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Does anybody have that image of what cyberpunk dialogue is like. "to crack a cyber lemon this nasty" or whatever

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I reblogged it earlier but I'm glad the Something Awful Forums 9/11 thread was archived because it's an incredibly important slice of internet history. For the record I think 9/11 was thousands of personal tragedies for the direct victims of the attacks but one big national farce that led to America's ongoing slide into fascism, and the nationalism and remembrance around it is a joke especially in the wake of the same amount of deaths every fucking day in the US during the height of coronavirus.

Nevertheless I think it's important that if you do not remember because you were too young or just didn't exist on Sept 11, 2001 to read the Something Awful 9/11 forums to get an idea of what the internet was like at the moment when America changed to 24 hour news cycles and renewed hyper-nationalism not seen since WWII.

This all happened before Twitter, Facebook, before Discord. Before smart phones. Before most people had cell phones. When a lot of people still had dial-up internet, even. Some people in the thread were relying on radio because internet and TV weren't keeping up.

It was a live event of internet denizens reacting to the biggest national event (and among the biggest international events) of the past 25 years. It was also a slice of what the internet was like at the turn of the millennium. Not only that, but people accurately calling out who was responsible, and what would result before the attacks even finished.

Keep in mind that the links that follow contain images of the event, lots of Islamophobia, people calling for the Middle East to be nuked, people blaming Palestine, casual racist and homophobic language (this was Something Awful after all), etc etc. They preserved the first 17 pages which spanned about 24 hours during the events. It's the origin of the "WATCH BUSH START A FUCKING WAR" screenshot.

Links under the fold. I've also annotated the pages with notes regarding the timeline and any posts of interest. Note the thread was preserved in Pacific Time even though the page says times are Eastern. That's incorrect. Post timestamps are 3 hours behind Eastern Time, which is the time zone where the attacks occurred:

Page 1 - Note the first post was edited to include images of the second attack. The thread started after the first plane hit. Second plane hitting the WTC happens here too.

Page 2 - Poster accurately calling out Bin Laden was responsible at 9:14 AM EST

Page 3 - "WATCH BUSH START A FUCKING WAR"

Page 4

Page 5 - First official acknowledgement it was a terrorist attack.

Page 6 - Pentagon hit

Page 7

Page 8

Page 9 - Commercial flights grounded by FAA (Federal Aviation Administration)

Page 10 - First mention of towers collapsing at end of page

Page 11 - More reactions to collapse of first tower. People thinking it was a bomb or yet another plane. Rumors about a fourth plane just missing the White House (these are false and predate the actual 4th plane crash by minutes)

Page 12

Page 13 - By this point there's just rampant speculation about more bombs at the WTC, the US Capitol building being hit, etc (all false). Remember this is all just people reacting to TV news and radio and the rumor mill via phone, AIM, IRC, and maybe text messages.

Page 14 - By this point internet news sites are overwhelmed

Page 15 - Second tower collapses. First acknowledgement of the fourth plane that crashed in PA.

Page 16 - There's an abrupt time jump in the threads, I think it was the result of admins pruning the activity or the SA forums going down. This page starts on 9/12 even though it is page 16. American flag signatures and ribbons start appearing.

Page 17

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OH NNO

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1941, noisemakers for special effects....

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its fluttershy's awesome secret

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Go Forth Former Delinquent Koshitan is the cutest thing ive seen an anime girl do in years. and now you'll see it too.

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PLEASE watch mayonaka punch, especially if you happen to like lesbian disaster vampires

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there's a weird misconception amongst some people that the problem with our society is that it's hedonistic and materialist. it's the opposite... nobody is having any fun and almost nobody owns anything

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Is My Blue Your Blue? A visual perception test that judges what you call blue and green and compares it with others’ results. I am “bluer than 68% of the population.” Now do red/pink, red/orange, and blue/purple!

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How intimidated do you think trans women on this site feel to even speak up about their being banned at all anymore after what the CEO did to predstrogen and the ways that staff has continued to allow administrative punishment of random trans women, who rightfully email staff asking why they got murked, who in response get an email typed by an actual human person waving their hand around going, ohh don't you recall? You were weird and sexually strange once. I know you know what you did. You've read our TOS. You know we have rules against being sexually strange. You are so naturally implicated in your own execution that we won't waste our breath even explaining why this happened to you. Don't worry, this wasn't random- this was premeditated by a real human person and we've all reached a rational conclusion together, us here at staff and what could have just been one spiteful person or an army of TERF Pinkertons, and we find your assuming of the latter to be quite disrespectful. Think of all the kind, compassionate people on staff who're wishing really really hard that this kind of stuff stops happening. Think about how sad they must be that you're saying all this mean stuff about them. They're just following orders!