your second poll item captured nearly all of my thoughts, except for:
1. "damn; that sucks", which is about as sad as i got for the poor people shot. yes, i am cold. if i don't know somebody who died, or know somebody well who is directly affected in a major way, i have just a "mildly sad for a couple of minutes" response to tragedy. i foster that within myself, because when i let myself get more affected i have to stop reading news, since there is no limit to mankind's inhumanity. 33 dead is really a small blip on the radar; that's a GOOD day in baghdad (where i know more people than i know at VT). since my coldness doesn't make me go out and kill people, i consider it a useful coping strategy, but i tend to be quiet about it in my LJ so as to not tread on more sensitive people's feelings.
2. "here we'll go again with the mass vicarious grief". i need to develop a better coping strategy for that because it pisses me off too much when i see people clamour for increasing their kevin bacon number in regard to a tragedy that in fact doesn't touch them directly at all.
i was hoping the shooter was a "normal" white middle-class american and if not, that he was at least not a muslim, and not a weird-clothes-wearing, videogame-playing geek. i am a bit sorry that he turns out to have been south korean; anything that makes americans easily able to "other" him isn't good.
Re: where were you/what were you doing/what were you feeling/when?
1. "damn; that sucks", which is about as sad as i got for the poor people shot. yes, i am cold. if i don't know somebody who died, or know somebody well who is directly affected in a major way, i have just a "mildly sad for a couple of minutes" response to tragedy. i foster that within myself, because when i let myself get more affected i have to stop reading news, since there is no limit to mankind's inhumanity. 33 dead is really a small blip on the radar; that's a GOOD day in baghdad (where i know more people than i know at VT). since my coldness doesn't make me go out and kill people, i consider it a useful coping strategy, but i tend to be quiet about it in my LJ so as to not tread on more sensitive people's feelings.
2. "here we'll go again with the mass vicarious grief". i need to develop a better coping strategy for that because it pisses me off too much when i see people clamour for increasing their kevin bacon number in regard to a tragedy that in fact doesn't touch them directly at all.
i was hoping the shooter was a "normal" white middle-class american and if not, that he was at least not a muslim, and not a weird-clothes-wearing, videogame-playing geek. i am a bit sorry that he turns out to have been south korean; anything that makes americans easily able to "other" him isn't good.