The kid in the picture is a boy named Adam Kyler. During 1998 and 1999 he was bullied savagely by another student at his high school for stuttering, being shy and his looks… Kyler was told by his tormenter that if he told anyone, he would “kill him”.
The guy bullying Kyle? Sixteen-year-old Dylan Klebold. One of the shooters at the April 1999 massacre at Columbine High School. He survived the shooting. Thirteen other people weren’t so lucky. The common narrative I hear always is “the shooters were bullied relentlessly, that is why they snapped”. And it is true — they were, indeed, bullied by some of the popular athletes. But they, too, were bullies, preying on the weak.
The Columbine shooters weren’t innocent victims driven to madness by bullying — they were actively bullying others, threatening others, making the lives of those they saw beneath them a living hell. They were angry at the world for not placing them at top of the social hierarchy. But they, themselves, were every bit as cruel to those “below” them.