Another 9/11 thread made me think.....

[BertrandRussell]

.... am I the only adult in the world never to have seen the footage of the Twin Towers? I had small children with me and listened to the news on headphones- then I decided not to watch it. And I never have.

I’m impressed you’ve managed to avoid it all these years. It was on so much and repeated on so many things. Have you seen a picture in the paper or anything?

Yes- i’ve seen still images.

I watched it and so did my children who were 5 and 2 at the time.

That's a pretty mean feat.

Ah ok. Very wise choice not to watch it. I got anxiety from watching it endlessly (would flinch at the sound of planes) and had nightmares for a long time

I think I've seen parts of it repeated literally hundreds of times without actively looking for it in adverts for TV shows or news excerpts not to mention all the documentaries and things I've watched about it which obviously contain footage.

I can't imagine never having seen any of it!

I would not have watched it, had I thought about it. I was told 'quick, turn on the tv' so I did. If I'd been home alone I'd have heard on the radio and possibly managed to avoid it.

I was in NYC with DS and my mum at the time .... we couldn't help but watch it. The friend that we were staying with lost lots of firefighter friends and family in the Towers.

I watched it happen on tv
It seemed like it was on for weeks, there was nothing else on tv, no normal radio shows, how on earth did you not see it.

I've taken my dcs to the memorial and museum and have shown them footage

It's the biggest thing to have happened in my lifetime

I am not entirely sure how you have managed to avoid any moving images of it in all the years that have followed, and I also had young children with me when I first heard what was going on and turned on the tv, but they thought they were watching a film or something and were not traumatised by what they saw.

But that said, I am not sure I don't envy you a little bit. A few months ago, I spent the best part of a day watching YouTube videos on the subject, and I ended up almost feeling physically ill by it, so immersed in the events I became. I have felt similarly when I have watched too many videos about the holocaust. It really was an unimaginable horror.

I haven't either. Have seen stills, but no movies. Don't really feel the need to search it out.

I was living in the US when it happened -friend picked me up walking to work in her car after the first plane hit, we listened to the car radio on the way in, then spent the day in the office with the radio on. Boss and several coworkers had family in NYC and I did in the Pentagon, and we spent the day pretty distracted and trying to get the long distance lines to work. Did get confirmation of everyone's saftey except for one of boss's cousins by the end of the day (he had been in the towers, but got out in a state of shock and just walked all day to get home in a daze, didn't arrive until late at night).

We had no TV at the time, and just go the news on the radio, then years later it wasn't on TV much anymore and I don't watch it or YouTube much anyway.

So you and me @murmuration!

I dont know how you could avoid it really? I dont seek them out either, but they've been repeated probably hundreds of thousands of times over the years.

People think it’s strange that I live in NY and have never been to the 9-11 museum. I have heard enough of my own friend’s first hand accounts of that day, I’ve never really seen the point. It just seems a bit like grief tourism to me.

I watched the live footage at the time but I’m struggling to think of anytime I’ve seen the footage since then. Small references occasionally such as plane looming at window and camera panning out to show towers, or photos but I’ve never come across the actual footage since.

I’ve deliberately chosen to avoid difficult news in more recent years, sometimes burying my head in the sand for a week or two until it’s been reduced to a digestible synopsis. I can only handle so much of the awfulness of the world before it overwhelms me.

Sure

To be fair, once circumstances meant that I didn’t see it in the day, I did. are a conscious decision to avoid seeing it. I have had to avoid it a few times.

Most news outlets nowadays don’t show the video footage anymore because it’s insensitive to the families who lost loved ones. The families actively asked for them to stop.

I saw it live at the time. It was pretty hard to avoid really.

My children saw it too, and they were aged 6 and 2 at that point. I saw no reason to hide it from them.

I'm actually not sure I have. I don't remember. I've seen stills.

Maybe I have. I'm not sure if the pictures in my mind are what I've actually watched or are things I've made up based on the stills I've seen in news papers and what I heard on the radio iyswim. I could Google it I guess.

Why did you decide never to watch it?

Because I didn’t see the point. I could not have been any more horrified. And (sorry- this is going to piss people off) I think watching it after the event is a bit voyeuristic.

I've always had a lot of time for you, @Bertrand, as a voice of brisk rationalism on the 'woo' threads, to give only one example, but this does smack of virtue-signalling.

I agree to an extent that there's a tone of voyeurism and competitive sensitivity/how closely affected people were etc on the current thread about what you were doing on 9/11 and I can't help feeling that it's significant that an awful lots of posters are misremembering the attack as taking place shortly after breakfast, when it was afternoon UK time, which casts a lot of those memories into doubt, anyway but I'm not sure I think there any value in compulsively avoiding any footage all these years on.

You asked me why I don’t want to see it. I explained.

It was on when I came home from school. My dm and 2 blokes from virgin media were sitting in the lounge and I thought they were watching a film together.
It was one of those things that you couldn't not watch as it was too unbelievable.