Hundreds of memorials were launched by students, grads and young adults ready to show anyone with a password they care for the world beyond their campus.

"We've all created groups on Facebook for various reasons — boredom, procrastination, humor," wrote Blair Badenhop, 23, a recent graduate of Gettysburg College, for the site Collegecandy.com, where she's now a staff writer.

"But yesterday, many of us took the time to dedicate our groups to something serious, something real." There were poignant memorial pages for the victims, trailing threads of prayers and comments from friends and strangers who wrote they were honored to know — or discover — the victims' lives and loves.

Massive group tribute pages mushroomed to honor all those who suffered. One surpassed 116,329 members by midday. Mixed in with the grief were diatribes over gun control and angry existential demands: Why? Why?

A group titled "Always remember VIRGINIA TECH" grew at a pace of 1,800 members in three hours, surpassing 10,347 by midafternoon. It featured hundreds of college logos each edited to adopt the Virginia Tech nickname, saying, "Today, we are all Hokies."

But Sandro Benitez, 37, of Ontario, Canada, who set up another group website as "a tribute" to all who died or suffered in the shootings, soon discovered that sprinkled among the memorials were revolting expletives and ethnic slurs so vile he deleted them all day Tuesday and edited his tribute to include a plea: "Keep the room clean."

Beckie Dykshoorn, 22, at the University of Calgary, said in an e-mail to USA TODAY that she launched a group hoping that "by posting words of encouragement to complete strangers, I could give hope to those who may have lost hope in the goodness of people," a hope she finds in Jesus.

And Osamah Abdallah, 19, of Loyola University Chicago, launched a tribute from the Muslim Student Association "to show people we are all united against injustice."

Every pebble in the Facebook pond launched a ripple. Matthew Wade's invitation to fellow George Washington University students to Tuesday night's vigil on their Washington, D.C., campus grew from eight to 80 members in half a day.

"I knew if I went to Facebook, I'd find people just as upset as I am," said Wade, 22.