9/11 footage is reaching new audiences — and fueling old conspiracy theories
A person watches as the Tribute in Light is tested over the skyline of lower Manhattan Wednesday in Jersey City, N.J. ahead of the 25th anniversary of the attacks. Photo by Adam Gray / The Associated Press
CNN
Even 25 years later, the planes keep crashing, and the towers keep falling.
All across the web, people who are old enough to remember September 11, 2001, are rewatching the attacks and rereading about the aftermath, often via devices and platforms that didn’t exist 25 years ago.
But that’s not what stands out most. It’s this: Some younger people are watching for the very first time.
“More than 100 million Americans are too young to remember that day,” former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg recently observed.
Some of them are discovering the horrors of 9/11 now, clip by clip, on video sites like YouTube and TikTok.
The experience can feel transportive, with viewers traveling back in time to an era of VHS tapes and landline phones. But it can also feel disorienting and deceptive, with very little context separating the harrowing historical record from inane conspiracy theories.
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