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Columbine, 10 years later
Dalboz
Resident Puppy EaterRight behind you...Registered User regular
Resident Puppy EaterRight behind you...Registered User regular
On April 20, 1999, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold shot up Columbine High School, killing 12 and injuring 23 others before turning their guns on themselves. There's been a lot in the media about this lately. One article that was particularly interesting though was Debunking the myths of Columbine, 10 years later.
While a tragedy, to me Columbine was really an prime example of media exploiting and sensationalizing a tragic event, reporting wrong information (knowingly or not), and spinning a story to promote causes. There was reporting that the shooters had somehow trained by playing Doom. Jack Thompson tried to take up the cause. Sega canceled the light gun for the Dreamcast because of Columbine. As was shown in the article above, there was a lot of bad information that got out about the event and people involved. How did this event affect you? How did it change your perspective on schools, media, cliches, etc.? Admittedly, I was already well out of school at that point, so I didn't experience any kind of backlash from it, but I know several in here were and might be able to provide some perspective on how or if things changed for them.
CNN wrote:What do you remember about April 20, 1999?
If you recall that two unpopular teenage boys from the Trench Coat Mafia sought revenge against the jocks by shooting up Columbine High School, you're wrong.
But you're not alone.
Ten years after the massacre in Littleton, Colorado, there's still a collective memory of two Goth-obsessed loners, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, who went on a shooting rampage and killed 12 of their classmates and a teacher, injured 23 others and then turned their guns on themselves.
Journalist and author Dave Cullen was one of the first to take on what he calls the myths of Columbine. He kept at it for a decade, challenging what the media and law enforcement officials reported.
"Kids had never been attacked in this kind of way until Columbine," he recently told CNN. "I just had to find out what happened to those kids."
Cullen's book,"Columbine," was released this month -- just in time for today's 10th anniversary of the shooting at the Colorado high school. While tackling popular misconceptions, Cullen also gives a riveting account of what happened that day and how the survivors view the event that marked their lives forever.
Cullen concluded that the killers weren't part of the Trench Coat Mafia, that they weren't bullied by other students and that they didn't target popular jocks, African-Americans or any other group. A school shooting wasn't their initial intent, he said. They wanted to bomb their school in an attack they hoped would make them more infamous than Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh.
The Columbine tragedy left a lasting mark on many Americans, largely because of the media's around-the-clock coverage in the days and weeks following the shooting. Columbine was named the top news story of 1999 with nearly 70 percent of Americans saying they "followed [Columbine] very closely," according to a Pew Research Center study.
When media coverage faded, reporters and investigators soon learned that some of the initial reports were wrong. Cullen writes about the misperceptions: "Facts rush in, the fog lifts, an accurate picture solidifies. The public accepts this, but the final portrait is the farthest from the truth."
Officials at the Jefferson County Sheriff's office agreed that the Trench Coat Mafia, among other myths, were false. Lead investigator Kate Battan said the 10-year anniversary offers a chance to clear up the misconceptions.
"It was the first big event where cell phones were around, and I had witnesses giving information to the media before I even got to it," she said. "A lot of that information was wrong."
For example, many in the media initially reported that 17-year-old Cassie Bernall, a Christian, answered "yes" when asked if she believed in God before she was shot to death. She became a poster child for the Evangelical movement after her death. But investigators and student witnesses later told Cullen that it was another student, Valeen Schnurr, who avowed her belief in God as she was shot. Schnurr survived.
Cullen's first book reading was in Denver, Colorado, a few weeks ago. He said most of the 150 guests, despite their close proximity to Littleton and the shootings, still believed that Harris and Klebold targeted certain classmates, among many other misperceptions.
Today, after carefully combing through the boy's diaries, school assignments and police documents, journalists and investigators agree there is no evidence the killers singled out the jocks in a hit list. In fact, their victims varied in race, popularity, religion and age.
Cullen said the myths were so widely reported that they were hard to take back later.
"You would have to go through a lot of corrections," Cullen said. "You would need to have something blockbuster to shake them [the public] up and say 'Everything you know about Columbine, let it go.'"
Psychologists who study memory say people tend to remember first impressions. In the case of Columbine, what the public first saw and heard in the news tended to stick with them.
Professor Elizabeth Loftus at the University of California-Irvine, who specializes in memory, said myths continue to be validated when people start talking with others about an event. Once memories are embedded, people resist changing their minds, experts say.
"Memories often fade and get more distorted as time passes," Loftus said
Five months after Columbine, Cullen wrote an article published on Salon.com revealing that most members of a group dubbed the Trench Coat Mafia had graduated years earlier.
The Trench Coat Mafia was a nonviolent school group of computer gamers established a few years before the shooting, Cullen said. They feuded with the jocks and wore black trench coats. Harris and Klebold were not members, Cullen concluded after talking to students at the school and analyzing police documents. Neither boy appeared in the Trench Coat Mafia's yearbook group photo in 1998. iReport.com: How did Columbine affect you?
The two killers were far from normal teens. Harris was a psychopath and Klebold battled depression, according to psychologists cited in the book. Even so, they also weren't the extreme social outcasts and loners depicted in the early days of media coverage.
Records released later by the Jefferson County Sheriff's office showed that Harris and Klebold had their own circle of friends. Klebold took a date to the prom, riding with a dozen friends in a limo, just days before the shooting.
"I don't believe bullying caused Columbine," Jeff Kass, who covered the story for the Rocky Mountain News, told CNN. "My key reason for that is they never mentioned it in their diaries."
After a decade of research, including hundreds of interviews and relentless requests for evidence and documents, Kass also released a book this month called "Columbine: A True Crime Story." It provides comprehensive profiles of the killers and their motives.
Kass was able to get Klebold's college application essay through public records requests. The essay indicated he was a complex teen, who acknowledged hanging with the wrong crowd during his sophomore and junior years.
Cullen, the original Columbine debunker, theorizes that the public was afraid to believe Harris and Klebold weren't total outcasts. By identifying them as goth loners who were "weird" or "oddballs," it was easier to set them apart from other students and for schools to distinguish future potential shooters, he said.
"The bombs were inconsistent with what we remember," Cullen said. "We dropped the one that was true and kept the myth."
Kirsten Kreiling, president of the Columbine Memorial Foundation, said she believed the initial reports that the killers were in the Trench Coat Mafia and targeted jocks. So did many other people in the community. Ten years later, Kreiling, who has diligently kept up with news reports on Columbine, knows those initial reports were false.
She realizes many people still accept the myths and hopes the truth of what happened at Columbine will some day replace the popular misconceptions.
"Understanding what happened can help us try to prevent these things from happening again in the future," she said. "If you don't understand history, you are doomed to repeat it."
While a tragedy, to me Columbine was really an prime example of media exploiting and sensationalizing a tragic event, reporting wrong information (knowingly or not), and spinning a story to promote causes. There was reporting that the shooters had somehow trained by playing Doom. Jack Thompson tried to take up the cause. Sega canceled the light gun for the Dreamcast because of Columbine. As was shown in the article above, there was a lot of bad information that got out about the event and people involved. How did this event affect you? How did it change your perspective on schools, media, cliches, etc.? Admittedly, I was already well out of school at that point, so I didn't experience any kind of backlash from it, but I know several in here were and might be able to provide some perspective on how or if things changed for them.
Dalboz on
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Ha ha... I kid, I kid. If anything we've become more reactionary and deluded.
On the plus side, we are strip searching 13 year old girls now for Advil, so you know the school are safer.
They moved that crappy movie with Barry Watson from 7th Heaven.
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A couple of random jackasses decided to shoot some people. This happens all the time. There have been at least two similar cases that were just as bad this year that I know of. It just so happened that in this case the nutjobs that did it were young.
It sucks that people die like that but it happens, every once in a while in a nation containing millions of people someone breaks. It's much more dangerous to sensationalize events like this, because you damage society over something that can't be prevented, and you convince other crazy people that if they do the same thing they'll be just as famous.
It was a gangster film...I guess you could call it that.
The two thugs had trenchcoats.
These are details we couldn't change.
Got some really weird looks that day. Luckily everyone figured out what was going on when they saw me hauling around a $11,000 broadcast quality camera. Yeah...still...egg...on all our faces.
Shit I should post this in Strange/Embarrassing moments.
I never finish anyth
That's the thing, though. Ten years ago, this was pretty much unprecedented. I was in high school at the time in Evergreen, Colorado. Littleton was like 25 miles from me. I don't know how other states reacted, but grief counselors were brought in, our school was released early for, I don't know, grieving?
Honestly, when it happened, it didn't really hit me that it happened to kids just like me, the same age and everything, until I went to the memorial.
I don't think it was the "worst incident of school shootings ever!" but at the time it was kind of a big deal.
Hell, thinking back, there were rumors swirling around everywhere that they had friends in other schools waiting to do the same thing, or that they had planted bombs in surrounding schools or football stadiums (our football JV team played them that year, if I recall), and that on the one year anniversary there would somehow be some kind of "anniversary" attack. None of it was true, of course, but it shows that it did something to people.
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PS: Fairview High School in Boulder, BTW, is a fucking excellent map for rocket arena.
It really wasn't...
It was the first such incident that got large-scale media attention.
Which is very different.
Now that the awkward depressing sarcasm is done, I don't think Columbine really registered for me when it happened. I was barely in middle school and up until the 7th grade (which was a few months away), I attended private school. I must have been kind of sheltered for something like that to really have affected me too much.
In other coincidental news, I found this little piece of stupid on The Escapist earlier today (this thread reminded me of it). Accompanied by an appropriate faceplam, of course.
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That strikes me as a really bad idea "Hey that guy is similar to those two guy who shot a load of people, lets antagonise him".
If I remember correctly, the date was chosen by Harris and Klebold because it was the anniversary of the OKC bombing.
GM: Rusty Chains (DH Ongoing)
And OKC bombing date was chosen for the anniversary of Waco, wasn't it? Though a day late.
I don't remember hearing that, although lately there have been stories circulating that they were inspired by the OKC bombing. Apparently, the original plan of the shooter was actually to set off a bomb (or multiple bombs; not sure), but they didn't work so it became a shootout instead.
Although OKC was itself supposedly retaliation for Waco. EDIT: Beat'd
Fucking asshole media. Sensationalize! SENSATIONALIZE! RATINGS RATINGS RATINGS!
This is the first major tragedy I remember being sensationalized and exploited for ratings by the media. It's the event that turned me against the news media in this country.
That's what I remember about Columbine.
And they watched The Matrix.
Meanwhile we continue to pack kids in like sardines into educational institutions that actively treat them like they're subhuman, and even make their treatment even more demeaning in response to these incidents. It's not enough that we search their lockers, we need to subject them to metal detectors and drug-seeking dogs. It's not enough that we ban them from wearing athletic logos on their t-shirts, we have to force them to wear uniforms.
If a system repeatedly produces people with a disposition towards violence, we should be turning a critical eye towards that system, not the individuals affected.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Actually I thought harris and klebold picked this date because it was hitler's birthday and they were big into the whole neo-nazi thing.
EDIT: According to wiki this may or may not be the case, and they did specifically mention oklahoma city and waco. Still, those are topics/events that neo-nazis usually obsess over, so there may be a link there too.
Then the guy from the Virgina Tech massacre (four days before April 20) mentioned becoming a martyr like the two punks from Columbine.
It's like the butterfly effect...maybe...okay, not so much...
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I had an air-tank to a paintball gun in my car, and the police were called over it. (At school.) I was pissed they searched my car and that they were stupid enough to think I could kill someone with an empty carbon-wrapped bottle.
GM: Rusty Chains (DH Ongoing)
Mostly I remember being pissed off that Doom was being linked to Columbine when far more graphically intensive shooters were around by then. It strongly hinted that some people refused to do any research whatsoever and what's more, they never got called out on it in the mainstream media.
I'm not really comfortable with any part of your post.
Police killing people who "deserve it" sets a bad precedent. For, you know, shooting "crazy" people because they're "crazy."
Secondly, a lot of spree killers are depressed. And hey, psychiatrists/psychologists have determined that at least one of the shooters was. And depressed people? Some of them commit suicide, especially ones that are unbalanced enough to kill others.
Teenagers get depressed and freak out over everything, thinking it's the end of the world, even minor shit. These people shot/blew up their fellow students and teachers. They knew there was no way in hell they were getting out of it. Of course they killed themselves.
Maybe it's because I can't wrap my mind around what the point of killing all of those people is; or what could be going on in your head to make you want to do that.
GM: Rusty Chains (DH Ongoing)
And they played GTA3.
Shut up I don't care that it wasn't out until 2001 they played it and it corrupted their fragile little minds.
They were probably just two people who might or might not have become spree killers on their own, and their meeting was a kind of perfect storm of homicide.
Serious psychological problems?
I think all mentally healthy people would agree that Columbine was abhorrent, because the kids were not mentally healthy. One of them was a psychopath, which as I understand it, means that he doesn't have "normal" emotions, and also thinks of people as objects to be manipulated.
Man, are you kidding? The day after Columbine was probably the best day of middle school I had. People left me the fuck alone, and I wasn't even remotely goth, just incredibly smart and pretty dorky.
I just wish I'd been allowed to continue wearing my nice mid-length leather jacket though.
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Well, time travel will do that to a person.
Last Thursday (VTech's 2nd anniversary) flyers were scattered around the Stephen F. Austin University campus threatening to kill 10 people.
There was a pretty decent book I read a couple of years ago, I can't remember the name of it. It followed a handful of people through their lives after a (fictional) school shooting in Canada. Hmm, thinking about it, I wrote a paper on the 'video games are bad!!!!' topic for that class.
Columbine may be the first of the 'modern' school shootings to be reported, but it was far from the first. It wasn't even the deadliest at the time.
Also, I think one reason people don't talk about Whitman as a "school shooting" is because that term has the connotations of high school/middle school; college students are kind of a grey area because they're considered adults in most respects. I've noticed the VTech shooting is mostly discussed as a spree killing instead of a "school shooting", probably for the same reason.
EDIT: Columbine was hardly an isolated incident, even in the context of school shootings in the 90s. Years before there was a shooting in Paducah, KY, and not long after there was one in Jonesboro, AR (where one of the shooters was all of 11 years old; the older shooter was 13).
So there was definitely a precedent. Columbine was just the one where things had finally built up to a head and people realized they had to do something. Unfortunately, the things they did weren't terribly effective, and school shootings have continued ever since then.
I didn't even scroll down. I would have put a warning on the link if I had known about the picture and... yeah, I agree, it doesn't really add anything to the article.
I would agree with your distinction between college shootings and younger ages, but in the immediate aftermath they are treated the same by the media. Actually, I'd go further and just say that Columbine was a spree. To just call Columbine a 'shooting' doesn't reflect the magnitude of the event. "School shooting" suggests one or two people were shot.
I think David Grossman's book discussed the other shootings you mentioned. I may try and track down that paper I wrote see if there was anything relevant for this discussion.
I remember that my school administration turned into a bunch of reactionary morons about it, wringing their hands and going "oh god this could happen here what're we going to doooooo?"
Ignoring the fact that my high school had big drug and gang problems, and kids got stabbed and shit like once a month.
Suddenly they felt they had to react to this potential threat that existed because the media told them so.
In particular, they seemed to subscribe to the myth of the "picked-on nerd who snapped", which was the popular media portrayal of Columbine at the time.
I was a nerdy kid in high school. I played Magic: The Gathering with kids at lunch. I hung out with geeky kids. Hell, me and another dude created the "Tabletop Games and Hobbies Club" basically as an excuse to hang out after school and play Magic and Warhammer and Dungeons & Dragons.
But, I wasn't the target of the school administration's new policy to start watching and suspecting dorky kids of being psycho killers, because I was popular. I played sports, was on other clubs, and had a wide circle of friends in a bunch of different cliques and crowds. So, I didn't fit the profile of the trenchcoat-clad lone loser that the administration had developed based on media information.
However, some of my friends did. They were alright dudes, and I was friends with them, but they did fit nerdy loser stereotypes and outside of a real tight circle of people they trusted, they were loners with low self-esteem and were frequently the target of social bullying.
I don't think any of those dudes could freak out and go all shooting spree one day, even if some of them were really bitter about their situation and blamed their social shortcomings and how much they were tormented directly on their tormentors. Nonetheless, a couple of em basically perfectly fit the made-up image of the "trenchcoat psycho" and the administration got worried about that.
So, they hauled me and other friends of these kids into the office individually to ask us about these kids. It was emphasized to us that we weren't in trouble, and nor were these kids they were investigating, but they just wanted to be safe and to help these kids if they needed help.
They asked us questions like "have you ever seen them keep a list of other students they hate?" and other bizarre questions that were based entirely on this erroneous psych profile that was based entirely on media fearmongering.
Now, I was young, but I knew mass media hysteria and moral panics when I saw them. I, like many people who actually knew a god damn thing or two, recognized the absurdities in the media portrayals of the Columbine shooting and the information that was allegedly coming out about the two killers.
So, I got pretty angry about being called upon to rat out some innocent kids who were only guilty of the crime of being losers. I got all outraged and grandstandish, getting up from my chair and shouting at my school principal and vice principal about how absurd they were being. I wanted to illustrate how ridiculous their insinuations and profiling was, going so far as to list the multitude of ways that I, personally, more accurately fit the definition of someone the authorities might consider dangerous.
I remember storming out of their office after they threatened to suspend me for my rudeness and profanity, and telling the kids that were under investigation. Those kids, in turn, told their parents. Those parents, naturally, were quite upset that their child (already a victim of social bullying and being singled out) was being targeted and accused of being potential psychopaths based essentially on nothing.
One of the kids' parents went to the local paper about it, and threatened to sue the school for discrimination.
All this noise seemed to end the "nerdy kid witch-hunt", at least from the administration's end.
It didn't really end the bullying for those kids, and "going Columbine" added a whole new dimension to it.
They would taunt those kids and be like "What're you going to do? Shoot up the school?"
Bullying in and of itself is retarded, but this seemed to be even more absurd. Why would you taunt someone that you actually suspect might one day snap on you and kill you? It's like shaking your balls at a rabid dog.
But then, teenagers are stupid.
I ended up writing a paper in my brief stint in college about Columbine, and about how the media and parents handled things poorly and how schools were veering in that direction. As someone mentioned on page one, we've got that story about the 13 year old girl strip searched by school employees. FFS