Icons For Columbine
Posted: Fri Jul 31, 2026 1:55 pm
Nowadays, at least online, across the internet, and pretty much any social platform you can fathom, bullying is a virtue. It's funny when someone does something that isn't socially acceptable, or morally impure, because it gives you a target. Somewhere to point your aggression. And as you recreate high school over and over again in ways that you can feel superior to others for no other reason than to compensate for the inferiority you've probably felt your whole life: It makes me think of my own experiences.
When I was a child, the bullying wasn't immediate. It's not something that started the second I stepped foot into school as a six year old. It was very gradual, and I think it began to really culminate in middle school, and especially high school.
See, I was one of those kids who ... wore glasses. And liked videogames, and action movies. And this was nerdy and dumb and stupid. But I was a child. I didn't really know, or understand that reacting to bullies, made them bully more. Nobody told me that. Nobody really had my back.
Why?
Well, when things got really bad in school, it was unfortunately right around the exact same time that Columbine happened. A tragedy that gave school staff everywhere an excuse to take the abused, and turn them into monsters.
I was one of those monsters.
I remember when it got so bad, kids were throwing rocks and burned out batteries at me on the schoolbus (this is just a single example), and I'd go into class and seethe, and nobody understood. Nobody really knew why. I even had this girl who had a crush on me, but I was so blinded by anger that I didn't care, nor reciprocate.
When it got to the boiling point, I think I remember punching someone in the head, grabbing someone else by the chest and lifting them off the ground, and then having a meltdown in the school cafeteria, which, in literal days following, got me transferred to another school district.
Because I reacted to bullying incorrectly.
I was a child.
And it wouldn't even be until twenty years later that I'd finally remember that this even happened to me, and also that ... these things weren't really my fault. I could have reacted better and less violently, but also, again, I WAS A CHILD.
School staff didn't have my back, my parents weren't there so they didn't know the extent of how bad it truly was, and so ... in the eyes of the school district, I was one outburst away from a handgun and a murder.
Even though I was just a fourteen year old who didn't have access to guns, nor had I ever had a thought of doing any such thing.
And all the injustices aside, and the kids who are now adults who never took any accountability for their actions ... wait, this is starting to sound like my digital life online for the past decade and a half, isn't it? People doing heinous things, largely at, and to me, and then getting away with it, without a single consequence to their names.
That's where the revelation is.
While I relive the past over and over again, and while we live in a time where covid-19 has happened and passed us by, and all the brain damage across the population that this had and may still be causing, I wonder if we've always just lived in a world destined to uplift the abuser, and turn the abused into caricatures of a monster. You probably already know that this is a rhetorical thought with an obvious answer.
But, it's just so crazy to me how much of my life has been framed around bullying, and I really don't even know why I'm writing this. Maybe to just put these thoughts out into the digital air. To bring to light something that maybe hasn't really been spoken about all that much in the past couple of decades.
I mean, how many people honestly have linked Columbine to the way we treat, and react to the bullied and abused?
Those are my thoughts.
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Originally published at NovaLandia: https://mkultra.monster/culture/2026/07/31/icons-for-columbine/
When I was a child, the bullying wasn't immediate. It's not something that started the second I stepped foot into school as a six year old. It was very gradual, and I think it began to really culminate in middle school, and especially high school.
See, I was one of those kids who ... wore glasses. And liked videogames, and action movies. And this was nerdy and dumb and stupid. But I was a child. I didn't really know, or understand that reacting to bullies, made them bully more. Nobody told me that. Nobody really had my back.
Why?
Well, when things got really bad in school, it was unfortunately right around the exact same time that Columbine happened. A tragedy that gave school staff everywhere an excuse to take the abused, and turn them into monsters.
I was one of those monsters.
I remember when it got so bad, kids were throwing rocks and burned out batteries at me on the schoolbus (this is just a single example), and I'd go into class and seethe, and nobody understood. Nobody really knew why. I even had this girl who had a crush on me, but I was so blinded by anger that I didn't care, nor reciprocate.
When it got to the boiling point, I think I remember punching someone in the head, grabbing someone else by the chest and lifting them off the ground, and then having a meltdown in the school cafeteria, which, in literal days following, got me transferred to another school district.
Because I reacted to bullying incorrectly.
I was a child.
And it wouldn't even be until twenty years later that I'd finally remember that this even happened to me, and also that ... these things weren't really my fault. I could have reacted better and less violently, but also, again, I WAS A CHILD.
School staff didn't have my back, my parents weren't there so they didn't know the extent of how bad it truly was, and so ... in the eyes of the school district, I was one outburst away from a handgun and a murder.
Even though I was just a fourteen year old who didn't have access to guns, nor had I ever had a thought of doing any such thing.
And all the injustices aside, and the kids who are now adults who never took any accountability for their actions ... wait, this is starting to sound like my digital life online for the past decade and a half, isn't it? People doing heinous things, largely at, and to me, and then getting away with it, without a single consequence to their names.
That's where the revelation is.
While I relive the past over and over again, and while we live in a time where covid-19 has happened and passed us by, and all the brain damage across the population that this had and may still be causing, I wonder if we've always just lived in a world destined to uplift the abuser, and turn the abused into caricatures of a monster. You probably already know that this is a rhetorical thought with an obvious answer.
But, it's just so crazy to me how much of my life has been framed around bullying, and I really don't even know why I'm writing this. Maybe to just put these thoughts out into the digital air. To bring to light something that maybe hasn't really been spoken about all that much in the past couple of decades.
I mean, how many people honestly have linked Columbine to the way we treat, and react to the bullied and abused?
Those are my thoughts.
-----
Originally published at NovaLandia: https://mkultra.monster/culture/2026/07/31/icons-for-columbine/