Memeification of 9/11
Guest Post by Marek Mazurek
We have a great group of readers here on Duncan’s Drafts. So good in fact they’re writing in with guest post suggestions, and I certainly won’t stand in the way of great content! This week’s post is complements of long-time-reader and collaborator, Marek Mazurek. Enjoy.
Last Wednesday, September 11, was a solemn day. Unless you went on the internet.
Over 3,000 people were killed by terrorists on Sept. 11, 2001, and many thousands were deeply, personally affected whether they be firefighters, family or residents of New York at the time.
Yet if you opened any social media platform on Wednesday you didn’t see respectful mourning. You saw wild memes ranging from the whacky to the absurdist to the just plain dirty. Even if you’re not posting online, you may find yourself joking with friends while saying the offhand ironic “never forget.”
The point of this guest Duncan’s Drafts is not to criticize the “sacrilegious” memes. I find many of them quite funny in fact.
The more interesting question is how did the quintessential American tragedy become a meme? And does that say anything deeper about our society?
One theory is that 9/11 memes are just a product of the overall internet vortex that takes anything of substance and strips it of meaning. P.E. Moskowitz writes about this phenomenon calling internet culture overall the “dissociation machine.” To briefly summarize the piece, Moskowitz posits that life in late-stage capitalism often sucks and the internet — and its constant memeing — acts as a drug to dissociate with reality to cope.
As a general theory describing the internet, I find that take convincing. But does that explain why 9/11 specifically seems to be so baked into (deep fried) meme culture? Does it serve as the ultimate tragedy, the lowest common denominator to signal that if we meme about this we can meme about anything?
The internet doesn’t seem to view the Holocaust as a source of dank humor. Nor the Great Depression or the Black Plague, all of which saw statistically more death and suffering. Granted the internet wasn’t around for the others, but is there something else at play?
As unfortunate as it is for the people who lost family members in the attacks on September 11th, the complete package of “9/11” extends beyond that single day. The pain at the time was very real. But that pain turned to anger and fear and retaliation against Muslims at home. “Never forget” turned into a quagmire that cut short the lives of so many in Iraq and Afghanistan.
To today’s liberal-minded youths, 9/11 is the worst of American jingoism and racism disguised as patriotism. It represents a topic for conspiracy theorists, who disrespected the solemnity of that day long before GenZ TikTokkers.
Instead of dissociation or nihilistic flippantness, maybe people making memes of Buzz and Woody aiming for the Twin Towers are trying to fight the negative externalities of the tragedy. It’s not the loss of life that’s being mocked, it’s the misplaced nationalism; it’s the ensuing wars.
A more recent example of the phenomenon would be the deluge of memes insinuating J.D. Vance had sex with a couch. Are the coconut-pilled leftists making those just trying to dissociate from the sucky prospect of a Trump-Vance presidency or do those jokes have more purpose?
Could you argue memers paint with too broad a brush on images surrounding 9/11? Of course. And I ascribing a staunch neo-liberal moral code to everyone who jokingly uses “never forget” in conversation? No, some people are just trolls.
But there’s a reason it’s become so widely accepted to joke about one of the worst days in U.S. history and I don’t think apathy alone explains it.
With that said, never forget that Ted Cruz liked porn on 9/11.