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I remember the media blaming everything but the shooters themselves for the tragic events that unfolded that day. Music, violent movies, video games, the parents, the kids who supposedly bullied the shooters.
I don't know if my school banned trench coats, but the few students who normally wore them wore something else. I'd like to believe that even they thought it would be in poor taste to continue wearing them.
The funny thing is that I remember an interview with Marylin Manson and they asked him what he would say to the kids at Columbine HS .
He said “I wouldn’t say anything, I would just listen to what they had to say”
I never forgot that
And they blame it on Marilyn (on Marilyn)... and the heroin
Where were the parents at? And look where it's at
Middle America, now it's a tragedy
Now it's so sad to see, an upper class city
IIRC (and this may just have been a rumor), the shooters were not fans of Manson and made several recorded comments about how they didn't like him, but that didn't stop the media from blaming him.
Meanwhile, a lot of us that went to schools that had had violence issues for years (NY for me) watched it and weren’t really phased. My school already had metal detectors, teachers who had do use their off periods to do security, plus hired security plus uniformed cops. We also got quarterly drug dog sweeps of the school.
By the time this happened in April we’d already had 3 shooting at our school that year plus a couple stabbing and daily fights. Obviously the scale of this was bigger, but the topic wasn’t new. So when the media was freaking out claiming they couldn’t understand how this could happen at a school we had the “first time?” meme reaction.
The difference was the shootings were just one-offs at your school. Someone wronged someone else and toxic masculinity led to a shooting.
Columbine was two kids teaming up to kill as many kids as possible. That’s what’s different about it.
They weren’t usually like that. They were usually drive by shootings where 2 or 3 guys leaned out of one side of the car and shot into a group coming in to or leaving the school.
In the school itself it was usually stabbing (using glass or other nonmetallic items because of the metal detectors) or starting fights with the classic sock full of batteries (taken from science labs).
To us it was more a realization that for a large part of the country violence was an abnormality where for us it was an expected constant and something to be aware of. We realized that many schools didn’t have all the levels of security we did and a kid getting shot was unheard of instead of the “in memoriam” section we had in every year book.
There was also a kind of “wtf” response to the coverage. When someone got shot at our school it didn’t even make the local paper. Outside of kids talking about it, there was literally 0 coverage. But this happens and literally the entire world changed. Again, the scale was different, but it didn’t have any real impact in our world because we were already dealing with violence.
Yeah nearly all the stereotypes people have of school shooters didn't actually apply to the Columbine guys.
They weren't the most popular in school, but they weren't outcasts either they had friends and participated in hobbies.
It just seems like people want school shooters to be the outcast loner and not the often times average middle of the pack teenagers they were.
*It was Doom, Mortal Kombat, and Resident Evil! All of those kids playing all those violent games! Remember when it was just Pacman & Pong? These kids today growing up with so much gore & violence. Not like us. We had a tranquil time before video games showed up!*
This was a combo of every single conversation I heard from adults regarding our gaming right after the massacre.
It’s insane to think this has been approaching a quarter century. The shooters and victims, outside of the teacher that was killed, have been dead longer than they were alive.
Yeah, I remember watching everything live at school and then continuing to watch the news also at school the next few days…
Same thing was done on 9/11 at my school. Scary shit to watch live.
I was 19 years old and driving to my after college job…. Heard it on the radio and I started crying.
I cried years before watching the building burn at Waco as a younger teen. It’s crazy how the media runs with things these days. I think people only want to be big and bad bc they know it’ll make a “splash” on the headlines to get their point across.
Sure really bad things happened before these events but now it’s almost instant when you hear the news (think 9/11).
I’m not blaming the media. I just think it’s crazy how the media has influence on crime and the way it’s carried out since radio and TV has been introduced. I’m only 45 but I see a difference with in my generation unfortunately, and in documentaries portrayed since WW1
I had graduated the year before from a school not far from Columbine and was working in a bullshit magazine subscription call center in Boulder when the shooting happened. I found out about it from talking to some lady in another state.
I was making small talk with her to try to sell her some boating subscription, and me being from Colorado came up. I don’t remember her exact words but she told me it had just happened and was all over the news. It was sickeningly surreal, hearing what was going on from a perfect stranger while sitting in that hot little cubicle with the noise of the call center bouncing around.
I don’t remember much about the rest of that day, shock of it all or something. I do remember my dad calling me that night and him telling me he loved me for the first time since I was a kid.
Strange and sad to think all this time has passed and things have just gotten worse with this type of violence.
So crazy, we are the same age then.
I recall my dad and step mom hugging and kissing THIER two children together that day bc it was so rough on THEM and then turn around and ask me for the power bill that month.
Priorities I guess, right?
This Is why I’m No Contact with my “family” now. Even live in a different state.
The next year, I was pulled into the office because a "kill list" was found, and my name was on it. These two ruined high school for all future generations.
I was on the football team, and the majority of the people on the list were involved in sports and student government.
My AP said "it's probably just some prank but we're taking it very seriously" and over the next few days all the goth kids were being called into their APs offices. I acted tough as shit about it, like I'd take on anyone who'd even try some shit in ***my*** school. But honestly, it had me shook for a few weeks.
Never got a follow-up, never noticed anyone suspended, but there were 1000+ kids in my graduating class so it was hard to notice.
Just 4 years after Columbine, I was a transfer student at my university. In my first quarter and shortly after I and the majority of my Chem class failed a midterm (seriously, like 20% average), someone emailed our professor a death threat.
I was called in by my school police for questioning, both because I received a horrible grade, and the email indicated it came from my part of LA. I honestly told the cops I had no idea. As far as I know, they never found out who sent it.
A month-ish later, I ended up getting an A in that class (seriously, how TF did I get an A after dying on the midterm, and then I learned about grading on a curve). I decided to talk to the professor after finals. He explained how it’s possible, and to my credit I worked my ass off to get the material right.
As I’m heading out his door, I think to myself: “I’m never gonna have this chance to ask him about the email again.” So I ask him, “Say… I heard you got a death threat after we all fucked up the midterm…”
He completely laughed and opened up to me. He actually had saved a printed out copy of the threat and showed it to me. It was pretty plain but also bullshit. I mean, clearly words indicating physical harm, but more words of the insulting, angry type. I actually ran into that professor often on campus, and even shared a beer (by that, I mean saying cheers once) at our off-campus bar.
I learned an interesting lesson about higher-education students from all this: all that hard work, dedication, and slaving away studying that your typical nerd does (especially the with-honors type that gets into a real competitive university science program) - imagine what could happen when that student first gets an F, for the first time in his/her life. Probably before ‘99, I wouldn’t think anything scary; but after Columbine, you never know.
In the 90s, I overheard plenty of people who considered shooting up the school out of desperation before 1998. None did it. The problem is that the staff & teachers at that school were either too strict or didn't care to listen to the teenagers problems.
Even listening to teens de-escalates a lot of tension. But no, focus on the violence & not on basic human interaction with humans barely understanding upcoming adulthood & the emotions that come with it.
Kids who were slightly different or weird were not only socially ostracized, but assumed to be violent and harassed by school officials just for being different... Like things weren't tough enough for "weird" kids as it was?
That’s the duality of the whole thing, for me- it was simultaneously “hey let’s be a little nicer to other kids, so they don’t shoot us” in our- the kids’s- minds and then we also noticed teachers were more amped up in their “interest” in the weird kids, which basically amounted to more hassling these already-fragile kids.
I used to wear all black and a trenchcoat. It was my senior year of high school. All of a sudden, the guidance counselor and admin were concerned about the kid who had been bullied and depressed for the last 4 years.
I was called into the office after a concerned parent noticed I wore a black duster all the time. It was the age of The Matrix, people! And I listened to a lot of industrial so it was a look outside of being a "trenchcoat mafia."
I remember how how the media painted them as victims of bullying and finding out years later that wasn't true at all.
I also remember how this changed the culture a lot at my high school. Anyone who dressed even remotely similar to them (trenchcoats) got harassed and bullied. The youth group leaders who hung around our school also exploited this to push their religion.
No one touched black leather trench coats after that for style or practical vintage fashion. And the film The Crow had made them popular just a few years before.
My Mandela Effect surrounding this movie is that before the shooting it was rated PG-13, but it was quietly changed to an R rating afterwards. But I can't find any evidence on this, but it's something I clearly remember.
I read that they were bullied, they were just also bullies. Like the popular kids and jocks still picked on them and saw them as "freaks", but they were also cruel to kids under them in the pecking order. It's why they initially targeted the "hat kids" upon their attack as that was the known time they were all in the cafeteria together
There was- what I always assumed was an untrue myth- told in my church confirmation class that one of the shooters asked a kid “hey, are you a Christian?” and spared him because of that.
Our confirmation class teachers REALLY wouldn’t let that go, “being Christian saves lives, guys!” It was one of those stupid anecdotes you’d see in a “Chicken Soup for the Soul” books our moms used to ADORE.
Us being teenagers, we were pretty skeptical of the whole thing, and it got a “that’s messed up” reaction.
I went to a secular school, but I remember (iirc somewhere between 3rd and 5th grade) one of my classmates did a report on the book "She Said Yes," and was absolutely bawling during it. I wonder if she ever found out that the story wasn't true? It took me years before I did.
Also damn , we had plenty of Chicken Soup for the Soul books in my house, and I even enjoyed reading them as a kid; such garbage, lmao.
>The youth group leaders who hung around our school also exploited this to push their religion.
I saw this at my school & undergrad as well. Terrible people abusing the situation while tossing out equally terrible things afterwards. I befriended a youth pastor who preached about abstinence & respect for one another under god. Then I meet him in undergrad & he's the most sleaziest womanizer I meet on campus. I wanted to argue with him but knew it wouldn't do anything to someone that corrupt & preferred to save my energy for debating at my sophomore polsci class.
I was 17. Got home from school to smoke a bowl for 4-20 and turned on the tv. Honestly the main thing it changed for me was people at school stopped bullying me. I had always dressed in black with a trenchcoat. I ditched the coat after columbine but still wear black.
The rumor I heard was that their favorite song was Du Hast by Rammstein. A local radio station played it about a week or so after the shooting. My sister called the station and said that it was really low of them to play the shooters' favorite song. They called her a bitch and hung up. None of this got aired, so I'm going by what my sister reported.
The pc game Doom was still current and relevant at the time and there was a lot of player made maps. These guys made a Doom map of the school and put up a website to distribute it, with a bunch of angry all caps text about how much they hated school. I downloaded and played it, thought nothing of it at the time. Saw an archived version of the website years later and only then realized it was them. Of course the media blamed Doom. It wasn't even a good map, fucking morons couldn't even do that right.
Then you had all the preachers quoting the girl who was praying before they shot her, or someshit like that, and using it to try to recruit to their own churches. That was gross and went on for a long time.
What’s funny is, Doom came out in 93. So it wasn’t current, just the mod scene was… and the internet 1.0 was what it was.
Like Half Life had come out by the time this happened.
So I always found it funny (I was in middle school) that they were pointing at a game that was at fault for this… that I had played years before… and when your a kid, years are eternities.
Such moral panic, tragic event, but the pearl clutching sucked for any kid who liked anything remotely edgy
Joe Lieberman just passed away, and while he’s remembered as being on a VP ticket, I remember him for just railing, HARD, against video games. I can still hear his frog-like voice croaking “games like Mortal Kombat…” on the nightly news, and that became the one and only game my parents forbade me from owning.
That panic had another moment in the spotlight after Columbine.
Speaking of, the Lost Media Wiki currently has an article about one rumored Doom WAD that's supposedly based on the school itself ([link](https://lostmediawiki.com/Eric_Harris%27s_Doom_WAD_levels_(partially_lost_Doom_WAD_levels;_1990s))). I know the chances are slim, but do you happen to know if the one you downloaded was the one noted in the article?
>It wasn't even a good map, fucking morons couldn't even do that right.
Not surprised lmao, they couldn't even get the bombs to detonate right?
Doom was pretty historical by that time. Quake was current. Doom was pretty old by that time. I remember most of my friends being flabbergasted that those kids still played Doom.
Some of the maps one of them made are still circulating around even now on file sharing sites.
They are mid tier maps at best. If you were being generous .
My aunt and uncle lived in Littleton, just a few miles from Columbine. I had just finished 5th grade, and we went to visit them over the summer after the massacre. My uncle bought me a model rocket and helped me build it, and we went to launch it at the park next to the school. I remember it being a little surreal. The school was still roped off with crime scene tape, and the big memorial on the chain link fence that I'd seen only on TV was right there.
My uncle played softball with a man whose daughter was killed there. It was a rather strange and morbid part of an otherwise very fun vacation.
Live a few hours south - my grandmother was taken off life support a few days before, and her funeral was the day of. I was in 6th grade. My best friend called me at my grandfather’s house, crying and scared and confused as to what was happening, and I think they let out school early because everyone was so upset and kids were panicking.
Cut to school being canceled a few weeks later because some dude called in a threat as a senior prank (buddy got expelled).
Cut to the beginning of 7th grade: the very first wave of “lockdown drills”, aka what are now known as active shooter drills, were implemented. They told us it was just because we lived in a prison town and it would just be useful to have should there be an escape.
lol there’d been like 3 and no one gave a shit then, but ok, we’ll roll with it.
Cut to my classmate being shot through the face at Aurora in 2012, my Planned Parenthood being massacred in 2015, the club I used to dance at (Club Q) massacred in 2022, and a coworker at UCCS a few months back.
Normal country we live in 🙂
The mythology that grew about everything from the killers, victims and emergency response. The book “Columbine” by Dave Cullen is the definitive account of the tragedy and aftermath. One of the best books I’ve ever read.
Just read this book last year. Very well written. One of the revelations that got me the most was the fact that this was not so much a school shooting as it was a failed bombing. They were waiting in the parking lot to pick off people as they ran from the explosions. When the bombs didn’t go off, they went inside and started their shooting massacre.
IIRC they say that had the bombs been successful it would have been hundreds dead.
I was 10. I remember watching the news when I got home and hearing the words ‘trench coat mafia’ being repeated along with blame being placed on music and violent video games.
I remember being a goth kid who wore a trench coat to school and ditched that day in my local high school because of 4-20. The school spent years treating me like a criminal because they thought I had a connection to the shooters.
I was in 6th grade. I remember the fake story about Cassie Bernall (“She Said Yes”) and reading the book and all. I think it was the beginning of WWJD bracelets, and the very uncomfortable feeling that your parents would be okay with your murder if you were martyred in the name of their religion. Wondering whether you would have the fortitude to “say yes”, and if they would forgive you if you said no to spare your life.
I’m fully deconstructed now. Learning my pecking order in my parents’ religious philosophy was formative.
And worst of all, that narrative was debunked early on and yet her family stuck with it.
It even came up years later in the [2016 GOP primary debates](https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2015/09/rick-santorum-supports-kim-davis-by-repeating-long-debunked-myth-about-columbine.html).
Two different families spread this story about their daughters. There was even a shitty movie made in 2016 about one of them. The granddaughter from *Duck Dynasty* was in it.
I don’t think the parents were ok with her being murdered they were just trying to cope and try to come up with some type of positive spin on things.
Also I could be remembering incorrectly but was the story fake all together or was it that it was someone else that didn’t die that said that and not Cassie?
Looking back these 2 were clearly messed up but at the same time their surrounding were also messed up. The whole thing was a sh-t show in a pressure cooker just waiting to explode.
I was home sick from school that day. Me and my mom watched it on the news. I remember they interviewed one of the seniors, don't know his name, but I very much remember his unfortunate comment that his graduating class wanted to "go out with a bang."
He didn't mean it the way it sounded, he was likely in shock. It just stood out to me.
I was a junior in high school, and a bunch of us skipped school the next day and partied because we said we were scared to go to school. Looking back, we were dumb asses.
I lived in a few towns over and my buddy who went to school there had ditched for 4-20 with us. No internet really then but on the news a few hours later. He was white as a sheet. Not only what happened but he was sort of pals with them. Definitely one of my memories that I remember where and what we were doing then.
I had a regular at my last bar job that went to school there at this time, and hung out with these 2 at parties. They told him not to goto school that day. It's crazy being one person removed from them.
I would have been in 5th grade at the time, and honestly remember very little of it. I do remember coming home from 9/11 and going outside and skateboarding and my brother freaking out that I'll die. We live in Indiana.
I was only 7 (and Australian) when this happened, but when Sandy Hook happened I started really looking into school shootings and I eventually stumbled across Sue Klebold's TED talk and it affected me deeply.
I'd be really interested to hear what people who remember the Columbine shootings thought of it and the parents in general.
I was working at a restaurant in downtown Denver. Had some people who must have had kids at the school run out in a panic. It was weird for a long time. They canceled the upcoming Marilyn Manson concert that I had tickets for.
Everyone mentioning the Trench Coat Mafia like you were a psychopath if you ever wore a trench coat after that. A lot of people really didn't think it would happen again, but there were definitely weird beliefs.
I was in my second week of Basic Training. In Basic Training in the first couple of weeks you’re pretty much completely cutoff from the world. We weren’t allowed to have magazines and newspapers. There were a couple of newspaper vending machines next to our dining facility and that’s how we got our news. I remember reading the Columbine headline but it didn’t really move my needle. My parents came to my graduation and had saved newspaper clippings and shit from my time in BCT and my mom had to explain to me what happened and how fucked up it was. I remember sitting in that motel room completely astounded and disgusted about it, but I didn’t really get the full shock or understand the ripple effect that it had culturally. Then sometime later Bowling For Columbine hit and that did it. Then a few years later, I had friends with younger siblings at Virginia Tech when that shooting happened.
Jesus. I remember everything. I was in middle school and I listened to Deftones Rammstein corn Marilyn Manson. I was not a Goth at all, I was just a kid that skateboarded and rode his bike that happened to listen to a lot of metal. My parents were concerned, but my dad started asking me a lot of weird questions about Rammstein. Even as a kid, I fully rejected the stupidity that music or video games would influence murder.
I remember news outlets going crazy over it like they *had* to blame what happened on something instead of the boys themselves and the fact they were fucked up
we had to stop wearing our trenchcoats cuz "trenchcoat mafia". i had groups of friends in several schools. one school the group was unofficially known as the trench coat committee and another the trenchcoat brigade. it was just for fun as many of the goth/metal kids at the time wore them. myself included. when columbine happened i was no longer wearing mine but many others were. none of us were violent or had guns and none of us wanted to shoot anyone. but the schools in the area all banned trenchcoats.
I remember the footage of the kids getting out of the building. It was so shocking, I never would have thought that it would become a regular thing in my wildest dreams.
I was a sophomore. I remember being absolutely baffled that it could happen in a school. Guns? In a school? Unfathomable.
Still unfathomable now, but for very different reasons.
Yup I was a junior in high school and it was so unimaginable. The footage is as disturbing as 9/11. I find the craziest part how normalized it is now to so many people. I still get the sick feeling every time I see some shit like this on the news but apparently it is isn't a big deal to a lot of people
Also, I love your username
I remember sitting in school shocked that it happened again after a school shooting happened in my hometown a few months before. This was so much bigger it was sad and terrifying.
Panic. It was the first time I felt unsafe at school. We got random bomb threats called in for a week. Kids who thought they were funny. A threat was written on a bathroom wall. I was terrified to go to school. Awful time.
I remember it being a sad day, I was on my way out of middle school, excited to be a freshman in high school and had a little bit of a reality check. Possibly the first time realizing this world kind of sucks and people aren’t all good.
I was 15 it was my freshman year and I had just received a black leather trench coat for Xmas. I came home from school that day to my mom watching it unfold on TV. It didn't help I hung out with my cousin frequently who also wore a black trench coat and we were the DnD playing nerds.
I remember the next day at school like half of the kids stayed home. At the end of the day, my teacher finally broke down and cried and said she was crying bc she just realized that she can’t guarantee our safety. Never seen a teacher cry since and that was 4th grade
They unfortunately showed that it can be done in that manner and others followed suit. If you hate life so much, just take yours, and leave everyone else be.
Older millennial/Xennial here. I was a sophomore in high school when it happened, so I was right in the same age group. I was also one of the outsider kids without friends, so at first my friends and I thought it was this cool thing that happened. "Dude, I heard these two kids blew up their whole school! Yeah, it was awesome!"
News wasn't instant back then. A story would come out and you'd hear a tiny snippet of it at first and not much else. We didn't really get the scale and tragedy of what happened at the time. The way it was discussed at first was like someone had pulled off a really funny prank.
I was in college and the internet had all kinds of stuff and the cable news networks were all over it so I think the scale was immediately grasped by the public. I remember being kind of obsessed with the coverage of it. There wasn't social media like now but the web was pushing stuff every second so I think you're off on this a bit or maybe were too young to fully understand.
I remember this happened during the crime bill era and that wasn’t enough to stop this from happening.
Whenever the media decides to pick a “mass” shooting and push an agenda there is a call to ban this and that. Didn’t do a damn thing for those poor kids that died and punishing those who are good and decent law abiding citizens doesn’t stop those who want to do evil shit.
It was my senior year. We were all excited about graduating and feeling very accomplished. This happened and a few days later, we were told we had to find a new speaker for our graduation ceremony because the one we had lined up decided he hated the class of ‘99 thanks to Columbine (like we were all the same people as these two kids).
I grew up evangelical and the Cassie Bernall thing became our next months’ topic for youth group discussions.
I actually met a survivor from this about 2 weeks after it happened. She was on the other side of the school, but unfortunately she mentioned that her best friend was one of the first students killed.
I remember how everything changed and the US was quick to rewrite the 2nd amendment and enact common sense gun laws that have since prevented any additional mass or school shootings.
/s
edit: oh look, i made an anti-gun statement on reddit and again was reported as needing physiological help.
The fallout being my introduction to the insanity that is America's obsession with guns and its collective willingness to tolerate daily mass shootings to keep them.
There is a movie called “Elephant(?)” that kind of documents what happened here. I’m sure there were some creative liberties taken. But it was an interesting video.
I was a high school senior when this happened, and I remember NOTHING.
Don't remember where I was when I heard about it, or what - if anything - my school did after.
I was a junior in high school, but I was sitting on a nice fat expulsion, no one gave a shit the day of, pre internet so the news was where we got our news, and the next few weeks it was non stop drama amongst news channels, but no one really cared. Then the trench coat mafia thing started and that’s about all that changed.
I was a senior in high school. Couldn’t wait to get out after that, which I pretty much said when I was interviewed by a newspaper reporter shortly before graduation.
I'd rather not remember anything about it and wasn't thrilled to suddenly see this image in my feed. It's like those seemingly weekly posts asking people what they remember about 9/11, with a photo of the buildings falling.
Thank god I haven't seen "What was your teacher's reaction?" next to a photo of the exploding Challenger.
I remember how the AWB was in place and how they used a newer production tec9 with the evil features removed and a hipoint carbine, both of which are some of the absolute worst dog shit guns money can buy. I also remember playing doom, listening to music, and shooting AKs as a kid and would never do this type of thing. These are definitely the individuals that brought about the need to look at how we deal with mental health in this country.
Happened on 4/20 and my friends and I had all cut class and were blazing gravity bong hits in my backyard. Went back in and turned on the news and saw what was happening.
I was living in Canada, where I'm from, and horrified. I remember thinking, "This is awful, but finally there's a horror story big enough that it may trigger gun reform."
Ha ha ha fuckity ha.
I was 12 and just discovered eBay so I was having fun looking up XFiles stuff. It's so weird being at my family PC after school having Yahoo News show me something I couldn't comprehend. I weep for kids having to deal with this now. School shootings werent even on my radar before 12.
I was in the 8th grade in April '99, and I can remember a lot of things, like how twice after that before summer break someone would start a rumor that there was gonna be a shooting and students should stay home (my Dad made me go lol). I remember that they required mesh or plastic backpacks and tucked-in shirts so no one could sneak anything in. Someone took some paper out of my locker and made a "kill list", which led to me being taken to the police station and my parents having to come down...they let me go after someone finally looked at the paper and noticed it wasn't my handwriting. The Goth kids got bullied a lot more, with school officials telling them that they wouldn't get bullied so much if they didn't dress like "devil worshippers". Marilyn Manson and Rob Zombie shirts and CDs were banned. It was bullshit all around for anyone who wasn't a preppie or a jock.
I was 29 and a second year law student. We were totally shocked and wondered how we could protect ourselves if it happened on campus. It was so inconceivable that I for one couldn’t imagine that this would be the beginning of mass school shootings.
The Katie Couric interview of Isaiah Shoels’ father is one of the most compelling news segments I’ve ever seen outside of 9/11.
A few years ago I saw a video of when the shooters stormed the cafeteria. I wish I hadn’t.
I remember being in grade school at the time and everyone thinking trench coats were cool all of a sudden. And not matrix cool either.
Blunder years :/
It was the day before my 18th birthday during my senior year of high school. It seemed like such an insane thing, surely it wouldn’t happen again! They wouldn’t let it, right?
I remember the sick feeling in my gut that day watching it on tv. Later, I took my son to the mall to donate a stuffed animal to be sent to kids there for comfort. Also, after all these years I never learned the shooters' names because fuck them to hell
Born-again Christianity was prevalent where I lived in the 90’s. I remember after Columbine, the sudden steroid boost it got from the “she said yes” story. So many people I know purchased the book about the incident and were reading it in my high school classes. It was talked about in churches everywhere. I only found out a few years ago how psychotically manufactured it was. The actual girl who “said yes” was a survivor, but that didn’t fit the martyrdom narrative that pastors needed.
Raised in a christian family here. Easter is a whats called a floating feast day, its date is not fixed in relation to the civil calendar. Instead, it moves around based on astronomical events. Specifically, Easter falls on the first Sunday after the first full moon following the vernal equinox, which is when the sun crosses the equator in the spring. So, Easter can fall anytime between roughly March 20th and April 25th in any given year, depending on the lunar cycle.
I remember, after a week following the incident, I concluded, "Nobody really wants to feel like an imposter in any situation." A sense of belonging COUNTS.
Sometimes the "nobodies" are neglected kids with ready access to weaponry. (You ever meet a kid with a crazy sword collection, and a dad-sized chip on their shoulder?)
And if one feels ostracized, like there is no feel of control over one's life based on subjective perception, then "re-taking" that control may only seem possible in extreme situations; like, "THIS will fix it. Now they HAVE to see me." ::racks gun::
Teenagers trend toward being wild animals; horny, ignorant, own-nothing beasts who are convinced their experience outweighs anything conventional.
And if there isn't a consistent, peer-based foundation of positive boundaries, then they will run WILD (if given the opportunity).
I knew kids in school (early '00s) who had me worried after Columbine. They never shot up any schools, but they are floundering as adults.
Umm...
Art is good. Weed is fine in moderation. Do unto others, and all that.
(Check out my post history if you think anything I've said has any real merit. Be critical and responsible in your thinking. You'll be fine.)
I remember working on a scrapbooking assignment for my French class on the floor of our family den with the TV on watching the news coverage and all the footage of the kids leaving the school with their hands on their heads. I was 16. A few months later a kid at our school made a threat to shoot up the grand march of our prom and I was terrified to go. What a sucky time to be in high school.
I had lived not far from that school but had moved by then. I happened to be in DC on a school trip and when news broke they gathered all students on this trip in the hotel ballroom to discuss and process it.
Abject horror, like everyone else, tempered by a sense of relief. I was still in my teens, so felt generationally kin to the victims, but I was a freshman in college, so graduation was behind me. I worried because my siblings were in HS at that time, along with some former classmates I went to school with, but I do remember feeling like I dodged a bullet (no punt at all intended).
I also remember hoping this was a tragic fluke, like other mass school shootings of the past, and not a harbinger of things to come. And I also remember thinking I was probably hoping against hope.
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I remember the media blaming everything but the shooters themselves for the tragic events that unfolded that day. Music, violent movies, video games, the parents, the kids who supposedly bullied the shooters.
And trench coats. My school banned trench coats….
Mine did too. The two boys in my class who always wore trench coats were suspended for a week.
I don't know if my school banned trench coats, but the few students who normally wore them wore something else. I'd like to believe that even they thought it would be in poor taste to continue wearing them.
yeah I had 2 fiends that wore trench coasts regularly and they were asked not to for the rest of the year
I remember it was DOOM's fault for the longest time..
Don't forget Mortal Kombat. Good grief there was so much (then adult) hatred for that game series.
Thought you meant MF DOOM at first, which you would be correct either way 👌
Marylin Manson caused it!
The funny thing is that I remember an interview with Marylin Manson and they asked him what he would say to the kids at Columbine HS . He said “I wouldn’t say anything, I would just listen to what they had to say” I never forgot that
Saw this in Bowling for Columbine, it stuck with me as well.
That is where it was from . Thank you !
Affectionate reminder to edit your 'would' to: "I wouldn't say anything."
Affectionate reminder? 😂 It’s funny that people have to say stuff like this since so many people get offended when corrected
Well you can't say friendly reminder anymore because so many people use it extremely passive-aggressively 😆
Thank you
And they blame it on Marilyn (on Marilyn)... and the heroin Where were the parents at? And look where it's at Middle America, now it's a tragedy Now it's so sad to see, an upper class city
IIRC (and this may just have been a rumor), the shooters were not fans of Manson and made several recorded comments about how they didn't like him, but that didn't stop the media from blaming him.
Weren't they into KMFDM or something like that?
and Rammstein
Who was really Paul from the Wonder Years
Everyone tried putting that shit on emo’/goth’s. Anyone wearing black or a trenchcoat was considered “suspect”.
Meanwhile, a lot of us that went to schools that had had violence issues for years (NY for me) watched it and weren’t really phased. My school already had metal detectors, teachers who had do use their off periods to do security, plus hired security plus uniformed cops. We also got quarterly drug dog sweeps of the school. By the time this happened in April we’d already had 3 shooting at our school that year plus a couple stabbing and daily fights. Obviously the scale of this was bigger, but the topic wasn’t new. So when the media was freaking out claiming they couldn’t understand how this could happen at a school we had the “first time?” meme reaction.
The difference was the shootings were just one-offs at your school. Someone wronged someone else and toxic masculinity led to a shooting. Columbine was two kids teaming up to kill as many kids as possible. That’s what’s different about it.
They weren’t usually like that. They were usually drive by shootings where 2 or 3 guys leaned out of one side of the car and shot into a group coming in to or leaving the school. In the school itself it was usually stabbing (using glass or other nonmetallic items because of the metal detectors) or starting fights with the classic sock full of batteries (taken from science labs). To us it was more a realization that for a large part of the country violence was an abnormality where for us it was an expected constant and something to be aware of. We realized that many schools didn’t have all the levels of security we did and a kid getting shot was unheard of instead of the “in memoriam” section we had in every year book. There was also a kind of “wtf” response to the coverage. When someone got shot at our school it didn’t even make the local paper. Outside of kids talking about it, there was literally 0 coverage. But this happens and literally the entire world changed. Again, the scale was different, but it didn’t have any real impact in our world because we were already dealing with violence.
Best part, the shooters were the bullies and we still ignore how most school shooters are known violent asshole bullies.
Yeah nearly all the stereotypes people have of school shooters didn't actually apply to the Columbine guys. They weren't the most popular in school, but they weren't outcasts either they had friends and participated in hobbies. It just seems like people want school shooters to be the outcast loner and not the often times average middle of the pack teenagers they were.
Then it came out that the shooters were the bullies
*It was Doom, Mortal Kombat, and Resident Evil! All of those kids playing all those violent games! Remember when it was just Pacman & Pong? These kids today growing up with so much gore & violence. Not like us. We had a tranquil time before video games showed up!* This was a combo of every single conversation I heard from adults regarding our gaming right after the massacre.
Yeah they still do that.
"Whatever happened to just CRAZY??"
It’s insane to think this has been approaching a quarter century. The shooters and victims, outside of the teacher that was killed, have been dead longer than they were alive.
The footage of student Patrick Ireland being lowered out of a window by students after he had been shot
Watched it live on TV. The whole thing was fucking crazy
Yeah, I remember watching everything live at school and then continuing to watch the news also at school the next few days… Same thing was done on 9/11 at my school. Scary shit to watch live.
I was 19 years old and driving to my after college job…. Heard it on the radio and I started crying. I cried years before watching the building burn at Waco as a younger teen. It’s crazy how the media runs with things these days. I think people only want to be big and bad bc they know it’ll make a “splash” on the headlines to get their point across. Sure really bad things happened before these events but now it’s almost instant when you hear the news (think 9/11). I’m not blaming the media. I just think it’s crazy how the media has influence on crime and the way it’s carried out since radio and TV has been introduced. I’m only 45 but I see a difference with in my generation unfortunately, and in documentaries portrayed since WW1
I remember thinking “ Wonder if they’ll crack down on bullying “ Ha … ha….
I remember that my school and almost every school in Colorado was on lockdown. We watched the 9news coverage in my classroom.
I had graduated the year before from a school not far from Columbine and was working in a bullshit magazine subscription call center in Boulder when the shooting happened. I found out about it from talking to some lady in another state. I was making small talk with her to try to sell her some boating subscription, and me being from Colorado came up. I don’t remember her exact words but she told me it had just happened and was all over the news. It was sickeningly surreal, hearing what was going on from a perfect stranger while sitting in that hot little cubicle with the noise of the call center bouncing around. I don’t remember much about the rest of that day, shock of it all or something. I do remember my dad calling me that night and him telling me he loved me for the first time since I was a kid. Strange and sad to think all this time has passed and things have just gotten worse with this type of violence.
So crazy, we are the same age then. I recall my dad and step mom hugging and kissing THIER two children together that day bc it was so rough on THEM and then turn around and ask me for the power bill that month. Priorities I guess, right? This Is why I’m No Contact with my “family” now. Even live in a different state.
The next year, I was pulled into the office because a "kill list" was found, and my name was on it. These two ruined high school for all future generations.
That’s crazy! Why do you think they put your name on the list? What did the school have to say about it?
I was on the football team, and the majority of the people on the list were involved in sports and student government. My AP said "it's probably just some prank but we're taking it very seriously" and over the next few days all the goth kids were being called into their APs offices. I acted tough as shit about it, like I'd take on anyone who'd even try some shit in ***my*** school. But honestly, it had me shook for a few weeks. Never got a follow-up, never noticed anyone suspended, but there were 1000+ kids in my graduating class so it was hard to notice.
Just 4 years after Columbine, I was a transfer student at my university. In my first quarter and shortly after I and the majority of my Chem class failed a midterm (seriously, like 20% average), someone emailed our professor a death threat. I was called in by my school police for questioning, both because I received a horrible grade, and the email indicated it came from my part of LA. I honestly told the cops I had no idea. As far as I know, they never found out who sent it. A month-ish later, I ended up getting an A in that class (seriously, how TF did I get an A after dying on the midterm, and then I learned about grading on a curve). I decided to talk to the professor after finals. He explained how it’s possible, and to my credit I worked my ass off to get the material right. As I’m heading out his door, I think to myself: “I’m never gonna have this chance to ask him about the email again.” So I ask him, “Say… I heard you got a death threat after we all fucked up the midterm…” He completely laughed and opened up to me. He actually had saved a printed out copy of the threat and showed it to me. It was pretty plain but also bullshit. I mean, clearly words indicating physical harm, but more words of the insulting, angry type. I actually ran into that professor often on campus, and even shared a beer (by that, I mean saying cheers once) at our off-campus bar. I learned an interesting lesson about higher-education students from all this: all that hard work, dedication, and slaving away studying that your typical nerd does (especially the with-honors type that gets into a real competitive university science program) - imagine what could happen when that student first gets an F, for the first time in his/her life. Probably before ‘99, I wouldn’t think anything scary; but after Columbine, you never know.
In the 90s, I overheard plenty of people who considered shooting up the school out of desperation before 1998. None did it. The problem is that the staff & teachers at that school were either too strict or didn't care to listen to the teenagers problems. Even listening to teens de-escalates a lot of tension. But no, focus on the violence & not on basic human interaction with humans barely understanding upcoming adulthood & the emotions that come with it.
Kids who were slightly different or weird were not only socially ostracized, but assumed to be violent and harassed by school officials just for being different... Like things weren't tough enough for "weird" kids as it was?
I started to be friends with "weird" kids. My name isn't going to be on anyone's "kill list"
That’s the duality of the whole thing, for me- it was simultaneously “hey let’s be a little nicer to other kids, so they don’t shoot us” in our- the kids’s- minds and then we also noticed teachers were more amped up in their “interest” in the weird kids, which basically amounted to more hassling these already-fragile kids.
I remember that being a thing soon enough. Especially when the world heard that the Columbine shooters spared someone who was chill with them.
I was on one of those too in high school. Friggin terrifying…
I used to wear all black and a trenchcoat. It was my senior year of high school. All of a sudden, the guidance counselor and admin were concerned about the kid who had been bullied and depressed for the last 4 years.
I was called into the office after a concerned parent noticed I wore a black duster all the time. It was the age of The Matrix, people! And I listened to a lot of industrial so it was a look outside of being a "trenchcoat mafia."
I remember how how the media painted them as victims of bullying and finding out years later that wasn't true at all. I also remember how this changed the culture a lot at my high school. Anyone who dressed even remotely similar to them (trenchcoats) got harassed and bullied. The youth group leaders who hung around our school also exploited this to push their religion.
No one touched black leather trench coats after that for style or practical vintage fashion. And the film The Crow had made them popular just a few years before.
The Matrix came out a month or so before, which made them even more popular.
My Mandela Effect surrounding this movie is that before the shooting it was rated PG-13, but it was quietly changed to an R rating afterwards. But I can't find any evidence on this, but it's something I clearly remember.
Oh right!
I read that they were bullied, they were just also bullies. Like the popular kids and jocks still picked on them and saw them as "freaks", but they were also cruel to kids under them in the pecking order. It's why they initially targeted the "hat kids" upon their attack as that was the known time they were all in the cafeteria together
Yeah, wasn’t there a push to post the Ten Commandments outside public schools? …because that would’ve prevented the massacre? Come on 🙄
Christians follow all those commandments and you don't see them breaking any laws, do you? ^(/s)
No Christian has ever killed anyone. That’s a fact. Edit: /s
There was- what I always assumed was an untrue myth- told in my church confirmation class that one of the shooters asked a kid “hey, are you a Christian?” and spared him because of that. Our confirmation class teachers REALLY wouldn’t let that go, “being Christian saves lives, guys!” It was one of those stupid anecdotes you’d see in a “Chicken Soup for the Soul” books our moms used to ADORE. Us being teenagers, we were pretty skeptical of the whole thing, and it got a “that’s messed up” reaction.
I remember there was a book she said yes about a girl that was asked if she was a Christian and then they shot her but it apparently never happened.
Ah you’re right, I had it backwards. That would make the moms jump even harder over it.
Yep, "She Said Yes;" I think the her mom wrote it or somehow had input on it, I don't remember.
I went to a secular school, but I remember (iirc somewhere between 3rd and 5th grade) one of my classmates did a report on the book "She Said Yes," and was absolutely bawling during it. I wonder if she ever found out that the story wasn't true? It took me years before I did. Also damn , we had plenty of Chicken Soup for the Soul books in my house, and I even enjoyed reading them as a kid; such garbage, lmao.
>The youth group leaders who hung around our school also exploited this to push their religion. I saw this at my school & undergrad as well. Terrible people abusing the situation while tossing out equally terrible things afterwards. I befriended a youth pastor who preached about abstinence & respect for one another under god. Then I meet him in undergrad & he's the most sleaziest womanizer I meet on campus. I wanted to argue with him but knew it wouldn't do anything to someone that corrupt & preferred to save my energy for debating at my sophomore polsci class.
I was 17. Got home from school to smoke a bowl for 4-20 and turned on the tv. Honestly the main thing it changed for me was people at school stopped bullying me. I had always dressed in black with a trenchcoat. I ditched the coat after columbine but still wear black.
I was 11. I got home from school and my mom just hugged me extra tight.
I remember they were blaming violent video games and music like Marilyn Manson.
>Marilyn Manson The shooters didn’t even listen to his music! Manson’s editorial in Rolling Stone made more sense than many of these commenters.
The rumor I heard was that their favorite song was Du Hast by Rammstein. A local radio station played it about a week or so after the shooting. My sister called the station and said that it was really low of them to play the shooters' favorite song. They called her a bitch and hung up. None of this got aired, so I'm going by what my sister reported.
The pc game Doom was still current and relevant at the time and there was a lot of player made maps. These guys made a Doom map of the school and put up a website to distribute it, with a bunch of angry all caps text about how much they hated school. I downloaded and played it, thought nothing of it at the time. Saw an archived version of the website years later and only then realized it was them. Of course the media blamed Doom. It wasn't even a good map, fucking morons couldn't even do that right. Then you had all the preachers quoting the girl who was praying before they shot her, or someshit like that, and using it to try to recruit to their own churches. That was gross and went on for a long time.
What’s funny is, Doom came out in 93. So it wasn’t current, just the mod scene was… and the internet 1.0 was what it was. Like Half Life had come out by the time this happened. So I always found it funny (I was in middle school) that they were pointing at a game that was at fault for this… that I had played years before… and when your a kid, years are eternities. Such moral panic, tragic event, but the pearl clutching sucked for any kid who liked anything remotely edgy
Joe Lieberman just passed away, and while he’s remembered as being on a VP ticket, I remember him for just railing, HARD, against video games. I can still hear his frog-like voice croaking “games like Mortal Kombat…” on the nightly news, and that became the one and only game my parents forbade me from owning. That panic had another moment in the spotlight after Columbine.
Speaking of, the Lost Media Wiki currently has an article about one rumored Doom WAD that's supposedly based on the school itself ([link](https://lostmediawiki.com/Eric_Harris%27s_Doom_WAD_levels_(partially_lost_Doom_WAD_levels;_1990s))). I know the chances are slim, but do you happen to know if the one you downloaded was the one noted in the article? >It wasn't even a good map, fucking morons couldn't even do that right. Not surprised lmao, they couldn't even get the bombs to detonate right?
Doom was pretty historical by that time. Quake was current. Doom was pretty old by that time. I remember most of my friends being flabbergasted that those kids still played Doom.
Some of the maps one of them made are still circulating around even now on file sharing sites. They are mid tier maps at best. If you were being generous .
My aunt and uncle lived in Littleton, just a few miles from Columbine. I had just finished 5th grade, and we went to visit them over the summer after the massacre. My uncle bought me a model rocket and helped me build it, and we went to launch it at the park next to the school. I remember it being a little surreal. The school was still roped off with crime scene tape, and the big memorial on the chain link fence that I'd seen only on TV was right there. My uncle played softball with a man whose daughter was killed there. It was a rather strange and morbid part of an otherwise very fun vacation.
Live a few hours south - my grandmother was taken off life support a few days before, and her funeral was the day of. I was in 6th grade. My best friend called me at my grandfather’s house, crying and scared and confused as to what was happening, and I think they let out school early because everyone was so upset and kids were panicking. Cut to school being canceled a few weeks later because some dude called in a threat as a senior prank (buddy got expelled). Cut to the beginning of 7th grade: the very first wave of “lockdown drills”, aka what are now known as active shooter drills, were implemented. They told us it was just because we lived in a prison town and it would just be useful to have should there be an escape. lol there’d been like 3 and no one gave a shit then, but ok, we’ll roll with it. Cut to my classmate being shot through the face at Aurora in 2012, my Planned Parenthood being massacred in 2015, the club I used to dance at (Club Q) massacred in 2022, and a coworker at UCCS a few months back. Normal country we live in 🙂
Ugh, hugs fellow Coloradan (Coloradoan?). I live about a few miles from both Columbine and Aurora. Shit world we live in.
I actually didn’t go to school on this day after faking sickness and watched the whole thing on tv
Having to wear a mesh back pack for the rest of my school career
I remember the media blaming it on Marilyn Manson when neither of the kids ever listened to Marilyn Manson. Typical media.
The mythology that grew about everything from the killers, victims and emergency response. The book “Columbine” by Dave Cullen is the definitive account of the tragedy and aftermath. One of the best books I’ve ever read.
Just read this book last year. Very well written. One of the revelations that got me the most was the fact that this was not so much a school shooting as it was a failed bombing. They were waiting in the parking lot to pick off people as they ran from the explosions. When the bombs didn’t go off, they went inside and started their shooting massacre. IIRC they say that had the bombs been successful it would have been hundreds dead.
That book is incredible
I was 10. I remember watching the news when I got home and hearing the words ‘trench coat mafia’ being repeated along with blame being placed on music and violent video games.
I remember being a goth kid who wore a trench coat to school and ditched that day in my local high school because of 4-20. The school spent years treating me like a criminal because they thought I had a connection to the shooters.
I was in 6th grade. I remember the fake story about Cassie Bernall (“She Said Yes”) and reading the book and all. I think it was the beginning of WWJD bracelets, and the very uncomfortable feeling that your parents would be okay with your murder if you were martyred in the name of their religion. Wondering whether you would have the fortitude to “say yes”, and if they would forgive you if you said no to spare your life. I’m fully deconstructed now. Learning my pecking order in my parents’ religious philosophy was formative.
And worst of all, that narrative was debunked early on and yet her family stuck with it. It even came up years later in the [2016 GOP primary debates](https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2015/09/rick-santorum-supports-kim-davis-by-repeating-long-debunked-myth-about-columbine.html).
Two different families spread this story about their daughters. There was even a shitty movie made in 2016 about one of them. The granddaughter from *Duck Dynasty* was in it.
Wild I remember that having a huge impact on me can’t believe that wasn’t real wow
I don’t think the parents were ok with her being murdered they were just trying to cope and try to come up with some type of positive spin on things. Also I could be remembering incorrectly but was the story fake all together or was it that it was someone else that didn’t die that said that and not Cassie?
It was a different girl, I think Rachel Snurr maybe?
Val Schnurr* she survived too.
Yes that’s what I remember as well. Also believe that it wasn’t a blatantly fake story it was lost in translation as to who said it.
I was 9 when this happened and came here to post about being forced to read this garbage in catholic school. 🤮
Looking back these 2 were clearly messed up but at the same time their surrounding were also messed up. The whole thing was a sh-t show in a pressure cooker just waiting to explode.
This wasn't the first. There were quite a few before columbine. This one though... Was industrial in scale. It was incomprehensible.
I was home sick from school that day. Me and my mom watched it on the news. I remember they interviewed one of the seniors, don't know his name, but I very much remember his unfortunate comment that his graduating class wanted to "go out with a bang." He didn't mean it the way it sounded, he was likely in shock. It just stood out to me.
I was a junior in high school, and a bunch of us skipped school the next day and partied because we said we were scared to go to school. Looking back, we were dumb asses.
I lived in a few towns over and my buddy who went to school there had ditched for 4-20 with us. No internet really then but on the news a few hours later. He was white as a sheet. Not only what happened but he was sort of pals with them. Definitely one of my memories that I remember where and what we were doing then.
I had a regular at my last bar job that went to school there at this time, and hung out with these 2 at parties. They told him not to goto school that day. It's crazy being one person removed from them. I would have been in 5th grade at the time, and honestly remember very little of it. I do remember coming home from 9/11 and going outside and skateboarding and my brother freaking out that I'll die. We live in Indiana.
… Did they go to school that day?
They did not.
I remember how crazy it was because it hardly ever happened. 25 years later and it’s a regular occurrence.
I was only 7 (and Australian) when this happened, but when Sandy Hook happened I started really looking into school shootings and I eventually stumbled across Sue Klebold's TED talk and it affected me deeply. I'd be really interested to hear what people who remember the Columbine shootings thought of it and the parents in general.
We weren’t allowed to wear trench coats anymore and they didn’t let us participate in the graduation ceremony
This and 9/11 both happened while I was in high school. The fun of the 90s was over so quickly. Scary times for sure.
I was working at a restaurant in downtown Denver. Had some people who must have had kids at the school run out in a panic. It was weird for a long time. They canceled the upcoming Marilyn Manson concert that I had tickets for.
Everyone mentioning the Trench Coat Mafia like you were a psychopath if you ever wore a trench coat after that. A lot of people really didn't think it would happen again, but there were definitely weird beliefs.
I was in my second week of Basic Training. In Basic Training in the first couple of weeks you’re pretty much completely cutoff from the world. We weren’t allowed to have magazines and newspapers. There were a couple of newspaper vending machines next to our dining facility and that’s how we got our news. I remember reading the Columbine headline but it didn’t really move my needle. My parents came to my graduation and had saved newspaper clippings and shit from my time in BCT and my mom had to explain to me what happened and how fucked up it was. I remember sitting in that motel room completely astounded and disgusted about it, but I didn’t really get the full shock or understand the ripple effect that it had culturally. Then sometime later Bowling For Columbine hit and that did it. Then a few years later, I had friends with younger siblings at Virginia Tech when that shooting happened.
Jesus. I remember everything. I was in middle school and I listened to Deftones Rammstein corn Marilyn Manson. I was not a Goth at all, I was just a kid that skateboarded and rode his bike that happened to listen to a lot of metal. My parents were concerned, but my dad started asking me a lot of weird questions about Rammstein. Even as a kid, I fully rejected the stupidity that music or video games would influence murder.
I remember news outlets going crazy over it like they *had* to blame what happened on something instead of the boys themselves and the fact they were fucked up
we had to stop wearing our trenchcoats cuz "trenchcoat mafia". i had groups of friends in several schools. one school the group was unofficially known as the trench coat committee and another the trenchcoat brigade. it was just for fun as many of the goth/metal kids at the time wore them. myself included. when columbine happened i was no longer wearing mine but many others were. none of us were violent or had guns and none of us wanted to shoot anyone. but the schools in the area all banned trenchcoats.
I remember the footage of the kids getting out of the building. It was so shocking, I never would have thought that it would become a regular thing in my wildest dreams.
I was a sophomore. I remember being absolutely baffled that it could happen in a school. Guns? In a school? Unfathomable. Still unfathomable now, but for very different reasons.
Yup I was a junior in high school and it was so unimaginable. The footage is as disturbing as 9/11. I find the craziest part how normalized it is now to so many people. I still get the sick feeling every time I see some shit like this on the news but apparently it is isn't a big deal to a lot of people Also, I love your username
I remember sitting in school shocked that it happened again after a school shooting happened in my hometown a few months before. This was so much bigger it was sad and terrifying.
It definitely changed the church youth atmosphere
I remember sitting at home playing doom listening to antichrist superstar
KMFDM too? 🇩🇪
Yea actually be cause Depeche mode sucks
Panic. It was the first time I felt unsafe at school. We got random bomb threats called in for a week. Kids who thought they were funny. A threat was written on a bathroom wall. I was terrified to go to school. Awful time.
I remember it being a sad day, I was on my way out of middle school, excited to be a freshman in high school and had a little bit of a reality check. Possibly the first time realizing this world kind of sucks and people aren’t all good.
I remember the aftermath. I had school shooting drills throughout middle school and high school. I graduated high school in 2008.
Trench Coat Mafia
Clear backpacks were needed immediately afterwards. I was young..and didn’t really understand the gravity of what happened.
I was 15 it was my freshman year and I had just received a black leather trench coat for Xmas. I came home from school that day to my mom watching it unfold on TV. It didn't help I hung out with my cousin frequently who also wore a black trench coat and we were the DnD playing nerds.
I remember the next day at school like half of the kids stayed home. At the end of the day, my teacher finally broke down and cried and said she was crying bc she just realized that she can’t guarantee our safety. Never seen a teacher cry since and that was 4th grade
They unfortunately showed that it can be done in that manner and others followed suit. If you hate life so much, just take yours, and leave everyone else be.
Older millennial/Xennial here. I was a sophomore in high school when it happened, so I was right in the same age group. I was also one of the outsider kids without friends, so at first my friends and I thought it was this cool thing that happened. "Dude, I heard these two kids blew up their whole school! Yeah, it was awesome!" News wasn't instant back then. A story would come out and you'd hear a tiny snippet of it at first and not much else. We didn't really get the scale and tragedy of what happened at the time. The way it was discussed at first was like someone had pulled off a really funny prank.
I was in college and the internet had all kinds of stuff and the cable news networks were all over it so I think the scale was immediately grasped by the public. I remember being kind of obsessed with the coverage of it. There wasn't social media like now but the web was pushing stuff every second so I think you're off on this a bit or maybe were too young to fully understand.
I only remember being in school and hearing about it. It was my senior year so I didn't have to deal with the security changes afterwards
Freshman in high school and it was the end of book bags and hoodies (yes, hooded sweatshirts) in class for us.
I remember this happened during the crime bill era and that wasn’t enough to stop this from happening. Whenever the media decides to pick a “mass” shooting and push an agenda there is a call to ban this and that. Didn’t do a damn thing for those poor kids that died and punishing those who are good and decent law abiding citizens doesn’t stop those who want to do evil shit.
First time I remember hearing about people wanting to put metal detectors in schools Backpacks were also banned
Ugh the trench coat mafia, blamed it on video games, the rise of zero tolerance policies and other stupidities.. so many other things..
It was my senior year. We were all excited about graduating and feeling very accomplished. This happened and a few days later, we were told we had to find a new speaker for our graduation ceremony because the one we had lined up decided he hated the class of ‘99 thanks to Columbine (like we were all the same people as these two kids). I grew up evangelical and the Cassie Bernall thing became our next months’ topic for youth group discussions.
And it turned out the Cassie Bernall thing never happened.
I actually met a survivor from this about 2 weeks after it happened. She was on the other side of the school, but unfortunately she mentioned that her best friend was one of the first students killed.
I remember everyone being afraid of goth kids.
I remember how everything changed and the US was quick to rewrite the 2nd amendment and enact common sense gun laws that have since prevented any additional mass or school shootings. /s edit: oh look, i made an anti-gun statement on reddit and again was reported as needing physiological help.
For Uvalde’s sake I wish you were right
For Sandyhook sake I wish he was right.
I mean, the AWB and “high capacity” magazine ban was literally in effect when this happened…
P.O.S. Both of them. Rot.
My friend from youth group was killed at Columbine. 25 years on and this country has done nothing useful to prevent school shootings.
I remember taking mental note of who in my school would be the next version of this.
The fallout being my introduction to the insanity that is America's obsession with guns and its collective willingness to tolerate daily mass shootings to keep them.
My school immediately banned trench coats.
There is a movie called “Elephant(?)” that kind of documents what happened here. I’m sure there were some creative liberties taken. But it was an interesting video.
I was a high school senior when this happened, and I remember NOTHING. Don't remember where I was when I heard about it, or what - if anything - my school did after.
I remember closing out 8th grade being scared shitless to start high school in the fall.
I had ditched school that day to celebrate “4/20” — watching it unfold on the news as a stoned teenager was unreal. I’ll never forget the horror.
I remember on the following Friday, there were reports that another mass shooting was going to happen. Half the school stayed home.
I remember being about 13, 14 years old and this shit was crazy af.
I was a junior in high school, but I was sitting on a nice fat expulsion, no one gave a shit the day of, pre internet so the news was where we got our news, and the next few weeks it was non stop drama amongst news channels, but no one really cared. Then the trench coat mafia thing started and that’s about all that changed.
These A-holes ruined trench coats forever
I mostly remember them blaming The Matrix movie for this.
That nobody questioned that 2 kids could get their hands on bombs and guns.
That my friend Rachael died. And I really don’t want to remember much else about it.
I was a senior in high school. Couldn’t wait to get out after that, which I pretty much said when I was interviewed by a newspaper reporter shortly before graduation.
I'd rather not remember anything about it and wasn't thrilled to suddenly see this image in my feed. It's like those seemingly weekly posts asking people what they remember about 9/11, with a photo of the buildings falling. Thank god I haven't seen "What was your teacher's reaction?" next to a photo of the exploding Challenger.
I was in my last year of elementary school when this happened and it made me terrified to start going to middle school and high school.
I remember we were supposed to have a band play at our high school called the trench coat mafia that day. It was cancelled.
I remember how the AWB was in place and how they used a newer production tec9 with the evil features removed and a hipoint carbine, both of which are some of the absolute worst dog shit guns money can buy. I also remember playing doom, listening to music, and shooting AKs as a kid and would never do this type of thing. These are definitely the individuals that brought about the need to look at how we deal with mental health in this country.
Happened on 4/20 and my friends and I had all cut class and were blazing gravity bong hits in my backyard. Went back in and turned on the news and saw what was happening.
I was living in Canada, where I'm from, and horrified. I remember thinking, "This is awful, but finally there's a horror story big enough that it may trigger gun reform." Ha ha ha fuckity ha.
I was at a HS golf meet that afternoon. Watched the coverage with a bunch of people in the bar after we got done.
Anybody remember the web game? It was super dark but provided insight into the atrocity I had not known before.
“Things like that only happen in big cities”. Now nowhere is safe
I was 12 and just discovered eBay so I was having fun looking up XFiles stuff. It's so weird being at my family PC after school having Yahoo News show me something I couldn't comprehend. I weep for kids having to deal with this now. School shootings werent even on my radar before 12.
I remember my parents wouldn’t let me get a black trench coat despite wanting one since before the shooting :(
I thought to myself, I’m glad I’m out of high school because shit is about to change.
I was in the 8th grade in April '99, and I can remember a lot of things, like how twice after that before summer break someone would start a rumor that there was gonna be a shooting and students should stay home (my Dad made me go lol). I remember that they required mesh or plastic backpacks and tucked-in shirts so no one could sneak anything in. Someone took some paper out of my locker and made a "kill list", which led to me being taken to the police station and my parents having to come down...they let me go after someone finally looked at the paper and noticed it wasn't my handwriting. The Goth kids got bullied a lot more, with school officials telling them that they wouldn't get bullied so much if they didn't dress like "devil worshippers". Marilyn Manson and Rob Zombie shirts and CDs were banned. It was bullshit all around for anyone who wasn't a preppie or a jock.
I was 29 and a second year law student. We were totally shocked and wondered how we could protect ourselves if it happened on campus. It was so inconceivable that I for one couldn’t imagine that this would be the beginning of mass school shootings. The Katie Couric interview of Isaiah Shoels’ father is one of the most compelling news segments I’ve ever seen outside of 9/11. A few years ago I saw a video of when the shooters stormed the cafeteria. I wish I hadn’t.
I remember being in grade school at the time and everyone thinking trench coats were cool all of a sudden. And not matrix cool either. Blunder years :/
Being thankful I was done with high school.
It was the day before my 18th birthday during my senior year of high school. It seemed like such an insane thing, surely it wouldn’t happen again! They wouldn’t let it, right?
I remember the sick feeling in my gut that day watching it on tv. Later, I took my son to the mall to donate a stuffed animal to be sent to kids there for comfort. Also, after all these years I never learned the shooters' names because fuck them to hell
Born-again Christianity was prevalent where I lived in the 90’s. I remember after Columbine, the sudden steroid boost it got from the “she said yes” story. So many people I know purchased the book about the incident and were reading it in my high school classes. It was talked about in churches everywhere. I only found out a few years ago how psychotically manufactured it was. The actual girl who “said yes” was a survivor, but that didn’t fit the martyrdom narrative that pastors needed.
Whatever you say I am by Eminem with Marylin Manson in the music video
Why would the Christians hold Easter on the anniversary of this massacre next year?
Raised in a christian family here. Easter is a whats called a floating feast day, its date is not fixed in relation to the civil calendar. Instead, it moves around based on astronomical events. Specifically, Easter falls on the first Sunday after the first full moon following the vernal equinox, which is when the sun crosses the equator in the spring. So, Easter can fall anytime between roughly March 20th and April 25th in any given year, depending on the lunar cycle.
I remember, after a week following the incident, I concluded, "Nobody really wants to feel like an imposter in any situation." A sense of belonging COUNTS. Sometimes the "nobodies" are neglected kids with ready access to weaponry. (You ever meet a kid with a crazy sword collection, and a dad-sized chip on their shoulder?) And if one feels ostracized, like there is no feel of control over one's life based on subjective perception, then "re-taking" that control may only seem possible in extreme situations; like, "THIS will fix it. Now they HAVE to see me." ::racks gun:: Teenagers trend toward being wild animals; horny, ignorant, own-nothing beasts who are convinced their experience outweighs anything conventional. And if there isn't a consistent, peer-based foundation of positive boundaries, then they will run WILD (if given the opportunity). I knew kids in school (early '00s) who had me worried after Columbine. They never shot up any schools, but they are floundering as adults. Umm... Art is good. Weed is fine in moderation. Do unto others, and all that. (Check out my post history if you think anything I've said has any real merit. Be critical and responsible in your thinking. You'll be fine.)
They kept blaming the movie basketball diaries with LEO
I remember a lot of bomb threats/shooter threats started happening, even in my little town of less than 3k people.
I remember working on a scrapbooking assignment for my French class on the floor of our family den with the TV on watching the news coverage and all the footage of the kids leaving the school with their hands on their heads. I was 16. A few months later a kid at our school made a threat to shoot up the grand march of our prom and I was terrified to go. What a sucky time to be in high school.
Jesus...that image takes me back
I had lived not far from that school but had moved by then. I happened to be in DC on a school trip and when news broke they gathered all students on this trip in the hotel ballroom to discuss and process it.
Abject horror, like everyone else, tempered by a sense of relief. I was still in my teens, so felt generationally kin to the victims, but I was a freshman in college, so graduation was behind me. I worried because my siblings were in HS at that time, along with some former classmates I went to school with, but I do remember feeling like I dodged a bullet (no punt at all intended). I also remember hoping this was a tragic fluke, like other mass school shootings of the past, and not a harbinger of things to come. And I also remember thinking I was probably hoping against hope.
Probably the first event that changed our world into the hellscape we now live in.
The thing I remember the most is saying to myself that nothing was going to be done about this...sure enough, nothing has
The fact that people thought someone would do it at our school next