The American flag flies at half mast at the 9/11 Memorial outside the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, July 26, 2011. Photo Courtesy of: Olivier Douliery/Abaca Press/MCT.
Twenty-five years ago, the United States was facing the reality of what would become known as the worst terrorist attack in history, both American and worldwide.?
With anniversaries, memorials and other tributes to the nearly 3,000 victims of the Sept. 11 attacks, the date in the second week of September becomes more than a typical day. And yet, some people in younger generations spend time poking fun at the attacks, sometimes more often than posting a photo in remembrance.?
Using the photo of former president George W. Bush reacting to being told the news while sitting in an elementary classroom. Responding to a negative event with “they hit the second tower” or “oh my god they hit the Pentagon.” Snide comments and dark humor jokes about terrorist groups.?
These are all pieces of media that float around platforms like Instagram, TikTok and Reddit, and seemingly make a resurgence in the time leading up to the anniversary.?
Generation Z, those born between 1997 to 2012, are often the generation that gets the finger pointed at them for making those jokes online.?
In a poll conducted by The Lantern via Instagram story polling, 89% of participants stated that they’ve seen, heard or directly experienced jokes about 9/11. But why? Why is the nation’s worst encounter with terrorism something that’s joked about??
Daniel Christie, a professor emeritus of psychology at Ohio State, believes it could be related to the different experiences between generations.?
“9/11 was a vastly different experience for those who were living at the time compared to those who were born after 9/11,” Christie said in an email. “Many of the people who were living when 9/11 occurred have autobiographical [memories] of the event. People born after 9/11 share collective memories of the event without necessarily acquiring the emotive power of having lived through the event. 9/11 is a history lesson rather than autobiographical.”
Christopher Gelpi, a political science professor at Ohio State, said that his two children have vastly different accounts of the day, despite only being two years apart in age.?
“For Gen Z, there is a real divide because they experienced the event very differently,” Gelpi said. “For example, I have two kids aged 28 and 30 — right on the cusp between Gen Z and Millennials. The 30-year-old knows exactly where he was on 9/11 and has a specific memory of it. The younger one doesn’t know where they were.”
Mallory Friedman, a fourth-year health sciences major, said that she learned about Sept. 11 in school, through her parents’ memories and eventually visiting the memorial museum in New York City. But she also sees jokes made online, especially ones that use photos out of their original contexts.?
“I remember seeing [when] Dolly Parton and Tim Curry died one day after each other, and then there was a meme of the picture of George Bush and someone whispering in his ear, and [the caption] is ‘they took the second queer icon,’” Friedman said. “It’s such a common thing to joke about that it’s been completely repurposed and repackaged into other deliverable memes for every walk of life, and that’s normal. We don’t bat an eye at that anymore.”?
The culture also ties into what gets people’s attention online, the absurdity of it all, Friedman said.?
“I think because we scroll so quickly through every piece of news, nothing is big anymore,” Friedman said. “Nothing that you see on your phone screen really makes you stop and say, ‘oh my gosh!’ and do any sort of critical thinking because you just scroll onto the next thing. So, I will consume 9/11-related media as it comes up on my screen, and then I scroll.”
But the consumption of dark humor media doesn’t automatically discount Gen Z to being insensitive towards these kinds of events.?
“That isn’t to say that we lack empathy as a generation,” Friedman said. “It’s just the way that we consume our news now.”
Gelpi said that younger generations, notably Gen Z since the majority are eligible to vote and be politically aware, is also something that goes into the online response, reactions and attitudes surrounding political events.?
“I don’t think Gen Z is responsible for the overall decline in political civility — that’s largely driven by older generations,” Gelpi said. “However, because Gen Z lacks direct trauma from the event, it feels more acceptable to joke about. When people make edgy jokes, the typical response is “too soon?” But for Gen Z, it doesn’t feel “too soon” because they never experienced it firsthand.
The lack of firsthand experience — for most of Gen Z, at least — can also justify the way we simply think about 9/11, separate from the outward expression of those thoughts.?
“The event occupies a different psychological category for them,” Christie said. “For my generation, 9/11 can be both a historical event and an autobiographical memory. For much of Gen Z, it is only the former, which is not to say there is an emotional void associated with 9/11, but the source and nature of those emotions are different.”
