On Dec. 14, a gunman killed his mom and 26 people at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn.
Twenty of those victims were children.
The media’s response was swift, as facts were made known as soon as they were found out via outlets such as Facebook and Twitter.
Response from the general public was just as quick, if not quicker, with “#PrayForNewtown” becoming the No. 1 trending topic on Twitter and gun control debates springing up between keyboard warriors.
Then, nothing but silence. Interest waned as the next big story came along.
Debates fizzled as all but the most ardent of supporters on either side moved on with their lives as if everything was the same as it was a week ago.
What happened?
We were so quick to stand strong, so quick to politicize the tragedy, so quick to interject ourselves into the cacophony.
We retweeted hashtags and shared statuses.
There were two simultaneous national movements both for and against increased gun control that rose from the doldrums in six hours.
That’s the problem, though:
We’ve grown accustomed to spending a short amount of time on human issues, then moving on because we’re not directly involved.
It was done and over, wrapped up and compartmentalized within our minds before even a week passed.
The trending topic didn’t even make the top 10 of trending topics for December.
We said our bit, or even our refusal to say our bit, then moved on.
Twenty-six people died.
Their futures were erased.
The only impact they would ever have on the world now will be in the political realm as a catalyst for gun control legislation.
Who among us stopped to take the time to reflect on the loss of those lives?
I know I didn’t.
Who among us reflected adequately not just on the children, but on the adults who died trying to protect them?
Again, not me.
Somewhere along the line, we became a society that believes in the power of the “Like” button more than the power of caring.
The public display that we care means more than whether or not we actually care.
Appearance means more than substance.
We’ve become social media politicians, trying to keep our true opinions under wraps while seeking acceptance by the general population.
Instead of votes, we measure our worth by retweets and likes.
Cookie-cutter empathy is the new black — it goes with anything. People use it to encourage debate, and people use it to stifle those same debates.
We even minimize events like these in the words we use.
UF getting shellacked in the Sugar Bowl was a “tragedy.”
How does a football game’s result even come close to the same level as Sandy Hook?
For us, every story like this ends with the apprehension or suicide of those who caused the tragedy.
Few words are said for those who have to move on, whose lives were personally altered in drastic ways over the course of the event.
On the rare occasion that a news entity does a follow-up, it’s certainly not front-page news.
There is no action in soldiering on — no pulse-pounding, heart-gripping response to the tale of a parent making a survivor’s favorite breakfast on his first day back to school.
We make one or two statuses, maybe tweet for a day or two, and then it’s back to posting our dinners on Instagram and watering our crops on FarmVille.
For us, it’s a new semester.
For those who survived, it’s a new life.
We need to remember that.
Logan Ladnyk is a journalism junior at UF. His column runs on Fridays. You can contact him via opinions@alligator.org.
