4-16

This guy was mentally ill. And in his manifesto he sounds 100% convinced that he's been wronged to such an extent that it made him crack. I'm guessing he hadn't been and that it was all in his head. But it explains why he'd go on a rampage. He wasn't just suicidal, he was suicidal and harbouring a delusional grudge.

I'm also torn as to the whole publishing of the multimedia manifesto. I've watched most, if not all of it. I guess when something this incredibly senseless occurs you just want to try to get it to make some kind sense or else it become incomprehensible. I guess as confusing and psychotic as it was, it does allow you to answer the big WHY question. I'm sure I wouldn't feel that way if I had a personal connection to the tragedy but from the outside looking in, I kind of needed some kind of explanation.

And I hate to say it, but I think the media is sensationalizing it. Notice how all the reports of the manifesto end with the most disturbing image of all, of Cho pointing the gun square at the camera lens. Why is it necessary to always end with that shot?

Anyway, I would disagree with Charles calling him a "loser". The event was despicable and terribly sad but dismissing this as being an action of a "loser" or as that Virginia poet/prof said, that he was just "mean" is really sticking your head in the sand. In my opinion, incidents like these need to be understood. Demonizing the killer is doing nobody any favours. A co-worker of mine put it best...he basically said "It's not so much that 32 people were killed and 1 killer committed suicide, it's more that there were 33 wasted lives."