There were a hundred different reasons why the Virginia Tech shooter did what he did. Primary among those was that he was seriously disturbed. But another was that he was looking to get famous. This is a bigger problem for our whole society than just lone killers. And it doesn't just apply to America, it applies to the whole world.

I have said many time before that the Columbine killers were looking to get famous, even if it was posthumously. This applies even more so in Virginia Tech. All of the shots of the killer posing at the camera were faux-hero shots (in his own twisted mind). This is how he was going to stand out.

He seemed to be thinking this way: Everyone is wrong, he wasn't going to just live the rest of his life in awkward obscurity like a loser. He was going to show them. Literally, show them.

You know who else does this? Suicide bombers. They make videos before they go to do their bombings. It is ostensibly to get their intentions on tape so people can know why did it. But that's bullshit. The real reason they're doing it is because they want to be someone bigger than themselves. They want to make their own rap video. They want to be famous!

...Meet Armed Resistance." That the title of this post at Classically Liberal, which compares the catastrophe at Virginia Tech with four other instances, most of them little-known, which ended quite differently because the would-be mass murderer was met with effective armed resistance by students, a teacher, a store owner, an off-duty policeman. The contrast is very persuasive; it raises some obvious questions.

How many more instances are there where armed civilians have prevented mass murder? Are there counter-examples where attempted intervention by armed civilians has made matters worse? And why, in these instances, do the media persistently fail to report the key role played by firearms in preventing further violence?

Classically Liberal makes what appears to be a powerful argument. If it's wrong, what is the evidence? Let's see whether our commenters can come up with some.

We have had many terrible things happen during the age of the Internet, but the Virginia Tech massacre is the first full-on YouTube tragedy. What does that mean? For starters, it means that every trivial bit of video has been preserved. Without their context, they look stupid and even comic. But it also means that every bad idea can now spring to fascinating life. On Wednesday, when Cho's plays were first released (Newsbloggers was one of the first sites), I joked with my editor that we should stage one of those plays, "Richard McBeef," here in New York as a benefit for the victims. He laughed and then we agreed that it wasn't a funny idea, not at all. This proves it.

As the victims in the Virginia Tech massacre are buried and the victims' families start to piece their lives back together, much of the scrutiny has shifted from the way that campus officials (not to mention local law enforcement and mental health professionals) handled Cho Seung-Hui to the way that media, particularly NBC, seems to be glorifying Cho by giving up hours of airtime to his ravings, his rhetoric, and his image. The NBC case seems clear-cut to me. Cho mailed them materials because he wanted to be famous in death. They are helping to make him famous and at the same time boosting their own ratings. It's mildly unsavory, like most coverage of tragedies by news organizations who don't (and can't) really understand the emotional complexities involved, and it's also highly insensitive to the families of the victims. But it is news, just as the backlash against NBC is news. How a tragedy like this shakes out, particularly in a society where the media is a character -- Cho's final words were to a national network -- is part of the story.

There are a few compelling notes that are audible over the chaos of coverage. One involves the postmortem diagnosis of the killer's mental illness. Cho's great-aunt, who lives in South Korea, was quoted on Thursday as saying that Cho did not speak much as a child, and that some thought he might be autistic. He had almost no ability to connect with others, and his strange way of speaking and acting made him the target of mockery. This should also have been a warning sign, according to some reports: A 2002 federal study on common characteristics of school shooters found that 71 percent of them "felt bullied, persecuted or injured by others prior to the attack."

But this seems contradictory. Cho, from most of what we're reading, was not frequently persecuted. He had developed good strategies for keeping himself apart. He never spoke to his roommates, never spoke in class. He was always downloading music and working on his own writing. Louis Kraus, the chief of child and adolescent psychiatry at Chicago's Rush University Medical Center, is one of the experts who does not believe that Cho's rampage was triggered by persecution. "This is very different," he said. "This type of mental illness that this poor man had was not something that was likely precipitated by teasing or bullying." Again, we'll probably never exactly know. But Kraus's description of Cho as a "poor man" is uncomfortable, though obviously true. How should we feel about the suggestion that something else -- a genetic illness, the thoughtless behavior of others -- might have pulled the trigger? On the one hand, everyone wants Cho to take responsibility, even in death. It's unfair to suggest that high school classmates who laughed at him when he read aloud somehow share responsibility for the massacre. On the other hand, isn't a sense of victimization and an unrealistic sense of the world present in more crimes? Isn't there always either the perception on the part of the criminal that he or she has been wronged? And as for the mental illness, how can you separate the inability to see the world clearly from the man who was incapable of seeing it clearly? Ultimately, does it matter whether you think Cho's behavior was an occurrence of pure evil or whether it was a predictable conclusion to a sad, disconnected life?

Hundreds of thousands of businesses and individuals pay public relations firms and publicists weighty retainers to get their messages out - to break through to an audience. Ford Motor Company wants you to know they're "bold." Obama wants you to know he's experienced enough to be President. I want you to know that I'm the witty go-to guy on American Idol commentary.

The demented Cho has managed to become not only a household name but also a legend in record time - and he didn't have to pay anyone to do it for him. Sending his press kit to NBC may be the only rational thing he did - since NBC News took the bait (in record time).

Here's a challenge: Give me a single upside to NBC showing the video, even the stills, from Cho's press kit. (Sorry, no prize this time.) Just one good thing that will come from this.

Last night, I watched MSNBC for about 45 minutes. Three different guests (one profiler and one psychotherapist included) made it clear beyond a shadow of a doubt that Cho's "content" was worthless; that there was nothing to learn from his rantings; that he was probably, among other things, a paranoid schizophrenic. In short, his words had no meaning.

A couple of guests applauded NBC for handling the material responsibly. The endorsements seemed suspiciously planted. One guest went so far as to say that this material would have gotten out there in some other way had NBC embargoed it. Really? Then I guess I can still catch the footage of Steve Irwin getting zapped by the stingray.

You don't need to give me the downside to airing Cho's multimedia presentation: further desensitization, inspiring of copycats ... I got those covered. (Media neophytes Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris left their fans wanting more image-wise. Cho's iconography might be kind of hackneyed but it's plentiful, perfect for screensavers. A few may even make the leap to t-shirts, a la Patty Hearst. Or how about "Cho" instead of "Che"?)

Of course everyone else showed the meaningless footage, no doubt accelerating the mythologizing of Cho. (Jeez, it took Mother Teresa seven years to just get beatified.) This morning a Fox News correspondent stood in the hallway outside Cho's door room in Ambler. Room 2120. This was The room of The man who perpetrated The worst mass shooting in American history, we were told. How long before the plaque that reads "Cho Slept Here" goes up?

***

UPDATE: Some commenters say I'm supporting censorship. I don't think I am. After all, news organizations get pitched stories constantly - by Proctor & Gamble, by the DNC and RNC, and in this case by a lunatic. The editorial staff need to decide what's newsworthy. In this case, I think the sending of the tape is itself a story. The content of the tape? Not so much.

But speaking of censorship, does anyone else find it almost funny to watch and hear the rantings of a homicidal maniac - but with the naughty curse words bleeped? Wouldn't want to freak the kiddies out!

AOL News has obtained two plays a classmate says were written by Cho Seung-Hui. Ian MacFarlane, the former classmate and current AOL employee, provided us with the plays. A note from Mr. MacFarlane and links to the works appear below.

What happened yesterday:

When I first heard about the multiple shootings at Virginia Tech yesterday, my first thought was about my friends, and my second thought was "I bet it was Seung Cho."

Cho was in my playwriting class last fall, and nobody seemed to think much of him at first. He would sit by himself whenever possible, and didn't like talking to anyone. I don't think I've ever actually heard his voice before. He was just so quiet and kept to himself. Looking back, he fit the exact stereotype of what one would typically think of as a "school shooter" – a loner, obsessed with violence, and serious personal problems. Some of us in class tried to talk to him to be nice and get him out of his shell, but he refused talking to anyone. It was like he didn't want to be friends with anybody. One friend of mine tried to offer him some Halloween candy that she still had, but he slowly shook his head, refusing it. He just came to class every day and submitted his work on time, as I understand it.

A major part of the playwriting class was peer reviews. We would write one-act plays and submit them to an online repository called Blackboard for everyone in the class to read and comment about in class the next day. Typically, the students give their opinions about the plays and suggest ways to make it better, the professor gives his insights, then asks the author to comment about the play in class.

When we read Cho's plays, it was like something out of a nightmare. The plays had really twisted, macabre violence that used weapons I wouldn't have even thought of. Before Cho got to class that day, we students were talking to each other with serious worry about whether he could be a school shooter. I was even thinking of scenarios of what I would do in case he did come in with a gun, I was that freaked out about him. When the students gave reviews of his play in class, we were very careful with our words in case he decided to snap. Even the professor didn't pressure him to give closing comments.

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.

As far as the victims go, as I was heading to bed last night, I heard that my good friend Stack (Ryan Clark) was one of the first confirmed dead. I didn't want to believe that I'd never get to talk to him again, and all I could think about was how much I could tell him how much his friendship meant to me. During my junior year, Ryan, another friend and I used to get breakfast on Tuesdays and Thursdays at Shultz Dining Hall, one of the cafeterias on campus, and it was always the highlight of my day. He could talk forever it seemed and always made us laugh. He was a good friend, not just to me, but to a lot of people, and I'll miss him a lot.

Click on the links below the read the plays. WARNING: the plays contain profanity and scenes with disturbing content.

- Read Play #1: 'Richard McBeef'

- Read Play #2: 'Mr. Brownstone'