During the weeks of media-stoked paranoia after the Columbine High School massacre, writer Jon Katz became a conduit for thousands of outcast teens who were suddenly singled out as potential sociopaths simply because of their fondness for the Internet, dark clothing or fantasy video games. Katz's columns at www.Slashdot.org didn't defend the killings, but they did explore the special hell endured by high-school geeks at the hands of taunting peers and suspicious adults, and they generated megabytes of e-mail from alienated kids and concerned teachers and parents.

The timing of the massacre and the outpouring around Katz's columns were oddly appropriate, since Katz had just published a Rolling Stone article about Jesse Dailey and Eric Twilegar, two "Pissed-off, Castoff Nineteen-Year-Olds" who "Escaped a Seven-Dollar-an-Hour Future in Dead-End Idaho and Rode the Internet out of Town." The heartbreak of Columbine made Jesse and Eric's escape seem all the more providential, and created a compelling moral subtext for Katz's book Geeks, a greatly expanded version of the magazine article.