How much of a role did music and games play in the lead up to the shooting

After a while of looking at old news reports its fair to say the media placed a large blame on the music the boys listened to aswell as their fanship of doom. However, today people no longer blame video games or music as much as they used to and i wonder why.

I know they liked industrial music like nine inch nails and kmfdm and dylan wrote in erics yearbook their "wrath ... will be godlike" - godlike being a kmfdm song.
Sol pais who committed suicide on wednesday also posted on her blog sh elistened to kmfdm, etc.

So what are your guys's opinions on how much music and games affected the boys? as much as the media blamed it or did it not have an influence on them at all

It's hard to say. I don't really know. I mean, music itself cannot cause people to commit acts like Eric and Dylan did. It has to be something else around them. I think there are a bunch of contributing factors. Who knows, music may have had some sort of influence?

a broken human wrote:

It's hard to say. I don't really know. I mean, music itself cannot cause people to commit acts like Eric and Dylan did. It has to be something else around them. I think there are a bunch of contributing factors. Who knows, music may have had some sort of influence?

Yh i agree its hard to see how much it affected them because like you said music alone cant make someone do that, i like similar music to what they did and i dont suddenly want to plot to blow up my school, thats why i wonder how much it did impact them in the mental states they were in.

Maybe they were listening to that kind of music because of what they wanted to do...

Why the music should always be the cause....

Icarius wrote:

Maybe they were listening to that kind of music because of what they wanted to do...

Why the music should always be the cause....

not saying it is the cause like i said i listen to similar music to them and i dont want to blow up my cause its just interesting that they often quoted songs in their writings like in erics year book

Quite a large role in my opinion. Wrath is also a KMFDM song, the last song on Xtort. The first song is Power, which opens with what sounds like "one of these kids is in here with a gun...officer down" in a way eerily reminiscent of Patti's 911 call. Dogma also seems like a theme song for the massacre. Eric was most fond of "Son of a Gun" and "Stray Bullet" which hardly need to be elaborated on for their possible influence. Our two longest videos of Eric and Dylan on a normal school day each have them wearing KMFDM shirts.

All their guns were "straight out of Doom." The pump action shotgun Arlene, the double barrel super shotgun, the AB-10/TEC-9 from the Doom novels, and Eric's carbine probably the closest thing to former human's gun.

They each carried two guns including a shotgun which they switched between using, very obviously in my opinion mimicking a first-person shooter.

The pipe bombs and bandolier may have been inspired by Duke Nukem 3d - Eric said it would be like "duke" as well as Doom and it's hard to say what else was like Duke, except that which was like first person shooters in general.

Telling people to stand up in the library may have been because in a first person shooter, you don't shoot people sitting under tables. The "white hats" may have been like the "zombies" green hair.

The white shirt and black shirt may have been like former human and shotgun guy.

The ammo pouches and the vision for the massacre in general resemble the cut away scene in Ultimate Doom.

Zach said Eric played Postal, and in Postal you exit by shooting yourself in the mouth. Playing Doom and Quake surely means Eric played Wolfenstein 3D as well, which if so I think must be where Eric's infatuation with German and the National Socialists started.

arg wrote:

However, today people no longer blame video games or music as much as they used to and i wonder why.

That's because the new "hip" things to blame for mass murder nowadays is Trump, "racism", "toxic masculinity", Trump, "white privilege", "gun culture", Trump, the "alt-right", 4chan, 8chan, Kiwi Farms, Trump, etc. Basically anything even remotely right-wing or conservative is blasted in the mainstream media whenever as much as fucking pin drops. The culture warriors of today are way different from the ones around in Eric and Dylan's time.

cakeman wrote:

Dogma also seems like a theme song for the massacre.

I always thought the perfect song for the shooting (or really any mass murder) would be the Nine Inch Nails song Burn. If you listen to the lyrics, you'll see why real fast.



I'm a little surprised that Eric and Dylan, having watched Natural Born Killers and having been fans of NIN, never mentioned this song at all.

QuestionMark wrote:

cakeman wrote:

Dogma also seems like a theme song for the massacre.

I always thought the perfect song for the shooting (or really any mass murder) would be the Nine Inch Nails song Burn. If you listen to the lyrics, you'll see why real fast.



I'm a little surprised that Eric and Dylan, having watched Natural Born Killers and having been fans of NIN, never mentioned this song at all.

Yes, interesting. While NBK is an undeniable influence, I tend to think Doom and KMFDM were greater. For my own taste I am curious if they listened to any L7 other than Shitlist. For a song for going postal, I'll take Professional Killer.

Apparently Eric quoted Dogma in Dylan's yearbook, but I can't seem to find it at the moment. I did notice in Eric's that Dylan quoted "YOU KNOW WHAT I HATE?" which means I guess Eric did show him his journal, which makes sense since he showed it to the camera. Hard to imagine Dylan showed Eric his, but then again Eric started writing one after Dylan did, as if he knew he had one, and showed him his.

I think music played an ambivalent role in the shooting.

It was important because I think it created a stronger link between Eric and Dylan as they shared similar tastes in music, video games, movies...

I think it was also important because they created an imagery for their depression and anger out of this music. They made this imagery theirs, and in the same time they were probably attracted to this kind of music and imagery because they were already in harsh, violent stuff and it told their feelings. But we can really see that they created a kind of imagery for their feelings, and Sol Pais was inspired by the imagery they created.

I also think that this kind of music may have keep them in their mood. I mean, they were probably constantly angry and depressed, and they listened to angry or depressive songs, so they maintained themselves in their feelings, they remained trapped. It doesn't apply to this kind of music specifically though and the music cannot be blamed for it.

But then, obviously music cannot be blamed for the shooting. It may have had some influence but it didn't lead to it.

When someone is mentally sick as to plan murder they get inspiration from whatever they get in touch with, be it violent music/video games or despacito, just think of Charles Manson getting his inspiration from The Beatles to do his crazy shit

"Movies don't create psychos, movies make psychos more creative" - Scream, 1996, and in 23 years I have seen few advances on this one sentence argument

I can't really blame the music or video games on this. An old monk once said something like "a sword is only a weapon if used in the wrong way"

"played a role" and "blaming" seem to me distinct, and conflating them seem to make it like trying to discuss sex with a Victorian. An appeal to consequences rather than the facts.

cakeman wrote:

"played a role" and "blaming" seem to me distinct, and conflating them seem to make it like trying to discuss sex with a Victorian. An appeal to consequences rather than the facts.

Yeah i agree, its quite obvious you cant blame music for the shootings, as pop culture has always influenced and will influence people, its just interesting how much of an role it played in the actual style and imagery of the shootings itself, like you said it even influenced the dual weapons, etc and it is a larger influence than for example than stoneman douglas and i guess the reason why been answered now in this thread

I don’t believe music or video games caused them to be like this. There’s tons of people who played the same games and listened to the same music. What I do believe is that music was important to them. It spoke to them. But that doesn’t make them different. That’s what music does, it speaks to people and people relate to it.
Dylan not only quoted songs in yearbooks but in his personal writings he used words and small phrases from songs to describe how he was feeling. Words he used: “Downward spiral”, “godlike”, “lost highway” (it’s a movie I know but movies do the same as music), and “halcyon”. I know there’s more references he makes I’d just have to go back and reread the pages to remember them all. But is music to blame? No. I disagree with that.

arg wrote:

cakeman wrote:

"played a role" and "blaming" seem to me distinct, and conflating them seem to make it like trying to discuss sex with a Victorian. An appeal to consequences rather than the facts.

Yeah i agree, its quite obvious you cant blame music for the shootings, as pop culture has always influenced and will influence people, its just interesting how much of an role it played in the actual style and imagery of the shootings itself, like you said it even influenced the dual weapons, etc and it is a larger influence  than for example than stoneman douglas and i guess the reason why been answered now in this thread

Yeah, I agree with you. I think it's just an appeal to consequences, "If you mention video games, then you're saying video games caused the massacre, don't say that!" A knee-jerk, "I don't like the consequences of that fact, therefore it's false." While they probably exist, I've never seen anyone actually argue video games caused the massacre, just people allergic to mentioning them at all pretending like mentioning them is the same as saying they were hypnotized.

It's very annoying. Video games can still be relevant without hypnotizing them. For example, if isolation, shooter video games, and murder fantasies all had a common cause. For another more relevant example, by inspiring the MO, which it very, very obviously did, and is why most people bring it up. The same for music and film.

I didn't even mention Eric shooting at the bombs, almost surely because e. g. nukage barrels explode if you shoot them in Doom, or the piece of wood Eric carried in his pocket which he called his "berserk", a reference to the dark medkit, 100% health power-up in Doom. I even think  the way Dylan tosses the Molotov at the bombs may (I emphasize may, I wouldn't bet the house) be mimicking the ogre in Quake.

The dual weapons are the most obvious, aside from perhaps the berserk. Anybody who has played Doom, or Duke Nukem 3D, or Quake, can tell you that you switch between various guns depending on the monsters you face, and you spend the majority of the time switching between a shotgun with its stopping power and a chaingun with its speed in firing (or in Quake, a nail gun).  Even if you didn't, the other weapons are either too advanced for teenagers to get a hold of, such as the rocket launcher, or futuristic and literally don't exist, like the plasma gun or shrink ray.  I think Eric's attempt to build a napalm flamethrower was surely his answer to the rocket launcher. He even says it's "the suicide plan" and shooting the rocket launcher into a wall or something else close is the easiest way to commit suicide in Doom.