How do you feel about people that post about Columbine but that seem to only put very little effort or time into their research posting misinformation or false facts?

I find it exhausting. At least, the misinformation routinely gets to me and sometimes I will argue about it even when I don’t really have the time to do so. (I call them the “I can’t go to sleep because people are wrong on the internet”-arguments, lol.)

What I don’t get is why they post about the subject at all when it’s so clear that they haven’t read a damn thing about it, hardly know what the 11k is, and don’t really have a clue about the boys or anything else overall. They may have ingested some loose threads of wrong information here and there, maybe been exposed to Cullen’s tripe, who knows.. but their posts can usually be debunked in ten seconds flat. And I would personally be embarrassed about putting wrong information out there (I was mortified over a few tiny mistakes I made over the years already so how do these people live omg) and I really don’t think it’s constructive in the slightest to make posts that will only teach people more falsehoods about the case.

Look, we’ve all started out somewhere. I knew less five years ago than I do now, too. My opinions have changed somewhat and my grasp on the evidence has increased with time. It’s natural to progress from posts that are okay information-wise to posts that are excellently researched, I think, but as with everything you need to be willing to put the work in. I barely spend time on my JFK assassination blog right now (which makes me sad ugh) because my fulltime job and other activities don’t allow me to dive into the research I know I need to do to make its posts factually accurate, engaging, and interesting for other people to read. I could easily decide “hey yes let’s make posts for that blog!” but I know I wouldn’t be able to deliver quality work so, yeah, I wait until I do have time and then spend hours working on posts and research to bring the best stuff to the table. It baffles me to realise some other people don’t really care about that sort of thing and will just spew out posts no matter how ill-researched.

Gotta say, sometimes it’s nice to have a few posts that don’t really take a lot of effort to write! There are posts of mine that I’ve spent hours/days on, and posts that I’ve spent five minutes tops on.. and the latter often get more notes. 😉 So it’s not always a question of effort, but it’s definitely a question of how much someone cares about getting it right.

styrofoam-souls replied to your post “Hi Miss Dragon! I want to ask you if somehow Columbine has caused all…”

Do you think it can be cured even? What if this sickness can never be cured at all?

@styrofoam-souls, that’s a very good question.. One I wish I had a ready answer for, but I think that this kind of observation has no immediate answers and may not even really require an answer at all.

All sicknesses can eventually be cured. It might take years of experimentation, of trying different cures, of adjusting this and that, of learning to live with what you’re given and learning to work with the hurt. Maybe not all of us will live long enough to see that cure happen in their lifetime. Maybe some of us will be so devastated by the effects of the sickness that they make a monster out of the disease and fight it in ways that don’t help at all. But, eventually, we find a vaccine or a medicine or a treatment that works miracles. We’ve always done that and we’re still doing that today – the human race would’ve been dead a gazillion times over if we didn’t try.

And I think that’s the key thing, you know? That one operative word: try. I don’t know when we will find a cure for these mass shootings, but I think we need to keep on trying. We need to keep on pooling our resources, learning as much as we can, doing outreach work, talking about this stuff openly and honestly, and support the activism that comes forth from these awful events.

I hope that things can change. I work to make that change happen. If all of us have that same hope and put in the work to push it to reality, then I honestly believe that we can heal and help and make these mass shootings something from the past.