Would Columbine Still had happened in another era?

I often wonder when I think about bullying and Columbine, if things would've been different, if the time period were different, like if the era was the 50's and/or 60's and Eric & Dylan grew up in the 50's and 60's, and were bullied by "greasers" instead of jocks, do you think E&D still would've committed a school shooting like they did in 1999 or do you think they would've done things differently because the time period was the 50's/60's?

42099_4EVA wrote:

I often wonder when I think about bullying and Columbine, if things would've been different, if the time period were different, like if the era was the 50's and/or 60's and Eric & Dylan grew up in the 50's and 60's, and were bullied by "greasers" instead of jocks, do you think E&D still would've committed a school shooting like they did in 1999 or do you think they would've done things differently because the time period was the 50's/60's?

Great question. I think Columbine is so synonymous with the late 90’s suburbia, end of innocence for my generation (even before 9/11) that I’m trying to think of the prospect of Columbine happening even earlier....and I can’t wrap my head around it.

I imagine they’d be very different people back then with different influences. I wonder how Erics physical issues would have been dealt with back then?

Would Dylan have just drank himself into a stupor and become a writer...how would someone like Eric have channeled all his energy?

I have to be honest. I don’t think it would have happened back then. Just like while there are many mass shootings now. Something like exactly like Columbine wouldn’t happen today.

Good question, their would be no doom for eric to play either so i wonder how he would develop without it or NBK for that matter.

Right!! The whole concept of NBK wouldn’t be conceived because it didn’t exist yet

I think it could have happened in the 50s or 60s too, especially because even if those periods were very different from the 90s, there was a generation gap too. After the war young people wanted to have fun, they could spend money on non-essential things and their parents didn't really understand them and the new youth culture.

Moreover, depression can happen at any time. At the time of Columbine, school shootings were not that common yet, so in a way they were not influenced too in the 90s, they "invented" their idea, they did not do like others. If they could find guns in the 50s or 60s, which was probably even easier than in the 90s, I think they could do it. Maybe the culture back then was less violent (but violence in medias) and we also know that violent in medias does not necessarily cause violence. The 40s were already violent enough.

Maybe they would find another movie or something else to relate their views to, does anybody know any movies that they could impossibly be the equivalent to nbk for them?

It also depends on why one believes it happened and are you talking about Eric and Dylan in Littleton, same family structure etc just in 1959 instead of 1999?

Neah wrote:

If they could find guns in the 50s or 60s, which was probably even easier than in the 90s

It would be unbelievably easy. Hell back then they could probably get their hands on WWII or Korean War era machineguns. Now whether they'd actually be able to use them effectively is another question, but the potential for major casualties is still there.

Screamingophelia wrote:

It also depends on why one believes it happened and are you talking about Eric and Dylan in Littleton, same family structure etc just in 1959 instead of 1999?

Yeah, same family structure, just instead of 1999, 1959. Yeah I thought, how would it have been different in 1959, maybe they might have been more accepted back then because, with the way Eric and Dylan were in 1999, that's how greasers were in the 50's, so perhaps they wouldn't have been bullied at all but more so, accepted, but then again, they started Columbine in the 50's looking like teenaged, 50's sock-hoppers, they would indeed probably have been bullied and so....I wonder how they would've handled it back during that era. It's an interesting thing to think about. I know had they been in the 80's and been bullied, the bullies and E&D would've settled their issues with a break-dancing dance-off lol

Giga143 wrote:

Maybe they would find another movie or something else to relate their views to, does anybody know any movies that they could impossibly be the equivalent to nbk for them?

Rebel Without A Cause?

Possibly considering the story is about rebellion (although i havent actually seen it before) but i do know a bit about and eric kind of resembles James Dean in my opinion.

Giga143 wrote:

Maybe they would find another movie or something else to relate their views to, does anybody know any movies that they could impossibly be the equivalent to nbk for them?

There's a great movie that could be the equivalent of NBK for the 50s, it is called Gun Crazy (1950). Maybe money is a little too important in this movie though.

Also maybe Bonnie and Clyde (1967)? And even if it is not really similar to NBK, the 50s/60s Eric and Dylan would probably like The Sadist (1963) and If (1969, with what is, I think, one of the first school shootings in movies. It shows the generation gap well. IDK if it would be too leftist for Eric) and all the 50s SF movies. All the movies I mentioned are great.

I have not seen it yet but Pretty Poison (that Dylann Roof put in the list of his favorite movies) could also be appreciated by Eric and Dylan.

It probably would have had a different character to it, but there were gun massacres in "those days" too (Charles Whitman) as well as school massacres--hell, one of America's worst happened in *1927* when failed local politician Andrew Kehoe tried to blow up a school with a homemade bomb.

Massacres such as San Ysidro (1984) and George Hennard's Luby Cafeteria massacre (1991) are not as well remembered for various other reasons--maybe because they weren't terribly *influential*.

I was 3 weeks away from my 19th Birthday on the 20th April 1999. So I was pretty much the same age as Eric & Dylan (slightly older). Screamingophelia put it right.

The mid to late 90's was fuckin bizarre. I think with the Internet, computer games, mobile phones and also music...things were deffo moving at an infinite speed in which I certainly found head spinning. I was in full time work at the time, working Saute at TGI Fridays in the UK. It was a strange time. Good times, but kinda scary in a way I can't explain, typing on a forum 20 years later.

Even in a grown adults working place being late teens was brutal. Alot of bullying going on. Some i witnessed, some I'm ashamed I took part in. It would be like trying to explain a feeling of Nostalgia. I could type 1000 words and still feel like I had got it wrong :/

I think that if 'Columbine' happend on the internet in the 2010s in New York state, it would have started a worldwide phenomenon......

Adzybear wrote:

The mid to late 90's was fuckin bizarre. I think with the Internet, computer games, mobile phones and also music...things were deffo moving at an infinite speed in which I certainly found head spinning. I was in full time work at the time, working Saute at TGI Fridays in the UK. It was a strange time. Good times, but kinda scary in a way I can't explain, typing on a forum 20 years later.

It was the beginning of a new era. It is weird that I also get some of the feelings you mentioned right now. Everything is evolving so quickly, and yet everything also seems to be fixed. Society evolves, people don't talk anymore, young people feel lonely, we become paranoid and start to be afraid of new technologies, of our own smartphone, we don't trust medias, there are a lot of tensions, a need for a national identity and yet societies are divided, we live with the thought that we can be killed in a terror attack in the street at any time. I really find this era a very scary time. I wish things were as simple as they used to be in the 50s and 60s. You needed a job, you learned in the field, you didn't need to have a diploma. You had an awkward moment in a public space, you didn't have too worry about being filmed and put on the social networks without your consent.

Even though Eric and Dylan were "modern" because they used the new technologies and Internet, I don't think they would appreciate how things evolved and how people lost touch with reality and with others. They would probably be against how things became so superficial, how people seem to live for the likes that they get on their profile picture.

Probably could've gotten the idea from Charles Whitman.

Giga143 wrote:

eric kind of resembles James Dean in my opinion.

He wished.

Neah wrote:

I wish things were as simple as they used to be in the 50s and 60s.

Ah, so simple, when legal racial discrimination was alive and well, practically all the Western nations of the time were fighting wars in faraway countries, the threat of a Third World War fought with hundreds - perhaps thousands - of nuclear weapons and potentially with a death toll of hundreds of millions, was a very real possibility, homophobia was rampant, a sitting US president was murdered in broad daylight, etc.

The past is never as good as it seems and is oftentimes several magnitudes worse than what people expect of it.

QuestionMark wrote:

Neah wrote:

I wish things were as simple as they used to be in the 50s and 60s.

Ah, so simple, when legal racial discrimination was alive and well, practically all the Western nations of the time were fighting wars in faraway countries, the threat of a Third World War fought with hundreds - perhaps thousands - of nuclear weapons and potentially with a death toll of hundreds of millions, was a very real possibility, homophobia was rampant, a sitting US president was murdered in broad daylight, etc.

The past is never as good as it seems and is oftentimes several magnitudes worse than what people expect of it.

Sure, I know all that, although all of the things you mentioned doesn't apply to France. But we had war too, young men had to go to Algeria on their military service and came back traumatized because they had seen war and torture. But I mean for the everyday life, things were probably more simple, but not necessarily better, and more similar to my view of things.

I am interested in the 30s and 40s, especially in Germany so I am well aware that the past is not better, despite what people say.