Why Columbine?

Hi guys and girls, newbie here.

I've recently become interested in Columbine after watching a documentary on TV. Though I had heard of it before (I was very young when it actually happened), I hadn't really paid much attention to the story. To me, as an Englishman, it was just another tragic school shooting in America.

But I was intrigued after watching the documentary and Googled it and starting digging into the story and now I'm slightly obsessed with all of it. The theories on what caused Eric and Dylan to do such a horrendous thing. Their writings and videos. How they kept their plans a secret. The conspiracy theories on whether anybody else was involved. The rather poor police response to the incident. The victims last moments. And so on.

I've been researching this subject almost every day for a couple of months now and am a little embarrassed to discuss it in real life with my friends or family as a lot of people will probably find it to be a strange thing to be fascinated with. Which is why I'm glad I've found you guys! Hopefully I can express myself on here without being judged, but time will tell.

Anyway, onto my question. Having read a number of threads over the past few days, it's clear that I'm not the only one who has an avid interest in Columbine. Which, I must confess, I'm relieved about! As we all know, there are sadly many school shootings in the US and elsewhere. Many before Columbine and many since. So why is it that Columbine is the most notorious of all the shootings? Why is it that it is almost always referenced when a crazed gunman attacks a school? Why are we all so fascinated by THIS school shooting above all others?

Virginia Tech had a much higher death toll than Columbine. Sandy Hook was particularly horrifying as most of the lives lost were very young children. But still, almost sixteen years later, Columbine is arguably the most infamous school shooting of all. Why?

Is it the fact that Eric and Dylan seemed like average high schoolers? That their minds seem so complex? For the women, is it because they are attractive? Or maybe it's that this incident had the rarity of involving two shooters and could not be written off as just a loner who went crazy?

It has to be remembered that Eric and Dylan's attack was actually, in many ways, a failure. After reading that they had mocked previous school shooters, it's clear to me that they would be dismayed to be remembered as the most famous school shooters in history. Because, as I'm sure most of you are aware, it wasn't supposed to be a school shooting but more of a bombing to rival that of the Oklahoma City Bombing almost exactly four years earlier. So, if this is such a memorable and infamous event now, imagine what it would be like if everything had gone as they had planned. If their bombs had gone off with full power, they would probably have killed hundreds of students before picking off fleeing survivors with their guns as well as possibly emergency personnel and reporters arriving on the scene. The death toll could have been far greater. But their amateur style thankfully showed and they were "only" able to murder 13 before committing suicide.

So why, in your opinion, is Columbine the most notorious of all school shootings? And why are you personally so interested in the subject?

Sorry for the long post, but I had to get this off of my mind! I look forward to reading your thoughts.

Hello PreparedRug4, first of all welcome to the forum

I have a whole year researching Columbine and here in the forum, I was also very young when this happened and I remember a bit and also remember heard about it years later but till now caught more my attention and Ive been wondering your same question.

What I did then, was to not only analyse the case but also the society of that time and now, I noticed that the 90's could be the most depressive generation for several reasons and everything started to became very empty for young people, this eventually affected my generation and the most recent ones too, which makes many people (including me for example) to feel very related to Eric and Dylan and this particular case.

Why?, well because if you start to read about it, you see that they were not only kids with mental problems but also social problems and problems to accept the system and what the adults teach us, but they were not and they are not the only kids with those problems, in the last generations many have the same ideologies and problems, you can see that the bullying and suicide problem is more serious now and I have seen how many guys are even fascinated with guns and have desires to do the same of  Eric and Dylan because they can feel more related to them than with another Mass Murderer. Adam Lanza and the mass murderers who followed after Columbine, are part of this group so anyone pay them many attention, not matter if they killed more people, because Columbine started many things, it was like a revolution, started many debates and is the case with more information in the internet and are involved two kids who seemed very normal just like all those kids seem, so all that makes it more attractive. I even think that after last week, any similar  mass shooting with many attention in the media, involved more than one gunman, what makes Columbine even more interesting.

I am not saying that the Sandy Hook case cant not be that fascinating because it could but we are barely starting to know things about Adam and he was another kid of the group who is the result of a society that is each time more fucked up.

Also, as you pointed out, Columbine was not planned to be a mass shooting in general, it was a bombing and became the most traumatic School Shooting in the end, another point of why its so interesting to so many people.  I dont think that it would not have the same impact as a bombing because it was planned to be something with a huge impact anyway and as Eric and Dylan wanted and predicted, is a case that started many copycats and each one more traumatic or with more fatalities than the last one.

In conclusion, Columbine is still very fascinating because these generations are full of people like Eric and Dylan, because Eric and Dylan remiend us a way (and not a very good one) to show what bother us of everything (from school system to society in general) and people can still feel related to them and have the chance to know a lot of them in the web for all the tecnology that didnt exist in the 70's or 80's when other mass shootings ocurred and I dont think that this will pass soon, not while what they hated so much and with what they were victims too is still relevant and also still affect many other kids and not while the media still give it attention.

PreparedRug4, if you dig through the forum you will see that we have asked each other and ourselves this very question many times. And the answer is: a million different complex reasons unique to each of us.

For me, it was being 15 years old and seeing 2 cute upper middle class boys from a neighborhood like my own all over the TV and the massive amount of media coverage and the fear that it could happen here and a small part of me that thought I completely understood why they did it. And the more I dig and the more I think, the more questions come to mind that will never be answered so I keep coming back.