A Matter of Death and Livejournal
Blogs and online journals have given the average Joe with internet access a voice. Who listens and if what they say is worth reading cannot be guaranteed, but one thing you can depend on is the existence of drama. And when the drama involves the law, you can also rest assured that the vultures will come a-flocking, seeking their own five minutes of fame. What I’m talking about are cases where a suspected murderer, pedophile, or other miscreant is discovered to have kept a journal, cases like the following. A Matter of Death and Livejournal
by Neva Chonin
Sunday, March 27, 2005
It seems that Jeff Weise, who shot and killed four adults and five teenagers before turning the gun on himself at Minnesota's Red Lake High School last week, kept an online diary at LiveJournal.com titled "Thoughts of a Dreamer: Liberate your mind, bitch." He hadn't posted anything since January, but the final entries were still sad reading. To paraphrase Kurt Cobain (who appears in Weise's user icon), the kid hated himself and wanted to die. He never mentioned wanting to take anyone with him, but a lot can happen in a few months.
Weise, who described himself on his journal's user page as "nothin' but your average Native American stoner," was less than mellow in his last entry, dated Jan. 27: "Part of me has f -- died and I hate this s -- . I'm living every man's nightmare, and that single fact alone is kicking my ass. I really must be f -- worthless. This place never changes, it never will. F -- it all. " Also pessimistic on Jan. 4, he wrote, "The instrument of my resurrection was supposed to be freedom. But there isn't an open sky or endless field to be found where I reside, nor is there light or salvation to be discovered."
Pretty desolate. More disturbing than Weise's melancholy ruminations, though, are the thousands of posts that have been appearing in the journal's comments section since the shootings. A few posts express compassion; a few are accusatory, sent by fellow students who lost friends in the carnage. Others come from strangers venting rage. That's understandable, if a little strange. People get upset by calamities and need to blow off steam; why not do it on the dead shooter's own turf? Most of the commentary, however, is the work of online trolls -- attention-starved gadflies who buzz around the Internet starting fires so they can giggle while the flame wars burn. Not surprisingly, Jeff's LJ milk shake brought them all to the yard before administrators disabled comments Wednesday.
"I MISSED OUT ON COMMENTING IN THE LAST KILLING LIVEJOURNAL SO I'M POSTING IN THIS ONE,"
announced one troll, finger glued to his caps-lock key. Typically, the media describe Weise as a misfit, a loner, weird, anti-social. Man, they need to take a look at some of the people now posting in his journal. Apparently mass murder can be both fun and funny for those whose taste in entertainment runs toward the macabre and misspelled. What better way to gain 15 seconds of notoriety than by riding the coattails of a tragedy?
The trolls are just as clueless as the FBI, which is "struggling to piece together a motive" for the shooting spree and making much over the fact that Weise wore black clothes! And eyeliner! And drew "ghoulish cartoons of skeletons"! And listened to heavy metal! Yeah, and he probably played video games, too. Look, I can solve the mystery: Relatives said he was regularly teased. He was bubbling with rage and had access to a gun. End of story, yes?
Apparently not, when it's so much easier for technologically impaired investigators to blame youth culture -- and for technologically savvy kids to live up to Devil!Internet stereotypes by posting crack-addled commentary on Weise's public journal. Weise isn't the first infamous LiveJournaler to draw flies. Last November, one Rachelle Waterman's LJ erupted into troll-infested chaos after a newspaper in her hometown of Craig, Alaska, reported her arrest for first-degree murder. Rachelle, who liked to post about how much she hated her mother, allegedly solved her domestic problems by paying two local thugs to dispose of "the female parental unit" -- and then wrote about it, albeit vaguely ("Just to let everyone know, my mother was murdered ..."). Rachelle called her journal "My Crappy Life: The Inside Look of an Insane Person." The title could have described any one of the cretins who later jostled for fame by commenting on her journal.
The most distasteful case of comment abuse concerned John Lockhart, a pedophile on the lam. His LJ, under the user name "ohbutyouwillpet," bore the somewhat sinister title of "Ramblings of an Inverted Mind" and included this slice of creativity in its user profile: "Defile ... desecrate ... debase. Can you feel love in these desires? Is there any? I can smell you. Right now I can, though you are not here. I can feel the heat of you and see your blood as it rises in flush. Something ... has to give. Closer ... come closer ..." Well, he asked for it. The trolls descended in droves. Judging by the messages left, most could give Lockhart a run for his money in the race toward callous perversity: "POSTING ON LEGENDARY JOURNAL" (is a low IQ directly tied to the use of caps lock, I wonder?); "I hear you like them before their skull plates fuse"; "I'm a child hater, myself."
I’d say more about it, but I’m having trouble writing lately. The creative center of my brain feels all shriveled up.
by Neva Chonin
Sunday, March 27, 2005
It seems that Jeff Weise, who shot and killed four adults and five teenagers before turning the gun on himself at Minnesota's Red Lake High School last week, kept an online diary at LiveJournal.com titled "Thoughts of a Dreamer: Liberate your mind, bitch." He hadn't posted anything since January, but the final entries were still sad reading. To paraphrase Kurt Cobain (who appears in Weise's user icon), the kid hated himself and wanted to die. He never mentioned wanting to take anyone with him, but a lot can happen in a few months.
Weise, who described himself on his journal's user page as "nothin' but your average Native American stoner," was less than mellow in his last entry, dated Jan. 27: "Part of me has f -- died and I hate this s -- . I'm living every man's nightmare, and that single fact alone is kicking my ass. I really must be f -- worthless. This place never changes, it never will. F -- it all. " Also pessimistic on Jan. 4, he wrote, "The instrument of my resurrection was supposed to be freedom. But there isn't an open sky or endless field to be found where I reside, nor is there light or salvation to be discovered."
Pretty desolate. More disturbing than Weise's melancholy ruminations, though, are the thousands of posts that have been appearing in the journal's comments section since the shootings. A few posts express compassion; a few are accusatory, sent by fellow students who lost friends in the carnage. Others come from strangers venting rage. That's understandable, if a little strange. People get upset by calamities and need to blow off steam; why not do it on the dead shooter's own turf? Most of the commentary, however, is the work of online trolls -- attention-starved gadflies who buzz around the Internet starting fires so they can giggle while the flame wars burn. Not surprisingly, Jeff's LJ milk shake brought them all to the yard before administrators disabled comments Wednesday.
"I MISSED OUT ON COMMENTING IN THE LAST KILLING LIVEJOURNAL SO I'M POSTING IN THIS ONE,"
announced one troll, finger glued to his caps-lock key. Typically, the media describe Weise as a misfit, a loner, weird, anti-social. Man, they need to take a look at some of the people now posting in his journal. Apparently mass murder can be both fun and funny for those whose taste in entertainment runs toward the macabre and misspelled. What better way to gain 15 seconds of notoriety than by riding the coattails of a tragedy?
The trolls are just as clueless as the FBI, which is "struggling to piece together a motive" for the shooting spree and making much over the fact that Weise wore black clothes! And eyeliner! And drew "ghoulish cartoons of skeletons"! And listened to heavy metal! Yeah, and he probably played video games, too. Look, I can solve the mystery: Relatives said he was regularly teased. He was bubbling with rage and had access to a gun. End of story, yes?
Apparently not, when it's so much easier for technologically impaired investigators to blame youth culture -- and for technologically savvy kids to live up to Devil!Internet stereotypes by posting crack-addled commentary on Weise's public journal. Weise isn't the first infamous LiveJournaler to draw flies. Last November, one Rachelle Waterman's LJ erupted into troll-infested chaos after a newspaper in her hometown of Craig, Alaska, reported her arrest for first-degree murder. Rachelle, who liked to post about how much she hated her mother, allegedly solved her domestic problems by paying two local thugs to dispose of "the female parental unit" -- and then wrote about it, albeit vaguely ("Just to let everyone know, my mother was murdered ..."). Rachelle called her journal "My Crappy Life: The Inside Look of an Insane Person." The title could have described any one of the cretins who later jostled for fame by commenting on her journal.
The most distasteful case of comment abuse concerned John Lockhart, a pedophile on the lam. His LJ, under the user name "ohbutyouwillpet," bore the somewhat sinister title of "Ramblings of an Inverted Mind" and included this slice of creativity in its user profile: "Defile ... desecrate ... debase. Can you feel love in these desires? Is there any? I can smell you. Right now I can, though you are not here. I can feel the heat of you and see your blood as it rises in flush. Something ... has to give. Closer ... come closer ..." Well, he asked for it. The trolls descended in droves. Judging by the messages left, most could give Lockhart a run for his money in the race toward callous perversity: "POSTING ON LEGENDARY JOURNAL" (is a low IQ directly tied to the use of caps lock, I wonder?); "I hear you like them before their skull plates fuse"; "I'm a child hater, myself."
I’d say more about it, but I’m having trouble writing lately. The creative center of my brain feels all shriveled up.