Tuesday, April 17, 2007

Cho Seung-Hui's Plays

Cho Seung-Hui, the student who killed 32 people at Virginia Tech, was a writer of "twisted plays." Ian McFarlane, his former classmate and a current employee at AOL has them.

Ian writes about Cho Seung-Hui at AOL

After hearing about the mass shootings, I sent one of my friends a Facebook message asking him if he knew anything about Seung Cho and if he could have been involved. He replied: "dude that's EXACTLY what I was thinking! No, I haven't heard anything, but seriously, that was the first thing I thought when I heard he was Asian."

While I "knew" Cho, I always wished there was something I could do for him, but I couldn't think of anything. As far as notifying authorities, there isn't (to my knowledge) any system set up that lets people say "Hey! This guy has some issues! Maybe you should look into this guy!" If there were, I definitely would have tried to get the kid some help. I think that could have had a good chance of averting yesterday's tragedy more than anything.

While I was hesitant at first to release these plays (because I didn't know if there are laws against it), I had to put myself in the shoes of the average person researching this situation. I'd want to know everything I could about the killer to figure out what could drive a person to do something like this and hopefully prevent it in the future. Also, I hope this might help people start caring about others more no matter how weird they might seem, because if this was some kind of cry for attention, then he should have gotten it a long time ago.


The plays are now posted on AOL and you can read them (unless you suffer from depression and I've been telling you to avoid disturbing news stories) by clicking on this link to that site

Now that's the power of the Internet. Amazing that we could read this if we wanted.

No, I haven't read the plays. I still have 2 more patients to see and even later, I don't know how much "twisted" I can take. But we were looking for the Why's in the last post, so here they are.

15 comments:

therapydoc said...

I remember that. Pretty hard to forget it. Thanks for making me sick again. Gotta' stay in touch with humanity, can't escape it.

Anonymous said...

Cho's writings are very disturbing. http://www.uslaw.com/pop/?p=32>Take a read.

Anonymous said...

Chos's writings are very distrubing. Take a read.

The Sarcasticynic said...

Yeah, sorry about that. Interesting that today the killers kill themselves, which makes all efforts to understand their motives speculation.

therapydoc said...

Yes, there was one angry young man.

Anger, friends, is the enemy.

therapydoc said...

Sarc, How could you have known?

The Sarcasticynic said...

How could I have known what?

therapydoc said...

How could you have known that telling me the story of the 16 year old would make me sick, of course. Readers should visit sarcasticynic's blog to read more about it and to get the words to the song , I Don't Like Monday.

ShellyAnn said...

What can be done to prevent people from getting to the point that this student reached?

therapydoc said...

I'll write on it tomorrow, P.

Heidi said...

It freaks me out to hear about these shootings. I don't know why Americans don't push on gun control already. Everywhere there's problems with pros and cons -- but mass shootings like this is beyond stress. That's just freaky.

The Sarcasticynic said...

I couldn't have known. But when you told me, I felt remorse for having caused any grief.

therapydoc said...

C.K., you have no idea how many bloggers out there disagree with you (and me). I read MANY who feel that if just one of the kids in the class had been armed then Cho wouldn't have gotten away with this.

I feel that had Cho only had a banana to shoot, or perhaps a carrot, then this wouldn't have happened. Someone with his degree of anxiety didn't buy that gun easily. It took a LOT of his emotional strength to go in that store and make that purchase.

The state of VA made it easier for him.

therapydoc said...

Sarc, don't be silly, we're good. I take in a lot of this every day, as do you. It's duh job.

Anonymous said...

She said, "I had no reason for it, and it was just a lot of fun," "It was just like shooting ducks in a pond," and "(The children) looked like a herd of cows standing around, it was really easy pickings."
_________________________

Sounds to me like she was saying that to avoid confessing her depression and low self esteem or whatever other mental illnesses she had. Like, she would rather be seen as evil and tough enough to kill remorslessly than weak and sick minded. I think the Columbine shooters acted similarly in their "basement tapes."

Maybe also a consequence of self hatred: "I'm pathetic and deserve to be hated so I'll make everyone hate me."

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