Unpopular opinions

I'm just gonna say it: If your biggest problem in life is getting picked on in high school then congrats, you have life on easy mode. Eric crying like a bitch about never getting invited to parties makes me laugh. We all know E&D had friends. But there were kids who had it way worse, had some sort of disability, had ZERO friends,etc. Now do you think either E or D went out of their way do be friends with those type of people as opposed to the popular ones? Hell no. One of their victims had a mental disability FFS. Of the two I hate Eric the most. I fully believe his character wasn't a result of bullying but more the cause of it. Just a guy with "short man syndrome" thinking he's hot shit and everyone should respect him. This will definitely make some people mad but there are some kids who deserve bullying. I didn't know Eric but the dude strikes me as an asshole in his own right and I'm almost certain he probably ran his mouth alot so people put him in his place.

I don't think Eric was a psychopath, and Dylan seemed to be more of a sociopath imo.

rae21 wrote:

I don't think Eric was a psychopath, and Dylan seemed to be more of a sociopath imo.

I'm pretty sure the psychopath thing was spread by Cullen who took it upon himself to diagnose someone dead that he'd never met.

Is there honestly a debate here on whether or not the dude who mercilessly murdered and maimed a bunch of innocent people is a psychopath? LMAO

What I find really annoying is that people who say E&D are Psychopaths or Sociopaths clearly have no idea what Anti-Social Personality Disorder is.

Tommy QTR wrote:

What I find really annoying is that people who say E&D are Psychopaths or Sociopaths clearly have no idea what Anti-Social Personality Disorder is.

Anti social disorder - A mental health disorder characterized by disregard for other people.

Psychopathy-  traditionally a personality disorder characterized by persistent antisocial behavior, impaired empathy and remorse, and bold, disinhibited, and egotistical traits

Which one of those falls under considering yourself to be superior to everyone else (egotism) and blowing kids' skulls apart while they beg for their lives under library tables (impaired empathy and remorse)? I think it's the second one buddy

HanShotFirst wrote:

Tommy QTR wrote:

What I find really annoying is that people who say E&D are Psychopaths or Sociopaths clearly have no idea what Anti-Social Personality Disorder is.

Anti social disorder - A mental health disorder characterized by disregard for other people.

Psychopathy-  traditionally a personality disorder characterized by persistent antisocial behavior, impaired empathy and remorse, and bold, disinhibited, and egotistical traits

Which one of those falls under considering yourself to be superior to everyone else and blowing kids' skulls apart while they beg for their lives under library tables? I think it's the second one buddy

Erm you do know the official diagnosis for a Psychopath is Anti Social Personality Disorder right? Just because you can kill someone, that doesn't mean you're a Psychopath.

Tommy QTR wrote:

HanShotFirst wrote:

Tommy QTR wrote:

What I find really annoying is that people who say E&D are Psychopaths or Sociopaths clearly have no idea what Anti-Social Personality Disorder is.

Anti social disorder - A mental health disorder characterized by disregard for other people.

Psychopathy-  traditionally a personality disorder characterized by persistent antisocial behavior, impaired empathy and remorse, and bold, disinhibited, and egotistical traits

Which one of those falls under considering yourself to be superior to everyone else and blowing kids' skulls apart while they beg for their lives under library tables? I think it's the second one buddy

Erm you do know the official diagnosis for a Psychopath is Anti Social Personality Disorder right? Just because you can kill someone, that doesn't mean you're a Psychopath.

Sure killing someone doesn't mean you're a psychopath. There are tons of scenarios for that happening. But we're talking about people who actively planned for a year to murder hundreds of people. Both disorders include anti social behavior. Only one makes you pre-meditate murder on a mass scale. Re-read those official definitions I just gave you. Carefully. Slowly.

HanShotFirst wrote:

Tommy QTR wrote:

HanShotFirst wrote:

Tommy QTR wrote:

What I find really annoying is that people who say E&D are Psychopaths or Sociopaths clearly have no idea what Anti-Social Personality Disorder is.

Anti social disorder - A mental health disorder characterized by disregard for other people.

Psychopathy-  traditionally a personality disorder characterized by persistent antisocial behavior, impaired empathy and remorse, and bold, disinhibited, and egotistical traits

Which one of those falls under considering yourself to be superior to everyone else and blowing kids' skulls apart while they beg for their lives under library tables? I think it's the second one buddy

Erm you do know the official diagnosis for a Psychopath is Anti Social Personality Disorder right? Just because you can kill someone, that doesn't mean you're a Psychopath.

Sure killing someone doesn't mean you're a psychopath. There are tons of scenarios for that happening. But we're talking about people who actively planned for a year to murder hundreds of people. Both disorders include anti social behavior. Only one makes you pre-meditate murder on a mass scale. Re-read those official definitions I just gave you. Carefully. Slowly.

I think you're missing the fact that a Psychopath has little to no emotion, while Eric and Dylan were full of emotion.

Psychopaths can have emotion. They tend to not care about those emotions or how they affect others.

The Hare Psychopathy Checklist uses the following criteria for psychopathy:

Glibness/superficial charm
Grandiose sense of self-worth
Pathological lying
Cunning/manipulative
Lack of remorse or guilt
Shallow affect (genuine emotion is short-lived and egocentric)
Callousness; lack of empathy
Failure to accept responsibility for own actions

Tommy QTR wrote:

HanShotFirst wrote:

Tommy QTR wrote:

HanShotFirst wrote:

Tommy QTR wrote:

What I find really annoying is that people who say E&D are Psychopaths or Sociopaths clearly have no idea what Anti-Social Personality Disorder is.

Anti social disorder - A mental health disorder characterized by disregard for other people.

Psychopathy-  traditionally a personality disorder characterized by persistent antisocial behavior, impaired empathy and remorse, and bold, disinhibited, and egotistical traits

Which one of those falls under considering yourself to be superior to everyone else and blowing kids' skulls apart while they beg for their lives under library tables? I think it's the second one buddy

Erm you do know the official diagnosis for a Psychopath is Anti Social Personality Disorder right? Just because you can kill someone, that doesn't mean you're a Psychopath.

Sure killing someone doesn't mean you're a psychopath. There are tons of scenarios for that happening. But we're talking about people who actively planned for a year to murder hundreds of people. Both disorders include anti social behavior. Only one makes you pre-meditate murder on a mass scale. Re-read those official definitions I just gave you. Carefully. Slowly.

I think you're missing the fact that a Psychopath has little to no emotion, while Eric and Dylan were full of emotion.

Impaired empathy and remorse =/= no emotion. There is nothing in the official defintion of psychopathy there states the person experiences no emotion

alphawhiskey86 wrote:

Psychopaths can have emotion. They tend to not care about those emotions or how they affect others.

The Hare Psychopathy Checklist uses the following criteria for psychopathy:

Glibness/superficial charm
Grandiose sense of self-worth
Pathological lying
Cunning/manipulative
Lack of remorse or guilt
Shallow affect (genuine emotion is short-lived and egocentric)
Callousness; lack of empathy
Failure to accept responsibility for own actions

Thank you! You can almost check off all of those for E&D considering their ENTIRE last year alive was them lying to their families and friends and fooling everyone into thinking they cared for them. Checking out colleges, Dylan going to prom. The list goes on. They systematically detached themselves from everyone around them while simultaneously putting on masks and hiding their intentions. Only someone with psychopathic tendencies could pull that off so eerily flawless as those two boys did

[smiley][You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

Quote :

Thank you! You can almost check off all of those for E&D considering their ENTIRE last year alive was them lying to their families and friends and fooling everyone into thinking they cared for them. Checking out colleges, Dylan going to prom. The list goes on. They systematically detached themselves from everyone around them while simultaneously putting on masks and hiding their intentions. Only someone with psychopathic tendencies could pull that off so eerily flawless as those two boys did

[/quote]
Well said

HanShotFirst wrote:

Is there honestly a debate here on whether or not the dude who mercilessly murdered and maimed a bunch of innocent people is a psychopath? LMAO

I'm not buying it, you can be a killer, even a cold blooded one and not be a psychopath.

For me, the reason why I think neither Eric or Dylan was a psychopath was because of one thing each of them had: they both had emotional attachment of some kind. Eric genuinely loved his parents and barely had anything bad to say about them, and also loved his pet dog dearly and animals in general. For everything Eric was a (self-admitted) hypocrite on, he never wavered in his belief that animals were fundamentally good and that people who hurt them were awful. If Eric was a tried and true psychopath, he would never have thought this way. Instead he would've been an animal abuser.

Dylan is a bit different here. He wavered back and forth between hating his family and loving them, but in his journals he talked a lot about how he wanted to pair up with his true love in the afterlife and very early on noted the betrayal and hurt he felt when he perceived his friends as abandoning him or disliking him for one reason or another. If Dylan was psychopathic then he would not have placed so much emphasis on his isolation from his friends or his lack of a love life, because a psychopath wouldn't give a damn what people thought about them.

Quote :

I'm not buying it, you can be a killer, even a cold blooded one and not be a psychopath.

For me, the reason why I think neither Eric or Dylan was a psychopath was because of one thing each of them had: they both had emotional attachment of some kind. Eric genuinely loved his parents and barely had anything bad to say about them, and also loved his pet dog dearly and animals in general. For everything Eric was a (self-admitted) hypocrite on, he never wavered in his belief that animals were fundamentally good and that people who hurt them were awful. If Eric was a tried and true psychopath, he would never have thought this way. Instead he would've been an animal abuser.

Dylan is a bit different here. He wavered back and forth between hating his family and loving them, but in his journals he talked a lot about how he wanted to pair up with his true love in the afterlife and very early on noted the betrayal and hurt he felt when he perceived his friends as abandoning him or disliking him for one reason or another. If Dylan was psychopathic then he would not have placed so much emphasis on his isolation from his friends or his lack of a love life, because a psychopath wouldn't give a damn what people thought about them.

Psychopathy has degrees. A lot of diagnosed psychopaths can experience love, this is all documented. But psychopaths are also aware of their disconnection with the world and this causes them great pain and suffering to the point they actually crave affection. Read either of their journals and it becomes abundently clear. Psychopaths refuse to accept responsibility for what they do. Eric literally blaming the guy he stole from for having computer parts in his van is evidence of this. Psychopaths are largley egotistical. Both boys saw thenselves as superior to everyone to some degree, Eric especially who belived he was smarter and more evolved than everyone. But the most damming evidence is a psychopath's ability to efficiently detach themselves from loved ones. They can have feelings for others but ultimately don't care about causing them pain. I'm just gonna say this: for every question people ask about how they were able to mask their nature for so long, how they could go to school, family holiday functions, how Dylan could take Robyn to prom and stand to look at her and other students knowing what he was gonna do in a few days - how they manipulated people into believing everything was (relatively) normal, etc. All these questions that make this case fascinating surrounding their deception, they do have an answer. And it is definitely not "anti social disorder". What they achieved goes beyond that and that is not what anti social disorder is.

Yes HanShotFirst! Check out Millon’s Ten Subtypes of Psychopathy
There are ranges and types

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

A psychopath isn’t going to always murder his dog. Maybe too much Dexter? Lol
Lots of lawyers, surgeons, car salesman are psychopaths due to the ability to remove emotion from a situation when need be. They’re not always merciless killers. But yes to be a killer in this situation, you’d be a psychopath. Not all killers are psychopaths because murder can be a crime of passion. This was not. Carefully planned and executed and a lot of lying had to be done to their families and friends to achieve it.

HanShotFirst wrote:

alphawhiskey86 wrote:

Psychopaths can have emotion. They tend to not care about those emotions or how they affect others.

The Hare Psychopathy Checklist uses the following criteria for psychopathy:

Glibness/superficial charm
Grandiose sense of self-worth
Pathological lying
Cunning/manipulative
Lack of remorse or guilt
Shallow affect (genuine emotion is short-lived and egocentric)
Callousness; lack of empathy
Failure to accept responsibility for own actions

Thank you! You can almost check off all of those for E&D considering their ENTIRE last year alive was them lying to their families and friends and fooling everyone into thinking they cared for them. Checking out colleges, Dylan going to prom. The list goes on. They systematically detached themselves from everyone around them while simultaneously putting on masks and hiding their intentions. Only someone with psychopathic tendencies could pull that off so eerily flawless as those two boys did

Then why do Fuselier, etc. only classify Eric as the psychopath? If both Eric and Dylan were fulfilling this list, why has Dylan been exempt from this classification?
(For the record- I think they were both mentally/emotionally disturbed but that neither was a psychopath).

Different professionals would have different opinions. There’s unfortunately no scientific proof. Much of it is based on behavioral observations. And as for Dylan and Eric, I do believe they would be on different spectrums. Eric making claims about tearing someone’s throat is on the extreme. Dylan might have fallen somewhere in the middle to lower end. Read the subtypes I posted. It gives more explanation/rationale
We can all provide evidence to support our argument. None of us truly knew them so it would be hard to make a clinical diagnosis or sound judgement without meeting them.

HanShotFirst wrote:

Quote :

I'm not buying it, you can be a killer, even a cold blooded one and not be a psychopath.

For me, the reason why I think neither Eric or Dylan was a psychopath was because of one thing each of them had: they both had emotional attachment of some kind. Eric genuinely loved his parents and barely had anything bad to say about them, and also loved his pet dog dearly and animals in general. For everything Eric was a (self-admitted) hypocrite on, he never wavered in his belief that animals were fundamentally good and that people who hurt them were awful. If Eric was a tried and true psychopath, he would never have thought this way. Instead he would've been an animal abuser.

Dylan is a bit different here. He wavered back and forth between hating his family and loving them, but in his journals he talked a lot about how he wanted to pair up with his true love in the afterlife and very early on noted the betrayal and hurt he felt when he perceived his friends as abandoning him or disliking him for one reason or another. If Dylan was psychopathic then he would not have placed so much emphasis on his isolation from his friends or his lack of a love life, because a psychopath wouldn't give a damn what people thought about them.

Psychopathy has degrees. A lot of diagnosed psychopaths can experience love, this is all documented. But psychopaths are also aware of their disconnection with the world and this causes them great pain and suffering to the point they actually crave affection. Read either of their journals and it becomes abundently clear. Psychopaths refuse to accept responsibility for what they do. Eric literally blaming the guy he stole from for having computer parts in his van is evidence of this. Psychopaths are largley egotistical. Both boys saw thenselves as superior to everyone to some degree, Eric especially who belived he was smarter and more evolved than everyone. But the most damming evidence is a psychopath's ability to efficiently detach themselves from loved ones. They can have feelings for others but ultimately don't care about causing them pain. I'm just gonna say this: for every question people ask about how they were able to mask their nature for so long, how they could go to school, family holiday functions, how Dylan could take Robyn to prom and stand to look at her and other students knowing what he was gonna do in a few days - how they manipulated people into believing everything was (relatively) normal, etc. All these questions that make this case fascinating surrounding their deception, they do have an answer. And it is definitely not "anti social disorder". What they achieved goes beyond that and that is not what anti social disorder is.

And here we run into the problem of what exactly a psychopath is or can/can't do. You've told me that psychopaths can feel love for others; I've heard others suggest that psychopaths can't feel affection towards anyone except themselves. It's all up in the air, so I can't say for certain if you're right or wrong.

Regardless I still think neither was a psychopath.

alphawhiskey86 wrote:

A psychopath isn’t going to always murder his dog. Maybe too much Dexter? Lol

IMO, a psychopath would never honestly admit to feeling affection for animals or be morally outraged at their harm. Eric did both.

I don't have a problem with "Eric's a psychopath," I have a problem with "Eric made Dylan do it."

As a mental health professional (MCSW) who works with and has training in high risk youth specifically, I second what [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] said. It's impossible to diagnosis withiut having worked with the boys individually and even then it goes beyond a run of the mill diagnosis and you would need a specialist in adolescent psychiatry. One of the reasons such diagnoses aren't given out to patients under the age of 18 is that many individual  "signs" of psycho/sociopathy are also developmentally typical teenage behaviors.

I don't think bullying was the only, or even the main, cause of NBK. But I do think it contributed to what they did.

I think too many people make excuses for the bullying at Columbine by saying things like, "what do you expect, it's high school?"
My unpopular opinion is that this kind of attitude normalizes bullying. We've all just accepted that teenagers are going to be awful to each other because that's the way it's always been. Let's not bother to demand more of ourselves and of children, let's just let them duke it out Lord of the Flies style.

Obviously there is still a lot of work to be done regarding racism, homophobia, sexism, etc. but throughout history marginalized groups have taken a stand and made people reconsider how they were treated. It used to be normal for a black person to have to sit at the back of the bus. That's just how it was. Until one day, people started doing something about it. It used to be normal for the majority of women to be homemakers, with no opportunities to do anything else even if they wanted to. Until one day, people started doing something about it.
As a society we recognize that discriminating against people is wrong- morally, ethically, and legally.

There's nothing normal about intentionally hurting another person. Whether it be by ostracism, gossip, name-calling, or physical violence. We don't have to love or even get along with everyone we come in contact with, but making excuses for bullying behavior by saying things like "it's high school" or "kids are just mean" is simply a way of removing responsibility, like there is nothing that can be done about it.

Parents need to step up and teach their children respect for their fellow humans. They need to practice what they preach because kids model what they see. Schools need to be proactive about prevention and they need to make every incident of bullying that does happen a teachable moment.

Bullying isn't normal; having a wretched high school experience because of people being mean to you isn't normal. Being a jerk isn't normal.

<steps off soapbox>

I've got too many:

I think what happened was Plan A, not Plan B. I don't think they ever planned to shoot from the parking lot. I don't think they gave up on the bombs exploding until towards the end of the library massacre, when Eric says to go down to the commons and they shoot at the bombs.  I think they started shooting outside because they thought the bombs had gone off or were about to.

I think while outside Dylan shot only 3 times with the TEC-9 but wasted his two shotgun shells on people already shot because he was supposed to spray the exits with the TEC-9 when he got to the bottom of the stairs and the inside once they entered. I don't think it's because he only shot when Eric was looking or something.

I think they couldn't see the cafeteria until Dylan descended the stairs and thats why not before but after shooting he went to check on the bombs. I think they would not have started shooting outside and I think they would have shot at the bombs just like they did later had they thought they had failed. I think they took into consideration people running the other way, and that's one reason why they weren't out in the parking lot but could go either direction on the stairs, plus be shielded from the blast by starting at the top. I think they were supposed to enter the west entrance when people ran the other way, hence Dylan reports back to Eric quickly and they enter the school.

I think the 15 minutes of waiting to charge through the school Dylan mentions on the Basement Tapes is the 15 minutes estimated for people fleeing and getting shot before they realize they better turn around, and charging through the school is entering the west entrance to cut off their exit. Another 15 minutes until they turn around again and go back into the parking lot means there's ten more minutes until the car bombs explode.

I think many questions about the massacre are answered when you realize they were playing Doom IRL. Most shooters I would guess even if they take two guns only use one at a time, but not with Columbine, because they were doing it like an FPS switching between the stopping power of a shotgun and the speed of another weapon.

I think Dylan was the brains of the operation, and probably even the bomb tech guy. I think his coming up with the plan is why he got to wield the "AB-10"-like TEC-9 and "super shotgun". He was the sound engineer with the more complex car bomb and more pipe bombs left in his room. He checked on the bombs both outside and inside.

I think when they were bored with killing students it's because they were ready to go to the next level and kill cops, not because of remorse or getting more excitement out of shooting lockers. I think they roamed the halls looking for police. Nobody would predict that the cops would stay outside, yet people seem to act like they did when asking "Why did they roam the halls". I think again, the bombs are the only reason the cops weren't on their mind in the library. I think if they didn't think the library was going to explode, they wouldn't have said it was going to, and then they would not have told John Savage to run - they would've just avoided shooting him. Savage doesn't say it, but others say they told him to run because they were going to blow up the library.

I also suspect bombs are the chief reason the cops did not enter. Not because of protocol. Not because of confusion about the amount of shooters or hostages. The CNN report curiously makes a point of saying it was relayed to police at the school that the diversion bombs had motion detectors on them.

thelmar wrote:

There's nothing normal about intentionally hurting another person. Whether it be by ostracism, gossip, name-calling, or physical violence. We don't have to love or even get along with everyone we come in contact with, but making excuses for bullying behavior by saying things like "it's high school" or "kids are just mean" is simply a way of removing responsibility, like there is nothing that can be done about it.

Parents need to step up and teach their children respect for their fellow humans. They need to practice what they preach because kids model what they see. Schools need to be proactive about prevention and they need to make every incident of bullying that does happen a teachable moment.

Bullying isn't normal; having a wretched high school experience because of people being mean to you isn't normal. Being a jerk isn't normal.

<steps off soapbox>

You my friend, are a saint and a scholar.

AntiSocial-MasterDebater wrote:

You my friend, are a saint and a scholar.

Lol, thanks!

Gonna have to disagree. It's called pack mentality and is human nature. As with many species across this planet. You can't suppress human nature. I know we'd like to believe if we all were cheery and got along, then every thing would be butterflies, rainbows, and no more wars. But sorry, there's reality then there is fantasy.

I will agree that bullying isn't natural only in the sense that bullying is how we funnel our natural instincts as we have the intelligence to do so.

If you want to look at the natural side of things then we can do like our ancestors did and kill the weak, leave the outcasts to die on their own, and murder the mentally and physically handicapped. Establish an alpha male/female, and climbing the social ladder means fighting or dying/killing the person who is already there.

You can't suppress bullying because bullying is already the suppression of what comes naturally to us. No parent can prevent it, and it can't be completely done away with. All you can do is appropriately react when it does happen, and punish accordingly depending on the severity.

HanShotFirst wrote:

I will agree that bullying isn't natural only in the sense that bullying is how we funnel our natural instincts as we have the intelligence to do so.

If you want to look at the natural side of things then we can do like our ancestors did and kill the weak, leave the outcasts to die on their own, and murder the mentally and physically handicapped. Establish an alpha male/female, and climbing the social ladder means fighting or dying/killing the person who is already there.  

You can't suppress bullying because bullying is already the suppression of what comes naturally to us. No parent can prevent it, and it can't be completely done away with. All you can do is appropriately react when it does happen, and punish accordingly depending on the severity.

Unfortunately, a lot of schools are falling behind on the whole punishment thing. It seems the same thing happened at Columbine. If any of the bullies were star sports kids, they weren't punished at my school. It was more important that they got to play basketball and win the game, sadly.

hvernon wrote:

If any of the bullies were star sports kids, they weren't punished at my school. It was more important that they got to play basketball and win the game, sadly.

Rage fuel. IIRC schools have even covered up rapes to protect their Chads. Who cares if Chad rapes a girl, right guys? But god forbid one of the shy kids puts a toe out of line.

My unpopular opinion of Columbine is that I wish the school HAD been destroyed, but only when no innocents were inside. Like if the bombs had detonated after the students had been evacuated, I'd like that. The culture of bullying and Chad worship, all supported by the faculty and principal, was vile and had to go. IIRC one of Rocky Hoffschneider's minions later became a heroin addict to cope with the guilt. That alone makes it clear they did some pretty horrible things. Because NBK was a failure, Columbine students have said that it's "basically still the same."

Chad?? Isnt that the term "nice guys" use to describe guys who they think get all the women?

Kev7382 wrote:

Chad??  Isnt that the term "nice guys" use to describe guys who they think get all the women?

Yes!

What’s funny is I have an ex-boyfriend name Chad who was very tall and skinny and extremely awkward so when I hear Chad being used like that I laugh. I liked him but he definitely wouldn’t be considered a star athlete type beefcake. Which is fine because I don’t really like big muscles. I like the long lean and tall, light hair Or short, brown hair and stocky. Never fails. All my exes look like that. All guys i have had crushes on look like that

LOL the only Chad I knew was my pastor's son. And he was like 5'4" and maybe 100lbs soaking wet.

Kev7382 wrote:

Chad??  Isnt that the term "nice guys" use to describe guys who they think get all the women?

Chad is used to describe jocks and athletes, nice guy is used to describe someone who is socially awkward and has poor communication skills.

I feel like this may be considered a bit unpopular. In general I do get a little annoyed at kind of putting one victim over the other saying that one person’s death was more tragic than the others. Like everyone who reveres Kyle as some sort of ultra victim. Peiole think Dylan knew he had a learning disability and killed him...There is absolutely no proof of that. Everyone that died and witnessed all these things are innocent victims/survivors.

Screamingophelia wrote:

I feel like this may be considered a bit unpopular. In general I do get a little annoyed at kind of putting one victim over the other saying that one person’s death was more tragic than the others. Like everyone who reveres  Kyle as some sort of ultra victim. Peiole think Dylan knew he had a learning disability and killed him...There is absolutely no proof of that. Everyone that died and witnessed all these things  are innocent victims/survivors.

Absolutely. No one child deserves to be mourned more than the other one for any reason. All the victims are important. All the victims deserve mourning. All the victims deserve remembrance.

I've always said this but I'll say it again, Eric and Dylan weren't bullied to the extreme that the media and certain people made it out to be.

I think the bulk of Eric's rage came from many things including always being left out, being shut down by many girls, and people not wanting to befriend him, to name a few.
He even wrote about how people had his number but never called "the weird Eric kid"
I think the mixture of those things and maybe a few other things created a perfect storm so to speak.

I do believe he got some shit from the jocks, but it wasn't an everyday thing, or nearly as bad as some people have made it out to be.
Jocks weren't waiting at their cars day in and day out beating them up.

I think that a lot of his rage towards the jocks was due to in a sense, jealousy, and the bullying was just the icing on the cake.
The jocks had free reign of the school, never seemed to get reprimanded, were popular, and had all the beautiful girls.

At the end of the day, Eric just wanted to be accepted and treated as an equal.


I've always wondered why they let Evan Todd live. He was a jock that from what I understand did give them shit.

Maybe it was the whole "playing god" thing, or maybe it was because he wasn't the stereotypical Columbine jock with the prom queen girlfriend.
He was overweight, and wasn't the best looking guy, so maybe they had pity on him.

Who knows, all we can do is theorize.

Screamingophelia wrote:

I feel like this may be considered a bit unpopular. In general I do get a little annoyed at kind of putting one victim over the other saying that one person’s death was more tragic than the others. Like everyone who reveres  Kyle as some sort of ultra victim. Peiole think Dylan knew he had a learning disability and killed him...There is absolutely no proof of that. Everyone that died and witnessed all these things  are innocent victims/survivors.

Good point!!.My sister says there was a bit of 'trauma Olympics" (kind of like the oppression Olympics) post shooting around Littleton and at Columbine. Who waswhere, injured, victims families, etc. Trust Littleton to turn everything into a competition haha.

A long time ago I watched Amanda’s YouTube series about being a survivor of the library. She said on the I think it was the 10 anniversary the tone was pretty much if you weren’t an injured survivor or a family member of someone who died you were nonexistent

My unpopular opinion is that our society create those humans, and it will continue, guns laws or not...

Blame capitalism, consumerism,pornography, lack of discipline and morality everywhere, ect...not their parents, their not proven mental sickness or their proximity to weapons...

Where are all those chinese mass killers, by exemple?

Has there been a comprehensive study of where every mass shooter got their guns and what changed after, if anything?

I agree though, looking at just gun laws won't change many of the underlying problems.

I was watching Greys Anatomy last night and a character from Scotland's son was shot and he said "it only happened once in Scotland and then they changed the laws and it never happened again" but why? There has to be a difference between something in the culture. Something ingrained.

I think the difference is in the UK, we have a collective sense of morality and guns are not part of our national identity. If young children are being slaughtered on our doorstep then we feel a responsibility to stop it. Weapons manufacturers (for the domestic market) are not such a powerful lobby and there are not so many areas where you go hunting for sport. Children certainly don't grow up surrounded by guns.

That being said, gun control was a practical step but also not the only step taken. It is much harder for example to just walk into my son's primary school now than it was when I was young. All health care, including mental healthcare is accessible for free, although for various reasons ( funding & otherwise) the waiting lists are getting longer.

Also, I guess the thing about Thomas Hamilton is nobody is going to look at him and think "what a hero". The narrative of the teenage outcast(s) wreaking revenge against the school bullies or society is far different to the weirdo paedo who attacks tiny kids.

Pixie13 wrote:

I think the difference is in the UK, we have a collective sense of morality and guns are not part of our national identity. If young children are being slaughtered on our doorstep then we feel a responsibility to stop it. Weapons manufacturers (for the domestic market) are not such a powerful lobby and there are not so many areas where you go hunting for sport. Children certainly don't grow up surrounded by guns.

That being said, gun control was a practical step but also not the only step taken. It is much harder for example to just walk into my son's primary school now than it was when I was young.  All health care, including mental healthcare is accessible for free, although for various reasons ( funding & otherwise) the waiting lists are getting longer.

Also, I guess the thing about Thomas Hamilton is nobody is going to look at him and think "what a hero". The narrative of the teenage outcast(s) wreaking revenge against the school bullies or society is far different to the weirdo paedo who attacks tiny kids.

And it’s interesting you mention him because that’s almost how I look at the Sandyhook shooting and yet nothing happened after that.

I appreciate you sharing that information with me. I spoke to my friend from Australia who came to visit Colorado over the summer and we had a long talk over some beer about it too. She researches true crime and is a fellow writer.

I really also feel like the motivations behind every mass shooting are different. Some for notoriety, some to make a political statements etc.

Icarius wrote:

Where are all those chinese mass killers, by exemple?

I'd love to make a big list for you to go over - mass murder in China is way more common than most wpuld think. The big problem is that Chinese (state owned) media censors the names and photographs of all mass killers, in a misguided and ultimately futile attempt at puting "No Notoriety" in effect. This makes collecting data on Chinese mass murderers incredibly difficult while simultaneously doing little to actually stop.mass murder in a significant way.

I would be interested in talking about that. I studied business and PR in China several years ago (I was in Beijing, Xian and Shanghai) and I really agree with what you’re saying.

Maybe not an opinion, so much as a musing but we can't state for certain that Dylan had depression. My reason for saying this is although some of the writing he left behind do point to depression, if he wasn't diagnosed by a professional in his lifetime then it is not right to armchair diagnose him post-mortem. Just as it is not right when people declare Eric a psychopath.

Pixie13 wrote:

Maybe not an opinion, so much as a musing but we can't state for certain that Dylan had depression. My reason for saying this is although some of the writing he left behind do point to depression, if he wasn't diagnosed by a professional in his lifetime then it is not right to armchair diagnose him post-mortem. Just as it is not right when people declare Eric a psychopath.

Just because someone doesn't hasn't been diagnosed with an illness doesn't mean they don't have it.

I never said that Dylan *didn't* have depression, just that nobody can state for certain that he had it or that it was the reason he got involved in the shooting.

People rightly get annoyed at armchair psychiatrists diagnosing Eric but don't bat an eyelid when it is stated that Dylan had depression.

That’s an excellent point. Even Sue when it comes to Eric is all about his psychopathy and says you cannot diagnose anyone posthumously but then states the depression and stuff as fact.

I would like to know exactly how charming Eric actually was? Was he just a good student and polite or was he a young Ted Bundy?

His classmates didn’t describe him as charming ..

1. It was a mainly nihilistic fueled attack. There was no motive other than "life is pointless, it is never getting better. Fuck it, lets do this and at least we'll have a good time."

2. Eric has been painted as being much "tougher" than what he was actually like. The reality of Harris was that he was a scrawny, socially awkward, short, average looking guy. He has a couple pictures in which he looks good, however, in person he was much different. Photographs of just peoples heads give off a different feel than viewing them in person.

3. Copies of the basement tapes exist.

4. Eric died thinking he wouldn't be remembered and considered himself a failure. He was probably filled with immense embarrassment. I wouldn't doubt that he was thinking about all the journals and tapes he left behind. Specifically how he pretty much failed at doing everything he said he was going to do.

Well, very interesting discussions, here just a few random thoughts i have:

- Both did not [i]really overall[i] felt superior. They felt it in a few ways, yes, but ultimately they felt inferior/weaker and the whole "god"-thing was just teenage compensation.
- While both were depressed AND angry, i DO believe that in tendency (!) Eric was more homicidal and Dylan more suicidal.
- Deep inside, both sometimes had feelings/thoughts until days before NBK of abandoning the plan (Eric maybe a bit more, because IMO his urge to die wasn't as prevalent).
- The 20th anniversary to come will be exploited to sell books/documentaries/magazines by some.

Well, maybe not all is controversial or unpopular, but these are some thoughts i wanted to share