Media and Massacre

Everyone has been inundated by the tragedy of Virginia Tech but the recent discoveries of a multi-media "manifesto" by the killer, Cho Seung-Hui, has added a sickening twist.

The Columbine killers had hundreds of pages of diary entries and hours of videotape documenting their rage and hatred. Jeff Weise, the Minnesota school shooter who killed his grandfather and 9 others, had a website with a flash movie showing a shooting.

The need for having secrets known and how the new media has opened up another more anonymous place for Pandora's Box to be opened is frightening. It fascinates me to see how both people use the medium and the medium uses the people...a devious symbiotic system.

It is obvious many of these people are motivated by a need to be known, "famous", or remembered since their current place in this world is not creating awareness. Would these killers be as motivated (and maybe even rethink) to commit such atrocities if they would not be "known" by millions following their act?