Did disappointment in online romance spark terrible actions of Jokela gunman Pekka-Eric Auvinen?

Internet conversations reveal a parallel world beyond "real life"

Pekka-Eric Auvinen

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Pekka-Eric Auvinen, the gunman in last year’s school shooting in Jokela, committed the mass-killing a short time after feeling disappointed in his first romance, which took place online.
      On the day before his rampage in November 2007, Auvinen wrote in an online chat room about his being jilted.
     
An article appearing in the December issue of Kuukausiliite, the monthly supplement of Helsingin Sanomat, examines the last months of Auvinen’s life as evidenced by his writings on the Internet.
     
Auvinen never met the foreign target of his affections face to face, but messages that he sent to her indicate that his emotions were powerful. He declared his love openly on YouTube. A community emerged on the video sharing website, where many knew both Auvinen and the young woman in question.
      The community was witness to a love triangle, in which the disappointed Auvinen was forced to look on as the woman and her new online boyfriend wrote affectionate messages to each other.
      Auvinen’s writings from September and October 2007 indicated powerful disillusionment, jealousy, and humiliation, and finally bitterness. He was still in the throes of this heartbreak on November 7th, the day of the shooting.
     
At home in Jokela, Auvinen was basically a loner, bullied and ostracised at school, but on the Internet he had an extensive international circle of acquaintances.
      In his online writings he was an intense debater, putting forward his favourite ideas of the superiority of intelligent individuals, natural selection, and the elimination of the weak.
      Auvinen also had other kinds of friends on the Internet. He was making plans to meet a British woman, who was almost 10 years older than he was, in the summer of 2008, once he had finished his matriculation examinations.
      An 18-year-old girl from Helsinki, meanwhile, still misses her online friend, and feels guilt for not having been able to prevent what he did.
     
     
An English language version of the lengthy article, which includes comprehensive transcripts and screen-grabs of pertinent Internet conversations, will be included in our weekly feature articles on Tuesday.


See also:
  In Another World - Pekka-Eric Auvinen and the Internet (9.12.2008, in four parts)

Helsingin Sanomat