# millennials are processing 9/11 normally, by which i mean posting

- Link: https://tacobout.online/2026/09/11/millennial-9-11-humor-25-years/
- Published: 2026-09-11T17:00:00-05:00
- Author: schwegler

i was twelve when 9/11 happened, which puts me in a very specific millennial demographic:
old enough to remember that day as an actual day, and young enough that basically
the entire rest of my life happened inside the world it built.

twenty-five years later, the internet has commemorated this in the most emotionally
healthy way available to us: an absolutely deranged posting cycle.

> — [Toronto Man (@fucklandlords.com)](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:47walaro66xes2hef3ickawn?ref_src=embed)
> [2026-09-11T15:27:51.615Z](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:47walaro66xes2hef3ickawn/post/3mvaux6b6k22s?ref_src=embed)

there is something very millennial about the speed with which a foundational trauma
became a set of reusable cultural objects. the school television. the president 
getting whispered to. the airport. the flag graphics. the phrase “never forget.”
the exact kind of cable-news lower third that can still make your nervous system
briefly sit up straight.

and then, because we had to keep living for another quarter-century, all of that
eventually became material.

 https://bsky.app/profile/britculpsapp.bsky.social/post/3k75ttdfjgw2f

## the joke is not that 9/11 was funny

the joke is that we spent twenty-five years being told there was one correct emotional
register for it while almost everything built around that grief became progressively
stranger.

there was the genuine horror, and then there was the political mythology. there 
was mourning, and then there were wars, surveillance, airport security theater, 
commemorative merchandise, campaign speeches, corporate remembrance posts, and every
public figure in america discovering that “9/11” could be inserted into a sentence
whenever the sentence needed instant moral weight.

eventually the solemnity itself became part of the thing being processed.

![President George W. Bush leans toward an Air Force One window while speaking by
telephone on September 11, 2001.](https://i0.wp.com/tacobout.online/wp-content/uploads/
2026/09/bush-air-force-one-phone-911.jpg?resize=1920%2C1280&ssl=1)

President George W. Bush speaks with Vice President Dick Cheney aboard Air Force
One, Sept. 11, 2001. White House photo by Eric Draper; public domain. [Source](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:President_George_W._Bush_talks_on_the_phone_with_Vice_President_Dick_Cheney_from_Air_Force_One.jpg).

> Google's 9/11 Homepage Design Stirs Controversy
> — [The Onion (@theonion.com)](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:a4pqq234yw7fqbddawjo7y35?ref_src=embed)
> [2026-09-11T14:00:40.782481218Z](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:a4pqq234yw7fqbddawjo7y35/post/3mvaq3brhhq2o?ref_src=embed)

The Onion understood this almost immediately. satire after 9/11 worked because the
national mood was already surreal: normal life had stopped, everyone was scared,
and at the same time people still had jobs, errands, television, bad relationships,
and a powerful biological need to care about stupid bullshit again.

that tension never really went away. it just got old enough to develop back pain.

## we also got twenty-five years of consequences

millennial 9/11 humor is dark because the history after 9/11 was dark. we watched
a catastrophe become a permission slip for things that were supposed to be temporary
and then simply became the furniture: the Patriot Act, the forever-war mentality,
suspicion as public policy, and the idea that taking your shoes off for a flight
was somehow a civic sacrament.

![President George W. Bush stands with Vice President Dick Cheney and Condoleezza
Rice in a White House emergency briefing room on September 11, 2001.](https://i0.
wp.com/tacobout.online/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/bush-peoc-911-briefing.jpg?resize
=1920%2C1280&ssl=1)

President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, and staff
in the Presidential Emergency Operations Center, Sept. 11, 2001. White House photo;
public domain. [Source: George W. Bush Presidential Library](https://www.georgewbushlibrary.gov/explore/photograph-video-galleries/september-11-2001-gallery-0).

> — [Toronto Man (@fucklandlords.com)](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:47walaro66xes2hef3ickawn?ref_src=embed)
> [2026-09-10T00:16:20.398Z](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:47walaro66xes2hef3ickawn/post/3mv4rkd6vxk2m?ref_src=embed)

so yes, a lot of the jokes are tasteless. some are aggressively stupid. several 
require the kind of background knowledge that makes you realize your youth is now
a historical period with archival footage.

but i do not think the existence of the jokes means people forgot what happened.
for millennials, it can mean almost the opposite. you do not build this much elaborate
nonsense around something that left no mark.

 https://bsky.app/profile/slclunk.com/post/3m7qrtc4ia22g

## history becomes folklore faster than anybody wants

there are adults now who were born after 9/11. there are younger adults who know
it primarily through documentaries, politics, memes, old news clips, and the fact
that every millennial can suddenly become somebody’s grandfather and tell you exactly
where the classroom television was positioned.

that is maybe the strangest part of the 25th anniversary. this thing that still 
feels like the dividing line between “before” and “after” in my own memory is becoming
history in the normal way history does: flattened, remixed, misremembered, made 
into jokes, rediscovered by people who were not there, and occasionally explained
very badly by those of us who were.

none of that makes the dead less dead, or the grief less real. it just means the
living kept being alive afterward, which is unfortunately a very messy condition.

anyway, happy 25th anniversary to the event that permanently changed airport shoes,
american politics, and millennial brain chemistry.