Let the finger-pointing begin…
Pekka-Eric Auvinen (left), the 18-year-old gunman who killed eight people and himself at Jokela High School in Tuusula, Finland yesterday, was apparently a fan of first-person shooters Counter-strike and Battlefield 2.
According to Battlefield 2 game stats available online, a Finnish BF2 player with the screen name NaturalSelector89 played his last match yesterday at 8:47 AM. That is, shortly before the shooting occurred. Auvinen, who posted a series of YouTube videos under the name Sturmgeist89, referred to himself in his YouTube profile as a “natural selector”.
Battlefield 2 is a popular, T-rated military shooter.
Available for download on the FPS Banana site is a user-created Counter-strike map, fy_jokelaschool_v1. The map was uploaded by the screen name 2tow. It is unclear whether that was Auvinen, although 2tow’s profile does list Finland as his native country.
Auvinen’s YouTube videos, including one that apparently stated his intent to attack the school are receiving enormous media attention. His YouTube profile reads in part:
…Don’t blame the movies I see, the music I hear, the games I play or the books I read. No, they had nothing to do with this. This is my war: one man war against humanity, governments and weak-minded masses of the world! No mercy for the scum of the earth!
Auvinen’s profile also lists among his interests:
Existentialism, Freedom, Truth, Misantrophy, Social / Personality Psychology, Evolution Science, Political Incorrectness, Women, BDSM, Guns (I love you Catherine), Shooting, Computer Games, Sarcasm, Irony, Mass / Serial Killers, Macabre Art, Black Comedy, Absurdism
Movies and Shows: The Matrix, A View To A Kill, Falling Down, Natural Born Killers, Reservoir Dogs, Last Man Standing, Full Metal Jacket, Dr. Butcher MD (aka Zombie Holocaust), Saw 1-3, Lord Of War, The Deer Hunter, True Romance, The Untouchables, 28 Days Later, 28 Weeks Later, Idiocracy, They Live, Apocalypse Now, End Of Days, The Shining, The Dead Zone, Dr. Strangelove, House MD (TV), Monty Python, TV Documentaries Relating To History
Music: KMFDM, Rammstein, Eisbrecher, Nine Inch Nails, Grendel, Impaled Nazarene, Macabre, Deathstars, The Prodigy, Combichrist, Godsmack, Slayer, Children Of Bodom, Alice Cooper, Sturmgeist, Suicide Commando, Hatebreed, Suffocation, Terrorizer
Books: Fahrenheit 451 (Bradbury), 1984 (Orwell), Brave New World (Huxley), The Republic (Plato), all works of Nietzsche
GP: For those who are predisposed to blame cultural or media influences, they are plentiful, as listed above. It would be unfair and unwise to suggest that games are at fault. Although there are those that will.
Clearly this young man was very troubled. News reports also state that he purchased the weapon used in the massacre shortly after his 18th birthday. The percentage of gun ownership in Finland is reportedly very high.
His use of YouTube to announce his intention seems to be an extrapolation of Virginia Tech killer Sueng-Hui Cho’s infamous pre-massacre videos.
UPDATE: Apparently Auvinen was into the Hitman series as well. One of his YouTube videos is titled A Tribute to CodeName 47. Its intro blurb reads: Hitman -series is one of the greatest game series in history. This is a tribute to the main character of the game, codename 47. …
