The Blame Knight Rises

Tragedy happens far too often.

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I went to midnight showings for two movies. The first was the release of episode one of Star Wars. I did that completely legit. I waited in line for hours, I got my tickets, I saw the movie, I went home and cried for a few hours about how bad it was. The second time was for the first Lord of the Rings movie. A friend who was the manager of the theater got me in for the employee viewing.

I never got into the idea that seeing a movie sooner made it better. Maybe that's why I don't understand why people think it's cool to say "First" in comment sections of...everything. I don't like lines and I hate feeling like my personal space bubble has been popped forever. I think I understand why other people do it, and why some choose to dress up as characters from the movies, but it's not for me. If it were possible, I'd love to go and always be alone in the theater or just have a few friends with me. Perhaps that's why lately we tend to wait for the DVD release, or even the TV premier.

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I have wanted to write a little on some current topics that have been floating around lately, and the shooting in Aurora is one of those topics. I'm still very new to blogging and sometimes I get the urge to run before walking, but something told me that people were going to be popping out write ups pretty fast. I guess I didn't realize how quick that would happen. The morning after the shootings, as more and more information was making itself public, many bloggers were clacking away at their keyboards, salivating over being the first one to click publish on their post. As a steady outflow of posts began to make it's way on to my twitter feed, I was reminded of a time when I was young. I was maybe ten or eleven and one of the neighborhood kids and I were having ourselves a heated little argument. Since I was so young at the time, I assume it was about which was better - bomb pops or orange push-ups. As the tension rose to the point of emanate fighting, I started to lose it a bit. I was so angry that everything I said was utterly stupid and made no sense at all. I would get my words out of order, and everyone watching would laugh, adding to my frustration of trying to explain how upset I was getting.

It doesn't matter what happened afterward, for the point of what I'm saying here is reacting to anything at your highest point of anger doesn't work. Reacting to things before you really know what's going on is dangerous, and desperately rushing to react at all will often leave you stumbling so bad that you lose the entire point of what you wanted to say.

I can't say if anyone regrets their knee-jerk posts or if they feel compelled to add or subtract from their statements. I will say that I was really disappointed with the theme of posts that were pumping out before the dust had even settled inside the theater.

Not surprising, it was all about who to point the finger at.

Blame Hollywood. Blame Warner Brothers. Blame Democrats. Blame Republicans. Blame the guy's parents. Blame local police. Blame the theater. Blame the people who were inside the theater.

I saw posts that encouraged blame to almost everything in the world with the exception of the whack job who found himself pointing a weapon at innocent people. It oddly reminded me of this post from Bekki at Chasing Supermom. I was hopeful that someone would just tell people to call off the dogs. I was concerned that amidst this outpour of grief from a small town, so many people sitting comfortable in their chairs sipping coffee, took to the internet to scream at each other, and I really wanted it to stop. Don't get me wrong, I saw compassion on that day. I saw messages of love and sorrow because in general, these horrible things tend to bring out the best in some people. Some people.

Sadly, many of these posts became a feeding ground of comments and finger pointing. Many people noted the baiting headlines and subject matter. As I stated, I'm new to the blogging world, and perhaps I'm just not sly enough to realize that if I really want people to read my work, I need to use titles like "Women are stupid," "Shut up women, there's a man about to talk," or "10 reasons why men are just better at everything ever." I find it a little sad that there's a need to resort to trick tactics in the blogging arena to become "popular" but perhaps that's why I don't get many views each day (be on the lookout for my post next week: "You, yes YOU, don't know how to do ANYTHING cause you are a DUMMYHEAD!").

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I'm going to close this with a story from my recent camping trip. A friend of mine received some heart wrenching news while we were on the trip. A troubled co-worker had killed himself. I've been in his shoes before, and watching him go through the instant pain of hearing the news was hard and brought up some of my own memories of dealing with that type of loss. In the middle of so much pain, it seems to be the natural human response to reach out for something to blame. A way to put an image in your mind of where to direct all the anger. The question of "why" becomes a sort of quest, as if the answer will make everything better. We talk about how we would have done things so differently, so much better, and so much smarter. We talk about our own adversities and how we've managed to overcomes them and be so well adjusted. I think we do this to distance ourselves; to pretend that in our world, tragedies of such a horrible nature never happen. We're all very smart and in control of our lives. Reality is normally much more simplistic than the worlds we see in movies. It's supposed to be. Movies are meant to offer a place of joyful escape be it thrilling adventures in space or spontaneously finding true love in a diner, but our lives are no more Gotham City than they are Mayfield.

Blame won't bring anyone peace. I would offer instead the idea that when tragedies like this arise, it is a great time for thoughtful conversation, not angry ramblings. It's a great time to remind yourself of the people you love and the need to make your time with them special. It's a great time to try and push forward, not stand still and scream. This tragic shooting, and situations like it, are not rational, and they are not carried out by rational people. Trying to connect the dots of "why" is a long, unending road because you won't find reason where it doesn't exist.

I doubt anyone who I took note of as a person who felt they had the entire situation figured out during a time when many news organizations were still using the term "alleged shooting," actually reads my tiny blip of internet. However, many people read their blogs, and from time to time that includes me. I have to say, sometimes the successful people in any given field, suck.

Seriously, the fact that people were writing hateful, insensitive, blame-crazy things to those who had just lost loved ones, including kids...is disgusting. No one deserves that.