The above description is taken from the account of Brooks Brown in No Easy Answers. It’s a fun little story that is purely based on good memories of Eric and Dylan and the group of friends they hung out with on the regular. It’s also interesting to note that Brooks met Eric for the first time here because Eric had tagged along with Dylan (who’d known Brooks since they were little kids). This Halloween-themed event also saw Brooks meeting Zach Heckler, who’d later grow so close to Dylan that he’d be seen as the ‘best friend’.
Of course, the massacre even looms over a story like this one. Nick Baumgart, who’d planned the haunted house garage, would later be the one to go to prom with Rachel Scott. But, for a tiny moment suspended forever in time, everyone banded together for a Halloween effort that wasn’t much of anything in hindsight but a lot of fun all the same.
Hm, I can’t really say that I have. I have occasionally seen someone who reminded me of them a little style-wise, like (for example) I’ve seen tall dudes around here with long hair protruding from beneath a cap the way Dylan used to style himself too. I think that’s fairly normal to run into every so often, though, as it’s not like the dudes had a rare look/style about them. To me, they both do have a very specific vibe/energy that’s impossible to replicate – I think the reason why I’m not often reminded of Dylan/Eric in everyday life beyond looks/style is because nobody else carries that particular kind of energy. (You can think of that energy as a fingerprint: entirely unique to everyone.)
many kids are bullied and/or play violent video games and
don’t end up shooting their school up. I don’t buy bullying alone as
being the reason, even tho they said it was. Besides that they didn’t
even just kill their bullies nor would their original plan have worked
that way. I’m sorry if I get the whole thing completely wrong due to me
being fairly new here, but I felt like I needed to explain myself
further since I do have a lot of faith in and respect for psychologists
in general
Hi! I hope you’re still around to read my answer to this, because I was in the middle of my hiatus when you sent me this and I didn’t find the time/headspace to formulate a reply until now. Questions like these are always a little more complicated for me to answer, because they pull a lot of information about the case together with public/personal opinion. I’m going to do my best to stay as comprehensive as possible with this reply!
The Tumblr community is one of the most vocal when it comes to disagreeing with expert opinions on the case, but we’re not the only ones. Other researchers/interested parties have also expressed their misgivings about the official story throughout the years. (We aren’t the only community with an interest in Columbine, though we tend to be one of the most sprawled-out/all-inclusive and this kind of presence really gives us a louder voice.) If there is one thing many of us agree on, it’s that the evidence pile tends to be a hopeless mess on the best of days. It’s not easy to find the information you need or create a comprehensive narrative out of the thousands of pages available. JeffCo’s own incompetence in certain areas is well-documented too, ranging from copious misspellings of names to the horrible circumstances surrounding the death of teacher Dave Sanders, and I think that this really fed into the level of mistrust that many of us have toward the official narrative. When law enforcement can’t even document the timeline of all the events that took place on 4/20/99 properly, there’s not a whole lot of confidence left in their ability to give us a (psychological) explanation as to why this happened in the first place. Journalist Jeff Kass touched upon that staggering incompetence beautifully in the early chapters of his book and Dutch author Tim Krabbé has also mentioned how chaotic and unthorough the investigation appears to be.
The earliest diagnosis of the boys was made by clinical psychologist and FBI Supervisory Special Agent Dwayne Fuselier. Despite his many years of experience with large-scale crimes and hostage situations, he is not without controversy when it comes to his involvement in the Columbine case: one of his sons actually attended Columbine at the time of the shooting and was in the cafeteria when it happened, while his other son had previously attended Columbine and had created a video of the school being destroyed while he was a senior back in 1997. Normally, this would’ve been a conflict of interest (and it was reported in the media at the time, too, as this article shows) but quite a few of the first responders had some kind of connection with the school and Fuselier’s assistance was welcomed all the same. Fuselier used the same evidence that was later made available to the general public, though he also had access to the basement tapes, when it came to actually forming a diagnosis for these two. I hate to quote Dave Cullen on anything, but he does mention how Fuselier went about it (to an extent – I’ve never been able to figure out just how Fuselier tested his theory when he’d formed it, despite Dave’s mention that Fuselier tested it thoroughly) and something about Fuselier’s method has always struck me as completely ignorant. Case in point: Fuselier’s very first thought upon reading Eric’s journal was “holy shit, he’s telling us why he did it”. Many people, including yours truly, work off the assumption that Eric wrote his journal with an audience in mind and that it was only a partial rendition of his actual thoughts/feelings for that reason. Dave Cullen claims throughout his book that Eric would prove the easier of the two killers to understand, but every scrap of argument that Fuselier and the rest of the experts come up with in regards to Eric is built up solely out of what Eric had created for them to see. Eric created his own narrative and the experts just ran with it.
To really understand why the psychiatric diagnoses don’t work, you really have to look no further than this fact: none of the experts had access to special information the general public does not possess at this time, with the exclusion of the basement tapes that we have a transcript for and some of the experts were able to view in their entirety, and none of the experts spoke at length with the people who knew Eric and Dylan best. There are no records of any experts having interviewed the parents, friends, and acquaintances of the boys. Instead, they chose to rely on their journals and other circumstantial evidence almost entirely. They never got to speak with Eric and Dylan themselves, either, even though personal conversations with the person in question are an absolutely critical stage in setting any sort of diagnosis. Both Eric and Dylan are not the most reliable narrators and a lot of the surviving material from them is coloured by their own feelings, experiences, and hypocrisies. They are no longer around to explain what they meant with certain comments and certain journal entries, nor can they expand on their own reasonings for the massacre or clarify things that are still widely debated among researchers today. I personally think that taking their word as gospel truth on anything makes you run a risk of creating some kind of ‘tunnel vision’, in which the lens that Eric and/or Dylan provide for you becomes the lens through which you see their writings/ideas/experiences. Eric provided such a lens for Fuselier when this expert first read his journal, but Fuselier accepted the lens as the cold hard facts instead of as the biased/willfully misdirective efforts Eric put into making sure people saw a particular image of him post-massacre. Post-mortem diagnoses are frowned upon by many because they are based off secondhand material instead of firsthand interactions with the person the diagnosis is set for. I would be able to expand more on this, but I made this post about the dangers of post-mortem diagnoses a while ago and I hope that’s comprehensive enough to explain what I mean at present.
Within our community, I actually often see people recognise the fact that both boys were likely to suffer from mental illnesses of some description. I don’t think it’s something that is widely ignored, as I do think the general consensus here as well as elsewhere is still that anyone who commits a mass murder suffers from some deep-seated mental/emotional/other issues that have led them to believe that their course of action is not the morally reprehensible and cruel act our society believes it to be. However, this community tends to be a lot more reluctant when it comes to actually expressing a particular diagnosis for either one of the boys. If we do mention a diagnosis, it is often mentioned as a possibility but almost never as a fact. Most of us recognise the validity of psychiatric diagnoses and a fair few of us actually have personal experience with a diagnosis of some kind, but we address Eric and Dylan not in limited terms that confine them to a particular diagnosis but choose to talk about them in broader brushstrokes and more inclusive ideas instead. I have personally written a number of things about Eric in particular that never mention a diagnosis (except when I successfully refute the psychopath diagnosis) but explain how he may have been as a person and how he came to be the way he was away from any kind of label or anything else. With Dylan, I have reframed the narrative to include his documented giftedness that was confirmed by his mother and that I know from experience can greatly impact a child’s development/inner life. It is possible to speak about both boys and give reasons for their actions/ideas/etc without mentioning a psychiatric diagnosis outright, which is something I personally encourage everyone to consider doing because it humanises both of them so much more.
As you said, many kids are bullied and play violent video games. Not all of them wind up shooting their school up, though I would argue that many kids who were bullied suffer lasting repercussions of this that greatly impact their interpersonal relationships and other endeavours they undertake later on in their lives. Similarly, the media/pop culture we consume can have both positive and negative effects on us. Some of the media we consume is actually a rather interesting observation of the world we live in today, especially if we veer into scifi/superhero/non-fiction/military narratives of some description. It’s all too easy to see how some of that media may serve as a foundation for some ideologies that are not the most morally sound, or how some of that media may be used as ‘training grounds’ for someone like a mass shooter. (However, I personally do not believe that censorship is the answer to this issue and I have gotten rather vehement in the past about advices like “read your child’s private journal” that are given in mainstream media. I do believe that there is something wrong in the way people parent their kids, but that’s a whole other can of worms for another day maybe.) I believe that, in Columbine’s case, the media the boys consumed was integral to a degree but was not the main catalyst for disaster. We can’t erase the impact of a movie like Natural Born Killers, after which they codenamed their entire plan, or the impact of a videogame like Doom, which Eric claimed would help him cope with the empathy/sympathy he may feel for his victims. Similarly, the bullying suffered by them is offset by the bullying they pushed onto others and was just one of many influencers for the massacre rather than the influence.
I believe that both boys suffered from massive issues that could not easily be resolved, and that they made each other worse and egged each other on. I do not believe for a second that Eric was the psychopathic mastermind that experts claim he was. I believe that the experts are by-and-large wrong and that they do not have a really comprehensive view of the boys. I believe that a lot of the expert opinions can damage the way people see the boys and the case as a whole and that they limit true understanding of why Columbine happened and, more importantly, why mass shootings like these keep on happening. I think that it is important to have sympathy for Eric and Dylan and to try and empathise with them as much as we are able to empathise with their victims. More than anything else, I think it’s absolutely vital to sit down with the evidence and form your own view of the boys that is not impacted by anyone else’s view. I understood Dylan fairly early on in my research, because I instantly recognised some things in him, but Eric took conscious effort on my part to try and understand. If I had simply gone off first impressions or off other people’s opinions alone, I would never have been able to write this piece about Eric that allowed me to try and help other people understand him in turn. I think there is something very rewarding, not to mention something very deeply personal, about really digging into the case and forming your own views of events/people/etc. I always try to be a guideline of sorts on my blog, because I know all too well how overwhelming the case can get, but there’s nothing quite like saying “fuck your expert opinions, I need to form my own” and running with it until you feel like you have a working image of the boys and the case that is not impacted by the absolute pile of bullshit that the official narrative tries to make us believe.
Additional ask: Opinion on those who romanticize Dylan and/or Eric themselves (not their actions)?
It’s a rather interesting phenomenon, isn’t it? I don’t think that it’s strictly tied to Columbine, either, because I’ve seen romanticisations happen throughout the true crime community over the years. The Columbiner tag just tends to be one of those that’s the most filled with this, which I think is partially due to the age demographic of the bloggers but also has to do with the nature of the crimes that Eric and Dylan committed. I also think that the fact that Eric and Dylan themselves were still very young and are highly relatable to many of us plays into this, too. (I guess it may be somewhat easier to romanticise two mass murderers who shot up their school rather than, say, a serial killer who’s known to rape/torture his victims? I could be wrong, though.)
I think there may be many reasons why people romanticise them, just as there are many reasons
as to why people may wind up justifying/condoning their actions. A huge
part of that is definitely this ‘saving people thing’ that half of us
suffer from – we wonder if we could’ve helped, if love could have somehow saved the day, if somehow things could’ve turned out differently if only a few key things would change, etc. I also think that for some Eric or Dylan just feel safe, because they’re dead and can’t hurt us now the way the living still can.
Then, of course, there’s that attraction of “I know I shouldn’t like this because it’s problematic as all hell but damn I can’t stop liking it” that’s essentially a part of their darkness reaching out and touching all the dark that we try to hide away within ourselves.
And, at the risk of alienating a few readers.. I really feel as though some of the people who romanticise Columbine/Eric/Dylan just haven’t sat down with the evidence long enough. I feel like some people have created this other image of them that’s mostly informed by their pictures, their videos, and some out-of-context quotes that set them up as these sweet and funny but ultimately troubled kids. It’s still Eric and Dylan, don’t get me wrong, but it’s a more sanitised version of them. It baffles me that some are still debating if they were racist (yes they were), if they were sexist (hello yes welcome to the dark ages), if they were cruel (”sure, I’ll help you”, anyone?), etc. I think it’s strange to see how all that information is right there at people’s fingertips but somehow they manage to ignore at least half of it to suit their own fancies.
Mostly my stance on things like these is “do whatever you like for as long as it doesn’t actively hurt anybody”, but I do hope that some will eventually sit down with all that evidence and really take a closer look at Eric and Dylan in light of all that. As someone who’s never made a blanket “I love you”-statement about either of them, I think I may just be the wrong person to really answer your question.. but I hope some may consider this answer an invitation to jump in with their own observations about this phenomenon we see a lot of in the Columbiner community?
“Just A Day” essay Deciphering and decoding Dylan’s writing.
People seem to believe that the essay ‘Just A Day’ was authored by Eric. This notion seems to stem from the belief that the document was found on Eric’s computer. In actuality, it wasn’t. Instead, it’s Item 871 located on Klebold School Server Files [see end of this post]. However, even if it was a document found on Eric’s computer or his school file server, as most people have thought in the TCC, I still would not believe it was authored by Eric Harris Every single time I’ve ever read through this essay trying to remain impartial, I can not help but feel that it is distinctly Dylan’s personality characteristics and idiosyncrasies that we’ve seen patterns of in his style of writings and school work. The earmark clues are all there in the grammar syntax and the use of sophisticated vocabulary inconsistently peppered with lazy shortcut ampersands and dollar-sign censored expletives. Eric would never dare to use expletives in a school assignment. He knew better than to intentionally add bad language which could risk him a lower grade. Eric dutifully abided by the teacher’s rules. On the other hand, Dylan was a bit of a slacker rebel when it came to stuff like this. He didn’t much respect his high school or its’ rules and he occasionally flouted them when/where he could. The clues are also present in his disdainful superiority of the vapid bourgeoisie suburbanites. How he sees the overly domesticated society almost like a pollution infringing upon the eternal, omnipresent beauty that is nature as spoiling his momentary serenity.
So, let’s begin dissecting this essay, revealing 20 stand-out clues which I feel confirm that ‘Just a day’ belongs to Dylan in heart and soul:
1) “They (our fishing trips) were always preempted (planned in advance), never extemporaneously (randomly)..”
Here we see the use of sophisticated language and complex almost archaic, old-fashioned syntax such as:
‘Prempted’ meaning ‘acquire or appropriate (something) in advance’ ‘Extemporaneously’ meaning spur-of-the-moment, impromptu, without planning.
2) “brought out by my father before his intended day of relaxation.”
Here you can see the proper address of ‘Father’ rather than ‘Dad’. Dylan opts for formal rather than casual. Conversely, I tend to think Eric might prefer to use the latter. In scanning through some of Eric’s work, this rings true.
The odd, sophomoric, antiquated use of ‘brought out’ combined with the intellectually stilted “intended day of relaxation’. I have to say it almost sounds a bit like mid-eighteenth century Byronic writing! Well, okay, maybe more like Dylan Thomas. 😉
I will also add in here [even though not numbered] that…
“a barrage of arguments *& pouting”
this wording tends to sound very intellectually posh. It doesn’t at all sound like something Eric would come up with. Besides, Eric would never admit to ever pouting: real men don’t do eat quiche or pout. 😉
3) “This was a good thing, as opposed to getting up for school”
Dylan loathed school; he didn’t want to be there ever. Apart from the fact that he was on the defense in the toxic, clique-y environment, there was nothing engaging for him academically. By contrast, Eric liked school because he enjoyed learning – however, he hated homework. He mentions this in his “Know What I Have/Love” list.
4) “or some other bulls*St.”
Dylan had a nasty, passive-aggressive habit of adding couched expletives in his essays. Again, it’s an amusing juxtaposition to all the other sophisticated manner of speaking in the rest of his essay! He kind of ruins everything else about his beautiful writing when he does this. So, inconsistently, rebelliously him! Another instance of the literary self-sabotaging that landed him a written reprimand from his Creative Writing teacher was his infamous ‘Man in Black’ essay written not weeks before the massacre. His teacher compliments his writing abilities and then proceeds to admonish him at the bottom of the essay that ‘I am offended by the use of profanity. In class we had discussed the approach of using * ! * !.”
5) and *6) “black skies *& coffee bean aromas.I never liked coffee, but I loved the smell.”
Again, simple but effective sorts of descriptors which sensorial picture paint the mood and setting. In that little snapshot, you can just imagine what that would look like as well as the smell of that early morning. Dylan was very astute at setting a mood and atmosphere in his writing style. You can see how gifted he is at describing a setting here in his gunpowder essay. You just feel like you are there experiencing everything with your five senses.
* Instead of typing out ‘and’ he opts for the lazy “&” ampersand. There are quite a few peppered throughout the doc. All his sophistication at the start of his doc goes out the window with each of his lackadaisical shortcut ‘&’.
7)“I would dine on fancy breakfast cuisine, otherwise known as Cocoa Puffs”
A dash of tongue-in-cheek wit with an oxymoron contrast. It’s a playful humor poking fun of his younger, unsophisticated self in happier memories. It’s also reminiscent of his playful sense humor in the cards he gave to Devon Adams.
8) “I always remember my brother trying to impress everyone, and myself thinking what a waste of time that would be.”
This is a bit of a salty, arrogant dig against a brother. It speaks of sibling competitiveness while simultaneously implying that he is above competing for people’s attention.
We know that both boys had older brothers which were much more socially outgoing with people. Of the two boys, Eric looked up to his brother and was known to be supportive of his football games. Still, I’m sure there was the sort of jealousy there for living in the successful shadow of his brother. I honestly don’t ever see Eric taking snooty pot shots at his brother, least of all in a school essay which might be read to the class.
Dylan, on the other hand, was gifted and naturally just ‘impressed’ with his advanced abilities. But perhaps Dylan was jealous that Byron was good with people and managed to naturally ‘impress them’ and win them over with charisma and woo. If that’s the case, Dylan is justifying his lacking in the arena of social skills since he was usually never inadequate at anything else academically speaking. So, here, he prefers to view all of that as jumping through hoops trying to please and win people over and that it’s just a vapid waste of time trying to define oneself by impressing others rather than just simply being who you are and not caring what people think. Winning people over as perhaps Byron naturally did with most people he came in contact with is relegated to simply “a waste of time” by Dylan.
9) and *10) “The drives up to the mountains was always peaceful, *a certain halcyon hibernating within the tall peaks & the armies of pine trees.”
He describes the trips as enjoyable because nature provides an automatic sense of calmness for him. It’s easy to understand when his mental chatter was constantly going all of the time. You could say that being out in nature and suspended in total quiet, soothed his mind and soul. Again, he describes what he is visually experiencing while on the trips up into the mountains in a concise yet, very vivid manner which makes you easily envision it easily.
10) A who else uses the word ‘halcyon’ but Mr. Dylan Klebold? It is his signature word of which he uses repeatedly in his journal. This is a deal breaker for me. Why isn’t it for most people that have read this essay and assumed it’s Erics? ‘a certain halcyon hibernating’ quite a poetically romantic description….
Eric, by contrast, would tend to describe things in a prosaic, very direct manner. By contrast, his writing approach is more action-oriented rather than ‘stop and smell the roses’ reflective.
11)“It seems back then that when the world changed, these mountains would never move. They would remain at peace with themselves and with anyone who would respect them.”
The world changes and advances yet, the mountains remain unalterably everlasting and majestic. Those that trespass but respect these timeless, constant monuments reap the peace and tranquility that is their silent secret.
12)“The lake is almost vacant, except for a few repulsive suburbanite a$$holes.”
Dylan censors an expletive to describe the artificial humanity infringing upon a near pristinely vacant lake.
13) “I never liked those kinds of people. They always seemed to ruin the serenity of the lake.”
No doubt altering the mood of the natural environment with their massive campers, garbage, and noise (and grill) pollution. Once they start to trickle in, the lake begins to lose the still and pure quality that Dylan enjoys witnessing – without having to share it with others who are undeserving of it for lacking in respect.
13) continued… “I loved the water. I never went swimming, but the water was an escape in itself”
Gazing into the water was a way for his mind to figuratively swim elsewhere..and to escape from the troubles of everyday life.
14) “Instead, I went with a lour, even though this was a lake.”
He misspelled ‘lure’ for a fishing lure. Generally, it seems as though he has at least one or two errors in his work. Even his college application letter, which should have been thoroughly proofed and error-free, had a glaring mistake with it’s rather amusing use of a veeeery wrong word. 😉
15) “Cast, reel, etc countless times, and my mind would wander to wherever it would want to go. Time seemed to stop whenever I was fishing.”
Again, you can see that the act of doing something repetitive, out in nature, in an absolute quiet, helped to provide a meditative state for Dylan. Time would become suspended and his mind would transport to where he happily wished to be.
16) and 17) “The lake, the mountains, the trees, all the wildlife *s$*t that people seemed to take for granted, was here.”
The mindful appreciation of the natural world goes unappreciated by most people other than himself. 17) Typical Dylan to ironically sum it up as ‘wildlife s$*t in an cavalier, irreverent fashion even though his point is that no one reveres it as only he can. Again, if we can assume that this is an essay written for school (can’t really get what else it might’ve been created for?), he clearly knows that using profanity is a no-no yet, he passive-aggressively slips it in the essay anyway along with those wildcard characters.
And for humor sake, let’s not forget how he started off this essay using lofty words such as ‘Extemporaneously’ and has no progressed..digressed? to a much different tone by the end of the essay.
18) “It was (as) if their presence was necessary for me to be content.”
I feel as though he forgot to put in ‘as if’ in this sentence. But again, he’s stressing that the breathtaking visuals surrounding him were integral to him finding a sense of contentment. A rare state of being for a Dylan.
19)“Time to go!. Done, Back to society. No regrets, though.”
You’d think most teenage dudes returning from a fishing trip might write it this way: “well, time to go back home! But so worth it!” Dylan rather perceives it more lamentingly like ‘time to go back to (the) society’…yes, back to the artificial world, with all of the humanity’s stupid system and rules. Though, maybe I’m just inferring a bit much here.. lol
However, ‘No regrets though’. For all the hullabaloo of getting up at the crack of dawn, and traveling out that way out into the precious, perfect solitude of nature – so well worth the time spent. No regrets! but instead, fond memories of the spiritual commune with Mountain Gods of nature.
20)“Nature shared the secret serenity with someone who was actually observant enough to notice. Sucks for everyone else.”
Others come out here to just do bunch of stuff out while out in a natural. Pitch a tent, crank up the BBQ, drinking beer and make a lot of noise chattering much a do about nothing. Nature is irrelevant to the suburbanites. As oppose to Dylan, who is there to commune with nature while pensively fishing. In his mindful appreciation, Nature shares a gift of ‘secret serenity’ – his attaining contentment in solitude for a few hours that feel like a state of foreverness. Nobody else gleans the obvious while out in nature but he. For they are too busy to notice.
Here is where this essay was found by Jeffco. If I’ve not persuaded you enough above, then this should be the deal breaker that ‘Just a Day’ belongs to none other than…Mr. Dylan Klebold
p.s. Honestly, just between you and me, I would so love to see all of those 28 essays of Dylan’s that were found on Eric Harris’s computer. Read the source. 😉
‘As Al said, he needs a type-O kidney. The Denver native and Navy veteran hopes more people will sign up to get tested for his sake and for that of others persevering down the same path.’
‘Anyone looking to donate a kidney or sign up to get tested can visit the Colorado Donor Alliance website or call Porter Adventist Hospital, which is assisting with the process of testing those who might be a match, at 303-765-3827, or contact the living coordinator at 303-765-6957.’
This was posted last year but I’m pretty sure he still needs a kidney. Anyone in the Colorado area who is a match and can donate a kidney please do, if you can’t, please share this post and maybe he’ll find someone who can!
It’s so unfortunate that this is a well-established belief about Eric, because I’m not sure I agree with that idea and I think it’s quite damaging to assume that Eric would’ve wound up doing something awful in life no matter what. I think we certainly need to take into account that Eric could very well have wound up committing himself to a bombing or another form of a massacre later on in life if he had somehow allowed himself to live beyond Columbine, but we also need to be aware that there’s quite a big chance that he would’ve eventually settled down somehow and become this slightly balding dad with two kids and a dog and a boring 9-to-5 job. People often seem to forget how young Eric was. He was barely out of his teenage years, barely an adult, when he committed mass murder and suicide. So many of his ideas were built on loose sand and changed in the blink of an eye. This was a young man who was trying to make sense of the world and his life and somehow wound up concluding that it just wasn’t worth staying alive for and that it would need to be utterly destroyed before he left this planet behind. There’s nothing that suggests that Eric could not have come to a different conclusion if given time, help, the right companionship, and other constructive things. I don’t believe in the idea that Eric was beyond saving, so I hope to one day put the well-established belief that he was inherently destructive to rest at last..
What counts for Eric also counts for Dylan, but the difference is always that people seem to have trouble seeing the worst of Dylan. It’s almost as if people have a hard time reconciling this shy and awkward kid with the level of aggression and alienation required for a massacre. I can’t count the times people have said “Dylan would’ve been fine if it hadn’t been for Eric”, as if Eric is somehow singlehandedly to blame for Dylan’s descent into murder/suicide. Let me put it this way: if Eric could have gone on to commit a violent crime post-Columbine, then so could Dylan. They both had the capacity for violence, for murder, for suicide, for destruction. One did not have more of it than the other. One did not want it over the other. One did not control the other.
I am of the opinion that there is a possibility that Dylan would commit murder-suicide if a long-lasting love relationship of his came to an end. I can see him getting swept up in his own residual strong feelings about his girlfriend to the point where he would not be able to close that off and move on the way most people do. It’s the whole “if I can’t have her, then nobody can”-idea spurred on by his tendency to put his lover on a pedestal, by his need to be so close to a lover that they would be intertwined and ‘of one mind’, by his refusal to acknowledge that her feelings for him had changed. He’d kill her and then kill himself, perhaps believing that they could be together in the halcyons if earthly circumstances kept them apart, perhaps believing life without her would not be a life at all.
Obviously, this is just one of many scenarios that could be possible in some form of hypothetical alternate reality/future. Dylan was just as capable of creating something awful as Eric was. His suicidality may be the most obvious concern to people, but I think there’s some definite cause for concern in other aspects of Dylan too and it is worth addressing those as well.
That’s a rather complex question, because there can be many reasons why someone would seek to justify and/or romanticise their actions. Some people have experienced things in life that make them feel as though these actions are justified and/or have developed a particular belief/idea structure in their brain that allows them to think that this course of action is the right one. Other people talk about justification when they really mean it in a more of a “look at me, give me attention”-sort of way, like it’s a safe way for them to rebel against society’s constraints and alienate others from them/keep other people at a distance at the same time. I’m sure there are other reasons, too, but these are the most prolific I’ve seen in the Columbiner/true crime communities.
Honestly, at the risk of sounding old and terribly ageist, I do sometimes spot justifications or romanticisations that make me go “wait until you’re older, you’ll probably grow back out of that mindset sooner or later”. This is mostly the case with people who really do use it as a means to be edgy and as a means of keeping society at bay during their teenage years in particular. I’m not saying everyone’s gonna grow out of that as they grow older, but I’ve definitely seen people claim they condone Columbine or some shit like that only to have them completely move on from the topic a year or two later and fall into happier pursuits of life. (Which is good, really, more power to anyone who can step away from this and not want to come back..) Point being, often the people who will say that Eric and Dylan were justified in doing what they did are still very young and are in the middle of experimenting with their own ideas versus society’s ideas and versus their own upbringing/family/etc. That experimentation will eventually solidify into a worldview, but they’re not there yet. I can’t judge that too harshly, though it sometimes does make me.. do a double-take, I guess you could say? I do know that debating it with them is only going to make them cling to it more loudly than before, so the best thing to do is to just quietly disagree/be a different voice in the community and not outright confront people in a way that makes them go on the defensive or feel unsafe in a community that can be and is so important to healthy and formative self-expression.
However, it’s not always like that. Some people will just condone because they honestly and genuinely believe that Eric and Dylan were right. They don’t see any issues when it comes to cold-blooded murder/suicide, but that doesn’t automatically mean that they would do it themselves. Some just lack the means/follow-through to actually do it, while others are just what I call “sideline applauders” who really do approve of the act but don’t feel the urge to do it. (Kind of like sports supporters who like to watch games/go to matches but don’t participate in the sports themselves, I guess?) Then, of course, you’ve also got ‘the ones to watch’ who’d absolutely 100% pull it off if given an excuse/opening/etc, and I think we need to be vigilant of this and learn to differentiate between people who’re just talking and people who’d actually do it. It also depends how they talk about it and how much thought really went into their ideas – I’ve often found it interesting to talk with the more thoughtful among the condoners, who’ve really thought things through and came to their conclusions rationally, but it can also be hard to talk with people who condone mass murder because it’s very far removed from my own ideas/beliefs/feelings/thoughts nowadays. (I have the small ‘fortune’ of being able to remember what it’s like to not see anything wrong with it, though, so I often draw on my own past experience/ideology when I’m talking about that because I’d feel very dishonest pretending like I never felt/thought that way in my life ever.)
What really, really gets to me about people who say that Eric and Dylan were right and justified in doing what they did is only one thing: when they say that their victims deserved it, had it coming, you know the drill. Because that is not true, not in any way, not now not ever, and I get viciously defensive when I see talk like that. Those thirteen people did not deserve to die. Those twenty-four people did not deserve to be injured like that. Those families, including their own, who got torn apart and wrecked because of it.. they didn’t deserve that, either. Were all these people saints? Of course not. But let’s be very clear about something: they were indiscriminate targets. They could’ve been literally anyone else and they would still have been killed/injured. Eric and Dylan did not handpick their victims in the way of “these people specifically hurt us” – these people were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. So saying that these particular people deserved what they got, that they were the ones who really had it coming, that somehow Eric and Dylan were justified in taking their lives in particular? Give. Me. A. Fucking. Break. You can condone murder all you fucking like in the relative safety of your online space, who gives a shit (cos I have officially run out of space in my brain to care about that), but talking about specific victims that way and pretending that these people were deliberately targeted by Eric and Dylan is bending truth/reality and I won’t stand for that.
Hi! We’re talking about this post, right? I think that’s a part of his mouth/nose, seeing as it’s about equal to his ear? If you zoom in on it, you’ll see that every part of his face above his ears is missing.
The real picture is a bit of a mess, agreed, but this artistic rendition of it is not too far from the truth. You can make out one of Eric’s ears in the real picture, too, but there doesn’t seem to be much of anything above that ear anymore. It’s really like he blew the top of his head off – you can also tell that his facial features were very heavily distorted by the gunshot, though they’re partially obscured by his gloved hand that came to rest in front of his face. It’s hard to make out a part of his face in that one unless you zoom in on it, rotate it, and use your knowledge of what human faces are supposed to look like because Eric’s doesn’t look like that anymore..
Columbine 