Even 25 years later, the planes keep crashing, and the towers keep falling.

All across the web, people who are old enough to remember 9/11 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 people are watching for the very first time.

A younger generation with no memory of that morning is discovering it all now, clip by clip, often with very little context separating the harrowing historical record from batshit conspiracy theories.

There are many entry points, some more reliable (and respectful to the victims) than others. Personally, I recommend going the documentary route. The acclaimed film “9/11,” featuring footage of firefighters inside the towers, is streaming on CNN All Access. I decided to show parts of the film to my children to help them recognize the heroism on display that day.

The public interest is palpable. “Turning Point: Generation 9/11,” a new documentary about the anniversary, was Netflix’s #2 movie globally last week.

On Google, rising queries include “how many stairs did the firefighters climb” and “who were the hijackers” — perhaps a useful reminder for news organizations to re-up archival content.

Some outlets are already doing so. I’ve noticed “60 Minutes” sharing clips from past 9/11 stories on its social media accounts all week long. The History Channel is resurfacing interviews with survivors since it is history now, after all.

And it’s all being delivered by the same chaotic social media feeds that increasingly blur fact and fakery.

Random and anonymous X and Instagram accounts are capitalizing (some might say exploiting) the anniversary by posting old TV clips and tributes… but also unhinged lies and innuendo. If you click into even a dryly factual 9/11-related post, you’ll likely find a comments section littered with heinous conspiracy theories.

The truth is out there, too, but people usually have to search for it.

A frequent entry point is the raw video of the TV coverage from the morning of the attacks. On YouTube, some of the most popular searches relating to 9/11 are “9/11 news coverage as it happened” and “videos of the plane crash.”

One YouTuber compiled playlists of many 9/11 broadcasts here. Another created this compelling multi-view showing eight channels’ coverage of the first 18 minutes of the disaster in New York. WNYW was the first local station to break in, and CNN was the first national network to do so. (If you’d prefer to read rather than watch, here’s the transcript of CNN’s first 30 minutes.)

If you spend some time with the coverage, you’ll see why National Review’s Jim Geraghty led his column today this way: “Kid, the thing that none of the documentaries will show you was how that morning, after the first reports, nobody knew anything.”

It’s so hard to convey what that uncertainty and, yes, terror felt like. But the feeling comes through in the minute-by-minute news coverage.

The videos also show how TV news anchors were, as Garrett Graff once said, “the closest thing that America had to national leaders on 9/11… fulfilling a very historical role of basically counseling the country through this tragedy.”

“I just wanted to get it right,” the late Aaron Brown, who stood on CNN’s rooftop and narrated the collapse of the towers, once told me. “I wanted to get it right for my audience, for the audience, for the people who employed me. I wanted to get it right for the history.”

If you’re interested in reading more about the TV coverage, I wrote about what happened inside the network control rooms on 9/11 in great detail here years ago. I noted that the attack presented TV producers with a stark new test for prospective talent: “Would you want them on the air on 9/11?”

Today, as algorithms resurface all this content, and as some people see the falling man for the first time, I’m left wondering: What’s the psychological toll of one generation’s most traumatic memory becoming another generation’s TikTok content?

That’s the headline on this Pirate Wires profile of Manny Marotta, the 27-year-old who runs an X account called “2001 Live,” where he and his half-a-million followers “pretend it’s actually 2001” on any given day.

Marotta plans to live-tweet the attacks tomorrow with “over 400 posts, timed down to the second, published without assistance.”

The “excruciating detail,” he told Harris Sockel, is in response to seeing “a lot of Gen Z people online justifying” the attacks or pushing conspiracies. “In a way, Manny sees his role as filling in for Gen Z history class,” Sockel writes…

“That single moment of terror that brought us together splintered rapidly,” Tina Brown wrote this week after rereading some of her 2001 diaries. “We’ve institutionalized distrust and suspicion; we’ve cultivated paranoia. Paradoxically, perhaps, that period of outraged unification led inevitably to the seemingly insuperable partisan divide we now find ourselves facing.”

“Not long after 9/11, Facebook was born, then YouTube and Instagram, and, at first, it felt as if these might become community-making phenomena, safe spaces,” Brown wrote. “Instead, as the iterations of social media pile up and the voices on them multiply, we live in a cacophony of chaos.”

Nancy Gibbs has been thinking about that loss of shared reality, too. Yes, “there were toxic rumors and conspiracies” back in 2001, “but compared with what has transpired since then, the information landscape looks practically pristine,” Gibbs wrote in a new essay for TIME.

Her conclusion: “Strong societies need good information; communities benefit from shared stories. On Sept. 11, many of those stories were of quiet, reflexive heroism, sacrifice, service. First responders and random strangers modeled courage under fire, and the rest of us were swept up in a wave of gratitude that helped drain the fear. Those are stories worth retrieving now.”

Today marks one year since the shocking assassination of Charlie Kirk. For the anniversary, TPUSA “is returning to the Utah campus” where he was killed, Courtney Tanner writes for the Salt Lake Tribune. The event will feature Glenn Beck, Michael Knowles and other MAGA media figures.

“The Charlie Kirk Show” is dedicating its show to the anniversary, and VP JD Vance is expected to call in this afternoon, Playbook reports.

>> Conspiracy theories about Kirk’s death “continue to generate millions of views online,” Ines Chomnalez and Sofia Rubinson write. Candace Owens is chiefly to blame. (NewsGuard)

>> CNN’s Elle Reeve is out with a stunning new report about innocent Utahns who have been targeted by conspiracy-heads, “bringing harassment, threats, and fears that have disrupted their lives long after the attack.” (CNN)

>> Malcolm Ferguson writes that what followed Kirk’s killing “was a frantic, McCarthyist campaign that led to hundreds of people getting fired or disciplined for expressing their First Amendment right…” (TNR)

I’m curious to see how night one of “Trump-a-palooza” rated (especially versus the NFL’s opening night). President Trump’s 107-minute speech included a long complaint about New York Times reporter Shawn McCreesh’s recent comments on CNN. (Not the sort of thing that will help Republicans in competitive races.)

Night two will feature… another Trump speech. Hopefully Daniel Dale is taking a nap right now, because his night one fact-check was 3,318 words long.