Virginia Tech Community Brushes Off Gunman Threat

By Ray Downs, Christian Post Reporter Friday, August 05, 2011

After a day of heightened tension across the nation over reports of a gunman roaming the campus, social media websites such as Facebook and Twitter have indicated that it is back to business as usual for students and faculty at Virginia Tech.

The university’s Facebook page has no mention today of the alleged gunman seen on campus yesterday. Instead, a post made at around 8 a.m. informs students that football practice started Thursday evening and provides a link to a photo gallery of the players.

Brian Romans, an assistant professor of Geology at the university whose tweets during the height of the scare were quoted by The Christian Post yesterday, has only tweeted about geology topics today.

And on the Virginia Tech student life website, there is no mention of any alerts or warning. There is, however, a musical performance of Rodgers and Hammerstein's "Cinderella" tonight at 7:30 p.m.

The "business as usual" tone of the Virginia Tech community on the web is a stark contrast to the public's web reaction to the possibility of another shooting yesterday, which saw everything from heartfelt prayers and dark jokes all over Facebook and Twitter. One is reminded how fast and deep a simple event can impact so many people and inspire them to share their feelings, whether those feelings are of empathy or cynicism, on the internet.

It is also a reminder of how quickly those events can escape the minds of people. Life goes on. And with the internet, life goes on quicker. However, yesterday’s events showed how fast memories can be dug up and viscerally relived.

Images of Seung-Hui Cho, the troubled young man who murdered 32 students at the university before taking his own life, were all over the internet yesterday, over four years after the tragic event occurred. With the public consciousness on the possibility of another Virginia Tech shooting, people were using the internet to remember what the last killer looked like, undoubtedly imagining what the new killer might have in common with the old one.

It is in this way that the past can haunt us in today’s digital world – with real images of horrible events conjured up instantly, rooting up powerful memories.

However, despite the internet’s ability to make us instantly relive events, it also shows us how quickly we let them go and move on to the next topic. And even people in the middle of the action, like the Virginia Tech students and faculty, simply push aside the anxiety and let life go on.

If the internet does cause cultural ADD, maybe that is a good thing sometimes.