Would you have been friends with Eric and Dylan?

It seems easy to think, "If I knew what was going on I would have been their friend". But for me, if we were classmates, nope. Connecting with people in school was always a challenge for me. I would have no way of knowing what they were planning.

If we were pen pals, I might get along pretty well with Dylan. At his age, we might have talked about how high school sucks and stuff like that. If he told me about his plans, I probably wouldn't take it seriously and if I did, I would try to talk him out of it. Eric probably wouldn't like me online or in person.

Magnaphoria wrote:

Wideawake wrote:

I don't think Robyn interested Dylan at all. It seems to me that he had this ideal of a girl that he worshiped and his preference was to obsess over someone who didn't truly exist rather than attempt a real relationship with someone who was flawed (as all people are). The girl(s) that he "loved" weren't real people to him. They were images that he put on a pedestal and built a fantasy personality for. In my opinion, even if he had managed to begin a relationship with his love, he would have been seriously disappointed to find that she did not perfectly follow the script he had created in his head.

I hate to look stupid, I read his journal a few times and that never really came to me. Sure , he did say "just a shell of what I want the most" but it's not like we haven't been dissapointed in someone when we got to get close to them and find out much more about their personality. Plus the "good body,almost perfect face, NOT popular" part doesn't sound like an impossible thing to achieve nor unreasonable to ask.

Mine expanding on the underlined parts?

Magnaphoria, I don't suppose that I have any definitive proof of this. However, there are a number of things that brought me to this conclusion. For one thing, he frequently refers to this person as simply "her" or "my love". Part of this could certainly be his fear of people reading his journal and/or prep for it being found after NBK, but he could have used a nickname.

Really the main factor that led to my idea was the way that he considers this girl(s) as soulmates without even knowing them, and believing they don't know him. Not the fact that he does so by itself but that he does so continually and over a long period of time.

And I may be incorrect on this part - I haven't read the journal in awhile - but I believe he makes several comments about his love's purity. He never really defines purity, but how do you know if someone is pure when you don't even know them? This is another ideal of his love.

Honestly I can't tell you what exactly I was thinking when I made this post several months ago, but this is likely a reasonable approximation of what I had in mind. I hope!

i was that weird loner autistic kid. i could never find friends that shared my desire to kill everyone at school, and eric & dylan never really told anyone about their plans... as much as i'd love to be friends with them it wouldn't have been realistic because i didn't know how to make friends or talk to people at the time
i didn't really learn social skills until about 2 years ago. i suppose if i met them in my less autistic state i could a been good friends with them. but its not like i'd prevent columbine from happening... if anything i'd make it worse.
or from eric & dylan's perspective, better.

Wideawake wrote:

I don't think Robyn interested Dylan at all. It seems to me that he had this ideal of a girl that he worshiped and his preference was to obsess over someone who didn't truly exist rather than attempt a real relationship with someone who was flawed (as all people are). The girl(s) that he "loved" weren't real people to him. They were images that he put on a pedestal and built a fantasy personality for. In my opinion, even if he had managed to begin a relationship with his love, he would have been seriously disappointed to find that she did not perfectly follow the script he had created in his head.

Brilliant [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] I couldn't have put it better myself. Dylan in particular seemed very unsatisfied with the world. Perhaps thats why he was so eager to die. He didn't attempt to find happiness because he knew deep down he would never find it here

Would I have been friends with Eric and Dylan?
Hm, thinking back on myself in high school I was definitely a stereotypical outcast. I hung out with a group of outcasts that all wore black head to toe and were very similar to the TCM. If they had gone to my school, I would have definitely been their friends. My school was very small, so I tended to cling to my weirdo friends. If I had gone CHS with them, I'm don't know if I would have noticed them or if they would have noticed me. I'm positive I would have had a crush on Dylan because he looks very similar to my other high school crushes. But I doubt I would be his type and even if I was I would have never had the balls to tell him I liked him, so we would probably just be friends. As far as Eric goes, I'm unsure. He had a strong personality and would have probably thought I was weird as fuck.

Dunno.

Theorethiclaly i we wer ethe same age, it might have been possible. I ould have had similar music tastes to Eric. They see to ahve taken classes that I might have chosen had i be a student of that HS.

but than again, this is just talking about interests and tastes. If I would have meshed with their prsonalities is a diferent question and the answer might likely be "no".

To be honest, I would have probably been friends with Dylan because he's just like me Shy yet a Very Bright person who has a lot of potential. And the fact that he's into computers like me is both something we have in common. Now Eric I probably wouldn't have been friends with because I probably wouldn't hang out with someone who has the personality that he does but I wouldn't have been enemies with it and would have thought of him as my acquaintance (Someone that I would have just fist bumped in the hallways occasionally).

No, I didn't correspond with that crowd too often @ my HS. I can guarantee you that I wouldn't have had issues with them tho. Case in point, as a baseball player I spent hours helping groom our infield. An identical group of kids would hang out near our field & drink & smoke/blare music while we practiced.

It escalated with our coach starting a personal war with them.. leading to showing up one day to a burned up/gasoline soaked infield. I thought it was hilarious & gave the group & smile & nod the next time I saw them.

I've always felt I'd be friends with Dylan and Rachel Scott. It's a completely irrational thought but I've felt that way for a long time

I've been involved in theatre and dance for a long time and I'm HS if I went to CHS I'd be involved in choir and theatre. I'd know Brooks probably and Dylan. I go back and forth on Eric. He'd either be my friend or hate me. I was always too afraid to talk to anyone so I'm not sure how I'd be. I know I'd be kind. However i had a temper so if he yelled at me I'd probably kick him in the balls...

Honestly if they were nice to me back then I'd cling on... anyone who was kind I'd be friends with

According to Sue's book Dylan was an adventurous eater and I'd find that refreshing

I'm new here so apologies for the post, I'm answering questions from years ago.

I would be a very close friend with them. I would also be in touch with Chris Morris and Nate Dykeman, they seemed to be guys I am friends with already. Adding the fact that we all share the same age (17-18), same music taste, have a huge interest in firearms and fireworks, video games and computers, experienced bullying and ostracizing, dressing weird, they would clearly hang out with me often.

I can imagine the topics I would discuss with Eric: Doom, hacking, girls, school, life in general.
And with Dylan: Music, computers, ranting, joking.

of course, during the 90's I was obsessed with Doom and making levels for it to the point where my nickname was 'Doom Boy'. When I was 18 I was as thin as Eric and wasn't some big tough guy. A lot of people read Eric's journal and think his writings reflected his personality, which is not true, you can see him the cafeteria video with his friends how goofy he was. The guy gets entertainment from spinning a phone around on a table.

They seem to think Eric would judge them and not be their friend because he would have considered them unworthy, but the fact is, Eric was friends with Mike Vendagina and Erik Veik among other people, and have you seen those people? have you seen how lame and goofy Mike is? He was a short fat guy with a Woody the Woodpcker Chilly Willy shirt on, if Eric could tolerate that, then he could tolerate us. His writings didn't reflect him at all, you can see him laughing at what Mike is saying and even Brandi's story about having 20 kids with Ben Affleck and her friend having roach eggs in her mouth.

spidEr wrote:

They seem to think Eric would judge them and not be their friend because he would have considered them unworthy, but the fact is, Eric was friends with Mike Vendagina and Erik Veik among other people, and have you seen those people? have you seen how lame and goofy Mike is? He was a short fat guy with a Woody the Woodpcker Chilly Willy shirt on, if Eric could tolerate that, then he could tolerate us. His writings didn't reflect him at all, you can see him laughing at what Mike is saying and even Brandi's story about having 20 kids with Ben Affleck and her friend having roach eggs in her mouth.

Eric in columbine video is by far the most accurate representation of Eric. Criminologist "experts" like Dave Cullen portray him as if he was a comic book villain, when in fact he was an average quiet boy. In the video, you can see Eric meowing at people, nervously looking around on the cafeteria table, making funny faces and just being the complete opposite of the idealized "REB" in his journals. If you read the AOL chat he had with an unnamed girl, you can see how polite and emotional he was, or that tape he filmed in his car, crying and talking about his childhood.

Exactly, only us researchers know the real Eric, and how pathetic he was (not in a bad way), and how much he was just like us at that age, just a young man. He wrote that journal for the world, he wanted the world to think of him as this badass, fearless REB character, and they still do to this day. They are giving him what he wanted, we are not, by seeing him as he really was.

When Eric is sitting with his friends at that table, even though the camera is focused on him, he barely talks and is not the center of attention. He only adds small comments here and there, and at no point do they sit around and listen to him talk, not even does Brandi. He listens to her and adds short comments.

spidEr wrote:

Exactly, only us researchers know the real Eric, and how pathetic he was (not in a bad way), and how much he was just like us at that age, just a young man. He wrote that journal for the world, he wanted the world to think of him as this badass, fearless REB character, and they still do to this day. They are giving him what he wanted, we are not, by seeing him as he really was.

When Eric is sitting with his friends at that table, even though the camera is focused on him, he barely talks and is not the center of attention. He only adds small comments here and there, and at no point do they sit around and listen to him talk, not even does Brandi. He listens to her and adds short comments.

Yep, he is exactly like myself and other teenage boys. People get freaked out when I say I relate to him, they think he was a charming psychopath with 3 girlfriends and a possession of powers of hypnosis, which is a huge load of hooey. He was a complete opposite of a textbook definition of a psychopath, he was probably more emotional and fragile than Dylan, considering he had friends while Eric only had him, and a few acquaintances like Mike and Veik.

spidEr wrote:

Exactly, only us researchers know the real Eric, and how pathetic he was (not in a bad way), and how much he was just like us at that age, just a young man. He wrote that journal for the world, he wanted the world to think of him as this badass, fearless REB character, and they still do to this day. They are giving him what he wanted, we are not, by seeing him as he really was.

When Eric is sitting with his friends at that table, even though the camera is focused on him, he barely talks and is not the center of attention. He only adds small comments here and there, and at no point do they sit around and listen to him talk, not even does Brandi. He listens to her and adds short comments.

I agree with you all 100%! Not everyone can see the real Eric. Or want to see ... Not as a hero (as seen by his crazy fans), not as a psychopath, but as an unhappy teenager who has not found his place in society (among his peers) and suffering from it. Eric was full of anger and frustration (because he didn't want to accept the role of an outcast), he came up with an alter ego (the image of a rebel) to compensate for his weakness.

.

eh I hung around some theater kids so maybe I'd have known Dylan.

I was manipulative, a bit unhinged, and I liked black, alcohol, weed, smoking, industrial; and grunge in high school. So probably. I was a pretty angry kid. I am nowhere near as severe as I was thank God.

I would have liked to be friends with Eric, he seemed like an interesting guy to talk to beyond everything ...

yeah, that was one of the odd twists at the time for people who realized they had shared interests with them.
At the time there were only so many people you could play computer games with or be friends with online and offline. If you did know someone into things you would almost certainly get into that stuff together. So middle school, early high school, yeah I think Eric would have been in the same circle of people.
Not so sure about growing and changing beyond that. School became something I didn't even care about. Not challenging, not important. And Eric was so consumed by it. I probably would have been there less than 25% of the days in the months leading up to the shooting.

And for those later years I feel like you could drop Dylan into a group of guys I knew around here and he'd fit right in. I remember a guy who they withheld his report card and maybe even diploma because he damaged a bunch of shit and they wanted him to pay. He'd go back at the end of every year and see if they'd give it to him yet. That guy would probably end up in those scattered eyewitness accounts claiming they saw so-and-so who knows Dylan and already graduated.

Since I've been dealing with the Columbine massacre for years and some of the views from Eric and Dylan's diaries seem familiar to me (it's ultimately the same worldview that I developed back then in my school days from 6th grade) so this would be an interesting question, which I have already asked myself.

Well, I don't know, and despite some similarities, I can only speak of pure speculation here. If I go back to my own school days, I had the same problems and conflicts as Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, from which very similar thoughts developed. I despised my entire school, but also fundamentally society, the system and the human species and expressed this very often, because I neither wanted to hide nor "adapt" myself. It was very possible that I would at least have come into contact with Eric and Dylan (but since I was also a very shy and introverted person at the same time, they would probably have had to speak to me or at least be in close proximity - such as School projects or secondary classes etc., even if I was still a lot more open in my school days than now, when I have resigned and finished with the whole world for myself).

Probably there would have been some "friendship" with them at this time, because (at least from my side) there would have been some "chance" for it, and I open up with them on the basis of the same interests, philosophical views and hatred of Jocks, purely in terms of content might have understood well. On the interpersonal level, I wouldn't be so sure, as there would be some other aspects (such as my own initial shyness or the "introversion" of Eric and Dylan etc.) so that the picture ultimately remains shadowy. Probably they wouldn't have liked me for some reason either, and then I would have big problems with them too, although I'm not assuming that, but I would like to include all possible variations, without dreaming to myself. I am really an honest person in this matter.

Most possible, however, is that I just wouldn't have any problems with them, because I would have it with the rest of the school. ^^

If I was born in 1981/82, went to the same school as them, I'd think I'd say yes I'd be friends with them

Definitely not.

I think so. I used to wear a black trenchcoat to highschool before columbine even happened so given my taste for black clothes and alot of the stuff they liked, I'm sure I'd have run into them and gotten along well. Maybe hanging out in the smoker's pit having conversations.

yeah, sure. we listen to the same music and share some ideals so probably. also i didn't have an audiovisual club in hs but i would have loved to join one as i used to be into photography at that time (and into vintage camcorders now, a year after graduation). i've been dressing goth/grunge since i was like 12, so if they saw me they would've thought i was cool ig

Oh boi...
Where do I begin. I'm SURE that I would be friends, or at the very least , I'd be kind to them.
I inherited my older brother heavy metal taste and knew a lot of bands the boys listened at a very young age, I was a metalhead/baby-bat when I was their age and dressed all black, though sometimes I couldn't dress that way because my fanatic Christian family would punish me for my 'satanic' taste in music and movies (horror movies) very often and made my life hell at home, I liked games my whole life and I still do and I was always drawing and painting (I'm currently an Ilustrator lol). No need to add that I was heavily bullied, constantly mocked too for all of this and was very depressed to the point of trying suicide a couple of times.
Man, my teenage years where on fire and, in all honesty, they either would make fun of me, respected me as they respected others they'd see as 'individuals' in the TCM, or I would be a really bad friend of theirs. I recall my way of thinking back then and I would've gladly join all of their shit behavior and maybe even NBK, remembering how angry and depressed I was...
I'm glad I didn't landed in Colorado back then and had some better company that lifted me out of that hole Xd

i was friends with a lot of dylan klebold and eric harris types growing up. none of them shot up any schools, but they were all outcasts. one of my childhood friends reminds me so much of eric, looking back. i dont think i wouldve cared for dylan. i find his pursuit of true love overbearing and cringeworthy. i love nine inch nails and im similarly melodramatic and depressed though lol. i think i could have gotten along with eric. we have a similar taste in music and film, and boys like him seemed to flock to me for whatever reason

no because i can’t handle social interactions xx