Talking to people about Columbine

Do any of you ever talk about your interest in the Columbine Massacre to people IRL, like friends or family? If you have how did they react?
If you haven't talked to anyone about it, why? I know it's a topic that would be very hard to fit into any conversation, but is anyone here afraid of people knowing about their interest in this event?
For my own part, I did bring it up to my sister once, to my dismay she didn't even know what I was talking about. She had never heard of Columbine. I told her I was going to take a trip to Colorado to visit the Columbine memorial (as a way to ease into the conversation without nerding out all at once) and she said "Columbine memorial?"

So yeah....

I've discussed it some but tend to get frustrated as most of the people I know IRL know very little about the case. Pretty much the extent of their knowledge comes from Cullen soundbytes on TV- Eric was psycho, Dylan was sad and coerced into participating.
This is the "safe" explanation and people like what's safe. They don't want to know more because then they have to think about the harder things. At least, that's been my experience.

Not really. I read "A Mother's Reckoning" and commented about how good it was. My own mother wanted to read it. We talked about it a little bit. That's as far as anything about Columbine has gone really. It's just not something I am open about. I don't really see a need to be. I have plenty of people on this forum to talk about Columbine with that won't judge me for my interest in it.

Very insightful. Thanks for your input guys

HanShotFirst wrote:

For my own part, I  did bring it up to my sister once, to my dismay she didn't even know what I was talking about. She had never heard of Columbine. I told her I was going to take a trip to Colorado to visit the Columbine memorial (as a way to ease into the conversation without nerding out all at once) and she said "Columbine memorial?"

I've met an alarming number of people who never heard of it too. Really shows how totally retarded the claim that mass killers are soley after fame is - most people don't even know about the details or even the names of the most famous cases.

I am into true crime in general and talk about it a lot.

But for me when I found out my brother's now wife was from Littleton it set off many conversations. She is young so she wasn't in school with them (she attended Chatfield when she was in HS) but she was there when it happened and regularly went to the school and other places in Littleton that E&D did during their lives

She herself isn't into crime so she didn't really know too much about the inner workings of Columbine but was interesting to talk to her about it.

Other than that though, the most I talk about it is on here. My husband could care less and talking about things like murder and suicide can get some interesting stares from others

I try to avoid talking about mass murders because people think it is a weird interest, especially in France where this is not a societal topic.

My sister is also interested in TC so we can talk about that (although she is interested in serial killers and school shooters only, whereas I am only interested in mass murders). We watched the documentary called Newtown together, I brought her to see Utoya 22 July with me in a preview showing and we have seen several documentaries about Columbine together.

But otherwise I try to hide my interest. Given that I study the English language and English-speaking society and history, I often talk about gun laws or far-right in America with a fellow student, but it is really annoying when I want to talk about a specific case and I have to hide most of my knowledge about it. I am even embarrassed to say the names of the killers, because in France no-one knows about Adam Lanza, Dylann Roof, Timothy McVeigh, Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris. In fact, I think briefly mentioning a specific shooting is fine because many people still have a vague idea of the event they saw on the news, but the moment you say the name of the perpetrator you realize you have crossed the line. Why would anyone remember their name?

I also try to avoid talking about it to my parents because they don't seem to like this interest. Sometimes they laugh and say "It's funny you are both interested in that kind of stuff.", but usually they don't really like it, I think especially mass murders. I think serial killers are fascinating for most people so that's fine, whereas mass shooters is a more weird and creepy thing to be interested in.

I have never talked to my family about Columbine. I assume they have never heard of it. My dad has mentioned Anders Breivik and Raoul Moat by name. I have heard him talk about the Las Vegas shooting, but he didn't recognise the perpetrator by name. And of course my family know about the Plymouth shooting, because we live quite close to it.