A piece on the LA Weekly blog today asked the question of what 9/11 would have been like in the age of social media. One of the more interesting points it makes is that had the tragedy occurred in 2009, there would have been video footage from inside the towers and planes — “maybe even a live video stream” — a simultaneously fascinating and horrifying thought.
There were enough cameras around in 2001, though, to mean that some of the iconic video of the day was captured by civilians — specifically the crash of Flight 11 into the first tower, which was shot from different angles, according to Wikipedia, by French filmmaker Jules Naudet and Czech immigrant Pavel Hlava. Their footage is just part of the flood of imagery from that morning — which has since become fodder for the hundreds of YouTube users seeking to create their own memorials for the tragedy.
And their soundtrack? The Alan Jackson country song Where Were You When The World Stopped Turning, a YouTube search for which pulls up nearly a thousand videos. And while there’s the odd appearance of a live performance by Jackson in there, the bulk of the results are simply photo and video montages edited to that soundtrack.
Most of these videos were created a year or two ago, and have racked up view counts in the five- and six-figure range — the one currently going viral today, When the World Stopped Turning: A 9/11 tribute , is closing in on 300,000 views. However, of the 2,000 comments it’s received, none are actually related to the video content. Instead, people are replying with their answers to the titular question, or using the space as a way to say something publicly yet anonymously about the tragedy. (YouTube user philliesMVP616’s comment: “I love you Maria. I’ll never forget :(“). The comments speak to the reason why Jackson’s song became a popular anthem (though, as the South Park boys pointed out, an arguably exploitive one) — it contextualizes September 11 in the realm of the personal. Which is the way we’re programmed to experience things these days.
YouTube has really become the Swiss Army knife of human experience, enabling the communication of so many different ideas and emotions. In this case, grief. These videos aren’t really saying anything other than “We remember.” Not that we’d ever be able to forget.
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