Columbine turns 20

It was one of the first huge stories in the 24 hour news cycle.

Good thing America took action and tried to prevent this from happening again.

It left a sad legacy.

SHE SAID YES!!!

R4 that reminds me of the first ever thread on Columbine on Datalounge!

[quote]Good thing America took action and tried to prevent this from happening again.

Indeed. It's sad how nothing has changed since then.

We've had at least one school shooting every year for 46 consecutive years in the U.S.

Sad.

"She Said Yes" was the "Let's Roll!" of 1999.

Eric Harris was a hottie, what a waste.

His lovely peers used to pelt him with ketchup-soaked tampons.

I think I'd get a gun, too.

He was a psycho.

R11 that's an urban legend. Dave Cullen's "Columbine" debunks a lot of the myths about bullying that sprung up after the shooting. Both boys were severely mentally ill.

You can be both at the same time, R12.

Why does Colorado seem to have a disproportionate amount of spree shooters? Obviously, these events have happened all over the country but there do seem to be a higher amount in CO.

The can't out-Florida Florida though.

The real anniversary is on 4/20

Thank you, r17. Columbine was a Taurus.

Back then the living didn't turn into "professional victims."

When is the USA going to take mental illness seriously.

Hope there really IS a Hell, just so little freaks like the Colombine shooters can burn in it.

I'm so tired of the "they were bullied!!!" narrative.

I was bullied pretty mercilessly in school too. Know what I didn't do?

Bring a gun to school and kill a bunch of people.

It’s what made me stop listening to Howard stern. I thought he was outrageous but it was schtick until that morning.

I was late going to work that morning and was walking to the train station and listening to his show, and they were covering it live because everyone was. Robin provided a news update and then Howard expressed surprise that the perps hadn’t raped any of the girls. “I mean, they’re shooting them, they might as well rape some of them too — there have to be at least a few hot ones.” That was the argument.

Usually his jokes get cackles from his crew but this was met with stony silence.

Took my headphones off and couldn’t get myself to listen anymore. Just had no more interest in what he had to say.

When will America realise it's 2019 and not the wild west of 1819 and ban people from having guns.

Oh yes. Never.

It's so sad that tomorrow there will be another Columbine, and the next day and...

We Americans care more about power fantasies than we do about other people’s lives, including the lives of kids.

Exactly, R22. Gay boys and lesbian girls are bullied mercilessly, every day, in school. How many school shooters have been gay or lesbian? They're almost always straight, white little boy freaks. Useless trash who arent tough enough to handle what we do and have, every damn day. We go through rejection, loneliness, harassment...yet we aren't taking the lives of others, like those garbage assholes.

Fuck those two and every piece of weak-assed trash like them.

[quote]It was one of the first huge stories in the 24 hour news cycle.

Ahem. Excuse me.

They weren't bullied. They were just psychopaths.

Also, if they were bullied, why did they attack all of the nerds in the library instead of the jocks?

That made me mad too r29!

The nerds probably made fun of their spelling skills. A note was found from Dylan to Eric saying "If they don't stop making fun of me, I am going to loose my shit."

"Columbine" is a must read.It's over 400 pages, but you won't want to stop once you start.

I don’t think Dylan would have done it without Eric.

Dylan was fug and stupid.

A somewhat inspirational story.

Yes better to endure years of bullying that ruins your life than to get your own back on the scumbags.

She doesn't look a day over 19.

Dylan was ugly as fuck, Eric was HOT!

He just needed a nose job at least Dylan wasn’t a dwarf like Eric.

Eric was hideous as well.

Eric was sexy as hell!

If Eric had been sexy, Eric would have been too busy getting laid to help plan and execute a massacre. Eric was just as repellant as his scumbag bud, Dylan, and as sexually attractive as Adam Lanza.

Eric was too full of psychotic tendencies and violent fantasies to get fucked.

But thank god they were both bad at building I.ED.s

There's so much denial and suppressed guilt amongst their snooty school, that they teased and bullied a couple of disturbed young men to the breaking point.

Dylan was the instigator of the whole thing.

They both were.

R42 wasn't one of them banging an older woman?

I remember how shocking Columbine was.

Now when you hear about a school shooting it’s “oh, must be Tuesday”

What's not changed: the shooters are always trashy, drama-seeking scumbags who should've suicided before hurting anyone else, thereby making the world a better place.

They were losers. With the amount of firepower they were packing they should've killed 3 times the people they did. They should've spent less time playing video games and more time at the gun range. If you're gonna shoot up a school, do a better job.

Who, R47? Dylan's mom?

I think that Dave Cullen, the author of Columbine, used to post here. The book is good, and he’s an entertaining interview. He researched the case and found that they were not especially bullied (meaning given no more grief than the average high school student). Eric was a psychopath who fantasized about destroying the human race, and Dylan was very depressed and easily influenced. But there really is no easy answer, like their snapping and shooting up the school because of bullying. It’s not true.

Eric shot more people than Dylan but it doesn’t really matter. They were both twisted little fucks.

Dylan’s birthday is 9/11. Hmm

And the NRA is still in power.

It's so sad. Every other country's response to these types of atrocities is to control guns.

America's is to do nothing. When the same bad thing keeps happening to your neighbour and your neighbour does nothing to stop it happening, after a while you just shrug your shoulders and say "oh dear, how sad, never mind". Until it happens again.

I understand the complexity of gun ownership in the US. It's just so sad. That you are where you are and seem incapable of stopping mass shooting events.

[quote]Also, if they were bullied, why did they attack all of the nerds in the library instead of the jocks?

They weren't really bullied and IIRC, the claims that they were bullied by jocks were mostly dispelled by Cullen. They did have one jock on their hit list. The person that kept pushing the theory that jocks had bullied them was Dylan's friend Brooks Brown who had also feuded with Eric Harris and Harris threatened him over the internet. In the years after the shootings Brooks did interviews where he said that Columbine had bullying problem that he blamed it on jocks. He kept trying to claim that jocks were targeting Eric and Dylan.

Brooks said in one interview that he believed that bullying in schools would be reduced or eliminated if athletic programs were taken out. I was in high school in the early 2000s when I read that interview and I thought his belief/idea was ridiculous back then because different types of kids can be bullies and not every school has the same bullying problem.

At my high school, most of the jocks weren't bullies. I played baseball in high school and hung out with some guys who played baseball and other sports. Several of them were very popular. I was in the closet as a teen and years later I still wonder how they would have treated me if I was out back then. But, the guys I was friends with really had no interest in bullying kids who weren't popular or who didn't play sports. There was one jock who I wasn't friends with that was a big bully targeted unpopular girls(overweight or unattractive types) in the school. This bully also had a sister in the same school who was mentally challenged and she was often bullied by mean girls or non jock asshole guys. He used to get pissed about those people picking on his sister, yet it was fine and dandy for him to pick on unpopular girls. I remember some other kids called him out on the hypocrisy and one weak excuse he used was that his sister was different and had special needs and the girls he picked on had it coming because of how they looked or dressed.

Brooks' idea about eliminating sports wouldn't have worked in my high school. The mean girls, the non jock bullies, and the jock bully would have kept on doing what they were doing. I also think if Brooks visited different high schools and talked to people he would have seen that anyone can be a bully and it's not always the jock type.

[quote]wasn't one of them banging an older woman?

IIRC, Eric had a relationship with a woman who was in her early 20s for awhile.

Dave Cullen's book was optioned by Lifetime for a miniseries. Parents of the victims opposed it and had an online petition. Cassie Bernall's father signed the petition and said Cullen told lies. He was probably pissed that Cullen revealed that Cassie wasn't asked the god question and the real girl who was asked was Valeen Schnurr who survived. Cassie's parents had a few years where they sold a bunch of books and did speaking engagements at churches and at Christian organizations.

It seems Lifetime scrapped the mini-series project. I'm curious how long the option was set for. If the option ends in several years, then a premium cable network HBO or Showtime should get the option rights and do the mini-series and not give a fuck about people opposing it.

Eric had a few girlfriends in his life but it seems many times it was one date only or they friend zoned him or simply refused to date him.

I'm sure he tried 'impressing' the ladies with stories about how he fantasized about killing his classmates, R60. That always keeps the ladies interested, right???

Being facetious, of course. He was obviously so deranged they knew to dump him or run away, as fast as possible.

Yes, at least a couple of parents forbade their daughters from dating him.

Too bad Eric had to kill himself.

Not really.

I still mull over that Gus Van Sant movie ELEPHANT (2003) from time to time. A Palme d'Or and a Cannes Best Director Award is not to be sniffed at.

Alex Frost gave an interesting turn. Still, it's hard to see why GvS presented the boys' relationship as quasi-romantic brotherhood, when by all real-world accounts they didn't relate that way.

The survivors speak

DAMN. I was in HS when this happened. We old now.

The guy who was bullied was the Virginia Tech shooter. Even the English professor piled on.

r68 these kids were, too. Cullen came in too late and prominently after the fact to get the truth. Reading and hearing the contemporary accounts gave a fairer picture, but that didn't suit his narrative.

r44 has it right. It was both.

People still get bullied in college, R68? Come on now.

We discussed Virgina Tech here in DL at the time. many posters wanted to kick the shit out of the English class kids who went on some news show and talked more shit about the kid. I read several articles faulting the professor (a black poet) for jumping on the kid, and then expelling him.

This is not to say the shooter wasn't obnoxious, but the professor, the school and his fellow students handled him quite badly.

R69 Yes. Cullen distorted facts to fit his narrative, and made up "facts" entirely.

Can somebody elaborate about the. VT professor bullying the student? I had never heard this before.

For those interested in the truth about Columbine.

Virgina Tech

One of those crazy fangirls is being sought for making threats against Colorado schools. She is allegedly 18 and looks 38.

I remember I was a junior in high school when columbine happened. It was 4/20 so many of us were high as shit all day. I don’t remember exactly if we learned about the shootings during school or of it was after school but it just seemed bugged out. Although it was the first high school mass shooting it didn’t seem to frighten or surprise me and several of my friends. We dealt with so many fake bomb threats to the school called in fron disgruntled students a mass shooting from an unhinged student didn’t seem too far off from these bomb threats. Of course I was an apathetic pot head semi popular student in that I played varsity sports, was friends with everyone but was also a bad kid so I was a weirdo however popular by default. I was close witn the jocks and the burnouts. I was a club kid so I knew what it was like not to fit in but I was funny athletic and a party fixture. This was pre smart phones and social media. Few people had access to cell phones which were strictly banned and fewer people had access to AOL. Had that technology been around during columbine where the students could live broadcast the terror and the gunshots like the parkland kids did it would have hit home and been more terrifying. More real. Us 11th graders on the east coast just chalked it up to some disgruntled goth kids and never imagined this would become a common occurrence later.

Interesting that these 'events' occur only on government property, never private.

All schools in Denver are closed today because of that loon r76 mentioned.

I don’t understand why anything about Columbine is hard to believe — we have mass/school shootings every year.

The New Zealanders have the right idea — they basically redacted this guy even more that Barr is going to redact Trump’s criminality. If these guncrazed narcissists knew they’d commit murder and NOT get famous, half of them probably wouldn’t bother.

(Oh, the New Zealanders have the *other* right idea of actually banning military style rifles after one was used in a mass shooting. Amazing!)

I believe Eric spent the weekend prior to the massacre attempting to get laid, but struck out.

Dylan was mentally ill, but had it not been for Eric, the only person he would have killed would have been himself.

It's always been funny to me that Brooks Brown was so insistent that it was bullying what set them off, because the one person that had Eric's number from jump was his mother.

I heard an announcer talking about the anniversary, and he mentioned the school was still open and I was shocked by that. Sorry, there's no way I could go to that fucking school.

[quote]I don’t understand why anything about Columbine is hard to believe — we have mass/school shootings every year.

Because until then it was virtually unheard of. It’s only now that it seems to happen frequently. Back then it was a shock.

[quote]I don’t understand why anything about Columbine is hard to believe — we have mass/school shootings every year.

Are you really unable to put this into context, stupid?

Bullies deserve bullets.

Columbine was definitely the one that changed everything culturally and the deadliest at the time. But oddly there were two other mass schools shootings (mass shootings as opposed to personal disputes between individual students or teachers) just in the previous year or so that I know of just off the top of my head. There was Kip Kinkel's Thurston High School shooting. And the reason I recall that there were other such massacres in the news is that, being only a kid at the time, for years I mixed up several details of Columbine in my head with this incident:

It’s the first time I remember not being able to shut off the news. I miss a time before then.

Government schools are idiot factories and bullies’ rights advocates. They had it coming and you know it.

Trailer for a recent documentary about the survivors. It's available on Hulu. I'll probably watch it later on this week.

"A Mother's Reckoning" by Sue Klebold is also excellent.

The schools in this part of England closed on the 12th April until the 29th April for Easter.

[quote]Erna

Fetid shit eating diseased Nazi pedo cunt fuck

Just heard on the radio -- the loon R76 mentioned is dead. No details yet.

I was in junior high for Columbine. It was the one that changed everything.

I wonder if Eric would still be hot in his late thirties.

I just looked it up -- Virgina Tech also happened in April and several students there had also survived Columbine

Springtime must be tough for psychos, R96.

Glad the 'infatuated' chick is no longer a threat to others. I'm sure her "I ♡ Hottie Eric Harris" tumblr page will get some re-blogs, now!

...she had to have been faking her age. Ain't no way in hell this person is 18.

I was ten years old when this happened, and the only thing I took away from it (being too young to really understand what "school shooting" meant... I would come to fear those later...) was the insane TV coverage. All day on all the channels, it seemed like. I'd see this again on 9/11, and understood a little better why the TV covered that, but still was pretty young to understand it.

I wonder if it's the pressure of spring break coming up that makes them flip?

April is the cruellest month, breeding

Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing

Memory and desire, stirring

Dull roots with spring rain.

The beginning of the abyss.

I would argue this event changed American culture more than 9/11.

The beginning of breaking, non stop terror news.

The Oklahoma City bombing was also in April -- back in 1995.

Ominous April.

Denver Post is a releasing a three part podcast about Columbine.

This reminds me that I need to get my hair done.

I wonder if Eric was talked into doing this by Dylan.

The guy who was principal at the time is promoting his new book.

What’s tragic is that hairpiece.

When you think about these events now you're almost surprised that "only" 15 died at Columbine. Now 20, 30, 40 seems to be the numbers from mass shootings. Sadly.