VA Tech killer’s digital vanity package (NPR News “Xeni Tech”)

in

Xeni Jardin:



  • For today's edition of the NPR News program "Day to Day," I filed a report on internet reactions around the release of a so-called "multimedia manifesto" by the Virginia Tech murderer, Seung-hui Cho. After shooting two people, and before killing 32 more, he mailed a package to NBC News which included photos of himself posing with weapons; videos of him rambling in threatening, narcissistic psychobabble; and a long, written diatribe.

    The package is being described by some as "unprecedented," and by others as "a spree killer's EPK." Cho is now tagged by some as "the first Web 2.0 psycho killer," and the net result may be a possible template -- even a challenge -- for aspiring mass murderers.

    - - - - - -


    LISTEN:

    "The Virginia Tech Shooter's Digital Mark." Link to archived audio (Real/Win). Here's an MP3 Link. Or, listen to this report as an MP3 in the "Xeni Tech" podcast (subscribe via iTunes here). NPR "Xeni Tech" archives here.

    Also check out a related commentary about how to properly print and pronounce Korean names, filed yesterday by NPR "Day to Day" producer and contributor Ki-Min Sung: Link to audio.

    - - - - - -

  • For today's report, I spoke with Loren Coleman, author of "Copycat Effect." Coleman believes that by replaying Cho's vanity videos over and over again, the media is perpetuating the cycle that inspired him to commit multiple murders in the first place. In that multimedia material, Cho describes the two teens responsible for Columbine as "martyrs" -- Coleman says this and other details prove Cho was aping and trying to one-up previous shootings, including the one in Montreal last year.

  • Also in the report, blogger and Berkman Center for Internet and Society fellow Doc Searls. He believes NBC and other news organizations should release the material online in as much unedited entirety as possible, as soon as reasonably possible. Here's a snip from his blog today:

    This isn't just about disintermediation, intermediation or even "the media". It's about no longer depending on The Media alone. Naturally, the media still have roles to play. They are just no longer the only ones playing those roles.

    When Cho walked around shooting people, those in the best position to help each other were right there. The media that mattered most then, in real time, was direct contact by voice, hand signals, and mobile phones. People helping other people. That's still true now.

    Again, I'm not saying that The Media are bad, or wrong. Just that we no longer live in a world where we get our best information only from top-down few-to-many sources. This is about AND logic, not OR.

    Also, I am not saying that disclosing this stuff won't have bad consequences. It will certainly have many consequences. So will concealing it.

    (thanks, Dave Winer).

  • Author and Asian Pop Culture columnist Jeff Yang spoke with us about whether "crowdsourcing" the post-shooting investigation is an entirely good thing. Online armchair analysts pointed fingers in the wrong places sometimes this week. Wacky conspiracy theories circulated (even as reader comments here on BoingBoing, albeit with warnings), and a number of bloggers misidentified one innocent, Asian-American VA Tech student as the killer because of the content of his livejournal. Online theories and speculation are okay, said Yang, as long as we remember they're just that -- and as long as we can remember that all of this is about real people. Victims, survivors, investigators, and families. People who are personally and intimately connected to the tragedy that happened Monday.

    Here's a related piece Yang wrote for Salon.com: Link to "Killer reflection." ("Cho and other Asian shooters were portrayed as "smart but quiet" and "fundamentally foreign." What do these stereotypes reveal, and what do they obscure?")

  • Editorial note: you may notice we haven't posted any of the contents of Cho's package here on BoingBoing. The NPR report doesn't include it, either. I'm not arguing it's a bad thing to make that available in whole or in part for public review, in this or other cases involving similarly sensitive material. But it's getting an awful lot of distribution in a lot of other places right now, and much of that seems exploitative. It didn't seem necessary or responsible to replay the material, yet again, for the purpose of telling the NPR story or blogging about online reactions.

  • A related media footnote: to the credit of the program's editorial team, IMO, the hysteria-resistant "Day to Day" began today's show with the following lead stories, in this order: Gonzales hearings, Sudan airstrikes, Iraq, Iraq, Iraq.

  • And finally: DIY/low-budget filmmaking expert Paul Harrill (links: home, blog) teaches digital film and video production at Virginia Tech University. I read an item on his blog last night that addresses this concern (as he summarizes it, "news outlets using a mass murderer’s fantasies as sick spectacle and [...] a source of revenue"). I want to end this post with an excerpt from Paul's blog:

    The past 48 hours have been one long, ongoing demonstration of what Jill Godmilow, in both her incomparable film What Farocki Taught and her essay “What’s Wrong with the Liberal Documentary?, labels “the pornography of the real”:


    The “pornography of the real” involves the highly suspect, psychic pleasure of viewing “the moving picture real” … a powerful pornographic interest in real people, real death, real destruction and real suffering, especially of “others”, commodities in film. These “pleasures” are not brought to our attention. The pornographic aspect is masked in the documentary by assurances that the film delivers only the actually existing real — thus sincere truths that we need to know about.


    [...]I think of storytelling as a kind of citizenship, so I don’t blame people for wanting to know the stories unfolding in Blacksburg, nor do I blame journalists for telling those stories. Still, how one gathers the facts, why you gather them, and the way you tell them can’t be separated from the story you’re telling.

    Link, and here's another post from his site.

    - - - - - - - - - -

    Previously on BB:

  • VA Tech: Cho sent "multimedia manifesto" to NBC; Siva on tech judgement rush
  • VA Tech shootings: world perspective
  • VA Tech shootings: SMS alert systems, more "copycat" discussion
  • VA Tech shootings: Wikipedia, federal drug records database
  • VA Tech Shootings: Cho Seung-Hui, murderer and playwright?
  • VA Tech mass shooting: Who or what is Ismail Ax?
  • VA Tech: guns on campus, TV producers on Facebook
  • VA Tech: questions, copycat odds, and 'net nabs wrong man
  • VA Tech massacre: 33+ dead, largest shooting in US history

    - - - - - - - - - -

    READER COMMENTS: your responses and related discussion after the jump.

    Steven Silvers says,

    Where there's tragedy, there's a press release selling something. Less than 48 hours after the shootings, a national telecom company issues a press release blaming Virginia Tech management, and suggesting that the murders would not have happened if the school had purchased its call-alert services. Link.

    CJ says,

    Perennial LOL generator Fox News endorses the opinion that the devil made Cho Seung-Hui kill several people. It's rambling, reactionary, involves several ellipses, and is just generally insulting to everyone that might even so much as look at the URL.

    Drew says,

    Here is a story about police in the Sacramento area looking for a copycat who threatened to, "carry out a rampage that 'will make Virginia Tech look mild.'"

    PeaceLove says,

    Among the tragedy coming out of Virgina Tech this week is the loss of 22 year old Dan O'Neil, a talented musician. His website contains some beautiful songs you might want to check out: Link.

    Adam Selvidge says,


    Chris over at cynical-c has a list (with links) of who the media is blaming for the VT shootings, including, but not limited to: It’s the fault of violent video games. It’s the fault of movies. It’s that no other students were armed. It’s the cowardly students who didn’t rush the shooter. It’s the first victim’s fault It’s secularism’s fault. It’s the Muslims’ and/or foreigners’ fault.

    Brad Flora says,

    What's Google charging the NYTimes for "VTech Shooting" ads? The Times and Washington Post have, rather pathetically, started buying search result ads from Google to funnel traffic to their VTech shooting coverage. Whose bright idea was this and what's Google charging them? AdWords offers an answer, as detailed in this post, but how accurate is it? And what does this mean for how big news will break in the future? Link.

    Andrew Jimenez says,

    I know media coverage of the Virgina Tech shooting is probably overwhelming at this point, but I just posted on my blog an opinion piece on the coverage thus far--in particular, today's (yesterday, now) Newsday--as well as glorification of killers in general. Link.

    Jeff says,

    Yesterday, I accused MSNBC of glorifying the Virginia Tech shooter by putting his PR package across their Web site cover page. Today, I got an interesting comment on my blog from Jim Ray, one of the editors there (I used to work there many years ago).

    "It's never easy when a media organization becomes part of the story, but we're not some monolithic block taking marching orders from our corporate overlords. There are real people making real decisions about how to handle these situations and I, for one, am proud of how we handled this one."

    But if you look on Ray's blog for yesterday, he has a screenshot of ABC screenshotting MSNBC's scoop ABC News posted a screen grab of our site on their homepage today. Rock the meta!"

    This does nothing to back up the idea that NBC handled this in a responsible manner.

    I agree these materials belong in the public domain, at some point. But the front page should feature photos of victims. The killer and his PR package should be relegated to the back.

    By publishing these on the front page, MSNBC gave every other media outlet a pass to republish them. They won't publish graphic photos from Iraq ... so why this?

    Link.

    (Via Boing Boing.)

    • VA Tech: Scientologists descend on grieving students

    in

    VA Tech: Jamie Bishop, son of sf writer Michael Bishop, among victims

    in

    Xeni Jardin:


    BP says,

    One of the victims in the VT shooting was Christopher James Bishop (Jamie Bishop), a German Instructor. He was teaching German language but was also a skilled Academic Tech Liaison who knew his way around applications.

    He kept a site of his work and projects here (Link) along with a portfolio. Some of the design work is pretty impressive, and he cites influences including Neil Gaiman and Frank Miller. His illustrations are in the portfolio under ‘illo’ and his flash and web work might be of interest to bb readers. (see his use of flash to teach lyrics to a German rap song, here: (Link).

    The NY Times has a short piece about him here (Link).

    His father is the [Hugo & Locus Award winning] science fiction writer Michael Bishop.


    More on the murder of Christopher James Bishop at Making Light, here, and many blogs and livejournals including this one here. (Thanks, Freddie).

    Previously on BB:

  • VA Tech: Cho sent "multimedia manifesto" to NBC; Siva on tech judgement rush
  • Why the shootings mean that we must support my politics
  • VA Tech shootings: world perspective
  • VA Tech shootings: SMS alert systems, more "copycat" discussion
  • VA Tech shootings: Wikipedia, federal drug records database
  • VA Tech Shootings: Cho Seung-Hui, murderer and playwright?
  • VA Tech mass shooting: Who or what is Ismail Ax?
  • VA Tech: guns on campus, TV producers on Facebook
  • VA Tech: questions, copycat odds, and 'net nabs wrong man
  • VA Tech massacre: 33+ dead, largest shooting in US history

    (Via Boing Boing.)

    • VA Tech: Cho sent “multimedia manifesto” to NBC; Siva on tech judgement rush

    in

    Xeni Jardin:
    MSNBC is reporting that Cho Seung-Hui, the alleged gunman in Monday's Virginia Tech killings, mailed a package of correspondence to NBC News during the two hours between the first and second shootings. NBC has shared the contents (said to include QuickTime videos, digital photos, other images, and text) with FBI investigators:

    "We received a package that included some images a lengthy diatribe. We believe it may shed some light on what he was doing between the first shooting and the second. It includes some images, and a disturbing, rambling, multi-page statement. (...) We are not going to give out any specifics of the information."


    Via TV Newser.

    UPDATE: NBC has published a statement. Snip:

    Brian Williams, anchor and managing editor of “NBC Nightly News,” said in a posting on the program’s “Daily Nightly” blog that the communication was received earlier Wednesday. He described it as a very long “multimedia manifesto.”

    The package, timestamped in the two-hour window between Monday's shootings, was sent to NBC News head Steve Capus.It contained digital photos of the gunman holding weapons and a manifesto that "rants against rich people and warns that he wants to get even," The Associated Press quoted an unidentified New York law enforcement official familiar with the case as saying. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly about it.

    Police said the development might be "a very new, critical component of this investigation.""We're in the process right now of attempting to analyze and evaluate its worth," said Col. Steve Flaherty, superintendent of Virginia State Police.

    Link.

  • Siva Vaidhyanathan has posted an op-ed for MSNBC.com about the rush to "technological judgement" after the Virginia Tech shootings:

    Over the next few days, as we wonder about causes and mourn those who fell victim to gunfire at Virginia Tech University on Monday, we will hear many fervent, ill-advised calls for quick technological fixes meant to prevent another such incident.

    We will hear "experts" on cable news shows blame video games for the rise in gun violence among young people - despite the fact that the rise in popularity of violent video games coincides with a remarkable drop in gun violence in all sectors of American society.

    We will hear others blame the university for not investing in technology that would have made it easier to alert students about the unfolding events. And we have already read foolish calls from conservative law professors and others who insist that deregulating a particularly deadly technology — firearms — would make our campuses safer. After all, they argue, if someone had been able to shoot back at the attacker, fewer people would have died. So Virginia should allow firearms on campus, they argue.

    But as we begin to examine what happened Monday morning in Blacksburg, we must resist the temptation to rush to judgment and draw ill-conceived lessons from the event while emotions are so raw and the pain so intense.

    As a culture, we are very bad at thinking about technology. We look to it either as something to fear or as a panacea for the flaws of the human condition. Technology is neither. It is merely an extension of our own wills and capabilities.

    Read the whole thing here: Link.

    Previously on BB:

  • VA Tech shootings: world perspective
  • VA Tech shootings: SMS alert systems, more "copycat" discussion
  • VA Tech shootings: Wikipedia, federal drug records database
  • VA Tech Shootings: Cho Seung-Hui, murderer and playwright?
  • VA Tech mass shooting: Who or what is Ismail Ax?
  • VA Tech: guns on campus, TV producers on Facebook
  • VA Tech: questions, copycat odds, and 'net nabs wrong man
  • VA Tech massacre: 33+ dead, largest shooting in US history

    (Via Boing Boing.)

    • VA Tech shootings: SMS alert systems, more “copycat” discussion

    in

    Xeni Jardin:

  • BoingBoing reader Bill Koslosky, MD says,

    What about protecting campuses using cell phone technology? Here's an article from The Roanoke Times online from last September that reports Virginia Tech was considering an SMS alert system for their campus considering that there was a prison escapee who was shot and killed just off campus on the first day of classes.

    There are companies that offer these services, and they make the point that while the vast majority of students carry cell phones, they are less likely to check school e-mail. Rave Wireless also offers GPS tracking by campus security for those students who feel threatened.

  • Here's a Bloomberg article about renewed attention surrounding school campus crisis security procedures, and the more immediate potential security dangers after Monday's incident -- the "Copycat Effect":
    After Columbine, there were 450 copycat threats, plots or shootings,
    according to Loren Coleman, a suicide prevention and school violence
    consultant. Schools in seven states were locked down or evacuated yesterday,
    the Associated Press reported.

    "Homicide is just a suicide turned outward,'' Coleman, author of the 2004
    book, "The Copycat Effect,'' said in an interview. "If we focus on analysis
    around the act, rather than to how people feel and react to this, then we
    have problems.''

    Link.

    But there's another security story that's not mentioned in this article. The part of the story that unfolded before Cho bought the guns and ammunition. He exhibited antisocial, threatening behavior for quite some time before he packed up weapons and killed 32 people. Much of that threatening behavior was directed at women. One female teacher reports being afraid for her safety when tutoring him alone. Cho is reported to have obsessively, persistently stalked (online, via instant messaging, and in person) a number of female students who lived on campus. By accounts now surfacing in the news, police came to speak with victims in one case (maybe more? maybe not), but no charges were ever filed, no further action taken, and the behavior continued to escalate. If even a misdemeanor charge had been on record, would he have been able to obtain those weapons so easily? Did nothing happen because the law enforcement system involved -- really, all of us -- don't take violent crime and threatening behavior against women as seriously as we should? Maybe none of that would have made a difference, but it's a question worth asking.

  • BoingBoing reader modality says,

    Two of my friends from Blekinge Tekniska Högskola in Sweden were visiting Virginia Tech when the shootings occurred, and one of them had his camera with him and captured 14 minutes of video: Link.

  • BB reader Mike Freeman says,

    Ad Age has an article about media companies purchasing Google Adwords keywords for the Virginia Tech shooting. From Canada I get an ad for thefirstpost.co.uk when searching "virginia tech shooting" but not for "virginia tech" or "shooting" on their own. US searchers may be getting more ads. Brings up an interesting question of whether this is ok (there would be no problem doing this for a 'positive' news story) or whether it's just plain icky.

    Previously on BB:

  • Why the shootings mean that we must support my politics
  • VA Tech shootings: Wikipedia, federal drug records database
  • VA Tech Shootings: Cho Seung-Hui, murderer and playwright?
  • VA Tech mass shooting: Who or what is Ismail Ax?
  • VA Tech: guns on campus, TV producers on Facebook
  • VA Tech: questions, copycat odds, and 'net nabs wrong man
  • VA Tech massacre: 33+ dead, largest shooting in US history

    - - - - - - - - - -

    Reader comments: Attorney Laura S. Petelle of Peoria, IL, says,


    Re: the lack of misdemeanor reports about the student -- I would suspect that most of these allegations were made to campus police, and there is not a university in this country that accurately reports its crime statistics because they are now made public every year. There's rampant massaging of statistics and lots of pressure from campus police and administration to NOT report. Students are often railroaded into a "campus arbitration" system under the belief that by reporting to the campus police, the crime becomes reported, when in fact it falls into the administration's hands and doesn't join the crime statistics. Then they're put through a campus arbitration if the administration is seriously concerned they might proscecute, and these things can be dragged on long enough that the Statute of Limitations runs out for the victim to report and prosecute through traditional channels.

    I'm most familiar with a particular sort of crime -- acquaintance rape -- because I went to a Division I football school, and we had a handful of women run off campus while I was there for having the temerity to report a rape by a scholarship football players, which was then generally played off as "she just feels guilty about it the morning after, so she's crying rape." (In the "small world" file, a football player - I can't for the life of me remember his name - sexually assaulted a woman four doors down from me in the dorm, and her parents were wealthy and powerful enough that the school quietly made him transfer to a DIFFERENT Division I football school, wherefrom he popped up at a summer camp for pre-teens where I was working as a camp counselor and he was an "inspirational speaker." Charming.)

    If you speak to student editors at independent student newspapers, particularly at sports schools, you'll get an earful about the crimes they hear about (and sometimes report on) that are somehow miraculously kept off the crime reports. I'm seven years out now, so I'm not very connected with the current issues with crime reporting, but I'm sure student editors could give you a complete rundown.

    If these women who were being stalked complained to campus police and no charges were pursued, this is the heartbreakingly inevitable outcome of campuses pursuing a policy of lying about campus crime statistics to worried parents to protect the school's image and tuition dollars.

    Author and journalist Charles Platt says,

    After a mass shooting, many people feel a strange need to claim prescience. "We always knew there was something about him ... the clothes he wore ... the poems he wrote ... the funny way he looked at me...."

    Thisis bogus, especially in the current case. The two plays that the student wrote were unremarkable; far less violent than many comics. If I had seen this text in one of the writing classes I used to teach, I would have thought nothing of it. The student did not have a large gun collection (two handguns only, apparently); was not a goth; did not target only women.

    He did apparently leave a long note explaining why he did it. This would be a lot more useful than pontifications from those claiming retroactive diagnostic abilities.

    "Anonymous Rochester Institute of Technology Student" says,

    Copycats of the VT Shooter are starting to spring up. Not even a full day after the horrific events at VT, I get this lovely email in my campus mailbox:

    On April 17, 2007 at approximately 11:25 AM, a staff member at the RIT Inn & Conference Center reportedly heard a suspicious sound coming from inside a student’s room. The alert staff member contacted RIT Public Safety.

    RIT Public Safety and the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office responded to the room, where a student admitted possessing two unloaded illegal firearms that he said he had just assembled. No live ammunition was found in the guns, however the Sheriff’s Office found ammunition inside the student’s parked vehicle. The student was suspended from the university and the Sheriff’s Office investigation continues.


    Link to a local Rochester paper that has more info on the story.

    Adam Backstrom says,

    I'm an RIT Alum, so the recent student arrest and it's mention on BoingBoing is of particular interest to me. (I had caught the story a few hours earlier via Facebook.) While Hackenburg did violate the law and his timing is pretty bad considering what happened at VA Tech, the WHAM article does not paint the picture of a maladjusted teen preparing to shoot up his school.

    I think it's important to make the distinction between a gun hobbyist who perhaps lacks some common sense and a suicidal mass-murderer.

    Jacob Patton says,

    Why don't groups use Twitter for their SMSM emergency alert systems? It's working for earthquake notifications in the Bay Area and must be useful in other emergency situations, too. (See my blog post from yesterday for more info.)

    Alan Seideman of loopnote says,

    We've gotten a few emails over the last couple days asking us if loopnote can be used for emergencies like these. If there had been a way to alert students via their phones about the danger on campus, perhaps the losses could have been fewer. While we definitely didn't build the service specifically for emergency situations, I think it makes perfect sense. Over the last few weeks we've been thinking about ways that groups communicate with each other. Each group consists of people who want to get information out and people who want to consume the information. For emergency "groups" like this, where the group consists of students/staff as well as emergency coordinators like campus police, it's important that the student body and staff be added to the group in an easy way. This brings up the issue of opt-in vs. opt-out subscriptions. Campus police needs to have information for students such as their email addresses and their phone numbers and phone carriers. With that information, they'd be able to create a "loop" on our site and manually subscribe others to that group.

    One of the things we're working on is a way to make it easier for "loop" owners to manually subscribe people to their loops. That's relevant because for an Emergency alert service you'd really want all the students to be subscribed but not have to depend on them to manually subscribe themselves. We initially thought that all subscriptions would need to be initiated by the subscriber because that was the least intrusive way to do things. We didn't want people to start getting spammed by loop owners. So we created loops and said that if anyone wanted to subscribe, they had to come to the site, find the loop, and then register before signing up.

    Later we realized that this wasn't necessarily the easiest way to do things and that in most cases subscribers would be happy if someone else (friends, family, their school) signed them for some type of alert - as long as they had the option to unsubscribe. So we've come up with a middle ground which I think works really well. A loop owner can subscribe others to their loop via email, im, or sms. Each subscriber will get a message asking them to confirm their subscription. This opt-out model works best because it has a low barrier to entry for subscribers but still gives people the control to stop spam and other abuses.

    We'd like to let schools and other organizations interested in setting up emergency alerts know that they can get in touch with us personally and we'll help them set things up. The service is free by the way. They can email us at info@loopnote.com.

    (Via Boing Boing.)

    • VA Tech shootings: Wikipedia, federal drug records database

    in

    Xeni Jardin:

  • BB reader Jess Hemerly says,

    In case you haven't seen it, the Wikipedia entry for the Virginia Tech Shootings is one of the most thorough and quite honestly amazing Wikipedia entries I've ever seen. The number of edits and the short time between edits in the History... kinda incredible.

  • W. Vann Hall says,

    This quote from an ABC News story contains a disturbing piece of information:

    Some news accounts have suggested that Cho had a history of
    antidepressant use, but senior federal officials tell ABC News that
    they can find no record of such medication in the government's files.
    This does not completely rule out prescription drug use, including
    samples from a physician, drugs obtained through illegal Internet
    sources, or a gap in the federal database, but the sources say theirs
    is a reasonably complete search.

    Somehow I missed the signing into law of NASPER, the National All-Schedules Prescription Electronic Reporting Act of 2005 (assuming the 'federal database' referenced is actually the combined databases of states accepting NASPER funding).

    Unfortunately, as I read subsections (f)(1) and (g) of the Act, it doesn't seem to allow searches such as this one. Must've been a signing statement attached: Link.

    BB reader Paul Pellerito writes in...

    The "federal drugs database" mentioned in your recent post about the VA tech shootings seems to be somewhat flawed; the funding is for states to adopt registries reporting schedules II-V controlled substances (spam-email things like ritalin, valium, xanax, adderall, vicodin, and oxycontin) but the most commonly prescribed antidepressants like prozac, lexapro, zoloft, effexor, etc are schedule six and thus not considered controlled substances. My day job is working in a pharmacy in Michigan, and we do not report schedule VI to any state or federal database. Chances are if Cho was on an antidepressant the record would not be in a national database. His pharmacy and his prescription insurance company will know, however.

  • Ryan Singel at Wired's Threat Level blog has assembled a collection of links to online social network profiles for some of the Virginia Tech students who lost their lives in Monday's mass shooting. Link.

  • Videogame abolitionist Jack Thompson has been parading before Fox News' cameras to blame the VA Tech shootings on electronic games. Kotaku editor Brian Crecente lists seven reasons this is bullshit: Link. (Thanks, Joel Simmons)

    Previously on BB:

  • VA Tech Shootings: Cho Seung-Hui, murderer and playwright?
  • VA Tech mass shooting: Who or what is Ismail Ax?
  • VA Tech: guns on campus, TV producers on Facebook
  • VA Tech: questions, copycat odds, and 'net nabs wrong man
  • VA Tech massacre: 33+ dead, largest shooting in US history

    (Via Boing Boing.)

    • VA Tech Shootings: Cho Seung-Hui, murderer and playwright?

    in

    Xeni Jardin:



    AOL News has posted what are identified as two plays written by accused (and deceased) Virginia Tech mass murderer Cho Seung-Hui: Link. Above, page 9 of his play titled "Richard McBeef." A second play, titled "Mr. Brownstone" will be scanned and posted shortly, according to blog editors. (thanks, Coates)

    An AOL employee and former classmate of the accused killer writes,

    When I first heard about the multiple shootings at Virginia Tech yesterday, my first thought was about my friends, and my second thought was "I bet it was Seung Cho."

    Cho was in my playwriting class last fall, and nobody seemed to think much of him at first. He would sit by himself whenever possible, and didn't like talking to anyone. I don't think I've ever actually heard his voice before. He was just so quiet and kept to himself. Looking back, he fit the exact stereotype of what one would typically think of as a "school shooter" – a loner, obsessed with violence, and serious personal problems. (...)

    When we read Cho's plays, it was like something out of a nightmare. The plays had really twisted, macabre violence that used weapons I wouldn't have even thought of. Before Cho got to class that day, we students were talking to each other with serious worry about whether he could be a school shooter. I was even thinking of scenarios of what I would do in case he did come in with a gun, I was that freaked out about him. When the students gave reviews of his play in class, we were very careful with our words in case he decided to snap. Even the professor didn't pressure him to give closing comments.

    Link to full text of post.

    Reader comment:
     Josh says,

    Just wanted to leave a comment before too strong an inference is drawn between Cho Seung-Hui's graphic writing and yesterday's events. Violent imagery in fiction does not necessarily involve violent intent on the part of the author, despite what campus police at the University of Florida Gainesville unfairly attempted to suggest last year (see May 22, 2006 post on Boing Boing).


    (Via Boing Boing.)

    VA Tech mass shooting: Who or what is Ismail Ax? UPDATED

    in

    Xeni Jardin:
    B. Frank says,

    The Virginia Tech shooter [Cho Seung-Hui] had the words "“Ismail Ax"” written in red ink on his arm, according to this blog from the Chicago Tribune.

    What does that mean? A google search shows nothing. Maybe the readers of Boing Boing could shed some light on this?

    My research so far only tells me:

    -Ismail is an Islamic prophet.

    -AX may also stand for the Alpha Chi Omega women’s fraternity, which I found does have a chapter at Virginia Tech.

    Any other ideas? I know in the grand scheme of things, it's irrelevant, but for me, trying to shed some light on the psychology of the person responsible for tragedy is a way of dealing.

    Previously on BB:

  • VA Tech: guns on campus, TV producers on Facebook
  • VA Tech: questions, copycat odds, and 'net nabs wrong man
  • VA Tech massacre: 33+ dead, largest shooting in US history

    Reader comment: Regarding a photo which may or may not have anything to do with this story, and this person -- Gabe says,

    I found this photo dated August 1, 2006 on Flickr. Caption: "He's a South Korean. Ismail is not his real name. He use it because his name is very hard to pronounce, especially for Indonesian people. His real name is Cho Seung Hoo ....... or is it Jo Sung Ho?"



    (Mirror here).

    Chomjangi says,

    Elda Rossell, the user who posted the photo on Flicker has a blog entry at this link regarding Ismail. Can anyone translate?

    Brian says,

    He may have been trying to write the name "Ishmael." Wikipedia notes: "The name has come to symbolize orphans, exiles, and social outcasts."

    BB reader William McEwan points to this possible link, in Islamic theological history:

    Ibrahim Confronts his People and Rejects their Idols

    He left his father after he lost hope to convert him to the right path, and directed his efforts towards the people of the town, but they rejected his call and threatened him. By Allah, he said, I shall plot a plan to destroy their idols. He knew that a big celebration was coming soon, where everybody would leave town for a big feast on the riverbank. After making sure that nobody was left in town, Ibrahim went towards the temple armed with an ax. Statues of all shapes and sizes were sitting there adorned with decorations. Plates of food were offered to them, but the food was untouched. "Well, why don’t you eat? The food is getting cold." He said to the statues, joking; then with his axe he destroyed all the statues except one, the biggest of them. He hung the ax around its neck and left.

    Michael Spencer adds,

    The conspiracist side of me notes that the semi-legendary Hashshashin (from which we get the word assassin) were Ismailis, a subsect of the Shi'a. Fans of William S. Burroughs and Robert Anton Wilson will be familiar with the assassins of Hasan Sabah. Here's a link to a page about the Ismailis and the Assasins (scroll down). It's probably just a coincidence, but I thought I'd throw it into the mix. Thanks for your excellent reporting.

    Steve says,

    This guy seems to have found a fairly convinving explanation. Especially if it turns out that Seung-Hui was Muslim.

    "For those of you still searching for meaning in this phrase, written in ink on Cho Seung-Hui's arm and also how he signed his infamous note, it starts with the story of Ibrahim's Ax (Ibrahim = Abraham):

    After making sure that nobody was left in town, Ibrahim went towards the temple armed with an ax. Statues of all shapes and sizes were sitting there adorned with decorations. Plates of food were offered to them, but the food was untouched. "Well, why don't you eat? The food is getting cold." He said to the statues, joking; then with his ax he destroyed all the statues except one, the biggest of them. He hung the ax around its neck and left.
    --The Koran

    Ismail was Ibrahim's son. It was Ismail that Ibrahim wanted to sacrifice for Yahweh (with an ax)."

    Mithras Invicti says,

    I looked at the pics on Elda Rossell's flikr, figured out she's Indonesian, then ran the blog post through an Indonesian-English machine translator and got this (crappy but helpful) output:

    Just sy was finished chatted with one of the guests WH. he South Koreans. His name of Ismail. Yep… you gak wrong read … his name of Ismail.

    Sy surprised also by the name of him, trus sy tny he, is it true that that his name.
    Evidently that his Indonesian name, the name in fact was Jo Sung Ho.

    He and several of his colleagues from KorSel, was studying Indonesian for 2 months in WH. after that he will go to Palembang to teach the computer in the TECHNICAL COLLEGE OF MACHINERY for 2 years.

    Ow, susye true chatted was the same Ismail/Sung Ho … because he was not yet fluent in Indonesian. Bhs England then only a little (sami mawon sm sy).

    But according to sy, he has been moderate could compared to his friends (sy sometimes still liked to laugh in view of the fact that his friend had difficulty really asked Indonesian).
    Trus sy every was the same Ismail, he must often chat with Indonesians yg was in WH.


    By the way the matter of the name, they were asked to choose the Indonesian name personally. Sy asked why Sung Ho chose the Ismail name, he every because he wanted to be friends with the person Islam. Trus he mentioned the veil, then mentioned the name of Ms Siam (one of the employees WH) that wore the veil.

    Sy also asked whether the Indonesian name his friends. Ismail mentioned Indra, the Torment … yep…ka you also were not wrong read … was yg his name the Torment, bayangin then!
    .

    Sy, Mbak Rus and yg other agreed if the name must be replaced.
    Possibly sy tomorrow could speak first with Ismail ttg this because we janjian to chat again tomorrow night.


    Palembang is an Indonesian city. Googling KorSel Indonesia results in a team playing in badminton tournaments there. My interpretation is that this took place in Indonesia. Nothing about the shooter indicates he visited (much less studied or worked) there. So, I guess it's not the guy.

    Daniel J. Geduld says,

    Not sure if this is a connection or not, but it very possibly
    could be. A searchon 'Ishmael's Ax' (I realize the spelling is
    slightly different, but if the killer wrote that, I'm guessing
    spelling was not in his right mind) comes up with a link in the book
    Ishmael by E.D.E.N. Southworth [ aka Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth ].

    Here is how the novel is described:

    "E.D.E.N. Southworth considers Ishmael to be her very best work, being
    founded on the life of one of the noblest of our countrymen who really
    lived, suffered, toiled, and triumphed in this land. Its inspirations
    of wisdom and goodness were drawn from the examples of heroic warriors
    and statesmen of the Revolution. Ishmael—born in the depths of
    poverty, misery, and humiliation and raised to the summit of fame—was
    good as well as great. His life is proof that there is no depth of
    human misery from which we may not, by virtue, energy, and
    perseverance, rise to earthly honors, and by God's grace, attain
    eternal glory    ."

    Here is the relevant section:

    ----------

    "Well, Hannah, my dear, I'm thankful as you feel any interest in me at
    all; and I'll tell you everything. Let me see, what was it you was
    wanting to know, now? all about myself; where I was living; how I was
    getting along; and what fotch me back here; all soon told, Hannah, my
    dear.

    First about myself: You see, Hannah, that day as you slammed the
    door in my face I felt so distressed in my mind as I didn't care what on
    earth became of me; first I thought I'd just 'list for a soldier; then I
    thought I'd ship for a sailor; last I thought I'd go and seek my fortun'
    in Californy; but then the idea of the girls having no protector but
    myself hindered of me; hows'evar, anyways I made up my mind, as come
    what would I'd leave the neighborhood first opportunity; and so, soon
    after, as I heard of a situation as overseer at Judge Merlin's
    plantation up in the forest of Prince George's County, I sets off and
    walks up there, and offers myself for the place; and was so fort'nate as
    to be taken; so I comes back and moves my family, bag and baggage, up
    there.

    Now as to the place where I live, it is called Tanglewood, and a
    tangle it is, as gets more and more tangled every year of its life. As
    to how I'm getting on, Hannah, I can't complain; for if I have to do
    very hard work, I get very good wages.

    As to what brought me back to the
    neighborhood, Hannah, it was to do some business for the judge, and to
    buy some stock for the farm. But there, my dear! that boy has slipped
    out, and is cutting the wood; I'll go and do it for him," said Reuben,
    as the sound of Ishmael's ax fell upon his ears.

    Hannah arose and followed Gray to the door, and there before it stood
    Ishmael, chopping away at random, upon the pile of wood, his cheeks
    flushed with fever and his eyes wild with excitement.

    "Hannah, he is ill; he is very ill; he doesn't well know what he is
    about," said Reuben, taking the ax from the boy's hand.

    "Ishmael, Ishmael, my lad, come in; you are not well enough to work,"
    said Hannah anxiously.

    Ishmael yielded up the ax and suffered Reuben to draw him into the
    house.

    "It is only that I am so hot and dizzy and weak, Mr. Middleton; but I am
    sure I shall be able to do it presently," said Ishmael apologetically,
    as he put his hand to his head and looked around himself in perplexity.

    "I'll tell you what, the boy is out of his head, Hannah, and it's my
    belief as he's a going to have a bad illness," said Reuben, as he guided
    Ishmael to the bed and laid him on it.

    "Oh, Reuben! what shall we do?" exclaimed Hannah.

    "I don't know, child! wait a bit and see."


    Link downloadable text of "Ishmael by Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth" at Project Gutenberg.

    (Via Boing Boing.)