The Night Before

I found myself thinking earlier, what did Adam do the night before the massacre? What do you think was going through his mind? Did him and his mother have any communication in the days leading up to the end of his life? I wonder if he got any sleep that night, knowing what he was going to do the next morning. Knowing his mental state, and dealing with similar issues myself, i can only imagine what the week leading up to it was like in side of his mind. We know he was alone the entire time, but what did he spend those days doing? Did he have any meaningful online conversations? I mean, this isn't exactly a normal shooting. This kid plotted & killed his mother and then savagely murdered 20 children.. one can only imagine what spending a few moments in his head would have been like.

His mother returned on December 13th.(evening hours) In her last known sms-message she didnt mention Adam. But,2 days before, she wrote to someone that he bumped his head and described it as "blood everywhere" and "poor adam bumped his head". So,Lanza was alone for 2 and a half days, maybe he prepared his "gear"although there where no Evidence of empty bullet-boxes,so he maybe prepared himself weeks ago. On december 13th he drove past Sandy-Hook-Elementaryschool, aproximately at the same time when he commited the shooting a day later.(9.30) As i mentioned it before,his mother returned but there is no evidence that something "strange" happened till the next morning. So,it is possible that he spent the night awake,maybe going trough his "plan" again. As morning comes,he went to his mothers bedroom,shot her 4 Times at point-blank, destroyed his harddrive( maybe he did it the days before,who knows?) put his outfit on(or weared it already while killing his own mother) moved the guns into the car from his mother and drove to Sandy-Hook. Well,its impossible to know what he thought the night before,especially because he offed himself,but maybe he just focused on his later actions. I doubt that he even slept one hours or two, so maybe he spent his last night in his "gaming/Computer room" and waited for the morning. I forgot,in the 2 days before the shooting he send someone a email(or SMS?) in wich he described that he Lost the "interest" in mass-shootings,sharing his thoughts about Chinese-mass-stabbings, explained that he dont like knifes and prefers the "asthetic" of guns,making references about James Holmes,Virginia Tech and a eastern-european women (cant recall her Name,sorry) who drove a truck into a crowd of people. With all this information it is really hard to imagine how he spend his last night.

I wonder if inside of his mind was frantic, like.. was he manic in his last days?
It's crazy to me that some people think his attack was a spur of the moment thing or that he suddenly snapped.

Adam Lanza lost his mind long before Sandy Hook.

I feel like events like Columbine act as a disease almost. Certain people see the spectacles & something changes inside of them instead of inciting the natural human response of empathy.
It's almost like a Copy Cat Virus. People with already fragile minds could snap just by watching a documentary like Zero Hour & relating just a bit *too* much.
There's no doubt in my mind that if the media didn't cover Columbine, or all shootings for that matter, the way it did/does (sensationalism, at it's finest).. copy cats wouldn't exist.
Adam Lanza would have just been a weird autistic kid with some dark thoughts, at best.

WasteOfGoodSuffering wrote:

I feel like events like Columbine act as a disease almost. Certain people see the spectacles & something changes inside of them instead of inciting the natural human response of empathy.
It's almost like a Copy Cat Virus. People with already fragile minds could snap just by watching a documentary like Zero Hour & relating just a bit *too* much.
There's no doubt in my mind that if the media didn't cover Columbine, or all shootings for that matter, the way it did/does (sensationalism, at it's finest).. copy cats wouldn't exist.
Adam Lanza would have just been a weird autistic kid with some dark thoughts, at best.

These statements feel contradictory.

QuestionMark wrote:

WasteOfGoodSuffering wrote:

I feel like events like Columbine act as a disease almost. Certain people see the spectacles & something changes inside of them instead of inciting the natural human response of empathy.
It's almost like a Copy Cat Virus. People with already fragile minds could snap just by watching a documentary like Zero Hour & relating just a bit *too* much.
There's no doubt in my mind that if the media didn't cover Columbine, or all shootings for that matter, the way it did/does (sensationalism, at it's finest).. copy cats wouldn't exist.
Adam Lanza would have just been a weird autistic kid with some dark thoughts, at best.

These statements feel contradictory.

How so?

WasteOfGoodSuffering wrote:

QuestionMark wrote:

WasteOfGoodSuffering wrote:

I feel like events like Columbine act as a disease almost. Certain people see the spectacles & something changes inside of them instead of inciting the natural human response of empathy.
It's almost like a Copy Cat Virus. People with already fragile minds could snap just by watching a documentary like Zero Hour & relating just a bit *too* much.
There's no doubt in my mind that if the media didn't cover Columbine, or all shootings for that matter, the way it did/does (sensationalism, at it's finest).. copy cats wouldn't exist.
Adam Lanza would have just been a weird autistic kid with some dark thoughts, at best.

These statements feel contradictory.

How so?

Well first you're talking about people relating too much to the Zero Hour documentary, but then you go on to make a point about media sensationalism (the news, right?). Because a documentary is quite removed from a news broadcast.
Also, when you say how people see these things and don't feel empathetic, it makes me think that it wouldn't matter if the news covered it a different way. Because if you've got someone who already can't relate to people I don't think showing scenes of crying families is going to affect their decision-making.

Mass shootings are handled poorly in general. Documentaries probably shouldn't be made, if we're being honest. They do get the infamy that they are out to get, majority of the time. That being said, i enjoy those documentaries but can admit i wish they didn't have to be made. What i was trying to say, was that on the day Columbine happened.. it was the central focus on the news and the way the media latches onto these high notoriety events makes it look .. "glamorous" for a certain demographic (could-be, or to-be shooters) .. Yes, we could debate that it doesn't matter in the long run but seeing countless shooters end up with fan-bases obviously makes it much more appealing & had the media not sensationalized columbine, documentaries wouldn't have been made cause their wouldnt have been anything to talk about because the so called "interesting" aspects wouldn't have been revealed. I think that the only way to even put a DENT in mass shootings & copy cat killers would be for the media to completely ignore them. Maybe i'm just ranting, maybe we disagree. Who cares. It's too late now anyways. This is pretty much all in hindsight.

My main point is that if Adam Lanza knew he wouldn't have gotten infamous, he probably wouldn't have shot the school up.

& if the media never covered mass shootings as they normally do, most people wouldn't hear about them and get the bright idea to go and do it themselves.


Then again, some people are just born bad.

Futility wrote:

and a eastern-european women (cant recall her Name,sorry) who drove a truck into a crowd of people.

im certain that the woman in question was most definitely Olga Hepnarová.

curieux wrote:

im certain that the woman in question was most definitely Olga Hepnarová.

It was her. Basically, Adam wrote that vehicles (along with explosives and knives) are not his favorite mass killing tool.

[REDACTED]

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Mr Bubbless wrote:

V. Pascow wrote:

My main point is that if Adam Lanza knew he wouldn't have gotten infamous, he probably wouldn't have shot the school up.

If he wanted this so called "infamy" then why would he destroy almost all evidence of his existence and literally everything he had??? If he truly wanted "infamy" then wouldn't he have made a manifesto or some glamourized proclamation beforehand???

He deleted one hard drive, which most likely contained.. questionable material. He was trying to control his image in the after life. He did not need a manifesto considering what he did could never have a motive. He wanted to SHOCK the world, just like Columbine did. My main points are that had the media never mentioned these deranged killers, most of them probably would not have gravitated towards violence like they did. Which is true regardless. Adam Lanza at some point saw something on TV or Youtube that sparked his interest in mass murder.. take away that media that gave him the interest, you have no mass shooter.

There’s no answer as to why he did what he did. My guess is that his motive was his anger and, in his own words, “scorn for humanity” (which became the foundation of his personal ideology), not infamy. Maybe he wanted to leave a specific message for society, but that’s a big maybe.
Mass shooters existed way before the media started giving them attention. And it’s not like Adam could have had a bright (or at least non-miserable) future ahead of him with his untreated mental illness. It’s easy to understand why someone who was never given a chance to fit in with the society and have a fulfilling life would be resentful of both society and life. It’s easy to understand why people like these eventually may decide to kill themselves and take others with them. Another user in this thread mentioned Olga Hepnarová. She lived long before Columbine, she was probably taught to be nice and nonviolent like any other girl, her mental health issues seemed to be less severe than what Adam had (I mean, it’s definitely not a competition, but she was able to work and, if I’m not misremembering, had some resemblance of a social life), she had no guns, and yet she still committed mass murder. The only mass killers who might not have become mass killers without the media influence are very young, very impressionable school shooters. But there have been 14-15 (and even 11-13) year olds who shot up their schools before Columbine. They could hardly expect the same level of notoriety as Eric and Dylan, yet it didn’t make them change their minds.
Sorry for my post being all over the place, too lazy now to edit it for brevity/clarity. Also if I sounded a bit too sympathetic towards mass killers, I didn’t intend to.

V. Pascow wrote:

He did not need a manifesto considering what he did could never have a motive.

I mean, that's incredibly questionable.

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Now, obviously the context for each of these is different individually, and it's certainly not the same as any motivation Adam had. But unfortunately plenty of groups throughout history had rationales for killing children. There's also the long, sad history of child abuse throughout the years from caveman times onwards, but again, very different than what he ended up doing.

He might have even considered child murder not so bad since children are going to be brainwashed by society and then start brainwashing others and so the vicious circle goes on and on. Having an irrational rationale is not unusual for mentally ill people who end up killing someone.