Roger Ebert offers an explanation years ago:
The reporter looked disappointed, so I offered her my theory. “Events like this,” I said, “if they are influenced by anything, are influenced by news programs like your own. When an unbalanced kid walks into a school and starts shooting, it becomes a major media event. Cable news drops ordinary programming and goes around the clock with it. The story is assigned a logo and a theme song; these two kids were packaged as the Trench Coat Mafia. The message is clear to other disturbed kids around the country: If I shoot up my school, I can be famous. The TV will talk about nothing else but me. Experts will try to figure out what I was thinking. The kids and teachers at school will see they shouldn’t have messed with me. I’ll go out in a blaze of glory.”
Unfortunately, our society celebrates shootings with more attention, coverage, and thought than any major sports championship. Shooters want attention and they get it. We click on articles, turn on TVs, text our friends about and....post it on message boards for discussion.
Sadly, there are numerous types of negative events that the press and social media love, and we eat it immediately.
Imagine if we had a world where more positivity and logic controlled the media and social media.