Tumblr's Columbine Culture

Social media is, if anything, another type of outlet available to us to express feelings, parade achievements, and to give announcements. In the same heights of popularity as Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter, Tumblr acts as a type of “blog” service, where profiles are arranged by reposted (or original) content. Similar to other social media platforms as well, Tumblr hosts a hashtag system, making it easy to find your interests on such a large site.

The infamous Columbine community gained its notoriety in 2015, when James Gamble, a 19-year-old Nova Scotian, posted his plans under the “Columbiner” hashtag to hold a shooting at a nearby mall. Upon looking at his Tumblr blog, police found that it was completely based on the two Columbine shooters, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold. What they found was obsession and approval from Gamble, an active part of this newfound Columbine community. Soon afterwards, a light was shown on the niche fan community of Tumblr, with many shocked at the vast popularity of it.

If you looked up the “Columbiner” tag on April 2^nd, 2018, you would find what I found: photo compilations of the two killers (caption: “pics of them smiling are the best”), mood boards (many of which are tagged as “requested”), uncomfortable “memes” making light of the tragedy, and text posts regarding the rather strong emotional ties of the users to Klebold and Harris.

Those who take part in the community refer to themselves as Columbine “experts,” posting speculation on the various journal entries, videos, and stories of Harris and Klebold while partaking in discussion with one another. Each part of the limited content that is given out publicly regarding the shooting has no doubt been poured over by the Tumblr Columbine community tenfold.

Other parts of the community deviate from their self-lead research to partake in more “creative” pursuits regarding Harris and Klebold. Fan art of the two is prominent, and the “Columbiners” also deviate to writing fictional and romantic stories surrounding the two (the stories often having some type of “self-insert” by the author). Fetishization of the two killers is, in short, incredibly prominent.

I spoke to three different “Columbiner” blogs, each with some spin on Harris and Klebold for their usernames (“harris-eric-klebold-dylan,” “klebuld,” and “harris42klebold0”).

For one, the strongest commonality between the three were the ages. All of them were reported to be under 18, thus not alive during the Columbine tragedy. Two of the three did not live in the United States either. Rather, they lived in the United Kingdom. When asked about the coverage of Columbine in their schools, the two that lived in the United Kingdom said that it was fairly little. For “harris-eric-klebold-dylan,” the book Columbine by Dave Cullen was a required piece of reading material for freshman. 

The book itself is controversial in the Columbiner community, primarily because they believe it shows Klebold as being a follower, Cullen’s implied self-diagnosing of Harris and Klebold’s mental states, and Cullen’s lack of mention to Klebold and Harris being treated poorly in their high school. In a strange way, it is also treated as a rite of passage to be blocked by Cullen on various forms of social media.

When asked about what they get out of this pastime, the responses were varied, but ultimately the same. For all three, it was a matter of being part of a community. Repeated themes were that of support and understanding. They seem to understand that they are on the fringes of a large social media platform and are not unused to negativity. In this way, they devote themselves to each other and their accounts even more.

Of course, the largest question surrounding the online Columbine community is why they hold empathy for two mass murderers. Most of it surrounds the lives of Harris and Klebold. Referencing the two boys’ poor school lives and personal failures, the Columbine community seems to find pity on them, seeing their acts as a product of their environment. Harris42klebold0 said, “I think it would’ve been telling them that school is shit and people are shit often, but that doesn’t mean your life has to be, you know?” In short, the empathy seems to lie in a lot of “what if.” What if someone had stepped in to stop the dangerous behavior by Harris and Klebold? What if someone had shown that they cared? Those are the primary concerns of the Columbine community. A post by a deactivated account called “asylum-of-creeps-and-killers” (reposted by another named “dylansgirl1999”), reads, “Being a true Columbiner means standing up for those who can’t stand up for themselves. Columbiners aren’t bullies. We fight the bullies. We fight for all the other Erics and Dylans out there and we give them something to believe in… Being a true Columbiner is about being the type of person Eric and Dylan needed in their lives. People who listen and care to those who are ignored.” In a way, the proclaimed mantra of the Columbine community is to lend an ear to those who experience the same thing as Harris and Klebold.

When asked about what they would say to someone who disagreed with their lifestyle, one of the blogs said, “Look into the subject more, they were disturbed kids who cried out for help but never got it. They were kids like us. They got bullied endlessly and snapped. Look into it more and try to understand them.”

While the delve into Tumblr Columbine culture is not recommended, it is hard to ignore the prominent idea behind it: an obsession of those who have committed atrocities. On a greater scale, the Columbine culture is only a small part of Tumblr's odd underbelly - every popular criminal and murderer has, without a doubt, been fetishized on the website. However, the "Columbiners" still find themselves as a trademark of strange social media culture, and arguably, for good reason - at the end of the day, sympathy from an online community will not change the events that happened on April 20, 1999.