When two Colorado students murdered 12 of their classmates and a teacher at Columbine High School on April 20, 1999, they committed what history would etch as the first school shooting of the internet era.
At the time, Google was still a startup. Facebook, the iPhone and YouTube had not yet been invented. Yet 25 years later, the traces left online by Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold have not faded into the obscurity of the early web.
Instead, those remnants took hold in each evolving online technology – chat rooms, social media and video – and today spark obsessive online interest among a generation that wasn’t even alive at the time of the attack.
That interest flourishes via online algorithms that amplify edgy or hate-fueled content, researchers say – and via social media platforms that prioritize audiences and profits over finding and removing violent and damaging content.
On the 1990s-era internet, the killers left behind their plans of violent terror – like threats and bomb-building instructions – as well as the personal minutiae of teenage life, like playing the first-person shooter game Doom. The lyrics to a favorite song, a recent electronic-metal release called “Stray Bullet,” were posted on one of their websites.
A dark subculture latched onto those details of their online life and the investigative reports that followed. The killers’ photos, personal journals and home videos fueled discussions in internet forums and chat rooms.
Today, researchers track social media, video sites and gaming platforms, where they find a cult of Columbine thriving among young internet users.
TikTok profiles with the shooters’ names and photos are festooned with hearts and ribbons and fans of the shooters declare their love and admiration in the comments. Videos splice together old footage and stills of the shooters.
First-person shooter simulations of the Columbine massacre regularly pop up on TikTok where they fetch tens and even hundreds of thousands of views.
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At the time, Google was still a startup. Facebook, the iPhone and YouTube had not yet been invented. Yet 25 years later, the traces left online by Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold have not faded into the obscurity of the early web.
Instead, those remnants took hold in each evolving online technology – chat rooms, social media and video – and today spark obsessive online interest among a generation that wasn’t even alive at the time of the attack.
That interest flourishes via online algorithms that amplify edgy or hate-fueled content, researchers say – and via social media platforms that prioritize audiences and profits over finding and removing violent and damaging content.
On the 1990s-era internet, the killers left behind their plans of violent terror – like threats and bomb-building instructions – as well as the personal minutiae of teenage life, like playing the first-person shooter game Doom. The lyrics to a favorite song, a recent electronic-metal release called “Stray Bullet,” were posted on one of their websites.
A dark subculture latched onto those details of their online life and the investigative reports that followed. The killers’ photos, personal journals and home videos fueled discussions in internet forums and chat rooms.
Today, researchers track social media, video sites and gaming platforms, where they find a cult of Columbine thriving among young internet users.
TikTok profiles with the shooters’ names and photos are festooned with hearts and ribbons and fans of the shooters declare their love and admiration in the comments. Videos splice together old footage and stills of the shooters.
First-person shooter simulations of the Columbine massacre regularly pop up on TikTok where they fetch tens and even hundreds of thousands of views.
Continues...
Columbine school shooters glorified by young followers: Inside the scary online obsession
Twenty-five years after the Columbine shooting, young people who weren't born when it happened are glorifying the killers on social media platforms.
