It wasn’t anywhere near as big a shift as 2016 when we realised that a lot of the people doing ironic nazi jokes were not, in fact, joking about having awful nazi beliefs. I was mostly on UK forums and IRC in 2001 though - the Americans would never have tolerated anything less than a reverential tone. There was a lot of conspiracy talk and concerns about further attacks and conflicts breaking out.
It wasn’t anywhere near as big a shift as 2016 when we realised that a lot of the people doing ironic nazi jokes were not, in fact, joking about having awful nazi beliefs. I was mostly on UK forums and IRC in 2001 though - the Americans would never have tolerated anything less than a reverential tone. There was a lot of conspiracy talk and concerns about further attacks and conflicts breaking out.