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

[hopita.livejournal.com]

Shortly after hearing about the massacre at VTech, I turned off the TV and went on about my business -- I suspect I was on my way to work. In that newscast (noon on the day of the shootings), they started by saying something like nine people suspected shot and ended the newscast by saying twenty, possibly twenty two.

I checked no ticky boxes for the first question because, while technically I engaged in a media blackout, it wasn't a philosophical, intentional media blackout -- I just went on about my business.'

And another random thought: I expected a tragedy round about now. It's nearly 4/20 (Hitler! Columbine! Marijuana!), and it had been a while since something like this had happened; when I noticed the date a week or so ago I wondered what sort of school tragedy would be happening on 4/20. It just happened a little early this year.

[sabotabby]

I've never noticed the 4/20 connection. Is it coincidence, or do you think that psychotic types plan for it because that's when other people have gone on rampages?

[hopita.livejournal.com]

Here's what Wikipedia has to say about it. There was the 1985 ATF Siege and Columbine. It was Hitler's birthday (and, for what it's worth, it's apparently Crispin Glover's birthday as well. And then of course there's the whole weed thing. Apparently The Oklahomka City Bombing and Waco both happened on April 19th. Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris mentioned both Oklahomka City and Waco as motivations for Columbine.

[hopita.livejournal.com]

I apparently missed one of the "bold" tags, but it took forever to do all of those links, so I'm gonna just say "feh."

[ironed_orchid]

It's also the day Jimmy Carter was attacked by a rabbit.

OK, I just got that by scrolling through the events on wiki.

[sabotabby]

I didn't know that Jimmy Carter was attacked by a rabbit.

I didn't know that rabbits could swim.

I am so much happier now that I know these two facts.

[ironed_orchid]

I learned this from an XKCD comic.

[hopita.livejournal.com]

I noticed that too.

[troubleinchina.livejournal.com]

With school shootings, especially in unis, I suspect a lot of it is the build up of stress.