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

[peterbilt-47.livejournal.com]

What is this "media blackout" thing you speak of?

Right after I heard the news, I thought to myself (as I don't personally know anyone at VTech) "jeez. That's messed up. I wonder how a person gets to the point in their minds where they can go and do that? I wonder if we could all be different to each other such that they didn't, or not as often? Probably. But probably also somebody's going to go batshit crazy in a very tragic way every once in awhile no matter what. I wonder who wants to join me for Chinese tonight?"

Like the loss of the Rain Forests, it's the kind of thing that sits in the back of your mind as "really bad, but basically an abstraction, outside my sphere of influence, and therefore where shall we eat?" Were someone to provide small, concrete actions I could take to contribute to a solution, I would likely take them. Until then, the new Indian restaurant in town is quite good.

[sabotabby]

What is this "media blackout" thing you speak of?

Deliberately refusing to read, watch, or listen to any news stories about it until the media calms the fuck down.

I basically had a lot of thoughts run through my head: "Is there anything I can do about it? No? Or at least not right now. On to something else, I guess." But it was way before dinner.

[lokilokust.livejournal.com]

the first i heard about was after the second incident, and one of the things i thought was 'wait... people were shot two hours before and no one thought to cancel classes or evacuate?'

[chibibluebird.livejournal.com]

The internet has significantly increased the number of people I know & also who're likely to have something really bad happen to them. Especially violence, given their geographic distribution, and um. mine. I often don't know how I should react when something does happen.

[sabotabby]

I thought that too, but I have some sympathy for the administration after I heard that the campus layout is similar in size and geography to UofT. If something like that happened here, it would be difficult to get the word out and evacuate. It might be slightly easier in Toronto because it's a large urban centre, and you could get police in relatively quickly to shut down that part of the city, but who knows how smoothly it would run?

This said, there's a darker element, and that's the immediate assumption that the first two shootings were the result of a "domestic incident"—basically, I heard that the authorities thought that it was a pissed-off ex-boyfriend that shot the first girl and her neighbour, and didn't consider that enough reason to cancel classes. If that's actually the case, then *rage*.

[lokilokust.livejournal.com]

'This said, there's a darker element, and that's the immediate assumption that the first two shootings were the result of a "domestic incident"—basically, I heard that the authorities thought that it was a pissed-off ex-boyfriend that shot the first girl and her neighbour, and didn't consider that enough reason to cancel classes. If that's actually the case, then *rage*.'
agreed.

[sabotabby]

Same here. There's also the friends-and-family-of-friends thing, so if I hear about flooding in Indonesia, it's not necessarily immediate concern for someone I know, but I'll be anxious to make sure that my friends' families are okay.

I think this is healthy, in a way.

way more than you wanted to know

[mistersmearcase.livejournal.com]

My reactions are kind of all over the map. I heard about it, thought "aw jeez" but filed it under "another awful thing happens," put it out of my head, read more about it later in the day, decided not to say anything about it, posted about some dumb thing or other and then tacked on "yeah I know, but I don't feel like posting about it," and then over the next day tried just to dismiss it from my head when it came up since I can't do anything about it and am skeptical of the worth of vicarious mass mourning (seems self-aggrandizing in a way), had one really inappropriate reaction that being "Oh, hey, he killed more people than Whitman, my alma mater no longer is the standard-bearer, woo hoo!", gave in and read a little about the guy, wondered what kind of crazy-ass laws they're going to pass about therapists that won't prevent this from happening again but will add to the bureaucracy in the world, blew the topic off when my mother brought it up, tried to imagine being the guy who did it, felt rotten for the families of the folks that died, felt weepy reading about the holocaust survivor who saved his students because I'm a sucker for that kind of story, thought about gun control and decided it probably wouldn't have helped though I'm still in favor of it anyway...

No ticky box for that reaction?

[realcdaae.livejournal.com]

What were the plays?

I've read about it all over my flist, but haven't gone to any of the news articles to read details, or watched or read the news in days. I kind of felt weird not saying anything about it on my LJ, but I really have nothing to say. Of course it's a terrible thing, of course my sympathies are with anyone who knew anyone who was there, but knowing more details about it isn't going to change my life, or anything else. I suppose I mentally filed it under the "another awful thing happens" area too.

I'm curious to know what the plays were though; and I do always get frustrated by the way people leap in to say "well, he was reading this/playing that/listening to that/wearing this, so those things are bad and dangerous". Asshats.

[florence-craye.livejournal.com]

Eh, I laughed at a joke made by a faculty member when the first news got out. We had just solved a problem with his email program, and he joked that maybe the shooter had a problem with Mulberry. I laughed and agreed. So I felt complicit enough to ticky that box.

One of my first thoughts was that it must have been a man, very likely a white man, who did it. I was wrong on half of it but it doesn't matter anyway.

If there's a flood/tsunami/plane crash in Indonesia, I actually feel more sad than hearing about something bad happening here in the states. I think it's because I have known people who are from there and also being really interested in it that I feel some greater connection, however true or not that connection is.

Re: way more than you wanted to know

[florence-craye.livejournal.com]

Yeah, gun control might not have helped in that case but it is still a good idea. I don't know how someone gets to the point where more guns is always the answer. WTF?

[begundan.livejournal.com]

Well, I heard the radio say something in the other room on that afternoon. I was working with a student at the time and calmly commented something like: "Yeah, these things happen every once in a while". I guess it's something along the lines of the 35,000 children, or the "just another day in Baghdad". But the truth is that, having grown up in Israel, I don't really think about such things anymore. Experience showed, that nothing new is ever said on such topics (and we both know that this includes both your blog entry and this comment), so such news just don't trigger my thought process anymore.
Actually, I was making up a scenario in which I save the day by stopping the shooter. While I know that this is disturbingly unoriginal, I'm old enough not to care anymore.
In other news, Finch station was closed for some time yesterday. They say someone jumped on the tracks.

[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.

[florence-craye.livejournal.com]

I think they were plays he wrote in class, and they were both violent as far as I know. I haven't read either.

[ltmurnau.livejournal.com]

A couple of one-act plays he wrote for a class were placed on a bulletin board system called Blackboard for peer review, and have been exhumed to the Internet by one of his former classmates. I don't have the link but it won't be hard to find.

Basically they are crap, full of puerile violence, and read as if they were written by an 8th grader who hasn't gotten bored with writing swear words yet.

They are being trotted out as evidence that he should have been pre-emptively locked up/ shot full of government-approved pharmaceuticals (never mind he was on antidepressants anyway)/ shot on sight/ deported to Korea, etc. etc..

So for once a whole subculture isn't being blamed for the actions of a deranged individual. [sarcasm]Though perhaps it's time the creative-writing crowd, that class of professional liars, came in for some overdue suspicion... look at them, making things up with impunity, writing and talking about things that never happened, making people upset, claiming it's all something called "fiction"... in the end, Americans don't trust a writer any more than they trust a reader.[/sarcasm]

[elgordochico.livejournal.com]

I read almost everything I could get ahold of. The reason I didn't blog about is because of my hardboiled credo on life: "Be a precious flower. But keep it inside. Keep it inside. Keep it...inside."

Feelings aside, I kept thinking about how many people die like this in a senseless hail of violence everyday in Iraq and everywhere else. Yesterday four people were killed here in Gotham, and the shooter then shot himself. Despite the similarities to VA Tech incident, it was a blip on the newsradar, and no one in the national media made a connection to how often this happens. I guess they were afraid to trivialize the tragedy by drawing our attention away.

The more I think about it the more I realize that the newsmedia makes a fetish out of grief. They don't focus on important stuff; they focus on "feelings." They hunt on the grief of survivors like emotional vultures. They are sending a signal to everyone to be ready to say something about their feelings. It doesn't surprise me in the least that many of those feelings came bleeding out on LJ. But I dunno how much it helps you cope with grief to make a blog post. It probably makes things worse to talk feelings with strangers, who cannot do anything to help you cope with them.

Traditional news media, by treating this event as an isolated spasm of violence, makes things worse. Fact of the matter is, there were roughly 40 school shootings last year around the world. More than 30 took place in the US. What we need is anger, not sadness. Constructive emotion is anger. Sadness is almost always destructive.

But, then again, what do I know.

[realcdaae.livejournal.com]

Ahhh, I thought it meant he'd been reading some particular plays and they were being pointed out as evidence that he was disturbed. I'd read something about his writings, but I definitely don't feel the need to go read any of them!

All horror writers should, of course, be locked away in mental hospitals. Along with anyone who produces a horror film. Look at that notorious serial killer Wes Craven, and Stephen King the mass murdering psychopath. Not to mention imfamous cannibal Thomas Harris, and that damn blood-sucking fiend Bram Stoker.

[erinlin.livejournal.com]

When I heard the shooter was Asian, I did a little mental rundown of all my friends and classmates who were Asian and thought "gee, I should watch out for them the next few days, in case some jerk tries something stupid."

I also felt a great surge of relief when I found out the shooter wasn't from the middle east.

I'm not sure how I feel about feeling like that; whether those were weird (or appropriate) reactions, but those were my first instincts.

[jk-fabiani.livejournal.com]

This is just like a typical day in Baghdad.

Thirty slain is considered a good day.

Re: way more than you wanted to know

[jk-fabiani.livejournal.com]

thought about gun control and decided it probably wouldn't have helped

Used a handgun. Easy to carry. Cheap ammo. What better tool could he have wanted? He got the gun legally too.

Re: way more than you wanted to know

[sabotabby]

A lot of people think that they could have played the hero, even otherwise sane people. (And John Derbyshire, of course, who is far from sane.)

But it's one thing to fantasize about how you could have saved the day and another thing to push for political changes based on that fantasy.

[stoneself.livejournal.com]

i was thinking... 32 at one time in rich school once in a great while v. one at a time in/around a poor school fairly often.

[sabotabby]

I think the other thing is that the social changes that one envisions preventing school shootings are pretty subtle and hard to identify. Whereas it's quite easy to imagine a world in which floods and tsunamis in Indonesia could not have anywhere near the death toll that they generally do. We can't help that it's surrounded by water, but it tends to be the poverty that makes natural disasters so devastating.

[sabotabby]

In other news, Finch station was closed for some time yesterday. They say someone jumped on the tracks.

How do you find that out? I heard that people jump on the tracks all the time, but you never hear about it unless someone gets pushed. [/morbid fascination]

Re: way more than you wanted to know

[florence-craye.livejournal.com]

The only thing I can think more guns would have caused is a lot more shootings, even on smaller scales.

On your second point: exactly. But I guess that's what the republicans are all about. "If only I had a gun, I could have stopped that abortion!" Ugh.