Let me try again: if he had stomped on an anthill to vent his anger you wouldn't have heard about it.
The media decide who gets to be (in)famous and by behaving in a certain way you can get your 15 minutes. Behaving in this particular way pretty much guarantees that. The link between gore and media coverage is firmly established by now so even if in the first few cases you could have said 'that's circular reasoning' after several such cycles you can no longer tell cause from effect.
Hence copycat crimes and other stupidities.
All it took for dumb, angry children to be set on this path was the attention given to the Columbine shooters. Quite a few of these idiots - if not all of them - think those guys were heroes and perceive the media attention given to them (movies, incessant press coverage) as positive.
They want that for themselves to compensate for some perceived inferiority or other shortcoming and so they go the same route.
I think today it is safe to assume that a hunger for fame is at least a component in these shootings.
I can easily imagine that "hunger for fame" is a component in these shootings, but that's not the same thing as "I have evidence to support" or even "is likely."
The media decide who gets to be (in)famous and by behaving in a certain way you can get your 15 minutes. Behaving in this particular way pretty much guarantees that. The link between gore and media coverage is firmly established by now so even if in the first few cases you could have said 'that's circular reasoning' after several such cycles you can no longer tell cause from effect.
Hence copycat crimes and other stupidities.
All it took for dumb, angry children to be set on this path was the attention given to the Columbine shooters. Quite a few of these idiots - if not all of them - think those guys were heroes and perceive the media attention given to them (movies, incessant press coverage) as positive.
They want that for themselves to compensate for some perceived inferiority or other shortcoming and so they go the same route.
I think today it is safe to assume that a hunger for fame is at least a component in these shootings.