Wednesday, 18 April 2007

• Currently Listening Sam's Town By The Killers see related

  BLACKSBURG, VIRGINIA

  I suppose I’m a bit emo.  I like emo bands, such as My Chemical Romance, Jimmy Eat World, and (sometimes) Fall Out Boy.  I honestly don’t know what exactly being emo means, but, based on my rudimentary knowledge of pop culture, I would venture to guess that common emo characteristics are shyness, thoughtfulness, broodiness, extreme sensitivity, and quiet.  I am most of these characteristics most of the time.  Additionally, it is no secret that I am an emotional person.  I can find an emotion and a life lesson from an everyday occurrence like ordering from the drive-thru at a Starbucks, so you can imagine that a severely emotive event, like the shooting that occurred in Blacksburg, Virginia, would shake the foundation of my very existence.  A coworker (Stanley) and I were talking about it this morning.  Stanley, who is a gun enthusiast and all-around redneck, claimed that if more people carried guns, then the gunman would have been stopped a lot sooner.  This struck me as both insane and somewhat valid.  It’s insane because it’s impractical, stupid, and downright dangerous for every college student to carry a gun to German class, but it’s somewhat valid because if just one of those slain students had a gun, then the fight would have been much more even.  I’m not advocating the NRA, but all I know is that if I was one of those students in that classroom, I definitely wouldn’t mind having a gun.

  I found Stanley’s take on the whole situation to be amusing, if not bizarre.  I suppose everyone will have their own perspective on the shooting.  I’ve been reading various blogs and media outlets, and there is obviously going to be social and political fallout.  People are already discussing gun control and campus safety, and the media hasn’t cut any corners to paint a picture of the killer. CNN and MSNBC seem to constantly use words such as “Korean”, “national”, visa”, and “student” to describe this man.  It’s probably wrong and racist to use these words to describe the murderer (but what do I know?  I’m not a sociologist).  I could see how this would be sensitive to the Asian American community, and any anti-Asian sentiment would be ignorant and unfair.  That’s obvious.  However, the media has also labeled the killer as “suicidal”, “lonely”, and “depressed”.  This deeply affected me.  These words have sometimes been used to describe me, and I would hate for people to relate me to a mass murderer.  I don’t sympathize with the killer at all, but I understand what it’s like to be suicidal, lonely, and depressed.  I don’t know if these characteristics influenced his rampage, and neither do you.  The only thing we know is that he killed 30 people, and we’ll probably never know why.  He doesn’t represent all Asian Americans.  And he definitely doesn’t represent all depressed people.  If Asian Americans are offended by the media’s coverage, are depressed people offended, too?

  My answer is yes.

  Because of this, this event deeply moved me. To me, it was much more tragic than larger-scale mass murders such as the terror attacks of September 11, 2001.  I can’t stop thinking about the senselessness of it all, and the agony it has brought forth.  I came across one of the victim’s MySpace page and read it thoroughly.  She had a very normal-looking page with everyday pictures and comments.  And it hit me that she was just a normal kid going to a normal school and living a normal life.  On that day she was probably going to check her MySpace page after German class like every other college kid did.  But now it’s all gone, and the finality is so heart-wrenching.  She will never see her MySpace page again.  She will never see all the comments from all her friends about how much they all love and miss her.

  I am so emo.

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