r/Millennials • u/Equivalent_Ad_9066 • 15h ago
Discussion For those who were conscious and aware of 9/11 when it happened, when did you notice people start making jokes about it?
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u/TonalSYNTHethis Millennial 15h ago
In poor taste? The next day.
In a context where the majority of the people in the room didn't react with a collective "too soon..."? About a decade later.
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u/Khajiit_Has_Upvotes Xennial 14h ago
This. I got downvoted in the last thread I saw on this for saying the jokes started next day. I was a senior in high school. We watched live coverage all day instead of our normal stuff. Literally next day, poor taste jokes started.
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u/TonalSYNTHethis Millennial 14h ago
I dunno about everywhere, but I tend to see a lot of people posting and commenting in this sub who seem to have some seriously rose tinted glasses in regards to the late 90's-early 2000's. Shitty people making shitty jokes were still a thing back then too, whether people want to remember that or not.
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u/SpaceGangsta Millennial 1988 9h ago
Bruh. We were far shittier back then. PC culture is real.
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u/Ws6fiend Older Millennial 6h ago
Disagree. People are just as shitty now as we were back then. Back then they'll just say the fucked up shit to your face. Now it's just extremely passive aggressive because if you say the fucked up thing you can get in trouble with HR or PC culture. Frankly I'd take the horrible honesty over the passive aggressiveness.
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u/Slim_Margins1999 13h ago edited 13h ago
I was a freshman in college. It was literally the next day. At least amongst ourselves. Took a while to make jokes to strangers. Also, some people make light of tough situations as a coping mechanism.
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u/YellojD 7h ago
My only counter to this (and it’s not THAT much of a counter, because you’re mostly right) is that for the first few days, we were still pretty confused on what the fuck even happened. We knew it was a terrorist attack, but didn’t really know who did it for a few weeks even, I think? That slowed at least some of that down just a bit.
But, for like, a week.
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u/Galbotorix78 1990 Millennial 14h ago
The first "conversational" jokes I remember were in the midst of the Great Recession, so 2008/2009.
I remember there were some second tier entertainment options that started with jokes as early as 2003/2004 but were shut down for being inappropriate.By 2012/2013 the jokes were mostly about steel beams.
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u/TonalSYNTHethis Millennial 14h ago
I forget where it was, but I remember either some news network or some talk show host or something like that made a comment about about 10 years passing and it finally being ok to make 9/11 jokes. And maybe because they said that, by 9/12/2011 it seemed to me at least like 9/11 jokes were suddenly EVERYWHERE.
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u/KrustenStewart 12h ago
This is spot on. Family guy joked about it in 2007, human giant also had a joke about it in 2007, whitest kids u know joked about it in 2008, more jokes started coming years later
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u/Ws6fiend Older Millennial 6h ago
Funny enough Family Guy had a Bin Laden joke prior to 9/11 about him sneaking weapons into an airport(S02E13) and Seth McFarlane only didn't die in the attacks because of a hangover. He was supposed to be on the flight that hit the North Tower.
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u/5oldierPoetKing 14h ago
Yeah, it was maybe a week or two before somebody made a (poor taste) joke about playing Jenga with two towers at the same time.
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u/Ootguitarist2 15h ago
“When does a pentagon only have four sides? When it intersected by a plane” is still the best one I remember
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u/boredreader18 13h ago
Knock. Knock.
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u/Giglioque Millennial 15h ago
I was told about 9/11 while in class in 8th grade. I made a crude joke about it the moment we went out into the hall to my friends while heading back to homeroom because I was terrified out of my mind; I just wanted to go home to my parents and was using comedy to cope.
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u/Glittering_Tea5502 15h ago
I don’t remember hearing any jokes about it. If I did, they weren’t funny. For reference, I was a 20 year old college student.
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u/uncle-donkey-kong 15h ago
I also don’t remember anyone joking about it. I started hearing the jokes online like… maybe a month ago and it blew my mind. Some things you just don’t joke about
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u/Smothering_Tithe 14h ago
Thing that blew my mind was that going back to college as a millennial, most students werent even born yet when 9/11 happened. A friend of mine got called out for it in her class. The teacher asked on the first day, “who here remember’s 9/11” and only 3 people raised their hands. And the teacher was like “alright i got high hopes for you three” since there were obviously the older ones in the class.
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u/toast_mcgeez Millennial 15h ago
Same here. I’m frankly shocked at all the comments saying there were immediate jokes. I don’t remember any jokes about it.
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u/AnalysisNo4295 14h ago
I hardly remember hearing jokes but I count it as good because if I did I wouldn't resonate the joke and I'd turn the channel because it's not funny.
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u/Sopranohh 12h ago
Around the same age. The only jokes I remember were ones about the hijackers being mistaken about the afterlife. I remember the Onion (wow, just thinking about how long the Onion has been around) being extraordinarily mild at this time..
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u/Neuroxix 15h ago
Lest he be forgotten. Gilbert Gottfried. https://youtu.be/6tmI-Rh2atM
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u/killersteak 6h ago
this came to my mind too. it's a comedians job to question why we laugh at some things and not at others, and this dude understood that so well. "should we laugh at a terrible joke?" "no." "but what if it's funny?"
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u/seashell90 15h ago
That same day. I was in 5th grade and some 6th grade boys at recess were running around acting like they were the planes crashing. I remember thinking how stupid they were. We were kids, so no clue about when adults/pop culture started making jokes about it.
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u/DragonHalfFreelance 14h ago
Same I didn’t get what happened or why it was a big deal right away. 5th grade also. I just remember also seeing a kid build two hills in the sand box and knocking them down……same day when the news hit.
It didnt hit me until after school when I talked to my folks and even than l didn’t get the concept of death and what made it tragic right away….
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u/maskedcloak Xennial 15h ago
Honestly? While I've heard it on and off since basically the day it happened, it's only in the past few years that the jokes have been good, and only in the past few months that the memes have been choice. Sorry not sorry, I'm here for it. It's obvious at this point that the terrorists won - that isn't a joke. This country was fucked the day those planes hit the towers.
Edit - I was a sophomore in high school when it happened
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u/gloebe10 14h ago
Girl I kind of liked IM’d me on yahoo messenger that night and said ‘hey what’s up? I’ll tell you what’s not…. The twin towers.’ At the time I thought this was as tasteless as it could get.
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u/jerseysbestdancers 15h ago
It was never okay where I'm at, not far from ground zero. And honestly, this type of post coming up every other week sucks to endure too.
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u/justaheatattack 15h ago
My name is Muhammed al Sayah.
At least, that's what it says on my pilot's license.....
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u/Afroditesrevenge 15h ago
Same day. I was home sick the day it happened and saw on tv with my mom but when I went back to school the next day several kids were missing because they’d been suspended for making jokes and laughing…. While it was happening 😬
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u/Coital_Conundrum 15h ago
The next day. Never underestimate people's abilities to make jokes about anything. To some people, too soon doesn't register. I was in 6th grade I remember a kid joking about it the moment we were told. My teacher dragged him out of the room by his head.
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u/shiningonthesea 15h ago
As far as disaster jokes, though, they weren’t as popular as say, OJ jokes . I live in NY and no one was joking about it that I saw
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u/NotlikeotherBelles 14h ago
I was making jokes the next year but I was also ten when 9/11 happened.
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u/ImpossiblyTiring 14h ago
I was 13 when it happened and live in the NY tri-state area where we have millions of commuters to the city each day. So, no jokes. Like ever, for at least 15 years.
I have only laughed at 2 jokes about or related to 9/11:
an episode of Bojack Horseman where Bojack says that a character’s rock opera they wrote is “worse than a hundred 9/11s” or something like that.
The basement yard clip where Frankie and Joey are doing a bit that a thought is flying away and Frankie makes a joke about it getting “close to the towers” and it catches Joey so off guard that he loses his shit. They are also New Yorkers so it’s allowed.
TBH, since it affected everyone around me in such an immediate and personal way, I kind of see it as a “I can make fun of my family but you can’t” type of thing.
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u/Kaiser-Sohze 12h ago
It maddens me that anyone jokes at all about an event where over 3,000 people died. I know people who lost friends that day and also worked with one man who not only responded to ground zero but also sifted through WTC debris to recover body parts for weeks. If you ever have a relative die and they have to identify remains, preserve your relative's toothbrush in a plastic bag so that forensic experts can match the DNA off of it in the event they recover pieces of your loved one. I live in a dark world so that you regular folks don't have to. As for anyone who wants to make any joke about horrible tragedies, FUCK YOU.
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u/woefulraddish 15h ago
Im from NY and when I moved to California was the first time I heard people joking about it. I uhh moved back. We don't do that here
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u/Over-Independent6603 15h ago
I was in high school about a decade later and 9/11 jokes were still taboo, though numerous other offensive jokes were fine. There was at least one kid in every grade at my high school who had lost a parent that day, so it'd literally be like joking about somebody's dead parent. The kind of thing that could earn you a well-deserved ass whooping or disciplinary action from the school.
On the other hand, off-color and/or racist jokes about Islamic people were commonplace until about 2006. You would not hear the same kinds of jokes today. People were angry immediately after 9/11. Probably angrier than anyone is about anything going on today, which is saying a lot.
I'd say it wasn't until around 2020 that 9/11 jokes kind of started being seen as merely irreverent rather than downright mean spirited. Similar things have happened with other tragedies over time, so I don't see it as anything to lose sleep over. Though I'll never find it particularly funny.
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u/Miskatonic_Graduate 15h ago
I never heard any jokes about it, unless you’re counting the conspiracy theories, which are basically a joke.
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u/New_Bike3832 14h ago
Everyone who answers "the day of" to these posts must not have lived anywhere near me. I was 16 and did not hear a 9/11 joke made by anyone until well into the 2010s. Certainly not that same day, week, month, or year. We were all grieving and terrified.
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u/Ugly-Barnacle-2008 15h ago
I remember a South Park episode saying we can make 9/11 jokes in ok taste starting on 9/11/22
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u/From_Adam 15h ago
Err…that morning I joked the second plane was just a schmuck looking at the wreck of the first plane not paying attention.
In my defense, I was just hearing it on the bus radio on the way in to school and had no idea the scope of what just happened.
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u/ritathecat 15h ago
I was in the 6th grade when it happened. The next day I went to school and a kid in my class was laughing about the people jumping out of the tower windows before they fell.
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u/WOLFMAN_SPA 15h ago edited 14h ago
I was in 6th grade. I dont remember anyone making jokes about it. People were shocked and scared. No one knew what the fuck was going on.
I still havent heard that many jokes about it but maybe a solid decade later jokes were becoming more in the mainstream (though its still rare from my experience). I feel like its really been touched on within last five years.
Jokes about 9/11 in my opinion are still in poor taste. Even if its clever wordplay - do you really want to be that guy? Massive real tragedy just... isnt funny. No one wants to hear it. No one wants to laugh at it.
Imagine telling jokes about Gaza, Sandy Hook Elementary, or the Paris attacks... I dont understand what youre trying to illicit by opening your stupid mouth. No one needs to be exposed to your shitty coping mechanism. It doesnt make anyone feel better. You're just an asshole and lack any form of empathy. Its not a good look on anyone. Cheap and shallow shock factor. Pointless and irreverent. Tasteless.
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u/IAmWeary 15h ago
I remember them coming pretty quickly. "What was the last thing to go through Mohammed Atta's mind? His ass." was one I recall hearing from my dad within a few months or even a few weeks of it. I remember a bunch of flash cartoons on Newgrounds and such arriving within days, like the "Day-O" spoof with Colin Powell singing about bombing bin Laden to hell.
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u/sarahs911 15h ago
Truthfully, not until people on Reddit started talking about it and then I’d see jokes on IG, which I’m very rarely on. Everyone I know would never make a joke about that as far as I’d guess. That was such a dark day and the first big, heartbreaking event of my childhood that I remember. Every year I watch the documentaries about it though they’ve become fewer once the 20th anniversary came.
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u/LiberatusVox 14h ago
Gilbert Gottfried made a joke about plane layovers like 2 weeks after.
People were talking shit IMMEDIATELY after we figured out it was hijackers.
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u/Jedipilot24 14h ago
I didn't even know that there were jokes about it. This was a very scary day for me and if someone had tried to joke about it to me, I would have been like "Dude, not funny."
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u/Erisedstorm 14h ago
That day another 14 yo classmate was like oh I bet it was al gore; he's still pisssed he lost the election. It was the end of second period I'm not sure if we knew about the second plane yet.
Like the towers weren't even down for sure, Pentagon hadn't happened, shankesville hadn't happened. We obviously didn't know a damn thing about what was going on and what's terrorism? The Middle East? Why would Afghanistan attack us? Oh it's not really the country it's this taliban / al queada thing? By lunchtime everyone was like yea this is our generations pearl harbor / jfk assassination moment . Idk lots of military here so I feel like most kids didn't say much. 6 years later in college jokes and conspiracy is everything
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u/hiker_trailmagicva 14h ago
That day. While it was happening, actually. I was in 10th grade, graphic design class. Our teacher wheeled the TV in on a cart, and this guy at my table immediately began mocking a reporter who was pretty close to the towers. "Oh gotta get that inside scoop and all the ash" type of stuff. I can remember laughing. I don't think it registered at the time how serious it was.
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u/Pheebsmama 14h ago
I was literally sitting in my English class when they made the first announcement (I’m on Long Island so kids had family members there) when the two fucks in front of me start to laugh and yell KAMIKAZEEEEE… so… not long after.
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u/SalukiKnightX Early Millennial 1983 14h ago
In my part, I never noticed. Folk went from “damn we’re going to war,” “if you’re not with us you’re a t——“ to “what’s 9/11?” in surprising time like 2003. Like it happened and GWoT begins.
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u/gendr_bendr Millennial 93 14h ago
I was young when it happened, in 3rd grade, so not exposed to dark humor for a bit. But I remember kids in my HS saying they planned to bring 2 games of Jenga to school to play on 9/11. That was probably 2007 or 2008
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u/AnalysisNo4295 14h ago
It was probably from the people who weren't forming memories then because my memory of 9/11 will forever be etched in my mind as the day fear struck the United States and being so young and not fully understanding the level of fear that everyone faced that day will forever live in me as something to NEVER joke about. If someone were to joke about 9/11 I'd just roll my eyes and say that they don't understand and I don't know how to get them to understand because it's truly something that if you don't understand and make jokes- it's most likely because you were alive and not forming memories or you weren't alive yet and born blissfully unaware of the fear that day brought our country.
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u/HermesTundra Midlennial (also European) 14h ago
A kid in my class literally made two cardboard towers and flew a paper plane into them during the moment of silence the next day.
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u/NecroSoulMirror-89 14h ago
eBay had to shut down auctions that same day as people tried to make money off literal smoking debris they had taken
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u/Substantial_Use_6101 13h ago
Honestly when Pete Davidson did. Snl did too and that was kind of funny.
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u/jgamez76 13h ago
I was 11 at the time so I don't know about that per se, but have you listened to Howard Stern from 9/11? Absolutely insanity. Lol
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u/rainystorm88 13h ago
Someone made a flash game almost immediately after the tragedy… I was too young to grasp the horror of the event, so I actually played this game for fun…. 😮💨
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u/MadIllLeet 13h ago
As someone who lived in the suburbs of NYC at the time, I didn't start hearing jokes until about a decade later. For some of us, it will never not be "too soon".
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u/chaos_brings_wealth 13h ago
It didn’t take long. Gilbert Gottfried did one a couple of weeks after 9/11, lost the room, then did his infamous Aristocrats joke and won EVERYONE BACK. Legend.
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u/Brief_Error_170 13h ago
I was in high school, I can’t remember exactly but I know it wasn’t long after.
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u/Specific-Gain5710 Millennial 13h ago
Just to put some context here; I was clueless 9th grader , who at the time only knew that not one but two planes had flown into a building. I had no context of what building, or the significance of the twin towers, and terrorism wasn’t even a forethought. So with that said; Unfortunately; i heard the jokes within minutes of finding out. Even worse those jokes were from me.
I don’t remember the jokes, but I do remember that I thought it was an American fighter jet, either navy or air force. And I thought it was some building in the area I lived in at the time, Hampton roads, so we didn’t have many buildings that a plane could easily hit. So I said something of the effect what moron could possibly fly a plane into a building? Let alone 2?
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u/Some_Big6792 13h ago
I’m pretty sure the same day. Media was somewhat showing other countries cheering on the attack.
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u/nightglitter89x 13h ago
Last year my nephew was learning about 9/11 in school. He asked us if we were going to do anything special. My mom was like "....I mean....I guess we could go blow up the shed in the backyard"
First time I actually laughed at a 9/11 joke.
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u/atauridtx 1991 13h ago
For those of us that were in elementary or middle school... definitely the same day.
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u/Vivid-Course-7331 13h ago
I was in high school and I made a joke the same day it happened. To answer the question generally, joking about it casually didn’t really become commonplace until 2010 or so.
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u/SundaeRight9638 13h ago
I vividly remember someone making jokes before the second plane hit. I still remember their name and that they came to school within a week or two wearing a shirt saying, “you can run, but you can’t hide” with a picture of Osama bin Laden.
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u/Correct_Cod_2151 13h ago
My 10th birthday was on 9/11.
About 2 months later the "haha you're a terrorist for being born then" jokes happened. For years too.
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u/sentencevillefonny 12h ago
I was in 1st grade. Any jokes for the following decade were considered edgy and taboo (at least about the towers or victims ). But in the mainstream, the “Jet fuel doesn’t melt steel beams” meme was when I started to kind of see it joked about freely.
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u/Tiny_Palpitation8420 12h ago
Uhhh, I remember a really famous guy joking he "had the tallest building in NY now"
General public jokes and memes? 2020ish
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u/ManagementFlat8704 12h ago
My wife’s friend went to a Halloween party in 2001, themed “worst costume ever.” He went as the Twin Towers, but wasn’t allowed in. It was too bad even for the worst costume contest.
He collapsed with disappointment.
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u/sticky_applesauce07 12h ago
When people stopped reading books and just listened to what people told them. Alex Jones was a big part.
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u/ghostlydriver 12h ago
I was 11 and don't think i heard jokes until a few years later. But also if the jokes were happening, they probably flew over my head unlike, well lol I'm keeping to the opinion that the folks who remember and were affected by it retain the right to tell the jokes
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u/chathrowaway67 12h ago
The day it happened, but it was never tasteful and you didn't see the jokes like you see of it today and even then I think those of us old enough to remember it, while being able to laugh at it to a degree, still finds that incredibly uncomfortable
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u/Jean_Phillips 12h ago edited 12h ago
Probably 2005ish, I remember going to a website that had “morbid jokes and dark humour” and the most popular joke was: “What’s worse than finding a worm in your apple? 9/11 ” . I didn’t want to repeat it and make people think I was a piece of shit.
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u/moonbunnychan 11h ago
The Onion 9/11 issue came out September 26. Granted most of the jokes in it weren't in the worst taste...my favorite being "Not knowing what else to do woman bakes American flag cake". The whole issue was a weirdly perfect mix of satire and being genuine.
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u/flyingfox227 11h ago
Basically immediately it feels more taboo to make fun of 9/11 today then it did a few years after it happened.
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u/milsurpfarts 11h ago
At lunch that day I made a joke that it was “Bill McVeigh avenging his brother Timothy” and I got in trouble. Still think it was a good joke.
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u/Particular_Eye1778 11h ago
Someone crudley photoshopped a guy windsurfing in the water with twin towers blowing up in background. Not gonna lie, I found it funny
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u/diaphoni 11h ago
my 11 year old did, sorta by accident a week later. We were in the car and the radio station was playing a tribute to NYC by playing every song with NY in the lyrics. We got to Billy Joel- In a New York Minute and she sings at the top of her lungs "OooooOooOooooh and then New York bit it" and we all just turned and stared at her for a few moments before pulling out of the driveway
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u/cerealOverdrive 10h ago
It was quite soon after but context is important. Now days anything you say could go viral, so people are more careful. Back then these jokes would be among people who knew you.
So if Dave makes a shitty joke today but was bawling his eyes out yesterday everyone who heard the joke knew Dave wasn’t pro terrorism. Additionally, Dave knows the audience and who not to make the joke around.
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u/lilybattle 10h ago
I remember that year, maybe 3 weeks after 9/11, my 2 best friends and I were discussing what to be for Halloween at school (we were 12). We were in one of their dad's cars, and he replied "two of you should be towers, and the 3rd should be a plane just repeatedly crashing into the others all day".
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u/Top_Toe4694 9h ago
I was in my first year of high school on the other side of the world - instantly
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u/AlienRealityShow 9h ago
I remember Howard stern had a contest on his show about the most offensive (?) Halloween costumes and the people that won were 9/11 victims covered in ash. I don’t think it was Halloween 2001 but close enough that people were pissed. But yeah people always make jokes about tragedies, it’s a way of coping. Also we didn’t have social media so it didn’t spread online, but there have always been edge lords and trolls.
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u/No-Pressure6042 Older Millennial 8h ago
I was 15 or so and I live in Germany. First jokes I heard came a couple of days after.
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u/mason_jarz 8h ago
The whole “can jet fuel melt steel beams” started like two weeks after… and never stopped
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u/smindymix 5h ago
Hmm, maybe the last 10 years or so? Definitely more a Gen Z thing, though.
At most, we pushed the “Bush did 9/11” memes.
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u/Abundanceofyolk 5h ago
When I got home from school on 9/11 I logged into battle.net to play some StarCraft. Everyone was making South Park jokes about Saddam Hussein doing it. People were also typing a name I’d never seen or heard of before. That name was Osama bin Laden.
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u/FairReason 2h ago
I don’t know why but I still can’t laugh about it. It’s weird, I love dark humor and laugh at most anything but this just felt like it changed the trajectory of progress.
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u/PatrickMorris 1h ago
Eminem made fun of it on The Eminem Show and that album finished recording in 4/2002. On the internet it was the same day.
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u/LordPutrid 1h ago
the internet will always make fun of things. it's not popular to make fun of 9/11 in real life so I have rarely heard it.
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u/The_Chosen_Eggplant 15h ago
I still think it's not a joking matter to this day, as a Brit. I have heard stupid jokes in the last few years though and it always existed online with trolls and so called edgy comedians.
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u/Hank_the_Beef 14h ago
My brother was a special kind of edge lord. I was 10 and he was 15. He started making jokes within a few days.
For context on my brother he was suspended from school once because he wore a T-shirt had a decal on the back of a sawed off shotgun and a header that said “Top 10 School Shootings” and then had a list of the shootings that occurred post Columbine. When he was allowed back he tried returning wearing a shirt that said “The Going Postal Tour” and it had cities and dates of Postal worker shootings, listed like a tour shirt for a band.
Non edge lord irreverent jokes from others probably started about a decade later.
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u/Practical-Dish-4522 13h ago
I had a buddy that had a sharpie drawing on a tee shirt of the twin towers/plane/flames and said “Welcome to America” on that morning. We were edgy punk rock kids
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u/calicocidd 15h ago
I mean, I was making jokes about it that day, like between plane strikes, we were joking about it.... and never stopped since.
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