What caused your interest in Columbine?

Just wondering what caused everyone's interest in Columbine? Was it Dylan and Eric?
Have you been interested since the massacre occured? More recently?
How many of us spend time every day researching or reading?

Randomly stumbled across the video of Dylan driving to school a few years ago. My interest has dropped over time, though I still rehearse my enthusiasm every once in a while.

In 2013, my dad purchased Bowling For Columbine and I saw the positive reception it received which sparked my urges to watch the film. I didn't like it much when I first saw it (I saw it twice and I still disliked it) because while I thought the interview with Marilyn Manson and the discussion of the massacre to be interesting, everything else bored me because it was presented in a way that didn't grab my attention.

However, the one that really sparked my interest was when I saw this Christian propaganda video called They Sold Their Souls For Rock n' Roll and it spent 15 to 20 minutes discussing the massacre. The reason why this sparked my interest for it so much was because of their music taste, I heard the excerpts of the songs they showcased (primarily the bands Rammstein and KMFDM) and I was thinking "these killers had fantastic taste in music, I want to know what else they liked and how they acted".

I think it was after hearing about Columbine mentioned alongside a few other crimes, so I decided to do some research on my own. This was over four years ago.

I don't entirely remember. Mid to late last year I was on the internet scoping memes as you do and I stumbled across a heap of Columbine memes. It struck me that although I knew the name Columbine, I didn't know a single thing about it. I started by just reading news reports and Wikis, then found sites like this and acolumbinesite, then the 11k, the documentaries, the tapes, the books... there was such a wealth and I enjoyed learning more and more the deeper I searched.

I guess it was just the DIFFERENCE. The mystery, the two shooters, the breadth of planning, the methodology, the media coverage, the response, the overwhelming unexpectedness of it and ultimately, the immense amount of data available on the subject.

Even now there's still unanswered questions and theories and conspiracies; almost 20 years later. It's unbelievable.

The eerie artifacts and legends surrounding the case. I was looking through Google Images for Oklahoma City Bombing stuff and somehow found a map of the school detailing where the library, cafeteria, E&D's parking spaces, etc. were and began rereading the Wikipedia entry for the crime, and then found the class photo, and then the cafeteria footage, and then "Hitmen For Hire," and my natural obsession with memorizing the key details for things kicked in, because I was looking through the cafeteria footage, since it was 3 hours and 35 minutes long and I was wondering where on Earth in all that the famous shot of them walking around with the guns in their hands were. That led to reading books and checking out this forum.

I am most interested in finding further creepy artifacts from the case (it was awesome that you guys found the full class photo) and detailing a roster of all the key players at the school (E&D's friends, the bullies, the girls, the injured victims, etc.)

I also have a fixation on Columbine's place as a key 90s event--as one that would influence future events and impact teenage culture, as well as being impacted by previous 90s events (OKC bombing, Waco, other shootings.) And it alludes to a weird quasi-positive quasi-negative nostalgia for my own teen years--I like to talk to people about how I was around when it happened.

I was in college in computer studies when it happened. It didn't get very much coverage on the news in Canada but I do remember googling how many school shootings there was here. Not many- under 5, and some of those were shootings that had occured on a school campus, not necessarily by a "school shooter".

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After the Las Vegas mass shooting I was researching that when I stumbled upon Columbine and became intrigued. I've always been interested in criminological psychology and have read a lot of books on that topic as well as criminology.

Columbine is intriguing and has such a wealth of information available with research. I also find people are very passionate about it so debates and discussions are fascinating. I have personal experience with suicide in my life as well so that is another aspect that is of interest. How well people can disguise how depressed and suicidal they really are. Dylon and Eric are unique as well because they both came from good, non-abusive families so do not meet the usual "type", for lack of a better word, of school shooter. I

I just discovered Sue Klebold is speaking in Ontario on May 1 (!!!!) with CAMH (an association I'm already involved with) and I wouldl really like to attend. Maybe ask her to sign her book? Its 4 hours away from me though...so that sucks.

I hope this makes some sort of sense? I just recovered from a two day migraine and that always befuddles my brain afterwards. Is befuddles a word?

My ex was abusive and a bully. At first it was only towards me, but then it progressed towards people in my family like my sister and then he tried to fight (like a fist fight) my 65 year old Grandmother. My brother would stick up for me and that would just piss my ex off even more and in December, 2011 my brother came over to my house to see me and when my ex got home and saw that my brother was there, he went after him (to fight him). My brother was only 16 at the time and it really devastated me that my ex would go after a 16 year old like that. I was already really depressed at the time, but that made my depression so much worse and I had pretty much decided the only way I was going to get rid of him was to kill myself.

During this time in my relationship, my ex was living in Philadelphia Monday - Thursday because he was going to school at Lincoln Tech during the day and working at night (his job was also in Philadelphia). And he'd come home Thursday night after he finished work and he'd leave at like 6 in the morning on Monday's to go back up to Philly for school and work. I did not move with him because I was going to school for Medical Assistance here where I live which was also Monday - Thursday.

The plan was once I finished school and my internship, I would move to Pennsylvania. After he moved out my sister moved in with me because I have panic disorder and I get really bad panic attacks and anxiety when I have to stay by myself for too long, especially staying by myself at night.

Anyway, after this fight in the middle of my living room between my 16 year old brother and my ex, my depression just got worse. I was on Zoloft at the time and my doctor doubled my dose, but I still had the worse depression of my life. I was suicidal and really thought the only solution to keep this maniac away from me and my family would be to kill myself and I stupidly told a "friend" about this and she called the police and told them she thought I was going to kill myself. Even though I told her I had already attempted suicide once before and couldn't do it because I could not let my sister find me dead and ruin the rest of her life by just killing myself and leaving her, she still thought I needed the police called on me.

So the police came to my house and forced me into a police car. I told them I was not going to leave and go to the mental hospital and they basically said it wasn't "optional" and that I had no choice, I had to go. And once I got to the mental hospital, they took everything away from me, including my phone. I had to spend the night there and was questioned by all these different nurses and doctors.

There was this guy at the intake office and when I went into his office, he actually said to me "If you want to get out of here, tell the doctor that you just said you wanted to kill yourself in the heat of the moment and that you really didn't mean it. If you tell them you actually plan on killing yourself, they won't let you leave". And so that's what I told the doctors and nurses that questioned me. It also helped that I was already on an antidepressant. I had to stay there overnight and was finally discharged at like 6:00 in the morning.

When I got my phone back, I had 49 missed calls from my ex. He sent me something like 180 text messages and 14 voicemails. He was saying all kinds of things to me because I wouldn't answer my phone. Any derogatory name you could think of, he said it to me. When I got home, I found out from my sister that he had been calling and messaging her too trying to get a hold of me. He was calling me all kinds of names to her too. She didn't respond to him and shut her phone off.

This was on January 3, 2012. Fed up with his bullshit, I was looking things up online like "How to deal with bullying" and it brought me to this article about Columbine and how bullying was the reason Columbine happened. And my interest spiraled from there and turned into an obsession. I bought Cullen's book on eBay and at first, I actually believed what he was saying.

Of course I had heard of Columbine and I remember when it happened. I remember getting home from school that day and my Grandmother was watching the live coverage on T.V. I remember seeing their pictures all over the news. It was their junior yearbook photos that pretty much all the news stations used.

So anyways, I became obsessed with Columbine and wanted to read anything I could about it. I thought about it nonstop and like I said, at the time, I believed that Dylan really went along with it because he was depressed and suicidal and just wanted to put an end to the misery in his life. And I could relate to that. I knew exactly what that felt like. You don't understand it unless you've gone through it yourself. Underneath it all, I really did not want to die. I was scared that I was going to kill myself though. I know that kind of sounds like a contradiction, but it's the best way I can describe it. I didn't want to die but I didn't want to feel like that anymore. And I knew my ex wasn't going to change and I also knew that I did not love him anymore. He made me not love him by abusing me, hurting me, abusing my family, making fun of me, mocking me and putting me down every chance he got.

Once he started living in Philadelphia 4 days out of the week, my sister and I saw what life was like without him. It got to the point where I was happy when he'd leave and dreaded when he'd come back. And I'd think about Dylan** and I did not want to end up like him. I did not want to let this go on and on until I just gave up and killed myself. And so on January 23, 2012, I told him over the phone (that way he couldn't push me or throw something at me if I told him in person) that I was not ever going to move to Philadelphia and that I did not want to be with him anymore. And he asked me if I was serious and I told him that I was. He told me to go fuck myself and hung up on me.

He called me a few days later and he was clearly drunk. He called me all kinds of names and told me I ruined his life and told me that he was driving and was going drive around until he crashed and killed himself. He'd call me and text me every few days. After the whole episode with him calling me drunk, I wouldn't answer my phone if he called. In April, he texted me he was going to come see me to try and talk and work it out. My Grandfather changed all the locks at my house for me and I changed my phone number. My sister changed her phone number too.

Once I changed my number, he'd send me emails that I wouldn't respond to. In August, he emailed me and threatened to kick my new boyfriend's ass because my new boyfriend "stole" me from him, which was just ridiculous because I didn't get a new boyfriend until 6 months after I left him. That was the last time he threatened me. After that, he started being nice to me, telling me he misses me and that he's changed. As recent as October, 2017 he still tries to say he wants me to come back to him. I've had to block him on social media because he always finds some kind of way to talk to me. Luckily he hasn't shown up at my house.

I know this is kind of long, but that's pretty much the story of how I became obsessed with Columbine. Back then, anytime I would search a question I had about Columbine, it always brought me to Danny's forum and so I joined there sometime around January 17, 2012 and then once that was closed down, I opened this forum.

** - When I say I thought about Dylan and how he committed suicide, this was right after I got into Columbine and I took Cullen's book as the truth. I was under the impression that Dylan was suicidal and gave up and just went and did Columbine so he could die. I know that's not the case now, but that was my mindset in January, 2012. And when I say I didn't want to end up like him, I'm only referring to the suicide part, not the homicide. I was never homicidal or thought about killing or hurting anyone else.

I had never heard of Columbine until 2007 when I had just moved to a new town away from my friends. Throughout my whole time at my new school I didn't have a single friend and the students and teachers would go out of their way to make my time there Hell and I was completely isolated. I had first heard of Columbine when the Virginia Tech shooting occurred, they had shown photos of Eric and Dylan on the CCTV as part of the news report. I thought the picture was pretty powerful.

The second time I ran into it was when my friend was complaining to me about a crazy stalker on YouTube who kept giving him trouble (who ended up being Pekka). While Pekka was still alive and active on YouTube I checked over his videos to see what kind of person he was and he had a music video for Columbine and also a play through of the first level of Doom, and it really surprised me that the guy was a Doom fan as I had been obsessed with that game since I was a baby. After Pekka's shooting I began researching into Columbine, and then I realized the only reason he was playing Doom was because he was trying to copy Eric. I began to read into their journals and started to see so much similarities between me and them.

Well Columbine has always been a pop culture reference and the video still of them in the cafeteria has always been intriguing to me. but what lead deeper into it was actually....OJ Simpson.

I was watching videos on YouTube about OJ and i came across Vincent Bugliosi talking about the case. His pure contempt about the whole circus was amusing. He said the jurors were "candidates for the mental poverty program" which killed me. Also him explaining how they lost the case was interesting to me. So i bought 2 of his books: His OJ one and Helter Skelter. I found the meticulous detail in Helter Skelter very fascinating and that got me into true crime.

That eventually lead me here. I got tired of reading about serial killers and wanted to see why 2 kids decided to shoot their school up.

A
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On April 20th, 1999 I came home from 5th grade to find my mom watching the news coverage on tv. She was crying. She watched it all evening, everyday after that for at least a week, and I watched it with her. I probably shouldn't have but back them people didnt really sensor stuff as much as they do now for kids. I went to school the next day and my english teacher told us that the shooters were cowards. I have just always been interested since day 1. I didnt start the research until probably 7-8 years later however. I went through a period of obsession with the whole thing. Now I just dabble here and there, mostly around the time of the anniversary.

Jenn wrote:

(...)

I know this is kind of long, but that's pretty much the story of how I became obsessed with Columbine. Back then, anytime I would search a question I had about Columbine, it always brought me to Danny's forum and so I joined there sometime around January 17, 2012 and then once that was closed down, I opened this forum.
.

thanks for sharing, glad you made it out

PotholeAbyss wrote:

In 2013, my dad purchased Bowling For Columbine and I saw the positive reception it received which sparked my urges to watch the film. I didn't like it much when I first saw it (I saw it twice and I still disliked it) because while I thought the interview with Marilyn Manson and the discussion of the massacre to be interesting, everything else bored me because it was presented in a way that didn't grab my attention.

However, the one that really sparked my interest was when I saw this Christian propaganda video called They Sold Their Souls For Rock n' Roll and it spent 15 to 20 minutes discussing the massacre. The reason why this sparked my interest for it so much was because of their music taste, I heard the excerpts of the songs they showcased (primarily the bands Rammstein and KMFDM) and I was thinking "these killers had fantastic taste in music, I want to know what else they liked and how they acted".  

Do you have a link for the documentary? Something i would enjoy playing a drinking game to...

Jenn wrote:

My ex was abusive and a bully. At first it was only towards me, but then it progressed towards people in my family like my sister and then he tried to fight (like a fist fight) my 65 year old Grandmother. My brother would stick up for me and that would just piss my ex off even more and in December, 2011 my brother came over to my house to see me and when my ex got home and saw that my brother was there, he went after him (to fight him). My brother was only 16 at the time and it really devastated me that my ex would go after a 16 year old like that. I was already really depressed at the time, but that made my depression so much worse and I had pretty much decided the only way I was going to get rid of him was to kill myself.

During this time in my relationship, my ex was living in Philadelphia Monday - Thursday because he was going to school at Lincoln Tech during the day and working at night (his job was also in Philadelphia). And he'd come home Thursday night after he finished work and he'd leave at like 6 in the morning on Monday's to go back up to Philly for school and work. I did not move with him because I was going to school for Medical Assistance here where I live which was also Monday - Thursday.

The plan was once I finished school and my internship, I would move to Pennsylvania. After he moved out my sister moved in with me because I have panic disorder and I get really bad panic attacks and anxiety when I have to stay by myself for too long, especially staying by myself at night.

Anyway, after this fight in the middle of my living room between my 16 year old brother and my ex, my depression just got worse. I was on Zoloft at the time and my doctor doubled my dose, but I still had the worse depression of my life. I was suicidal and really thought the only solution to keep this maniac away from me and my family would be to kill myself and I stupidly told a "friend" about this and she called the police and told them she thought I was going to kill myself. Even though I told her I had already attempted suicide once before and couldn't do it because I could not let my sister find me dead and ruin the rest of her life by just killing myself and leaving her, she still thought I needed the police called on me.

So the police came to my house and forced me into a police car. I told them I was not going to leave and go to the mental hospital and they basically said it wasn't "optional" and that I had no choice, I had to go. And once I got to the mental hospital, they took everything away from me, including my phone. I had to spend the night there and was questioned by all these different nurses and doctors.

There was this guy at the intake office and when I went into his office, he actually said to me "If you want to get out of here, tell the doctor that you just said you wanted to kill yourself in the heat of the moment and that you really didn't mean it. If you tell them you actually plan on killing yourself, they won't let you leave". And so that's what I told the doctors and nurses that questioned me. It also helped that I was already on an antidepressant. I had to stay there overnight and was finally discharged at like 6:00 in the morning.

When I got my phone back, I had 49 missed calls from my ex. He sent me something like 180 text messages and 14 voicemails. He was saying all kinds of things to me because I wouldn't answer my phone. Any derogatory name you could think of, he said it to me. When I got home, I found out from my sister that he had been calling and messaging her too trying to get a hold of me. He was calling me all kinds of names to her too. She didn't respond to him and shut her phone off.

This was on January 3, 2012. Fed up with his bullshit, I was looking things up online like "How to deal with bullying" and it brought me to this article about Columbine and how bullying was the reason Columbine happened. And my interest spiraled from there and turned into an obsession. I bought Cullen's book on eBay and at first, I actually believed what he was saying.

Of course I had heard of Columbine and I remember when it happened. I remember getting home from school that day and my Grandmother was watching the live coverage on T.V. I remember seeing their pictures all over the news. It was their junior yearbook photos that pretty much all the news stations used.

So anyways, I became obsessed with Columbine and wanted to read anything I could about it. I thought about it nonstop and like I said, at the time, I believed that Dylan really went along with it because he was depressed and suicidal and just wanted to put an end to the misery in his life. And I could relate to that. I knew exactly what that felt like. You don't understand it unless you've gone through it yourself. Underneath it all, I really did not want to die. I was scared that I was going to kill myself though. I know that kind of sounds like a contradiction, but it's the best way I can describe it. I didn't want to die but I didn't want to feel like that anymore. And I knew my ex wasn't going to change and I also knew that I did not love him anymore. He made me not love him by abusing me, hurting me, abusing my family, making fun of me, mocking me and putting me down every chance he got.

Once he started living in Philadelphia 4 days out of the week, my sister and I saw what life was like without him. It got to the point where I was happy when he'd leave and dreaded when he'd come back. And I'd think about Dylan** and I did not want to end up like him. I did not want to let this go on and on until I just gave up and killed myself. And so on January 23, 2012, I told him over the phone (that way he couldn't push me or throw something at me if I told him in person) that I was not ever going to move to Philadelphia and that I did not want to be with him anymore. And he asked me if I was serious and I told him that I was. He told me to go fuck myself and hung up on me.

He called me a few days later and he was clearly drunk. He called me all kinds of names and told me I ruined his life and told me that he was driving and was going drive around until he crashed and killed himself. He'd call me and text me every few days. After the whole episode with him calling me drunk, I wouldn't answer my phone if he called. In April, he texted me he was going to come see me to try and talk and work it out. My Grandfather changed all the locks at my house for me and I changed my phone number. My sister changed her phone number too.

Once I changed my number, he'd send me emails that I wouldn't respond to. In August, he emailed me and threatened to kick my new boyfriend's ass because my new boyfriend "stole" me from him, which was just ridiculous because I didn't get a new boyfriend until 6 months after I left him. That was the last time he threatened me. After that, he started being nice to me, telling me he misses me and that he's changed. As recent as October, 2017 he still tries to say he wants me to come back to him. I've had to block him on social media because he always finds some kind of way to talk to me. Luckily he hasn't shown up at my house.

I know this is kind of long, but that's pretty much the story of how I became obsessed with Columbine. Back then, anytime I would search a question I had about Columbine, it always brought me to Danny's forum and so I joined there sometime around January 17, 2012 and then once that was closed down, I opened this forum.

** - When I say I thought about Dylan and how he committed suicide, this was right after I got into Columbine and I took Cullen's book as the truth. I was under the impression that Dylan was suicidal and gave up and just went and did Columbine so he could die. I know that's not the case now, but that was my mindset in January, 2012. And when I say I didn't want to end up like him, I'm only referring to the suicide part, not the homicide. I was never homicidal or thought about killing or hurting anyone else.

So glad you made it out of that relationship. So many stay in abusive relationships. It takes a lot of guts to leave. Thank you for sharing.

spidEr wrote:

I had never heard of Columbine until 2007 when I had just moved to a new town away from my friends. Throughout my whole time at my new school I didn't have a single friend and the students and teachers would go out of their way to make my time there Hell and I was completely isolated. I had first heard of Columbine when the Virginia Tech shooting occurred, they had shown photos of Eric and Dylan on the CCTV as part of the news report. I thought the picture was pretty powerful.

The second time I ran into it was when my friend was complaining to me about a crazy stalker on YouTube who kept giving him trouble (who ended up being Pekka). While Pekka was still alive and active on YouTube I checked over his videos to see what kind of person he was and he had a music video for Columbine and also a play through of the first level of Doom, and it really surprised me that the guy was a Doom fan as I had been obsessed with that game since I was a baby. After Pekka's shooting I began researching into Columbine, and then I realized the only reason he was playing Doom was because he was trying to copy Eric. I began to read into their journals and started to see so much similarities between me and them.

The teachers bullied you instead of protected you?! Thats ♤○[×/¥£ up. Sorry you went through that.

I've always been a morbidly curious person and have (very casually) looked into shootings etc before.
One evening in 12th grade I was watching one of those "The Top 30.... bla bla bla" TV shows and one spot was the Erfurt School massacre.
I went on Wikipedia to look into it a bit further where it was mentioned that Robert had been inspired by the Columbine massacre and then I fell down a long, deep rabbit hole...

Virginia Tech.

Oldmare wrote:

PotholeAbyss wrote:

In 2013, my dad purchased Bowling For Columbine and I saw the positive reception it received which sparked my urges to watch the film. I didn't like it much when I first saw it (I saw it twice and I still disliked it) because while I thought the interview with Marilyn Manson and the discussion of the massacre to be interesting, everything else bored me because it was presented in a way that didn't grab my attention.

However, the one that really sparked my interest was when I saw this Christian propaganda video called They Sold Their Souls For Rock n' Roll and it spent 15 to 20 minutes discussing the massacre. The reason why this sparked my interest for it so much was because of their music taste, I heard the excerpts of the songs they showcased (primarily the bands Rammstein and KMFDM) and I was thinking "these killers had fantastic taste in music, I want to know what else they liked and how they acted".  

Do you have a link for the documentary? Something i would enjoy playing a drinking game to...

I found a playlist with most of the parts, part 4 is missing. Part 1 has the segment discussing Columbine. If you want to do a drinking game of it, I recommend water because if you use alcohol, you'll get alcohol poisoning and I don't want that to happen.  

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