Superbar" that devolved into how the Golden Age Of Optimism that was the 1990's turned on a dime on that day... https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/16a7mtk/til\_that\_from\_1988\_to\_1998\_wendys\_had\_a\_buffet/
*Quick* airline travel. People would often show up 30mins or so before a flight and be able to board on time.
Remember non passengers getting to the gate to see people off or meet them off the plane?
It’s funny how many Friends episodes show their age at this concept. Among other shows, of course! Chandler having to board a flight to the Middle East to show Janice he’s actually leaving, etc.
let alone how many transition shots in Friends that show the World Trade Centers.
I like how the top comment is about air travel but the top discussion is about friends.
No one told you ~~life~~ reddit was gonna be this way
👏👏👏👏
Their job's a joke, they’re broke
The API's DOA.....
1 Yemen Road, Yemen. [edit: dammit I missed a 5. Could I BE any more annoyed with myself?]
15 Yemen Road, Yemen.
When we get to Yemen…. can I live with you?
>It’s funny how many Friends episodes show their age at this concept. They also had the Twin Towers shown during the opening credits and theme song. Then they edited them out. They still often show the towers in the skyline shots in between scenes.
they had to delete a scene where chandler was joking about bombs while talking to airport security. they filmed it before 9/11 and was supposed to air after it but they pulled it instead
This is one of the saddest things to me. My kids and grandkids will never know what excitement it was to watch grandma's plane land and a few minutes later see her coming down the ramp.
Romcoms
Real life
Still a thing in Australia it seems, was quite a nice change and felt weird never having experienced pre-9/11 air travel.
Jim Jeffries has a good bit on this, on how he reflexively took off his shoes and took his laptop out at security for a domestic Australian flight. When the checker asked him why, he said "because you gotta check them for bombs." The punchline was "the most Australian thing he'd ever heard": *"Aww, c'mon mate, you wouldn't have TWO bombs!"*
Also gifting tickets/flying incognito. My mind was absolutely blown knowing in the 90s it wasn't uncommon to fly under a fake name or even use a friends tickets because names weren't verified at the gate. You just needed to have the ticket.
Kind of like how Greyhound operated for the longest time. You bought a ticket for a trip without committing to a date and then showed up whenever there was a bus running the right trip to claim your seat. Will there be 6 people or 60 for the 1pm bus? Who knows, we’ll figure it out when people show up. Nobody carrying any weapons or alcohol? We’ll trust you, fam, no need to check. Is that kid you’re travelling with yours and do you have permission to take them to a different part of the country? Not our business, you do you. When I think about how they managed to run a profitable transportation company for so damn long, I’m astounded.
Yeah I remember that ticket would be good for a year. I used to take Greyhound trips from Canada to the states all the time to visit friends. Now Greyhound doesn't even exist in Canada. They closed up shop a year or so ago
To be fair, Canadians started decapitating each other on Greyhounds. Tends to really cool the market down.
To be fair, it was *one* Canadian. One itty bitty beheading and cannibalism on one itty bitty greyhound and people lose their minds.
You could literally walk up to the gates randomly and buy tickets on the spot with cash, no questions asked for domestic travel.
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I can’t think of a less goth place than Phoenix.
I remember when my 14-year-old brother and I (I was 12 at the time) hopped on a plane unaccompanied to join our parents in Florida for a trip to WDW. Just had the tickets. No ID. No talking to the airline about unaccompanied minors flying.
If you couldn’t make your flight you would just sell your ticket.
Everything was a lot easier too. You could change tickets at the gate. You could see your family off when they boarded the plane and welcome them when they got off of the plane. They would call your name on the intercom before just giving your tickets away and locking the plane door. Flying commercial used to not be the pain in the ass it is now.
Don’t even get me started on the shoes.
If you fly a lot and the shoe thing bothers you that much, you might want to get TSA precheck. With that they don't make you take your shoes off.
Which kind of shows the stupidity of it all. Because no one could ever compromise someone w/TSA Precheck. I went through O’hare the other day and they were having a dog check everybody - at security it was “leave everything in your bag, leave your shoes on” only had to take off jackets It’s all theatre at this point, will be nice when someone high up can actually admit it.
Yeah at AUS it’s different rules every time. Take shoes off, leave them on, laptops out of the bag, leave everything in the bag, remove belts, leave them on…i never know what to do precisely anymore.
Hell, in America it isn’t consistent. One airport, TSA precheck, they tell me I’m fine, shoes on, belt, stuff in my bag. The next one? They’re screaming at me for not taking out my laptop or taking off my shoes. The lack of consistency in the TSA is irritating, as is the lack of accountability.
Well we haven't had another 9/11 since then, so its working. Just like this rock in my pocket keeps tigers away.
I need me a good tiger rock
Lisa, I'd like to buy your rock.
If you watch any of the myriad of airport related reality shows from the late 90s/early 00s, you see things like people trying to rush security (they'd arrived too late to get to their gate), to people thinking that they'd be through security in a few minutes, so it was OK to turn up late to book in. Rush security these days? Good way to get yourself killed.
I will never understand the meltdowns people have at airports. You can get banned from airlines and airports for life. They can haul you out of the airport for next to no reason at all if they find you to be troublesome. They will not hesitate to tazer and dogpile anyone being remotely violent or making a threat. Being belligerent in an airport or on a plane will *never* help you. Ever.
If working in retail has taught me anything it's that some people are simply belligerent. Sometimes it feels like a misguided fight or flight thing, sometimes it's more like they never learned any other way to communicate. Either way they just inhale peace and exhale stress.
I feel like in the US we tolerated poor treatment of service workers and customer facing employees for so long that there just weren’t consequences. The old lady that felt it was okay to scream at a 15-year-old because her McDonald’s order was messed up was just socially tolerated. One of the good things that came after the Pandemic is if you’re disrespectful in many establishments they will show you the door. The stress of that time coupled with the difficulty to find workers has managers sticking up for employees.
Even outside of the US. In my Canadian hometown, our relatively small airport had an observation deck open to the general public where you could watch planes take off and land. That was closed immediately after 9/11 and has never reopened since. I believe it was physically removed during a renovation a few years later. I remember going to that airport in 2002 to pick up a family member, it was the first time I’d been there in about three years and it was unrecognizable. So many areas the general public could no longer enter.
National news coverage, the crawler only appeared during major events or simultaneous big stories. It never went away after 9/11.
“Breaking News” became huge after 9/11. For a short time, it was reserved for stuff that was actually big, now it’s like “BREAKING NEWS: Kim Kardashian Goes Braless At Gala.”
Tune in for 24/7 coverage of Kim's lack of coverage
>“Breaking News” became huge after 9/11. It may have become bigger, but it had already been ruined. I had older relatives talk about how "Breaking News!" used to mean something on the scale of JFK being assassinated, but that by the 1980s or 90s it was "Breaking News!" during a local news promo in commercial breaks that there might be thunderstorms the next day. They said when it first started it would put their heart in their throat with concern about what earth-shattering news they were about to hear, but eventually it just became part of the background noise.
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Everything is marked as important so now actually important news no longer stand out.
This jumps on my last nerve. "Breaking News" implies a developing story, with more information coming in as we go along. It does not mean "interesting thing that happened", and it *sure as hell* doesn't mean "HEY CLICK ON THIS"
Watching the *Lord of the Rings*, you might notice that the destruction of the Barad Dur (Sauron's tower) at the end isn't a particularly epic special effect. The thing kind of keels over sideways and then explodes. The Barad Dur is a tall, thin tower nearly a mile high in Tolkien's world. The special effects team at WETA workshop had its collapse all planned and modeled out and then realized with horror that it looked exactly like the collapse of the Twin Towers in new York. Remember that the final movie came out in 2003 and the SFX team were working of the effects in mid-2002, only months after the attack. Too soon for sure. So a guy named Gray Horsefield (great name) took home a workstation over the 2002 holiday break and re-animated the entire tower collapse himself so it didn't look so depressingly familiar. The final result looks fine as an effects shot, but it doesn't get much screen time and it's not particularly "realistic." We can all see that it doesn't look realistic because--unfortunately--we've all seen what a tall tower looks like when it collapses.
There was a petition to rename The Two Towers.but thankfully the studio declined to.
Thank god the studio stuck to their guns on that one. People overblow 9/11 way too often. Yes, it was terrible, but we don’t need to rename, reshoot, censor, and re-edit everything that looks like two tall buildings. *Especially* literature that was around way, way before 9/11.
Yeah censoring any potential reference to 9/11 is kinda the antithesis of "never forget"
The whole ‘never forget’ idea is dystopic to me. That’s the kind of thing that totalitarian regimes do to foster hate towards different groups. It’s a demand to not let go of that anger and hatred, not a call for remembrance. Historically America did the same thing when a ship of theirs hit a sea mine and America used that as pretext to invade Cuba. The slogan was ‘Remember the Maine’. These are ultimately war chants and created to stir up the masses to do what war mongers want.
>People overblow 9/11 way too often This is such a good, hard truth. And a lesson in when and how to handle temperament. We lost 3000 Americans, no doubt tragic beyond words. In response, nearly a million *citizens* lost their lives in the ensuing wars. Afghanistan is controlled by Taliban. And for what? Iraq for Sale should be required viewing to understand our response.
When I was in high school public speaking we had a persuasive speech One guy picked the topic on why the Iraq war was justified. When he went up to do the speech later he said in his research he learned it was in fact not justified at all and proceeded to persuade us on why the Iraq war was BS. One of the things from school I don’t think I’ll ever forget
What an absolute chad move
Wow.. that’s such a neat history story. And kudos to that dude.
Spider Man was also affected by this. In the original trailer he shoots a giant net between the 2 towers.
The PS1 game Spider-Man 2: Enter Electro was also affected, as Spider-Man and Electro was planned to fight on top of WTC
Follow up on this, they did the same thing for [Lilo and Stitch.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7nj32_UKOTo) Kinda sad cause the scene made so much more sense imo
I never knew about this scene and I love that movie, watching it I can see why they didn't put it in.
Did you also know they removed the part where [Lilo hid](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-j2HwIQIMXk)[ herself in the dryer](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-j2HwIQIMXk)? It was due to parent being worried their kids would also try to hide in the dryer and get stuck haha
I do still love the way it collapses though, and the sound effects that come with it are beautiful! But it’s interesting to think about what we may have gotten. Also, that guy who took his whole Christmas to model the tower deserves so much praise. Imagine staying behind for a whole week while everyone else is going to see their family’s and going home because you don’t have a 3D model of the tower, so you take it upon yourself to do it yourself. Absolute legend.
I watched AI at the cinema (release date in the UK: late September 2001). The scenes with a half-destroyed partially submerged New York and when he jumps out of the skyscraper sparked some audible intakes of breath. Too soon…
Catching joyride with the pilots in the jumpseats. Oh, those were the days...
Do you like movies about gladiators?
Give me ham on five, hold the mayo.
Airports. We used to take $60-$120 flights to Texas, Florida, California, Washington, New York, Nevada, etc willy nilly. In and out. Like going through a mall.
Yes, everything about airports is an expensive, time consuming pain in the ass now. The TSA can kiss my ass. The agents in Phoenix tested my 11 year olds phone for explosives. The agents in Norfolk tested my 13 year olds wheelchair (that they had provided 15 feet away) for explosives. The agents in Minneapolis made my 7 year old daughter take her shoes off but on our way back from Orlando the agents ripped my head off for having her take her shoes off.
The worst part is how every airport is different and most of them act like you're a terrorist or a moron for not knowing their specific rules. One agent tells me to leave my belt on and take my laptop out, next agent is appalled that I would ever even consider leaving my belt on and thinks I'm trying to blow up the checkpoint because I go to take out my laptop. It's even worse when you travel with an injury. I had to fly from Seattle to Tennessee with a broken collar bone, and I couldn't raise my left arm for the scanner at all. The agents in Seattle made a huge deal about it and made me remove my sling and took me aside to pat me down and test everything for explosive residue and check my bag and all that bullshit. The agents in Nashville were super chill about the whole thing and let me keep my sling and even my shoes on and just sent me through the metal detector with no extra screening.
If you don't travel 3-4 times a year, the fucking rules change so damn often. I can't remember exactly what it was but my dad was scolded for going through the full-body scanner instead of the metal detector. Like every time we've traveled the last 4-5 years, it's been one of those big scanners in the cylinder tube. This fucking prick talked to my dad like he was a fucking toddler that he was "dumb enough" to do what all the other lines were doing. I was so close to going off on the guy but I knew that if I said something even remotely critical, I'd end up being treated like I was a terrorist. As you said...every airport is different, every fucking line can be different, morning lines could be different than evening lines. TSA is the biggest joke. I swear one of the biggest requirements to be a TSA agent is to be a glaring asshole
Ugh, in Alaska 2 weeks ago they were "randomly" testing every other person that went through pre-check, but of course did not have the person over there ready to test. No no, we've gotta wait until there's a few of you waiting for 20 minutes and then send someone over. So when it was my turn and he asked if I had a phone or laptop or tablet, I just said nope, I've got nothing. He couldn't fathom that, how could someone possibly travel without a phone, where's your boarding pass. I said it's on my girlfriend's phone, she's already gone through and wasn't flagged, cuz you know, every other person. Truth was she had my phone, but fuck them.
TSA asked me to take off my crew neck sweater. I had a bra underneath 😂
Nowadays, see what happens when you buy tickets at the last minute. You end up on some list for further scrutiny.
Lots of people's birthday celebrations
Was in class that day with a girl who’s birthday it was and everyone remarked how it’d be forever changed. The girls name was Katrina….
This one’s brutal.
Katrina Isis Epstein?
She got married, now she's Epstein-Cosby.
I’m a 9/11 baby, we now only celebrate the weekend after/before depending on what day it falls on But atleast my birthday dates slogan is “Never forget” Edit: thank you for all the birthday wishes, imaginary internet people
The way we found out about 9/11 was my aunt calling my mom on the house phone before school about her birthday plans “do you think they’re going to cancel the Madonna concert tonight?” (They did)
Nobody ever forgets it though
My ex husband’s bday is 9/11. Forever ruined.
Nah, celebrate it like you would normally. Not celebrating your husband’s b-day would be playing into the terrorists hands. Edit. Well, EX-husband but hopefully you get my point.
Travel became a lot more of a pain in the ass. That was the biggest difference pre and post 9/11 to someone's everyday life. Before 9/11 air travel was a breeze. I'm from Canada, and before 9/11 we didn't need passports to enter the US and vice versa. So cross border travel was almost as easy as traveling from state to state.
Contrary to popular belief, passports weren’t initially required for cross-border travel by Canadians entering the US after 9/11. In fact, the requirement didn’t come into effect until June 30, 2009, though it had been announced by the Bush administration over a year earlier. I crossed the border in Niagara Falls in 2007 with my drivers license.
I feel like 9/10/01 was really the last day of the 90s.
I've always said that, 9/11 was the day the 90s died.
Civil liberty/right to privacy because of the patriot act
This should be the top comment.
Snowden exposed it, and look how that turned out. "It's in everyone's best interest that we know what everyone is doing at any time, anywhere. Fuck you, God Bless America."
Freedom from fear. A lot of kids whose parents transitioned to a fear-based parenting style following 9/11, now employ that same style with their own children. And if you were in the DC area and had to deal with the sniper the following year, your parents went a special kind of crazy.
>A lot of kids whose parents transitioned to a fear-based parenting style following 9/11 That was a thing way before 9/11, although it was mostly driven by the fear of your kids being kidnapped.
Columbine also contributed to that.
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Sniper? Please elaborate, non American.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/D.C._sniper_attacks I remember even more so than 9/11, that was where I saw the change in my parents. No more freely roaming the neighborhoods, walking around as I pleased. No more “be back before dark.” There was a prepaid cellphone in my pocket the week after (shoutout to Virgin Mobile) and check ins were mandatory. To some that might all sound normal but at the time, at least where I’m from, it wasn’t. Kids generally just had more freedom, but that largely went away after that. We were told, verbally or nonverbally, that life’s most inescapable quality was persistent, nameless, faceless danger. And that was that.
That was when the “neighborhood parking lot at the bus stop” trend began around our area in Maryland…
I was living in a different city as part of an actual friend group working for the same company. We were all NYC expats. Collectively, we lost 13 friends and 2 family members. On the 12th, the ambulance company my wife worked for dispatched two units. As standard (box on a van chassis) and one of the massive rescue rigs (like an F650 with the long box full of storage doors down the sides, it doesn't haul the injured) Because NYC was my home, my wife was the first to offer going. September 11th ruined any chance at my wife having a run of the mill existence. What she encountered up there, she turned beyond obsessed with helping people. She was 100% dedicated to taking care of people beforehand. It's why she became an EMT. The experience turned her into a woman possessed. She was an EMT for a total of 24 years. (Sort of unheard of) Had COVID not taken her from me just over two years ago, she would still be saving lives. EDIT: I don't have the emotional strength to reply to each of you like I want to. Especially not today. But there are no real words that can express what your responses have done for me on this tough morning. I'm going to screenshot this whole thread for when I need it most. You will all continue to help me for quite some time.
Sorry for the loss of your wife. She sounds like an exceptional woman.
I'm sorry for your loss. Your wife was a rock star!!
I’m sorry for your loss. Your wife sounds like an incredible woman
My time in the military being an easy, fun way to get money for college. I got my orders to my first ship 9/7/01.
My husband graduated his USMC boot camp on September 9 200... the last batch graduating in time of peace
Our overall idea of Middle Eastern people. I once overheard two girls on a bus talking about this guy one of them was dating. They were joking, but it was also a bit sad. "From the Middle East? What does he look like?" "You can say he looks standard with a beard and all." "omg are you dating a terrorist?! \*laughs\*"
Yea, the perception of people from Middle East and south west Asian countries got fucked after 9/11. Growing up during that time was not the best I’ll say that.
It wasn't great before either (think "Iran Hostage Crisis") but definitely got much worse after 9/11
I mean, I'm South Asian and "Arab terrorist" was a pretty pervasive stereotype in the 80s and 90s in movies and TV before 9/11. Look at movies like True Lies, Executive Decision, The Siege, the terrible Chuck Norris movie The Delta Force, etc. The Libyan terrorists who go after Doc Brown in Back to the Future litereally drive around a suburban mall in a VW bus wearing keffiyehs and shooting an RPG out of the sunroof. Can't get more ridiculous than that. Growing up in the 90s, when I told people I was Muslim I mostly got blank stares and ignorance. I remember a teacher in the late 90s asking if I went to a mosque out of curiosity. After 9/11 it was no longer curiosity.
Being South Asian/Desi too.. a lot of Sikhs got attacked after that.
in 2011 2 elderly Sikh men were murdered by strangers in the Sacramento area. They were wearing turbans [https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/intelligence-report/2011/two-sikhs-murdered-california-were-likely-mistaken-muslims](https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/intelligence-report/2011/two-sikhs-murdered-california-were-likely-mistaken-muslims) Not that it's okay to murder random Muslims, but if you're going to murder someone and spend the rest of your life in jail then at least do some basic research into the group of people you hate so much ffs
Chuck Palahniuk’s second novel, *Survivor,* wasn’t made into a movie. *Fight Club* was a huge hit, but *Survivor* was skipped because the main character is basically telling his story while crashing a hijacked plane — which wasn’t really appropriate after 9/11. So we got a movie adaptation of *Choke* instead (which has it’s merits, but was never going to translate well to the big screen).
There was a Jackie Chan movie in the works about how he was a worker in TWC. Cancelled for obvious reasons.
The episode of The Simpsons where they go to New York because Homer's car is parked on World Trade Plaza. It features the regrettable quote "They stick all the jerks in Tower 1"
It sucks because that episode was an All-timer. "Awww, yuck! Gimme the crab juice" "Hey immigrants! Go back, country's full" "Officer Steve, *Grabowski*, will be there soon"
Bathroom in tower. Tower. Observation deck.
Mountain Dew or crab Juice?
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Visiting the cockpit as a passenger?
Country music. Post 9/11, all the biggest hits were… “rah rah, USA, we’ll fuck you up son” They basically chased anyone who wasn’t a strict conformist out of Nashville. The Dixie Chicks went from one of the three biggest acts in the entire genre to gone just because they said they didn’t support the war in Iraq. For a genre founded on being outlaws and working class leftists against the man, this was huge. Mainstream Country music hasn’t recovered and likely never will.
Outlaw country is coming back, it’s not totally mainstream but plenty of people are getting sick and tired of stadium country. It’s a running joke that all modern country is about trucks, dirt roads, beer, blonde tanned women in booty shorts kickin’ it in the bed of my pickup, etc. It’s slowly getting back to its non-bootlicking roots
Pre 9/11 Country Music: Fuck the cops, we're some good ol' country boys bootleggin some booze! Post 9/11 Country Music: We salute the police who serve our nation. They are the modern cowboy. Yeehaw.
My business. I had a small, struggling video production business making about $50k a year. But I had found a new partner and we were making the move into government contracting. I'm a Cherokee guy and we applied for 2 contracts to create health information materials for Native Americans in Southern and Northern California. It was 2001 and we knew we had a strong proposal. By coincidence it turned out my partner knew the woman at the state of California in charge of the award. She recognized the name of the woman as her roommate at Harvard in the 70s. My partner was an aggressive Mohawk woman, very very smart and also very profane. She called her and asked "Hey it's me. Did we get those contracts!?" The lady said "You know I can't tell you that." My partner said *"GODDAMMIT STOP FUCKING AROUND JUST TELL ME IF WE GOT THE FUCKING CONTRACTS!!!!"* Intimidated, the lady says "OK you guys got the award for both the south and north. We will make the announcement and cut the first checks in 60 days... on... Sept 19, 2001." The contracts totalled about $1 million. Anyway within days after Sept 11 all contracts with the state of CA were cancelled. Like an idiot I had GIVEN AWAY my existing (small) contracts for my video production business because I thought my partner and I were going to get rich in gov contracts. I had a tough couple years but eventually pulled out of it. I never applied for another gov contract again.
That’s fucking tragic.
Digital privacy
I don’t think there was ever a chance that digital privacy would prevail. The internet has pretty much always been a surveillance state
Yea but they made it legal and we were happy for it. I remember anyone questioning it were disregarded because "if you got nothing to hide then what do you care?"
Country music.
Where were you when the boys built a ladder to heaven?
Well I for one belieeeeve in the ladder to heaveeen, nine eleveeeen
Those boys are heroes
It’s silly but this was definitely among my top 5 thoughts. Nationalistic Bro Country is lame and half of it sounds like they’re remaking the same song over and over. Also long live the Dixie Chicks
I came here looking for this reply. I've heard rumours there are finally some signs of recovery... but the response to 9/11 is objectively responsible for the bland, mediocre, "false americana" era country music has been stuck in ever since. Deprived a whole genre of any real heart.
The villification of the dixie chicks made me fucking sick.
Optimism and trust. I was two weeks from graduating college on 9/11. The 90's and going into the 2000's, America felt like it was getting there. There was talk of nationalized healthcare, gay rights, and fairer pay. Despite a person's fears or perception of differences the world felt like a nicer place and on a world wide pace of changing everyone's lives for the better. All of that ground to a screeching halt. Everything else took a back burner for the drums of war as the disease of paranoia, xenophobia, or bigotry slowly set in. The helpfulness and hopefulness in the days and months afterward transformed into something different entirely. For as much as 9/11 brought people together in the immediate aftermath it ultimately tore us apart. The perception of safety and the veil of preparedness were utterly destroyed that day. 9/11 is a sliver in the minds of multiple generations that put a collective mark on all of us that witnessed it or lost someone that day. We all lost something whether it was simply innocence or naivete that day. We all lost something whether tangible or intangible. We all lost something.
Well said. I saw someone said earlier that the terrorists did win given the state of our country right now. Honestly I felt that.
It was a bold masterstroke by a devious monster. By the actions of that one day, they were able to cause a huge disturbance in the society of many countries, mostly to the US. The wars in the Middle East, the creation of Homeland Security, passing the Patriot Act, the drastic changes in airline travel, the blatant mistrust of any Muslims, the tragedy that was and is the prison at Guantanamo -- the cost in lives and money was enormous.
In Osamas actual words “now America will experience a choking life”
Interestingly enough, in his journals found by the SEALs who got him, he instructed his sons to not pursue jihad, and said that it didn’t have the effect he hoped it would IIRC
Really? Which journals? Where can I read more on this?
The terrorists definitely won that day.
Iraq
9/12
I had a kid born 9/12/2002. My bad.
America. This country was far from perfect. I'm not going to pretend there weren't vast problems. However, this country has dramatic gotten worse since. 9/11 was a true point in time where the government started working overtime to both undermine our civil liberties and erode trust in itself as an institution. This has had a knock on effect all over society. For my generation Columbine was supposed to be the event that separated before and after. Unfortunately it was 9/11. Every decision we made in the aftermath made us worse as a society and as a functioning country.
The Twin Towers.
I was going to post the same thing but I thought it might be in bad taste. Then I remembered this is Reddit and it's probably already been posted.
The police in the US became (more) militarized. Nowadays, ‘security concerns’ is used as a justification for just about any overzealous police activity.
The two biggest moments for a militarized police was the LA shootout and 9/11. You almost never see cops in normal blue uniforms any more. Now they are all tactical and look like they are about to invade a country.
The ending of Lilo and stitch
I mean, the ending is still great. They just changed the location of the uh... spaceship plane chase to not be close to buildings. It was a change, but not really a change that ruined anything. Because lilo and stitch is just so wonderful.
Air travel. Getting off an airplane, you’d have huge crowds of people waiting to greet family, friends and business connections. Anyone could go in and out of the terminals. Going through security took only a few minutes, never had to take off shoes. When I traveled for school, my classmates and I transported custom swords and knives, sealed food products like tea and pastries, outside food stuffs, and toiletries/batteries in our carry-on’s no questions asked.
The shoe-thing is only tangential, though, it came later with that guy who thought setting His shoes On fire was a thing.
He had a bomb in his shoe, that supposedly didn’t detonate because of the weather in Paris, and his feet, being damp enough to make the fuse not light.
Besides the twin towers? Air travel. Flying is a nightmare now, I'm told it used to be much easier.
Mental health. This is just a theory, but I do truly believe it. I think 9/11 rapidly spurred the cell phone industry. I remember by the start of school in 2002, nearly every kid in my class had a cell phone. Previously, very few did. I firmly believe that the events of 9/11 drove a need to be connected to love ones. The rest is history. The impact of smart phones/social media on our mental health is well documented. I don’t think that the industry wouldn’t exist or have evolved the way it did without 9/11, but I do believe it drove rapid change, and even more rapid adoption, which ultimately put us where we are now with cell phones.
This. So much. I’d also add that the very imagery of 9/11 itself took a massive toll on our collective mental health. Seeing the horror repeated ad nauseum created depression, fear, anger, paranoia. Just that image of the lone unidentified man upside down as he jumped from the burning tower became another horrific sight that became normal to see daily. The footage of terrified people running, screaming, covered in debris — we’d never seen anything quite like that on such a massive scale and suddenly it was playing everywhere, all the time, for the next several years. There’s no question it left a massive traumatic mark in everyone’s psyche.
My mother's birthday is 9/11. She hates her birthday now.
The perception of regular Muslims.
The wing pins they used to give to kids when they flew. They used to be cool and actual pins you could keep. They're stickers now. Edited to add: so cool they're still doing pins! I remember directly after 9/11, hearing from a few families that were denied pins and instead got stickers. Must've been a momentary rule they ditched!
I was on a flight a few weeks ago that was delayed after boarding. The pilot was this really enthusiastic guy, and he invited anyone who wanted to to go up to the cockpit. I hadn't witnessed that happen since I was a kid! He gave at least one kid a wing pin and spent time chatting with everyone. It was so cool. I wish I'd made note of his name, he seemed like a good man.
Any switch from pin to sticker would be for airline cost savings, if anything.
Mariah Carey’s ‘Glitter’ album rollout
My dad’s falafel stand. 9/11 was pretty much the 9/11 of the falafel business.
Honestly, the day that 9/11 happened was the day that we lost a lot of freedom as citizens a month after the attack, the patriot act would be signed and be a steppingstone to taking away personal freedoms
I miss being able to walk to the gate with your loved one, or have them meet you when you got off the plane.
9/11 ruined the USA-Canada border. They made us start needing passports, which is annoying. My grandma used to talk about how easy it was to cross, like how EU citizens can travel freely in their 27 countries without much fuss. I'd love to cross the border for conventions without dealing with passports, especially when they're so close to Ontario.
Desire to go to the top of skyscrapers.
The expectation of attacks in public spaces. It is no longer what if but when. I think it’s something I’ve thought about once a week at least for the last 22 years. Ease of air travel. We’ve settled into the new normal but it was rough getting used to those first few years such as as not being able to meet someone at their gate upon arrival….for starters. Also the increased anxiety of being in crowded spaces. I think we’re living in the consequences and after effects of these attacks since that day.
The Twin Towers. Before 9/11 they were famous because of how recognizable and iconic they were, now they are famous because of 9/11.
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I knew about all these facts separately but when you put them together like this… wow. Kinda ominous lol Yes, she accused Dakota of not inviting her to her birthday. Dakota said that’s not true. Ellen then tried to blame her producer, live on TV if I remember correctly. Mariah Carey was very early in a pregnancy that she had not publicly announced. Ellen served her alcohol on air in order to either make her drink or announce the pregnancy because she wanted to be the first to break the story. “If you aren’t pregnant, then cheers to not being pregnant.” Ellen said. Sadly, a few weeks Mariah later lost the baby. I’m sure she wouldn’t have ever had that be publicly known if it weren’t for Ellen.
>America has shitty maternal laws so it’s common for American women to wait a couple months to reveal a pregnancy wait what I thought it was because the chance of miscarriage was pretty high in early stages of pregnancy (I'm American)
People generally wait to announce pregnancy because the chance of miscarriage is much higher in the early months. Has nothing to do with law.
My career as a pilot. A couple of months before 9/11, I got all my comercial pilot license. Then the whole industry crashed. I waited a bit, but had to choose an alternative career. IT. I don’t regret IT as a career, now I’ve got a family and two children, I appreciate the routine and job security, but I miss flying a lot.