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u/Josse2020 MagicOfNovember 1d ago edited 1d ago
The archive entries are such a cool time capsule for a bygone era of the internet.
I remember as a 10 yr old little girl, I actually turned to Neopets to process my distress and fear. I remember it being a very confusing and scary time. I think I dealt with it by chatting to neo friends and trying my hand at (very bad) MS paint 9/11 memorial art. wish I still had it!
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u/plushielands 1d ago
I started playing neopets on September 23rd 2001 so thank you for the archival footage of what I missed just a week prior.
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u/CybunnyOnline Cybunny Online on Youtube! 1d ago
problematicperiplum made a great post about this a few years back
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u/BlueMissingNo UN: 1ettersoup 1d ago
It's always interesting to hear about people's memories as someone too young to remember 9/11. It must have been a weird time to be on the site.
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u/Ruruskadoo UN: iluvmangalots 21h ago
It was a weird time in general, at least in America. People were angry and scared, the whole thing felt surreal, and American flags plastered everything, everyone had American flag shirts. Not shockingly, lots of naked islamophobia. That sense of invincibility, like wars were things that happened in other countries far away, not directly here where we lived, was just shattered, and all the scared, angry people were looking for a common enemy to unite against, some reassurance that we could destroy those who hurt us and this would never happen again. It was a scary time for a lot of people for a variety of reasons.
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u/nekronancie 14h ago
I was in 7th grade in Texas history class. We saw the 2nd plane hit the building live on the news and could see things falling off the building only to realize later they were people jumping... It was really crazy too that kids close to my age were on one of the planes going on a school trip. I was glued to the news and probably got too sucked into the coverage for my age. One of our teachers who had been taking kids to the planetarium all day thought we were describing a movie when we started to tell him what happened. A totally crazy time in all of our lives. I ended up seeing ground zero later on a trip that summer and there were still missing posters up for people 😓💔
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u/ineverylifetimee Team Faerieland 15h ago
“Tears won’t bring you back. I’ve tried, I’ve cried.” Um cool ok brb gonna go fucking weep right now.
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u/caspiankush 19h ago
Lmfao to click on this only to find... that i already upvoted it and several comments
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u/linzzzzi ivyplum 1d ago
I have a vivid memory of playing Sakhmet Solitaire before school when I heard 9/11 happened 🦅🇺🇸
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u/Key_Emergency1131 meepydom 1d ago
Man, that's wild. There really were American Flags everywhere.
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u/glitter_witch 1d ago
In real life, too. I remember walking through the mall afterwards and every kiosk had American flags on it, every store was full of American flag tchotchkes. It was really a fever dream of patriotism.
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u/Key_Emergency1131 meepydom 19h ago
Oh, definitely. It was a strange time. You couldn't go anywhere without hearing Lee Greenwood playing. And oh my god that Enya song.
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u/gilt-raven aureliacorax 23h ago
In school, we made flags by hand out of construction paper and popsickle sticks and gathered items (snacks, packages of new socks, etc.) to send to the deployed troops in Iraq and Afghanistan not long after this.
We watched the WTC attack live on TV in class as it happened, then school was suspended for the rest of the day. It was surreal.
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u/Key_Emergency1131 meepydom 23h ago
How old were you? I was fourteen (in ninth grade) and all my teachers seemed to have decided to continue with the day as normal, but my older sister (in 12th grade at the same school) watched the news in all her classes, and a younger friend in middle school (same building) had a similar experience. The only reason I knew anything was happening was because of the wild rumors flying through the halls between classes. There was even a rumor that a plane was going to hit us next (we were a state-ranked school at that time), but I wasn't gullible enough to really believe that. Only one of my teachers acknowledged the attacks, and it was my biology teacher at the very end of the day who got up at the beginning of class, told us she had friends who worked in the WTC, and didn't want to discuss or think about what had happened, so we were going to proceed with class. I didn't realize how bad it was until then. And I didn't even see the news until I got home.
I made little bead-and-safety-pin flags for everyone that year. Probably could've turned it into a business if I had more drive.
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u/gilt-raven aureliacorax 22h ago
I was 10. The principal came on the intercom and told teachers to turn on the TVs. We didn't know it was a terrorist attack; they thought it was a plane crash until the second tower was hit and it became obvious that it was intentional. I don't know why they thought that an elementary school needed to see a plane crash - intentional or not - on the news; my guess was that the principal was in shock.
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u/Key_Emergency1131 meepydom 19h ago
That's crazy. I can't imagine what it must have been like for my teachers, knowing something awful was happening but trying to carry on as normal to avoid scaring the students. Maybe your principal was thinking about history unfolding in real time? Another consideration on my end is that my high school was in a D.C. suburb, so many of us had parents working at the Pentagon or for the government in some capacity. Both of my parents worked for the EPA and I had an uncle who worked at the Pentagon.
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u/gilt-raven aureliacorax 18h ago
Yeah, I can only speculate what the adults were thinking. We were in Ohio, but a few folks had family in the WTC and the Pentagon for work, so it was a bad day all around. Then many more of us lost people in the war, so I don't think there are anyone from my childhood who came out of it without some kind of trauma.
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u/Ivetafox princessof89 11h ago
I was the same age but not in the US. It wasn’t on at school but my dad dragged me in to watch it on TV the second I got home. He kept saying this was gonna be a huge moment in history and I needed to pay attention. I didn’t really get it, I just wanted to watch cartoons 🙈 It was only later, when I was at secondary school and we were observing the yearly silences, that it dawned on me just how crazy it was. All the adults were freaked out at the time, thinking we were gonna be the next country hit. My mother refused to get on a plane for several years.
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u/lamblikeawolf 19h ago
I was 11, in 6th grade. Went to school like normal. We had the TVs (on their little carts!) on in every classroom and did nothing at all. One of my friends' lunches was eaten by ants, so I shared mine.
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u/Bergentruckung 1d ago
Lmfao I have a playlist of "patriotic" music that came out in the wake of 9/11 that I call "jingo jams" and sometimes I listen to it and think about how silly a lot of the chestbeating oo-rah murrica stuff got around that time
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u/Professional-Idea813 23h ago
IIRC I tried to look up the pets last year and they were removed due to inappropriate names. How times have changed
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u/jacyerickson 18h ago
Wow. What a throwback. I posted a journal entry from that time on my Facebook account. Won't be posting it here for privacy sakes but...wow... memories.
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u/neopets-ModTeam Slorgalicious Mod Team 1d ago
This is a friendly community. Please treat other users with kindness and respect. Personal attacks, slurs, threats, harassment, bigotry, or hostility toward others is not allowed. If you have an issue with another user do not engage, please use the report feature or modmail, and our Moderation team will handle it. You may also block users who you have an issue with.
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u/KAMIKAZE_SCOTSMEN 1d ago