Aside from Eric, Dylan, the victims, the survivors, and the families...

...who in the Columbine "universe" do you find most interesting?

I find Rocky Hoffschneider interesting - not for who he is (or was), but for what he represents.

In this world, we follow laws - the natural laws that tell us to breathe, to eat, to drink; the social laws that tell us to wear underwear, to buy iPads, to go on green and stop on red.

The social laws tell us that we should do certain things (say "Please" and "Thank you") and not do certain other things (don't cut in line; don't push or shove).

Rocky flouted those laws. He felt like being an asshole, so he treated others badly - for no other reason than, "I can get away with it." He didn't say "Excuse me" when he butted in front of other kids in the lunch line. He didn't say "Pardon me" when he pushed other kids to the ground and called them cocksucking faggots. He didn't even say "Sorry" or "My bad" when the world found out how much of a prick he truly was. He acted out of his basest animal instincts - I bigger than you, I treat you like shit, you kiss my fucking ass.

In high school, at least, Rocky was the distilled essence of assholery. He was a living Biff Tannen - a shitty guy who shat on nearly everyone around him. And he has a lot more in common with Eric and Dylan than most of us here care to believe.

To me, NBK was nothing if not a Category 5 shitstorm. Eric and Dylan had all of these nasty feelings bottled up inside them. They felt as if they would explode if they couldn't get them out. So they opened up their psychic sphincters and took a toxic dump on a school that they always felt was one big shithole anyway.

They, too, flouted the laws. They felt like playing God, so they killed some kids and spared others. (Of course, if their bombs had gone off, those whose lives they spared would likely already have been dead by the time they opened fire on anyone.) They said, "You know what? You can take all your prohibitions against murder, all your platitudes against inflicting suffering on others, all your bleeding-heart moralism - your 'Thou shalts' and 'Thou shalt nots' and your 'Love thy neighbors' and your 'Do unto others' - and you can blow them out your ass! If it moves, it bleeds; if it bleeds, it dies."

When it comes down to it, many if not most guys don't want to play by the rules; they want to make their own rules. And sometimes, if not most of the time, if not nearly all of the time, they don't care who gets hurt.

I also find Rocky Hoffschneider the most interesting. I tried to look him up on facebook, and I could not find him. I wonder what he is up to today. I wonder what Rocky Hoffschneider does for a living.

I'm most interested in the relationship of the various girls Eric and Dylan were interested in to E&D themselves, as well as the people Eric and Dylan hated (for some reason I'm interested in Nathan Baumgarten lately, having forgotten he was actually Rachel's prom date.)

As for the victims, probably Rachel, yes--a terribly cliched answer since she's now the most famous victim since Cassie wasn't actually asked if she believed in God--but from sort of a social-function perspective: less who she was, than what she represents versus the more complex person she actually was, the "angelic" qualities she's been ascribed with, versus some of the problems she really felt deep down, and the saintly image she's achieved since then and how people respond to those who have been sainted and hagiographied (that may not be a word) in death. One thing I'm interested in is how Christian she was (and wasn't), and how many of the people who are in love with her have sort of tried to lightly push her deeply-felt Christianity aside for the simple reasons that a)they're kind of in love with her, and b)they're not Christians at all. It's interesting to me when people would fall in love with someone they're not really compatible with.

The jock bullies? Not so much. Rocky and Evan Todd are the only ones I know by name, anyway. Rocky seems to lay low these days. I do not believe Rocky "caused" Columbine much at all, but when one reads about the ugly climate at the school, one inevitably finds out about Rocky, and reading the horror stories of what Rocky was allowed to get away with will remind one of their own "Biffs" they had in high school. I was not actually "bullied" in high school, aside from a few minor embarrassing incidents--(bullying implies *repeated* torment from one or more individuals, which never happened to me) but those embarrassing incidents, small as they are scope in comparison to *real* bullying vicitms, nonetheless haunt me to this day, so when Rocky comes up in these discussions I always flash back on that a bit as my school was filled with redneck assholes.

But yes, what Rocky represents has always been a pathetic problem with American culture specifically and the human race in general--that is to say, the "sheeple"--everyone backs off and lets the big dumb alpha male get what he wants, a theme I most recently noticed represented in the ending of the 2003 film Mystic River.

gumshoe wrote:

I also find Rocky Hoffschneider the most interesting.  I tried to look him up on facebook, and I could not find him.  I wonder what he is up to today.  I wonder what Rocky Hoffschneider does for a living.

last i heard (year or so ago), he was living in suburban Denver with wife/kids and working in the construction industry as a manager. On the surface it appears he finally stopped having ethical/legal issues associated with being an a-hole of a human being... post college he was doing MMA fighting and was the focus of a civil suit for wrongful death in an accident (snowmobiling) that eventually caused the death of a fellow MMA fighter.

Possible, but i doubt he's completely cleansed of his issues... wouldn't be surprised if he popped into the news for anger/ego related offenses.

He was born on October 15 1979.

He currently lives in Platteville, CO.

Before that he lived in Laramie, WY from 2008 to 2014.

I hope that someday before the end of his life even if he lives to be a very old man, that Rocky will come to realize and understand that what he did was wrong and the hurtful effect he had on many of his former classmates.One thing for sure ,if that ever happens Rocky will have to come to that realization on his own as no amount of public criticism ever seemed to have any effect on him in that regard.

PaintItBlack wrote:

One thing for sure ,if that ever happens Rocky will have to come to that realization on his own as no amount of public criticism ever seemed to have any effect on him in that regard.

Is this true for him in recent years? He's 37 years old now. Is he a normal guy? Does he have kids? If so, they'd better not type daddy's name into any search engine.... I feel kinda bad for him. Columbine has followed him around his whole life even though he didn't know the perpetrators and the massacre happened after he graduated. So many anecdotes (many questionable) and he's become a symbol more than a real person. It's a bit unfair. It must suck to be a 37 year old dude who, should he have the misfortune of typing his name into google, will find stories about how Columbine might not have ever happened if it weren't for him. Seems like he's often painted as the worst bully in a school that had the worst bullying culture in human history. Even mundane transgressions like him parking in the wrong spot eighteen years ago are repeated ad nauseam.

That said, Rocky is very interesting because.. who was the real Rocky? Was he some sort of extraordinary bully that American high schools rarely see? Or was he just another immature teenage asshole similar to those in thousands of other high schools? Has he said or written anything since Columbine? If he wrote a book I'd certainly read it.

Columbine HS in the late 90s has obviously reached mythical status. The bullying narrative was pushed too far imo. Good intentions, but probably a lot of hearsay and hyperbole. Countless students were interviewed and poured out their grievances for the rest of the country to hear, but I think that would be true for many HS's if put in the same position. What percentage of HS students actually feel like they are treated fairly? I'll put my money on zero.

We see this sort of thing over and over again. People who want to blame Satan will see his face in the WTC smoke or notice that Eric made a few weird faces when he was bored out of his mind in his HS cafeteria. Conspiracy theorists will call it a false flag and talk about a third shooter. Kinda like the hologram planes that hit the WTC . Lonely idol worshippers will claim to know what was going on in Eric and Dylan's heads. They were sweet, brilliant, attractive, and misunderstood. IQ's of 120. Not enough Jesus in school. Too much Jesus in school. Video games. So many scapegoats.

Something about Rocky's story feels the same. It feels overstated. And how can it not be if the internet is still talking about where he parked his hummer back in 1997?

"the worst bully in a school that had the worst bullying culture in human history"

I agree that Columbine was probably terrible, but if the 1969 film If.... (starring Malcolm McDowell) is any indication, British prep schools were probably worse. (All sorts of pressuring/hazing mixed in with sexual troubles at an all-boys school.) That is fiction, but it also ends in a school shooting. By saying that Columbine had "the worst bullying culture," are you implying that it would be worse than, say, some inner city school full of gangs? Is it "worse" because Columbine put up a facade of academic/athletic brilliance? (At least the Larkin book said that Columbine actually had good teachers and wasn't a redneck-jock diploma mill like my own high school.). That's in the eye of the beholder...

You've hit on the main reason I'm interested in the Columbine story: "Columbine HS in the late 90s has obviously reached mythical status." You read so much about the people around E&D and related to the story, that you begin to feel like you were there, or as if you'd give anything to have been there.

I find Mark Manes to be really interesting. I actually kind of feel bad for the guy because he and Phil were basically the scapegoats for the whole shooting due to the actual perpetrators were not around for justice. I really would like to know what was going through his head when he first heard about the shooting and that E & D were involved. Another interesting thing is the shooting practice thing. Most of us have seen "Rampart Range" video with all of them interacting together but there were two other times I believe that they went out just to shoot around. I would like to know how they interacted and if they said anything odd to Mark, Phil or Jess that would tip them off to what they were about to do. I just would like to sit and talk with the guy to see what he thought about the whole Columbine thing and his thoughts on E & D in general because he was able to see them in a setting that most people were unable to. Also he was a Columbine grad so I would like to get his opinion on what he felt the culture of the school was.