Generally, people weren’t dicks or trolls online quite as much at the time. The internet wasn’t for everyone in 2001. Most people got their news from TV. I had a family member call me to turn on the TV.

The lack of decency part was how quickly the anti-Arab sentiment came out of the woodwork. With a lot of people still sort of attuned to it from the first Iraq war, it was easy for a lot of people to fall back into that. Tons of racist cartoons and photoshoped images sent around, mostly by email. Lots of email forwards. To be fair, people were extremely pissed, and since it was not a nation-state doing this, it was hard to have someone to blame in the traditional sense.

But, in general, people were more shocked and terrified. Especially as the anthrax stuff happened a few weeks later, rampant speculation and conspiracy theories ramped up. All of that “jet fuel can’t melt steel beams” started within days. A lot of “woah, I can’t believe it” stuff. It took a few days before things got back to normal.