“Fuck it, Dude. Let’s go bowling.”
And, the planes hit at 9 in the morning, it’s not like he had time to bowl and then the planes hit. This guy was playing while the rest of the country was glued to their televisions.
The alley was probably nice and quiet, he could focus on his game.
It isn’t impossible that he didn’t know.
Many people don’t listen to the radio or watch TV. No smart phones.
edit = I saw the story [comment above] and the guy was just trying to be normal. I can respect his choice.
Yeah, but I feel like if you interacted with anyone you’d know something was up, if they don’t just tell you. Hell, if the bowling alley had TVs they were probably all on the news. Maybe if he was at home I’d believe he didn’t know, but not out somewhere where you have to interact with other people.
This. If you were in public, you knew. Everyone was talking about it. This was before certain news media fully splintered off into exclusively covering alternate realities, so most people at the time were on the same page information-wise, regardless of where they got their news from.
deleted by creator
He was in a league and the games weren’t cancelled
gotta get catharsis while you’re processing tragedy somehow. in a lot of ways this guy had it figured out
Read the article. It’s short.
Buddy what article? It’s a shitter screenshot.
https://kbin.melroy.org/m/whitepeopletwitter@sh.itjust.works/t/929047/-/comment/7504824
You got a mirror to this previously unposted article? I don’t have an mbin account.
Exact quote of the reply:
My apologies, it was 1AM, I thought it would do the thing where it shows you the comment on your instance.
My entire school knew within minutes of the second plane. There’s no fucking way he left the house that day and didn’t know.
My man
If I don’t bowl today the terrorists win.
Literally tho. That’s the kind of thing Bush & Giuliani were saying.
if you don’t lie about wmds and start a war lasting two decades based on a lie the terrorists win
That’s actually strangely beautiful. The worst terrorist attack on this country and people who weren’t directly affected just kinda… continue going about their lives.
It’s obviously tone-deaf and selfish too, but from the attackers’ perspective, what did you actually accomplish with all that money, planning, and lives spent?
I remember losing track of time watching it on TV and my boss called all pissed off. Rush to work and he is giving us shit because everyone was late. A coworker guilt tripped him hard about how we all just watched thousands of people die and were traumatized. He shut up and eventually sent us home early.
I remember I was in high school and they didn’t do early dismissal but all of our classes were pointless because we just watched the news. I also remember an edgelord kid making jokes while the news was on after the first plane hit about how the pilot must have been drunk or something and then literally watching another plane hit live and he shut up
Then I had a shift at my job, blockbuster video, which decided that people may want to rent movies during this tragic time so we had to come into work. Absolutely no one came in and my coworker spent the entire shift freaked the fuck out that a nuclear bomb would be dropped on the northeast
For reference I lived in New Jersey not that far from Manhattan. I could kind of get it if I lived in like Wisconsin or something.
Silly coworker, they would have opened with a nuke if they could. (Too soon?)
That was unironically my response to their anxiety. Why would they bother with all the plane nonsense if they had access to nuclear weapons? Makes no sense. But people went nuts after 9/11, totally irrational
That edgelord kid hadn’t been sat at a freshman class meeting a few minutes before, next to a kid whose first response to “A plane just hit the World Trade Center!” was, “What, another Cessna?”, right?
Please say no.
I wonder what it would be like today… Just one 8 hour long news segment that not everyone even hears about?
Oh god, all the top video clips would be made by people who died minutes after uploading them.
#JustBossThings
Bill seems like a good guy. I read the article hoping that he would mention that he has a brother called Tom.
Quite interesting seeing how everyone reacted at the time.
When I woke up to the news, my first thought was “oh great, that’s 24/7 news coverage for the next month at least. We’re not going to stop hearing about this for years”
Might have underestimated things a bit.
Definitely wasn’t expecting 25 years of what feels like constant coverage, infinite conspiracy theories, the invasion of multiple countries, and the death of literally tens (hundreds??) of thousands of people.
Also wasn’t expecting just how much of an impact it had on security - and not just at airports. We work at the airport and access is such a major pain in the butt now, but even going to ports or train stations has this constant fear that a bloke carting a bag of tools is there to do some terrorism instead of the far more reasonable expectation that maybe they’re here to do that job we requested. It’s been a quarter of a decade ffs.
“We can’t let the terrorists win” was the catch cry, but man they kicked our collective arses and are still doing so.
As a kid (12 years old) in the U.S., the division of eras that occurred on 9/11/01 was clear and immediate.
Adults acted very differently, starting that day. They went from being confident and in-control, to scared and uncertain. Teachers didn’t know what to say to us. Some of the school staff openly wept. Everyone was really lost, and U.S.ians have been seeking a strong leader to guide them ever since.
Flags were everywhere. Everywhere. I know for foreign visitors it’s hard to imagine there being more U.S. flags around the country than there already are, but it really was ridiculous. A neighbor and I used to see how many cars we could get to honk, just by standing on the side of the main road and waving flags.
It was like a hive mind took over the populace. Nationalism took hold in a way I had never seen before. Any disagreement with U.S. policy was now considered “unAmerican” and was likely to compel someone to say, “If you don’t like it, you can leave (the country.)” (No, it doesn’t make sense. It never made sense. I can’t explain it, I was just a kid that got told it for disagreeing with George W. Bush.)
Anyway, there was a clear, undeniable shift in culture that happened on 9/11/01. It’s wild to see the same people twist around over the course of 20 years, going from flying into a rage at the thought of someone criticizing the U.S., to actually agreeing that the U.S. is falling apart (even if we disagree on how or why.)
Not feed into any of the conspiracy theories, but if anyone ever wanted to quickly control an entire countries populace, this would be a great way to do it.
The event was used as an excuse to take away more of our freedoms. Like the War on Drugs.
We are running out of things to take. What will be demanded when the well runs dry?
Freedom of thought.
7 10 splits don’t melt wooden pins
Two possibilities here; either the country was under attack, and not only did this guy decide it was a good time to go bowling, but the bowling ally decided not to close for the day, or; this guy bowled at least one full game before 8:46 am. Not sure which is weirder.
I was in college in Texas when it happened. I don’t remember anything closing.
All of my classes kept to their regular schedules.
Interesting. I grew up in NYC, so obviously, everything shut down. We were kept at school (high school), but they gave up on teaching before noon, and everyone needed to be picked up by an adult (which was frustrating for me because I lived two blocks away).
I live in Massachusetts now, and most people recount something similar; not as severe, but school was let out early and their parents left work early. Maybe it was because some of the hijackers left from Logan.
Or started the game before then and decided to finish anyway. Or started before then and was too in the zone to hear about news.
“Hey Earl, they just hit the pentagon. Maybe someone should tell Bill?”
“Look, he’s at 260. Unless they get the White House, I say we let him have this.”
Bill does for us in the bowling alley what G.B. did for those kids in the classroom.
My money is on everyone being distracted so he took the opportunity to walk to the end of the lane and keep knocking over all the pins by hand.
Even better, he was at work and couldn’t think of anything better to do after the shift ended.
Wait is this the real answer?
It sure was:
And then it was 9/11.
“I was at work when it happened,” Bill said. “Of course we didn’t have a television there, but we had a radio and a newsflash came across the radio. So of course everything was dead silence.”
Bill and his co-workers finished out the day, and not knowing what else to do he said fuck it, let’s go bowling, and man is he glad he did because it was the best game of his life. He’d never bowled so well in decades of trying. He’d never bowl so well again. Amidst the chaos and fear and uncertainty of the world changing in ways neither he nor the rest of us yet understood, Bill Moro went and bowled a perfect damn game on 9/11.
This is the second best day of my life!
Sir. A second plane hit the second tower. America is under attack.
This is the best day of my life!
“40 Wall street actually was the second-tallest building in downtown Manhattan, and it was actually before the World Trade Center the tallest, and and then when they built the World Trade Center it became known as the second-tallest, and now it’s the tallest And I just spoke to my people, and they said it’s the most unbelievable sight, it’s probably seven or eight blocks away from the World Trade Center, and yet Wall Street is littered with two feet of stone and brick and mortar and steel …”
Trump on 9/11.
Yes, he was always narcissistic scum. NYC tried to warn everyone else.
Their warning was absolute proof to the south that he must be their messiah.
No other possible reason for NYC to talk shit about him.
Wow, he used to be coherent.
But that was before 2001, apparently.
Are we sure this didn’t happen in one of the many countries that write their dates properly?
Yeah, apparently he lives in Massachusetts.
Wait, was this a candlepin 300??
Shit… I never thought about it. Do other countries have bowling? Like, I know the game/sport is derived from various previous games/sports throughout history.
But bowling in its current American form, is that played a lot else where? And if so, how do those top tier american bowlers i see on the ocho stack up? I guess I know what internet video rabbit hole im falling down tonight.
I don’t live in the US and within the distance of a short walk, there are no less than three bowling alleys near me. One is public, one belongs to a bowling club and I don’t know about the 3rd one.
Can I ask what country? Or region in the world?
I’m in New Zealand, we have tenpin bowling here, and I believe the rules are the same as in the US. I’m pretty sure it’s a popular game around the world.
I see you’ve not yet been to Canada.
I won an online digital photography contest that day.
I find it very strange seeing people express such somber emotions about 9/11. Admittedly it was before I was born, but it seems so different to my experience. The reverence displayed for human life during 9/11 seems so disjointed from the apathy to the multitudes more who died in gaza. Who died in Ukraine. Who died in hospitals during COVID. I cannot imagine myself being so shaken by death. When I see tragedy it affects me very little. Not to say I think death is okay, I just can’t imagine living in a time where I would have grievances to spare on another thousand dead.
What I’m trying to say is that I probably would set a personal best during a modern tragedy and be either oblivious or indifferent. Relatable meme lol
I watched human beings jump out of skyscrapers live, my homeroom class. It had an impact.
And then everything went nuts, the Patriot act got passed, and the whole WMD bullshit, and my whole high school encircled the building and prayed. Nuts.
Do you think seeing it live on tv is what made the difference? Could you see people having a similar reaction to modern incidents if they were televised as much.
Probably, yes. Also the fact that they were their people.
America is on friendly terms with most of the world, surprisingly enough, so most would have viewed this as an attack on an ally.
I think seeing it live did make a difference. We didn’t know what was going to happen next. When we saw the second plane hit, at first we thought it was a recording of the first plane. It was traumatic.
I don’t know if you’d get the same reaction nowadays. Our media environment is much more fractured, I don’t know if you’d have the same experience. Even January 6th, it felt like I had a tad more control because I could choose where to get my information from, instead of having the one news channel.
I think part of why it feels so non-impactful to you is because 9/11 truly set off a chain of events that has led to the situation we’re in, including the many tragedies you mention in your comment. Of course 9/11 doesn’t exist in a vacuum, and it itself is just a one part of a much more complex web of actions and decisions, but the fact remains that for most common people 9/11 was an absolute tipping point after which nothing is the same. The sort of horrors you’re talking about in the world in the wake of 9/11 just weren’t the same kind of reality in the world before, at least not with the same intents and reactions thereto. You’re right to think it’s strange the way people react to and hold 9/11 because you’re never experienced the world before it. And to be clear, I am not saying the world was perfect before or that there weren’t horrors before, because their were, but 9/11 became a catalyst for so much reactionary evil and overreach and horror that it simply is non-comparable to what came before.
important note: this entire comment and perspective implies an enormous Western post-colonial bias. People in different parts of the world had and have an enormously different reality especially in regards to this event and I will not pretend to be able to speak to their experience.
because 9/11 was never about human life, Americans don’t give a shit about that. they care about their own life, and 9/11 was a shocking, if temporary, reminder that a full life isn’t a sure thing.
basically the American people felt for a moment how their government has made brown people all around the world every day for decades and the panic was enough to start multiple wars without an end in sight.
and of course as evidenced by these wars, it was a perfect excuse for maxing out the already obnoxious jingoism of the population. they just do it on reflex, no thinking.
never forget. respect the veterans. thank you for your service.
what was the service again? oh yeah cracking skulls of brown children? thanks a lot. I’m thankful you exploded those newlyweds on their wedding day who were surely getting married so they could do terror attacks together. thank you.
biggest terror organization in the world.
You remember how weird and scary and paranoid everything was in the early days of the pandemic? That’s a bit what it was like on/after 9/11. It was a shock to the entire nation, and the world suddenly felt uncertain in a way it hadn’t on 9/10.
You’re contextualizig the attack in terms of loss of life, numbers, but what you’re missing is the vibe of the thing.
For me, Covid is more like slow horror that creeps in, slowly boiling you like a frog.
9/11 is probably more like what Jan 6 felt like. Obviously, more people died on 9/11, but I’m talking about the shock of it, and how surreal it feels.
Covid feels more like a “Flint, Michigan” scenario.
I guess its because one category is negligence, the other is malicious intent.
That’s fair. I went with Covid because J6 did have any real ongoing impact. It happened and then everyone tried to move on like nothing had happened. That was itself surreal, of course. Covid had more of the “this changes everything forever” feeling (though at this point it seems like everyone has forgotten about it)
No not really. I remember people dying while others lamented the loss of economic value. I didn’t feel paranoid or scared I felt disappointed.
The vibe of the thing is exactly what I’m referring to. The vibes being somber seems a reality so far removed from what I’ve experienced and I want to understand why. From what I can gather from comments the reason seems to be that it was shown on tv. That tracks with modern disasters not gaining such notoriety because mainstream media won’t show you the scattered remains of children who died in buildings brought down by American armaments.
Look, I lived through both 9/11 and the pandemic and other events besides. If you didn’t feel any weird vibes in the first weeks of March 2020, I’m guessing this is more of a You problem.
My point is that many people felt destabilized by the attack. Maybe you’re too galaxy brained for that, but maybe you can try being galaxy brained enough to understand how others felt.
i remember going home with a friend because my parents were both working, and watching him play team fortress classic while half the lobby had nicknames like “OSAMA BIN LADEN HAS NO BALLS”
Man this is the kinda contemporary responses that need to be preserved. I feel much more of a human connection to an emotional reaction like that than I have for any other. Thank you
if nobody’s pointed out it - it’s because rich people died in 9/11
One is a conflict that has perpetuated arguably for more than 400 years.
One is a war that has been going on since 1948. Could be argued that it even started in the 1800’s with zionism.
One was COMPLETELY out of the blue, unprecedented in USA. Pearl Harbor doesn’t even come close to the impact of 9/11.
So yeah. Obviously people have different feeling about it.
9/11 was so shocking, it was known around the world.
My parents who grew up in a developing country (that is not even a US ally btw) also heard about it on the news. Its literally the first thing that come to mind when the concept of “terrorism” is uttered.
In 1993 a truck bomb exploded in the basement of the world trade centre killing 6 and injuring over 1000. Completely out of the blue? A first in history? Google pre 9/11 terrorist attacks, have a read through.
I said in another comment that the I think the reason for such discrepancy between the reactions I see in my life and the reactions to 9/11 from people who lived through it was they saw it happen on tv. And I guess in a weird way that does make sense to me. Of course people don’t have such a visceral reaction to things they haven’t seen.
I’ve seen plenty of the muslim conflicts. It is well reported in Sweden. You miss the geographical impact of a “real” threat occurring in North America.
I know about the truck bomb. It was like a footnote of nothing in comparison.
Idk I guess it’s just confusing for me. I don’t care particularly more about the people who died in 9/11 than I do about the people who died elsewhere. For me it is no less tragic than any other incident. And for me so much is happening that I’m numb to it.
Then thats a “you” problem.
Do you feel alright going to sleep in a safe bed at night?
i lived through it and got out of class early in uni because of it and watched tribute.wmv regularly and i turned out ok
Bowling a perfect game like there’s no tomoro
“dear god, what have I done!?”
There is a small theater monologue to be written about this event.
