where were you/what were you doing/what were you feeling/when?

[sabotabby]

It's perversely fascinating reading LJ several days after a tragic newsworthy event. Most people on my friends list, for example, are aware at some level that 35,000 children die every day from preventable diseases, and this is a tragedy, but none of us blog every day about the 35,000 children who die every day from preventable diseases. It's usually the unexpected mass deaths that fire up the collective imagination.

Well, we don't know those children. But most of us don't know anyone who went to Virginia Tech either, but a lot of us are overwhelmingly upset and touched by the lives and deaths of people we never met. I'm disinclined to say anything cynical about that; I mean, I have that same reaction. (And check out the spike in the numbers of LJers who were "sad" or "shocked" over the past few days.)

At any rate, I have a theory that a lot of us react to high-profile tragedies in bizarre ways that we tend not to talk about. Accordingly, a poll:


[Poll #969519]

Comments

[threeliesforone.livejournal.com]

I at least wanted to have some fun in conversation by claiming that Starcraft made him do it.


...which is the first thing me & my partner said when we heard he was from south korea [in jest, of course]. i'm glad we're not the only ones.

[sabotabby]

Why no one ever asks, "What is it that makes someone want to carpet bomb a middle eastern country?" Somehow that doesn't qualify as psychotic.

Frustrated masculinity? Also, I know that Scooter Libby wrote some very disturbed fiction. And George Bush listens to that violent country music.

[sabotabby]

Although, it'll be even better when we get the first killer who compulsively played The Sims.

Presumably, he or she would barbecue babies and drown adolescents in swimming pools. Also, there would be a bunny involved. I don't think anyone I know who plays the Sims plays it properly.

[queerasmoi.livejournal.com]

What crossed my mind (actually later when the shooter's identity came out) was: "I am positive that Margaret Cho has something timely, appropriate and respectfully witty to say, that it's on her blog already, and that it's more worth quoting than anything else I could have to say about the topic."

[one-serious-cat.livejournal.com]

That's why "I blame the patriarchy" crossed my mind as I learned more about what had happened.

[sabotabby]

My friend TAs Comparative Literature and thus I wasn't surprised at the appalling quality of the writing. Quote from him:

Student: I need an A on this paper to get into teachers college!
My friend: Your paper doesn't have any verbs in it.

I actually saw the non-killer's LJ within a few hours of reading about the shootings. It didn't occur to me, even with the guns, that he might be the shooter, though I wasn't surprised when other people came to that conclusion. I think the fact that he was apparently posting while the shooting was happening or shortly thereafter tipped me off.

[sabotabby]

Jesus looks pretty sweet with those guns, though.

[king-felix.livejournal.com]

After The Sims enter the public domain, I'll make a few changes and release The Sims: Ultimate Murder Simulation Edition.

It'll be a huge hit with the kids.

After that I: sit back. Profit.

[sadie-sabot.livejournal.com]

yeah, actually i guess I'm more pissed at the media, I mean, if people saw the iamges of the people killed in Iraq, heard about their familiesw, their musical tastes, etc, like they are about the VTEch vicitims, theymight give more of a shit.

And being mad at the media is such a diffuse kind of thing, you know?

[sabotabby]

Of course, you were totally right. WWMCD?

[sadie-sabot.livejournal.com]

and does she?

[one-serious-cat.livejournal.com]

As far as the decision of some polemicists to think like a mass murderer and blame the victims, I think James Bowman needs to be thrown into the middle of the circle with Steyn and Derbyshire to be pointed and laughed at. Bowman, author of Honor: a history, probably has no more shame than the other two, but he's had to deal with far less public scrutiny. Just a thought.

[queerasmoi.livejournal.com]

http://www.margaretcho.com/blog/ourhumanity.htm

[sonjaaa.livejournal.com]

Yeah, totally. Medication should be a last resort treatment after trying others.

[silmaril.livejournal.com]

The "something else": "I am not surprised at all. Why am I not surprised or shocked at all?"

Then the next day I tried to analyze that thought a little.

[cpxbrex.livejournal.com]

Yo, Jesus can KICK SOME ASS. After all, not many Messiahs can kick vampire ass all over Canada! (http://www.odessafilmworks.com/jcvh/index.html)

[sabotabby]

I really like that post.

[livingfossil.livejournal.com]

Yea, I don't own a TeeVee so my mom informed me about the shootings the morning it happened. I live in Richmond so many of the people I come into contact with are much closer to the tragedy that I or most other people are (most of the kids I work with know people at VATech). I can't really say that I a more sad today, yesterday, or whatever, on account of this tragedy; the world we live in is so fucked that this sort of violence shouldn't surprise us, and it doesn't me so much.

The gun control thing sort of tickled me when I saw some of it circling out from various centers in the blogosphere: it's one of those boxes people think in when they are confronted with a systemic ill.

I haven't commented on the shootings that much except to say that this tragedy is allowed to become a media-spectacle, while others on scales of magnitude far greater are not. Ah well: The world sings a song as it moves along, and it ain't in a major key.

[begundan.livejournal.com]

That's what a co-worker said.

[sadie-sabot.livejournal.com]

thank you for that. I clearly need to add her blog to the ones I regularly look at.

[sabotabby]

I think a major cultural difference up here is that no one, when we hear of a shooting, automatically thinks, "more guns would have solved the situation." It seems counterintuitive from where I'm sitting.

[jhfurnish.livejournal.com]

blackcommentator.com had an interesting political cartoon about that. I'm going to post it on my LJ.

In the meantime, they have more than two of these in Iraq every day - and today there were like 185 killed or something like that in a single car-bombing incident.

But, as you say, we don't know them.

As Stalin said - and I know you know this quote - "One man's death is a tragedy. A million deaths is a statistic."

[robotar.livejournal.com]

I thought: "worst shooting in American history?" And so I went and looked up on statistics of the massacre of American Indians.

[fun-drive.livejournal.com]

This was just a shocking event that the media keeps on playing because it was that shocking and because they got his press release.

[sabotabby]

Someone needs to make the photo that jk_fabiani just posted in his LJ more widely seen. But I don't think that gory photos will do it.