9/11 and "never forget" collide with the meme generation's dark humor
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America says "never forget" — but a growing share of Americans don't remember.
Why it matters: More Americans are coming of age with no firsthand memory of 9/11, creating emotional distance from the trauma and more room for dark humor and reinterpretation.
The big picture: For Americans under 27, 9/11 arrived through textbooks, movies, social media and family stories rather than lived experience.
- That distance can make humor easier, amplified by algorithms that reward provocative content and a generational instinct to push back against mandatory reverence.
By the numbers: About 83% of adults born before 2001 remember where they were or what they were doing when they heard about the attacks.
- But roughly 10% of U.S. adults were born after 2001 and have no firsthand memory of 9/11.
That distance has allowed 9/11 to become fodder for a flood of memes, including ones using the iconic photo of President Bush learning about the attacks while visiting a school.
- Viral joke videos routinely rack up hundreds of thousands of likes, including clips with more than 900,000 and 680,000 views.
- The attacks have also become punchlines on podcasts, and in movies and TV shows.
What they're saying: "I don't think I would personally sit and make 9/11 jokes," Harry Daniels, a 22-year-old TikTok star known for serenading celebrities, including President Biden, tells Axios.
- Daniels says it's difficult for some to "empathize or comprehend how massive 9/11 was if they weren't physically there to see it."
- "I think it's not cool to have empathy anymore," he says, adding that online culture rewards appearing "perpetually unbothered, perpetually unfazed."
The other side: "I was at Hofstra [University], and I watched the building fall in real time," Jamie Cohen, a professor at CUNY Queens College, tells Axios.
- "It definitely f--ked me up... So now when I'm in a group chat where 9/11 memes come through, it's weird to separate the humor of the meme from the event."
- Cohen doesn't think younger Americans necessarily find the attacks funny: "I think what they're doing is finding humor in the darkness."
Zoom in: Jokes about 9/11 aren't new, but their reach is, Alex Turvy, a media sociologist, tells Axios.
- "If you roll the clock back to 2001 or even 2010, a dark joke … might have circulated among a few friends," he said. Now, it can become "a reusable format that's easily seen by millions of people."
- Cohen compared it to millennials joking about the Vietnam War in ways their parents wouldn't.
The intrigue: Some tragedies remain largely outside meme culture. Turvy pointed to Sandy Hook, whose child victims are viewed as completely blameless.
- 9/11, by contrast, is sometimes filtered through debates over U.S. foreign policy, American power and the wars that followed.
- That resurfaced when young TikTok users rediscovered Osama bin Laden's "Letter to America," with some saying they found parts of his critique of the U.S. compelling.
- Turvy said that framing may lead some younger people to treat 9/11 partly as a political event rather than solely as national trauma.
Zoom out: "Things will forever lose their significance as time goes on and as history goes on and as new tragedies come to light,' Daniels said, adding that someone will always try to capitalize on a moment.
Go deeper: Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to stand trial in 2028 over 9/11 attacks
