Slashdot Mirror
The Public & The Internet: Open Forum
brent_clements writes "With the recent shootings in colorado, and other recent shootings around the country, I have been seeing articles such as this one, touting that these kids used the "internet", played games such as DOOM or Duke Nukem and were general geeks who were picked on in school. The articles that I am reading give me the impression that by using the internet or playing these games the kids were somehow provoked by them. " I'm overstepping my usual bounds a bit, posting what's sort of an AskSlashdot, but given the constant coverage, here in the US of the Colorado Massacre, and the fact that the murderers are being styled as geeks and hardcore Internet people, I'm wondering what everyone thinks. Is the perception of this prevasive? Or, more honestly, does the Internet make things like this easier for people? What about socialization of people? Let 'er rip folks-because geeks are getting blasted out there right now.
I spent 11 years as a professional military officer, and while I was so employed I was constantly researching and studying my trade.
One of the books I picked up was called "On Killing", written by a Army Colonel with a PHd in Phsch, an absolutely facinating study into what it meant, on a personal level, to kill someone.
One of the subjects in the book was on the training of soldiers to kill. Humans have a powerful, innate aversion to killing people and getting people to overcome this aversion is very difficult. It's also the prime purpose of any Army training cadre.
In WWII, a study showed that a very small percentage of soldiers in a given battle actually fired their weapons, and an even smaller percentage of those soldiers fired aimed shots.
One of the changes made was to replace the standard Army "bullseye" rifle practice target with a man-shaped target. Thus conditioned to shoot at man -shapes (rifle engagements take place between 400 and 100 metres, so you can't make out faces etc.) the percentage of men who shot went up dramatically - by Vietnam, most men were actually firing aimed shots.
An interesting side note is that cases of post-tramatic stress syndrome increased at the same rate - those who would not normally have killed were now killing - and suffering the consequences after the fact.
Now I certainly don't think that DOOM or Quake turned these kids into monsters, but it is entirely possible that the game helped to desensitise and condition them to be able to overcome the natural aversion to killing. DOOM didn't get them to bring all those guns and ammo to school, but once the shooting started DOOM _may_ have helped keep it going.
Incidently, on the gun control issue, there's no issue that tears me (as a retired military professional) harder in two directions. On the one hand, I have lived around high-power firearms for most of my life, I have been in possible-live-shoot situations before, and I know when to shoot, and when not to. I trust myself with a firearm, because I'm highly trained, and I know that I won't use one except in the direst of situations. I would like to be able to carry a gun. Not some monster cannon, just a standard frame 9mm loaded with a "safty round" like a Glaser that does not shoot through people and is frangible (so no ricohets). Ammo capacity is not an issue - if I need more than 3 rounds, there's bigger trouble afoot than I should be involved in.
However, I DON'T trust Joe Public. I have no assurances that anyone holding a gun really understands what it is he's holding. Cops do, soldiers do, but I don't think guys like ESR do - and that scares me.
I'm not sure which is worse - people like me without a gun, or people not like me with one.
DG
I realize this probably won't be the most popular opinion you'll read attached to this article, but I'm going to step out on a limb. There seems to be a knee-jerk reaction going on here, on two counts. First, the media, for seizing on violent computer games and the internet as a possible `cause' of this tragic event, but also, the slashdot community for dismissing this possibility out of hand.
Several of the (few) posts at this point make the following argument -- "I play violent video games, and I've never killed anyone, so that theory must be wrong!" This is a fundamental logical flaw. If the statement were "violent video games turn everyone into killers", then a simple counter example would be sufficient. However, merely stating that violent video games have no effect on you doesn't disprove a relationship. I'm not necessarily claiming that there is one; just that this argument is flawed.
Now, to claim that there is a relationship. Several people have pointed out that violence predates the internet and computer games by a large margin. This is certainly true. I could sit here and make the argument that violence has never been this realistic, but I don't think that's the point. I do think that mindless violence, which is being portrayed more and more, in many different forums, is problematic. I was recently playing Quake Team Fortress the other day. As I entered the game, I was greeted with the message "Kill, Kill, Kill!"
--
Ian Peters
I agree with this. Here in Atlanta, one of our local radio idiots was talking about the influence of Marilyn Manson on these devil worshippers, and how we would hear a lot more about the music and how it was to blame before this was all over. Keep in mind, he was saying this at a time when the exact identity of the shooters was not known. The police had not even secured the building. When I got home that night, CNN was showing the cover art to Rammstein and playing up the fact that these two spoke German to each other.
Then came the video of Doom. I noticed the player in Doom had the shotgun (may favorite weopon in Doom) and had not yet got the chain gun.
Of the 1800 students at Calumbine (sp?) High School, how many do you think have played Doom? How many have listened to Rammstein?
Certainly any male old enough to hold a joystick has played Doom. No mention is made of the total prevalence of Doom on personal computers. It's an immensely popular game.
The media looks for some trait in the personality of these kids that will help mark them as members of a counter culture, but the traits they come up with are mainstream.
Marilyn Manson, Rammstein, Doom. Not all teenagers listen to these bands or play first person shoot-em-up video games, but they are not counter culture.
The fascination with Hitler is disturbing, but not uncommon in confused teenagers. Most grow out of it. The strange posts to AOL (if true) are disturbing, but AOL is a very mainstream outlet for kids to express their uninhibited thoughts in anonymous chat rooms. There is nothing unusual about doing this.
These two were disturbed, they needed help, but the media looks at normal, everyday trappings of teenage culture and places them on a stage as oddities. They are not oddities.
Questions that should be asked: How did these guys manufacture pipe bombs in their garage without their parents noticing? What legitimate warning signs were missed? (e.g. did they threaten someone verbally, had they tortured animals in the past, was there a history of non-lethal violence leading up to this.) But the media plays clips from "Du Hast" and shows 640x400 screens of monsters getting blown away with a shotgun.
There's no easy answer to this one, but it's difficult for me to believe that these kids were instilled with any morality or belief system.
School shootings are a uniquely American phenomenon and in a uniquely American way, pop culture will blame pop culture for the evils of our pop culture.
I am a senior at Arapahoe High School, in Littleton just 5 miles east of Columbine. They aren't our main rival, but I've watched two back-to-back state championship soccer games from the Arapahoe side of the field when it was down to us and the Columbine Rebels. As a result, there's been some real animosity between our two schools. Needless to say, that has been thankfully tossed aside as many of us went down there to offer help and support.
/. and user friendly for a bit of escape, and then seeing Iliad's message there and then later this (huge) thread on slashdot.
Also, I am a varsity wrestler (hence the handle i use) and i just recently competed in the regional championship which was held in the Columbine gym.
And as soon as I heard about the shootings, the first thing that came to mind was the time I was sitting in a bathroom stall in the Columbine boy's bathroom during the tournament. All 3 walls were covered with hate messages, swastikas, references to satan, and especially things to the effect of "All jocks must die!" And, like all those Columbine students, I thought that was kind of strange and then promptly dismissed it as I left the stall.
I don't personally know any of the victims, but it's been a hard last couple of days when I didn't know that fact. The coordinator of the gifted/talented program at Arapahoe (a good friend of mine) is the next door neighbor of a fatally wounded victim and has also known Dylan, one of the killers, since preschool. A fellow member of my track team is a friend of that kid everyone saw hanging out the window on the news. So its been a surreal week, and I don't think it's quite hit me yet.
When I first found out about the incident, it had only just started 15 minutes earlier, and for the next several hours I was under the impression that it was a minor shooting, with perhaps a few injuries. Then, I got home after practice and got the updated story, and couldn't believe it.
You've all probably seen on the news what they've been saying about Littleton, CO. Well its true. Practically every school here is a blue ribbon school, no gang activity, long honor roll lists with the bumper stickers to proove it, and plenty of soccer moms. Oh, and despite the name, its not little - thats just the name of the founder. It's a suburb of Denver, and nothing separates the two except a thin invisible line.
So I believe them when they say "If it can happen in Littleton, it can happen anywhere." -cross community upbringing off the list. And the more you read about the kids' parents, the more you will realize they were not "brought up wrong" or "mistreated". No, they both come from 2 parent households, and the neighbors feel strongly enough that the parents were good caring people (one mom works as a counselor for disabled people) that they wrote a note, signed by 19(?) of them expressing their support for the parents (although i admit that them not knowing about all that bomb building has me stumped) so I don't thing is parental upbringing. These two guys did little league sports and cub scouts, and the like, and Dylan attended a youth group with a friend of mine only last year. By his account, Dylan was normal.
Oh, and this "trenchcoat mafia" thing has also been blown out of proportion. This group (which was not a gang at all, and had no affiliates outside the school) was a geek type group that dressed different but had fun in their own way, and didn't harbout much more resentment than your average high schooler. They did, however, have a facination with guns. This is a description of that group as it stood last year, and they even took out a yearbook ad that show the group of geeks all smiles.
Things turned sour with the group late last year, from what I heard, when the jocks started picking on them. Then the hate started. They resented how the jocks seemed to run the school, and they were always picked on. A fight was arranged at a local baseball field after a big confrontation at the school. The trenchcoats showed up with brass knuckles and swords, so the jocks left.
I don't know for sure, but I believe that Eric and Dylan were drawn into the group through their interest in computers and weapons, and turned sour with the rest of the group from the run-ins with jocks. Their real flaw, I believe, was a combination of not knowing how to play the high school game and no effective method of dealing with hate. They channeled it into a long range plan, set in motion near the begining of this school year, to get revenge on the jocks and have the final say, so to speak.
In every way, they thought of the whole matter as a war. They developed a fascination for war (WWII and in particular) and Hitler, and went around annoying people by marching around the school with precise 90 degree turns like soldiers.
Here is where the part about DOOM comes in. They were so consumed by their big plan, that they played DOOM head to head over their modems for hours upon hours. This was not for fun or relaxation or to try to beat each other or any of the normal reasons a person would play DOOM. They took it seriously and considered it training. They also played paintball a lot, and for the same reason. The important thing to stress here is, that while those 1st person shooters may or may not contribute to this kind of thing, in this case the plan came first and the "training" second.
All of this is kind of overwhelming when you are so close to it. Its kind of funny that, even after I knew that it had made world news and forced "Littleton, CO" into the same breath as the likes of "Jonesburo, AK", the thing that really drove it home for me was logging onto
If you've gotten this far, thanks for reading my thoughts and impressions on the matter, and I wish only the best of health and peace to all of you.
Vidi, Vici, Veni
I guess I'm kinda at the epicenter of all of this. Last year I graduated from Chatfield, a school thats about ten miles away from Columbine- we were the school that was built after Columbine got too crowded back in '85. I go to church locally there. There were forty people in the youth group that went to Columbine. Today, we're short one. The girl that was praying in the library was my friend- they came in, held up a gun to her head and asked her if she believed in God. She said yes, and was shot. Murdered for her beliefs. One of the nicest people I've ever met.
So people are throwing fingers in every which way, trying to find out what caused this. I don't know exactly what it was caused by, but I know that many of the things they point at are simply symptoms, not the problem itself. So the kids liked to dress darkly and write death poetry. Was this the cause? I doubt it. And to pointing at the jocks as the reason? Heh. I got teased as much as anyone while I was in school. That may have been a contributing factor, something that pushed them over the edge, but again I don't think it was the overlying cause.
There are many factors to this. Everyone seems to be trying to find something to point the finger at. That ain't the way. This is much too complex to have just one single cause. I wish people would stop trying to classify people by group and start looking at them as people. Listen to 'Unity' by Op Ivy sometime. Thats what I'm talkin about. We are all different, but we are all the same.
Still not dead.
Apology in advance: This is a) long, b) I can't spell worht a damn, so forgive me, and c) I am basing some items on being in the USA, so forgive me if I make certain assumptions on laws and customs that you might not be familiar with. Thanks!
Well, now that we've debated up one end over the other about media, games, parents, cheerleaders who lead them on, teasing, and everything else, I'm going to make a try to see if I can figure out why, and what the solution is.
You see, this is very important to me. My daughter was born April 1. I want to see her graduate from High School, go to college, and be happy and successful some day. I want to sit down at the table each night and hear about her day when she's going to school.
I don't want to hear about how little Bobby shot up little Stevie because they didn't like each other.
So, here's my own opinion:
Why they did it:
1. No emotional connection to other students
I watched the news the morning after on the Today show, as they interviewed different teenagers about the killings. Almost all of them said "No, I really didn't know them. Well, I knew their name and face, but that was it." Only one student said "I was friends with one guy- and he told me to leave that morning. I left."
These two teenagers had no reference to the other students. Forget the Neo-Nazi stuff or whatever- it wouldn't have mattered. They had no emotional connection to these kids.
2. Parents didn't get a clue
The day after, their was a web page viewed on the news that was suppose to have been made by one of the students. Now, maybe that's been debunked by now- if it has, let me know. But the web page was basically "We hate them all, we wish they would die."
How the hell didn't the parents notice this? Or the pipe bombs in the basement, or at least the supplies to make them, or all of the ammo?
3. Not just disconnected, but disliked
An interview with a local student who had just moved from that area talked about how these two teenagers were into computers and, while he never used the word "geek", let's face it, they probably were. They lived in a culture that society rewards with money later in life, but punishes because they dare to be different in high school. Day after day, they probably heard the comments from other people, or perhaps just ignored.
4. Faulty wiring.
Something inside their heads just didn't connect right, and they decided that killing people was OK.
All right. Now, the solutions. Again, these are just my opinions, so work with me here. If you have a better idea, let me know- I've got to find out before my daughter get's too old.
1. Parental involvement.
Above all else, I believe in my heart that this is the most important thing. I know, people say "Teenagers hide stuff, they don't tell parents anything". I know this- I was a teen, I certainly didn't tell my parents everything I did. But my mother at least made the effort. There always had to be a parent or adult at someplace I was going to- and let me tell you, it's hard to try and put the moves on a girl when Dad's in the other room. I had a curfew- perhaps too strict of one, but it was there. I plan on having one for my daughter, but I'll give her slack as long as she calls to tell me first.
My father used to read my journal and my mail- jerk action for sure. I've sworn that I'll never do this to my child, and I mean it. But I will know what's she's doing. Who she hangs out with. If this means that I have to give up some of my time to come home some afternoon, make cookies or bring in video games for them to play (yes, those evil video games.) Check out where they go on the Internet, or their web page. Sure, they can make up something on geocities where you'll never find it. But make some sort of effort- odds are, you'll find out something before it gets to be a problem.
2. Some gun control for teens.
Before you get your panties in a not, just finish reading. Personally, I don't like guns. Too loud. But I have no problem with people who own them- I have a former co-worker who had a concealed weapons permit, and kept one in her purse. Great- I'm happy for her.
But there's no need for teenagers to have a gun except for the a) firing range and b) hunting range. A fellow at my last job was taught by his father when he turned 11 how to handle a gun. The number one lesson? How to put it away, lock it up, and never ever use it except for where it is supposed to be used. He was told over and over again, no guns on people. Don't shoot the birds. Respect this- or else your privilage to use the gun will be taken away for a long time. He was taught to respect the power and responsibility that comes with it- and when to use it, and when not too.
A law out in my place in the world came up about restricting concealed weapons in schools and churches, and was shot down. Seems that would infringe on little Johnny's rights to carry a rifle into school.
Teens don't needs guns- if you can't drink alcohol until you're 21, smoke until you're 19, and drive until you're 16, there's no way I want to give you the power to kill somebody just because you're big enough to wrap your finger around the trigger.
3. Death penalty for teens.
Yes, I'm saying death penalty- or at least hard laws. I don't give a flying leap if you're just 16, 14, or even 11. You kill somebody, I want it plain and simple that you are going to the chair, and nobody can save you. I admit, this won't stop some kids, especially these two who committed suicide after their rampage. But you know what- I bet that if every teen knew that if they shot somebody and killed them, they would be guarenteed a trip down death row, shootings would slow down. If they knew that Amy would be in jail until she was 70 for shooting Carla, she might think twice about it. As it is, some laws have them until they turn 21, or even 18, clear their record, and send them back out. I'll be honest- kill them. First felony, some jail time and therapy. Second felony, some more jail time, better therapy, job training, and then move them far away from where they commit crimes so they don't keep going back to the "bad crowd". Third felony- kill them. They obviously can't learn, and are therefore genetically defective, and must be culled from the herd. And those who think that I would spare my own child- think twice. Looking into my heart, and honestly feel that if my daughter did these things, I would cry, I would wonder what I did wrong- and then I would tell the DA to send her to the chair, and then spend the rest of my life feeling terrible about it. But I'd do it for the rest of society.
So, there's my rant, my opinions, and my views. Help me out- let's find a solution, write to our congresspeople, and fix these students. I figure I've got about 11 years to have this fixed before my daughter is old enough to worry about it, and want to get started now.
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel