About

Mark Wahlberg's 9/11 Statement sometimes referred to as "It Wouldn't Have Went Down The Way It Did," refers to a viral catchphrase and phrasal template meme sparked by a statement issued by Hollywood actor Mark Wahlberg in 2012 regarding the September 11, 2001 hijackings. In an interview with Men's Journal, Wahlberg said, "If I was on that plane with my kids, it wouldn't have went down like it did." The statement has been parodied and repurposed to reference different moments in popular culture and media in consecutive years.

Origin

In an interview with Men's Journal^[1] for their February 2012 issue, Mark Wahlberg was quoted to have said the following statement about the September 11, 2001 hijackings and terrorist attacks in New York City;

"If I was on that plane with my kids, it wouldn't have went down like it did. There would have been a lot of blood in that first-class cabin and then me saying, 'OK, we're going to land somewhere safely, don't worry.' "

Wahlberg had previously discussed the 9/11 attacks, since he was originally scheduled to take one of the hijacked planes out of Boston, and avoided doing so by leaving for Toronto a week earlier than planned.^[2] Wahlberg later apologized for his words, calling his statement, "ridiculous … irresponsible … [and] insensitive."^[3]

Spread

On January 19th, 2012 YouTuber^[4] Action Figure Therapy posted a video joking about how Mark Wahlberg could have stopped 9/11. The video gathered over 230,000 views in twelve years (seen below).

While Wahlberg's statement was often reposted online in the 2010s, memes using his statement as a phrasal template did now grow popular until the 2020s. X^[5] user @justinboldaji posted an image containing Wahlberg's face and his quote on September 11, 2020, alongside a crown emoji, gathering over 12,000 likes in four years (seen below, left). On July 4th, 2023, The Onion posted a satirical headline that read, "Mark Wahlberg Claims 9/11 Would’ve Gone Down Differently If He Were In Al-Qaeda" (seen below, right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

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External References