Pickup artists argue that “Game” is the solution to Elliot Rodger-style rampages. Here’s why they’re wrong.
From Elliot Rodger’s Google+ Profile
Pickup artists, classy fellows that they are, are using Elliot Rodger’s killing rampage as a marketing ploy. In the comments to one of Rodger’s videos on YouTube, a company called Strategic Dating Coach offered their solution to prevent similar shootings in the future: send disturbed young men who can’t get dates to one of their coaching sessions!
While this response to Rodger’s mass killing is uniquely crass, the argument that “Game saves lives” is hardly new. To PUAs like Heartiste and Roosh Valizadeh it’s practically an article of faith.
In the wake of George Sodini’s murderous shooting spree in a Pennsylvania gym in 2009, Heartiste (then known as Roissy) wrote
If Sodini had learned game he would have been able to find another woman and gotten laid after his ex dumped him. He wouldn’t have spent the next 20 years steeped in bile and weighed down by his Sisyphian blue balls, dreaming of vengeance. Game could have saved the lives of the women Sodini killed.
The fact that Sodini had in fact imbibed in the alleged wisdom of pickup artistry, going so far as attending a pricey seminar from old-school pickup guru R. Don Steele, a self-proclaimed expert on dating young women, didn’t lead any in the pickup community to reconsider this position.
Nor has it this time. It is clear that Elliot Rodger was steeped in “red pill” thinking about women. And while he wasn’t himself a PUA, he was certainly aware of the basics of “Game.” Indeed, he subscribed to a number of PUA channels on YouTube and was a regular commenter on PUAhate, a sleazy forum devoted to criticizing “game,” not because it is manipulative and misogynistic but because it doesn’t work.
On the Roosh V forum earlier today, Roosh acknowledged that Rodger knew at least a little about “red pill” ideology – noting that Rodger referred to himself as an”alpha” – but still went ahead and argued that Game was the solution to massacres like this:
He is self-delusional and massively entitled, but exposing him to game may have saved lives.
In a followup comment, Roosh expressed his concerns for the real victims of this tragedy – Pickup artists:
I’m trying to think of ways our enemies will come after us because of this, but if anything, we’re the solution to this sort of murder rampage. This is the society that progressives wanted, where women are fully able to choose the top 10% of alpha males while shaming masculinity, leaving beta males with modest resources in the dust. Of course they will simply push a ban on guns, but this wholly neglects the cause. Seven people died because this guy couldn’t get laid … .
Other commenters were quick to agree. According to someone known as Moma,
Roosh has a very valid point. This will continue to replay over and over again. As human beings, our wiring is very basic yet primal. …
When have you last heard of a porn star shooting up a place? How many have emptied their balls in a hot lizard and then felt the urge to go and smoke 50 strangers?
According to Samseau, the problem wasn’t that Rodger hadn’t heard the Game Gospel; the problem was that he had rejected his salvation:
He knew about Game. If he had an account on PUAHATE then he knew about game. He was just a denialist. There was no helping this dude.
Roosh seconded this bit of wisdom, seeing it as clear evidence that “game denialism kills.”
Michelin, for his part, hoped that PUAs would be able to use the massacre as a publicity bonanza and a great “told you so” to all the haters.
One should write a mainstream article about this case. The argument that game could have saved lives can be an eye-opener and a smash in the face to haters of game.
Tuthmosis, the man best known for a Return of Kings post on the “5 Reasons to Date a Girl With An Eating Disorder,” reported his joy that PUAhate was getting bad press:
Seeing your enemies fall is a delicious treat you only get to taste a few times in your life. I’m savoring this delicacy with a cup of freshly brewed coffee. It’s a shame real people had to lose their lives, but I can’t help but think this will discredit a horrible website, PUAHate–and a way of thinking–that could have harmed even more men and innocent people. Beta losers will never go away, but this will wake up a few men and, more importantly, scare others.
Zelcorpion blamed “girls” and MGTOWers for giving Rodgers bad dating advice:
I bet a few girls told him that he only needs to be himself, be nice, be a gentleman, have a nice car, looks etc. – only to realize that it mattered shit. Instead of learning from the PUA-community he chose to listen to PUAhaters and some of the anti-female comments of the MGTOWs who themselves are often refusing to accept Game or even basic concepts like Alpha/Beta. I think that problem will become way worse, since hypergamy and promiscuity will only increase and most men will be left in the sexual wasteland.
But it took a relative newcomer to the forum by the handle of thedavidgt to raise the obvious logical objection to the Game-for-everybody solution to incel rage:
If every sexless beta in the world took it upon himself to learn game, approach girls, lift, dress well etc, would it not simply feed women’s egos and entitlement? So instead of occasionally getting awkwardly hit on by skinny fat, poor-dressed chumps, the average 7 would then be approached several times a day by extremely high value men. We’ll have a society of men working to improve themselves for women who will get lazier and lazier while at the same time demanding more and more.
In fact, the “Game saves lives” mantra is dead wrong, but not for this reason. First of all, there is no clear evidence that “game,” per se, works, except insofar as it encourages men to pursue large numbers of women and numb them to the pain of rejection. It’s possible that a few of the conversational ploys invented by various PUAs may work better than having no conversational ploys at all. But there are no magic cheat codes to “getting with women.”
There is one more disturbing way in which “game” may increase “success” with women for unscrupulous men: many of the standard techniques of “game”– invading a woman’s personal space, touching her repeatedly, trying to “isolate” her from her friends – may serve as “tests” to find women who are less likely to resist violations of their boundaries. In this way, “game” may serve as a quite effective enabler of date rape. Indeed Roosh himself has admitted to raping a date too drunk to consent.
So how much of a solution is training a guy who is already filled with a toxic mixture of entitlement and self-loathing (yes, these strange bedfellows do often go together) in some techniques that might help him to tamp down his insecurities enough to manipulate some willing or not-so-willing women into bed?
You might have simply turned a mass killer into a serial rapist, or possibly a serial killer. Ted Bundy was quite the charmer. Somehow this didn’t make him a decent human being.
Even if “game” were the beneficient form of “self-improvement” that some of its proponents like to claim it is, teaching Rodger how to be a better dater would not make him a better person. Would having a girlfriend solve all his problems? Hardly. Relationships require patience and compromise and mutual respect, and Rodger seems to have had none of these qualities. Instead of directing his narcissistic rage at “girls” at large, he would likely have ended up abusing a string of girlfriends.
The problem wasn’t Rodger’s lack of “Game.” It was his lack of humanity.
Posted on May 24, 2014, in all about the menz, alpha males, beta males, boner rage, empathy deficit, entitlement, evil sexy ladies, evil women, heartiste, imaginary oppression, incel, internecine warfare, irony alert, men who should not ever be with women ever, misogyny, narcissism, nice guys, playing the victim, PUA, PUAhate, red pill, rhymes with roosh, self-congratulation and tagged elliot rodger, heartiste, incel, misogyny, pick-up artists, pickup artists, PUA, roosh. Bookmark the permalink. 1,747 Comments.
>the sheer amount of planning that went into this is not indicative of a psychotic break. When did anger and misogyny become mental illnesses, anyway?
Since when does psychosis mean you’re unable to plan? People with paranoid delusions can maintain them for a long time and act on them. Also, the fact that his psychiatrist prescribed him Risperdal, an anti-psychotic, is at least some independent confirmation that the problem here was psychosis.
That’s what misogyny IS. It’s a spectrum, not something different. Christ on a pogo stick, all these people squirming to find any way at all to avoid putting the blame for this where it lies: hatred of women.
Take your ableism and excuses and shove it. PUA doesn’t “save” anything and nobody here is saying it would: the whole point is that PUA is about encouraging rape.
“All the men out there are violent brutes and all the women are irrational, and I’ll show everyone by shooting random people!”
Fuck that guy, and fuck the people who can go with “he’s crazy” to dismiss the very real effects of the growing reactionary-sexist side of the internet (sure, it’s always been sexist, but previously more in an oblivious way and now in more of a pseudotheoretical ideological way).
>Take your ableism and excuses and shove it. PUA doesn’t “save” anything and nobody here is saying it would: the whole point is that PUA is about encouraging rape.
I’m really not sure what you mean by my ableism, so perhaps you could explain or point me to a suitable reference.
In any case, my point is that this guy’s problem went well beyond misogyny; his misogyny may have been the cause of this behavior, but it did not explain everything he did, and it was primarily the product of delusion, not ideology. And since it substantially preceded his exposure to PUAs and related manosphere types, it can’t be due to that exposure.
Again, I’m not legitimize PUAs or suggesting they don’t encourage rape. I am merely saying that the place their misogyny comes from is different from the place this guy’s misogyny comes from. I’d hope that part of dismantling misogyny is understanding its origins. I don’t think it helps us understand what produces the typical misogyny that we encounter every day by clouding it with this particular individual’s delusional reasons for hating women.
FFS, haven’t you read this thread at all? Or the other thread about Rodgers? Go and fucking read them before asking us to repeat ourselves about what the hell ableism is.
Also take your oh-so-removed academic “where did his misogyny come from?” attitude away. Frankly I don’t give a shit right now, when society is STEEPED in the attitude that men are entitled to women’s bodies, and yet another man has murdered women because of his entitlement and rage.
Just go away.
>Fuck that guy, and fuck the people who can go with “he’s crazy” to dismiss the very real effects of the growing reactionary-sexist side of the internet
It’s possible to consider him crazy without wanting to dismiss the real effects of the growing reactionary-sexist side of the internet. I am very much concerned about that; it’s why I read this site every day.
This guy was NOT the simple product of the reactionary-sexist side of the internet. Can you, otherwise, explain to me how MRA rhetoric provoked in Rodger a desire to kill his little brother for the crime of being socially successful and likely to lose his virginity before Rodger did? This is paranoid delusion, not the ideological misogyny of MRAs.
Yeah if you read this site everyday, you’d know why what you’re saying is so problematic. If you’re REALLY so confused about what ableism is and why what you’re saying is so fucked up, I suggest a little-known site called Google.
We’re telling you what you’re saying is fucked up. Until you understand why, I suggest you go away. Far, far away.
Yeah, I’m calling bullshit on “I read this site every day” too. We talk about this shit all the damn time and you’re claiming not to know what ableism is?
Are we looking at a sock here, or is this just the same old same old sameyness?
I’m not confused about ableism, I just don’t see how what I’m saying is ableist. I’m not suggesting that all people with mental illness are dangerous or violent. I’m saying that the cause of this guy’s misogyny is his delusion, NOT his ideology. Maybe you don’t think that’s an important distinction; I do. His decision to commit mass murder was also the product of his delusion. His first victims were innocent of any crime; he knew nothing about them, he merely killed them for being around him. Yes, he felt entitled to sex with attractive blonde girls. He also felt entitled to winning the lottery. That is not the product of ideology; it is the product of delusion.
Anyway, I’m tired of being yelled at when I just want to have a reasonable conversation about this, so I’ll just leave it at that.
@saurabh
I think a lot of the behavior you’re describing reflects Roger’s narcissistic grandiosity. I also think you vastly underestimate how much all us non-psychotic adults are “out of touch with reality”, yet are able to function and even thrive in life. The belief systems we use to explain and excuse our behaviors often have a very tenuous relationship with reality. Rogers actions show his extreme black-and-white thinking, but again that fits with his malignant narcissism. I’d argue people who are discussing his sense of entitlement and misogyny are doing a better job of explaining his psychology then those who are discussing psychosis. YMMV of course.
Yeah, because it’s so out of touch with reality when well-off white dudes think the world owes them everything.
Except it’s not, because that’s the way the world works, and “we are owed sex by any woman we want, and have the right to take it” is the core of every goddamn MRA and PUA site there ever was. Don’t bother with this hair-splitting nonsense and armchair diagnoses. All you’re ending up doing is saying “Not all MRAs are like that!”
Also ::points up:: what brooked said about this whole “out of touch with reality” thing. Name one person who isn’t, by someone else’s standards?
Oh, and the “Anyway, I’m tired of being yelled at when I just want to have a reasonable conversation about this, so I’ll just leave it at that.” doubles the bullshittery of claiming you read this site every day. How can you do that and NOT know what’s going to get you called out, and harshly? It also sounds very much like a few whiney trolls we’ve had lately. Funny how you don’t appear to recognise that.
“Getting into this guy’s head” is almost completely pointless at this juncture. He’s dead. 6 other people are dead. Trying to justify or ameliorate what he did by saying he was mentally ill is not only insulting to the many people who have a mental illness and aren’t homicidal in the least, it also neatly sweeps the real problems of misogyny and privilege under the rug, kicking the can down the road until the next time someone gets pissed off and unloads a gun into a crowd.
We can’t keep doing that.These shootings have been happening more and more recenrly, and while mental illness has always existed, the environment that’s leading people to resort to this kind of terrorism hasn’t, and the media and our leaders need to face it instead of insisting it can’t be helped.
QFT.
>Oh, and the “Anyway, I’m tired of being yelled at when I just want to have a reasonable conversation about this, so I’ll just leave it at that.” doubles the bullshittery of claiming you read this site every day. How can you do that and NOT know what’s going to get you called out, and harshly? It also sounds very much like a few whiney trolls we’ve had lately. Funny how you don’t appear to recognise that.
I usually don’t read the comments, I just read David’s posts, which is why I don’t know how much I sound like a whiny troll; I don’t doubt that I do, but that’s not what I’m trying to do. I started reading the comments on these posts because I have been obsessively reading about this incident all day, and I wanted to know more. A few hours ago I felt pretty much the way you did, like this guy was a disgusting misogynist and an example of the damage the MRAs are doing; I felt differently after reading his manifesto.
Also, regarding being out of touch with reality, having been there many times myself, I agree one hundred percent. We’re all there a little bit, and I don’t really believe in the notion of a normative mental health or illness; but I still think we can make reasonable statements about what constitutes reality. A person who holds the belief that they are destined to win the lottery is nowhere near that.
I recommend reading this New Yorker article: nyr.kr/1k8WKfb about Adam Lanza, the Newtown killer, and comparing it to the writings of Rodgers. I think these are people who needed help recognizing their delusional states and did not get it in time and who were consequently driven to concluding that violence was their only remaining choice.
>Trying to justify or ameliorate what he did by saying he was mentally ill is not only insulting to the many people who have a mental illness and aren’t homicidal in the least
I absolutely don’t understand this. Are you suggesting that we shouldn’t consider mental illness in determining criminal cuplability? “Not guilty due to insanity” has been a valid legal defense for quite some time, and while we might question the idea of categorical insanity, I certainly think that holding people responsible for things they do as a result of delusion is not something we want to do.
Nor does it demean all mentally ill people to say that a particular heinous event was the product of mental illness. Some people get a fever because they are sick. That does not mean that all sick people get a fever.
I didn’t know anyone needed help to realise that murdering people was a bad idea.
Is this guy’s thinking completely outside the bounds of normal human behaviour? Yes. Is that in any way related to mental illness? Fuck no, and that is why what you’re saying is so disgusting.
Human relationships are not a gaaaaame !!
The other problem with the “game can save lives” argument is that it’s arguing that his problem was the one he identified – that he couldn’t get laid. Therefore, if he’d got laid, he would have been happy and wouldn’t have killed people.
No, the problem is that he was a twisted fuck and the extreme misogynistic ideology of the manosphere gave him a rationalisation and an intellectual framework for his killing rage.
Also
I’m in no way an expert on murderers or mental illness, but given the vast numbers of mentally ill people who manage to not murder people, I don’t think it’s mental illness that drives people to kill. In fact, if I had to guess, I’d say it was…hmm…perhaps an unbelievable sense of entitlement and an inability to see other people as people?
“We” are not sitting on a jury. Armchair diagnoses don’t help anyone, and only add to the stigma mentally ill people (who are far more likely to be victims than perpertrators of violence) suffer.
Rodgers was competent to make his videos and write his rants and manifesto and plan murders. Don’t try to pull the “but he was delusional” bullshit. It’s just defending him.
You’re talking as if delusion means someone can’t plan and think and commit crimes they are fuckingwell responsible for. You’re just excusing him, whether you think you are or not.
What the hell is the point of reading a blog and not reading the comments? They make up the bulk of the conversation, ferchrissake. You come in here claiming to read the blog every day, and then act surprised when you’re called out for ableism and what boil down to apologetics for MRA misogyny. Golly gee, imagine if you’d bothered to READ the hundreds of comments here in your visits, you might not have made a complete ass of yourself.
wewereemergencies – and conversely, think of all the women murdered every. fucking. week. by their intimate partners. Are the “but he was crazy!” brigade really stupid enough to claimall those murdering men are mentally ill?
Well, probably. That, or those women must have done something to deserve it (SARCASM. Major, major sarcasm) Have you seen the comments by a sorority girl who was a witness? She thinks *her* actions may have somehow lead to this. My heart just broke for her.
Have I mentioned how gross the “crazy” argument is even apart from the ableism? (I mean, that is the biggest gross part). No-one ever said “but maybe Muslim suicide bombers are mentally ill!” No, the conversation about mental illness is about divorcing yourself from Rodgers, detracting from the actual issue, and, because they can’t be racist, shitting on another oppressed group! Congrats concern trolls, you are terrible on multiple levels.
Oh crap, it looks like the comments after my sarcasm warning brackets were meant to be sarcasm. They weren’t. They were deadly serious. The line before was sarcasm.
I’m really really sorry. Should have been much clearer about that.
What utter bullshit! In fact, it is insulting to a bull’s anus to imply it would produce such a ridiculously useless pile of nothingness. *thinks of allotment with pride*
His misogyny WAS his ideology. And of ll the ideologies that an entitled, affluent, het, western, white boy could have fixed all his hatred and anger upon, misogyny is going to be the one, pretty much every fucking time. Because hey, welcome to our world.
Even if we were to buy saurabh’s argument (which I don’t), we’d still be left with a situation where it was the PUA stuff that Rodger was reading that handed him the gun. Stop trying to absolve that wretched, hateful ideology of responsibility for incidents like this. It’s not even as if this is the first time they have blood on their hands.
(I was really hoping for a more intelligent analysis of the situation than “well he was just crazy” here. Guess there always has to be one asshole who pees in the punch bowl.)
So, my understanding of narcissism is that it’s not a mental illness. Just a way of describing a set of behaviours that show extreme self-centeredness and entitlement. So saying he sounds like a malignant narcissist isn’t diagnosing him – just saying in different words that he was a nasty, entitled little shit. Does that sound right?
I read the manifesto. This fucking guy. Not once did he approach a woman, or talk to a woman, or proactively engage in any social interaction with a woman. Instead, he chose to sit around wearing cool clothes in heavily populated areas waiting for women to approach him. That was quite literally his entire strategy. Wear Armani. Go to Starbucks, or party, or walk around campus. Wait for a beautiful blonde to come and talk to him.
Shockingly, the results of this inaction were… well, no action. Then he’d notice happy couples and become so enraged he would either a) sit and seethe with hatred and indignation, b) run somewhere and cry bitterly, or c) toss his beverage at said happy couple and feel vindicated.
He had no female friends. He states that his first American friend was a girl, but then he hates her when they see each other again as teens because she grew up to be attractive, had equally pretty friends, and had a boyfriend. He hated his stepmother for immature reasons, and his mother was taken for granted as a dispenser of favours, opportunities and material goods (when she buys him a BMW he notes that she SHOULD HAVE bought him one during his first year of college and thinks that by the time it was actually given to him, it was too little too late). He disliked his sister too, and in one particularly creepy paragraph describes standing outside of her bedroom door listening to her have sex with her boyfriend and growing increasingly jealous and angry as he does so (of her boyfriend and the fact that she’s getting laid at her age – 4 years younger than him). He had a female counsellor he actually enjoyed talking to, but he made a conscious decision to not receive any further counselling from women after she left town because he deemed their interactions as “fake.”
He writes pages and pages about how women have wronged him, about how flawed and amoral and evil women are, but he came to these conclusions solely from watching attractive women interacting with men that weren’t him and drawing his own conclusions.
Hey, remember that asshole David posted about a few days ago that wouldn’t shut up about the solipsism of women? Somebody should point him to this spoiled, entitled brat’s manifesto so he can see what a solipsistic, vindictive, hateful monster actually looks like.
Is that what they call it nowadays?
According to rule 34 there must be a porn shoot of someone shooting while they shoot…
According to the BBC report, he went to a sorority house and, when they refused to open the door, then embarked on his drive-by shootings. Thank gods, they sorority did not let him in because how many deaths might this have been if they had!
Of course, the BBC report also ignores the fact that his street targets were women and talks of him “shooting people at random”. Thanks, BBC, for your sterling journalism whenever gender is involved. /sarcasm
>So, my understanding of narcissism is that it’s not a mental illness.
Narcissistic personality disorder is a category in the DSM-IV. Malignant narcissism is not, but some people think it should be. In any case, he certainly has many of the features of narcissistic personality:
(1) has a grandiose sense of self-importance (e.g., exaggerates achievements and talents, expects to be recognized as superior without commensurate achievements)
(2) is preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love
(3) believes that he or she is “special” and unique and can only be understood by, or should associate with, other special or high-status people (or institutions)
(4) requires excessive admiration
(5) has a sense of entitlement, i.e., unreasonable expectations of especially favorable treatment or automatic compliance with his or her expectations
(6) is interpersonally exploitative, i.e., takes advantage of others to achieve his or her own ends
(7) lacks empathy: is unwilling to recognize or identify with the feelings and needs of others
(8) is often envious of others or believes that others are envious of him or her
(9) shows arrogant, haughty behaviors or attitudes
I believe the reason so many people cry “mental illness” here is because they are considered mentally healthy, and “mental illness” is a very convenient other to blame. It’s the easy out.
They have a hard time wrapping their head around his so-called logic. That screed of his is ridiculous. (I scanned some of it, read highlights, and then closed that window, because I couldn’t take any more.)
But, when you get right down to it, you’ll realize that everyone has a bit of darkness in him, and has urges and impulses to do some violent actions, when we’re hurt or angry. I have the urge to slap someone, when I’m angry with them. But I don’t act on that urge. The vast majority of people, including the vast majority of people with mental illness, both have violent impulses from time to time, and also resist acting on those urges. This is the way normal human beings are.
However, the fact that we have those urges can be pretty frightening, when someone else so publicly acts on his. We see a mirror, quite enlarged, of the violence in our own hearts, and it terrifies us. Therefore, we want to make him as different from us as we possibly can. “Mental illness” is the scapegoat for people who are not, themselves, mentally ill.
And that is why it’s so hurtful to those who are, or have loved ones who are, mentally ill. They don’t want to be linked to that scapegoat, especially knowing that it is, actually, just a scapegoat, and not a real excuse, at all.
Do mentally ill people sometimes commit violent crimes? Yes, sometimes they do. Just as mentally normal people sometimes do. It doesn’t alter the fact that this guy focused his violent impulses on women, and the men who have sex with them, and that the MRA, PUA, and Incel sites he read sharpened that focus.
Therefore, misogyny is a true issue here, while mental illness is 1) undiagnosable on a dead man, let alone through the internet, and 2) not really relevant.
At least, this is my understanding of it, and why the commenters here really don’t want any armchair diagnoses of psychoses on this topic. Please, confirm or correct me. I’m still learning.
P.S. – by “this is the way normal human beings are,” I mean that to include all those who have the capacity to control their urges and actually do so, regardless of their other mental capacity/health.
Also, as to the argument of “If he’d only gotten laid, this wouldn’t have happened,” NO. Just no.
See, if he’d gotten laid, he would have wanted MORE. And it wouldn’t have been enough. And then, it would have happened. It might have been delayed, but the hatred for women was too deep.
I recently read LBT’s post with her abuser’s letters, which shows exactly how this escalates. Rape wasn’t enough. He wanted to rape her more often. When he got it more often, he wanted it even more than that. And all the while, he was the victim, making so many sacrifices.
Same thing with this guy. He was the victim, everyone was piling on to him, he was the one sacrificing, and nothing would have been enough.
> The vast majority of people, including the vast majority of people with mental illness, both have violent impulses from time to time, and also resist acting on those urges.
What about those people who cannot resist those urges? Rodgers describes being sickened by the thought that he has to commit this act (mostly because he does not want to die, he wants to live happy) but being unable to see an alternative. That seems to me to be someone who is compelled by their condition, not someone who is fully in control of themselves.
Let me quote some of his final words:
>I am not part of the human race. Humanity has rejected me. The females of the species have never wanted to mate with me, so how could I possibly consider myself part of humanity? Humanity has never accepted me among them, and now I know why. I am more than human. I am superior to them. I am Elliot Rodger… Magnificent, glorious, supreme, eminent… Divine! I am the closest thing there is to a living god. Humanity is a disgusting, depraved and evil species. It is my purpose to punish them all. I will purify the world of everything that is wrong with it. On the Day of Retribution, I will truly be a powerful god, punishing everyone I deem to be impure and depraved.
This sounds like someone suffering from severe delusions.
Sorry, LBT, the pronoun “her” was in reference to your host at the time. Is that right?
He sounds exactly like multiple PUA and incel guys who we’ve had pestering us here before, and who I’ve seen on other blogs. I eagerly await* saurabh’s explanation of how they’re all psychotic and the commonalities we can see between their ideas can’t be blamed on PUA.
(Not really)
Ok, @Saurabh, you need to fuck off, now. I know you are just loving lecturing us all on the technical diagnoses of different mental disorders but you are being fucking rude and unhelpful.
Just piss off for a while and practice some empathy.
BTW, some of us have psych degrees and are quite familiar with the DSM diagnostic criteria for various conditions! And we’d still like you to GTFO and stop trying to shift the blame for yet another murderous rampage motivated by misogyny away from misogyny.
Seriously, I am so tired of this shit. How many women have to die before people will be willing to admit that, oh hey, virulent enough misogyny really does motivate some men to kill women.
Do other PUA or incel guys take it as a personal insult and react with extreme rage when they hear that one of their peers had sex? I’ll admit I haven’t read a lot of the incel/PUAHate stuff, so if this is the case I’m not aware of it. But I certainly don’t think that’s true for PUAs in general.
And, again, I’m not trying to excuse PUAs or say that their behavior is not the product of pure misogyny: I’m saying that they are exactly that. PUAs are misogynists, pure and simple, and their behavior is not a product of psychosis. Rodgers was something else.
“What about those people who cannot resist those urges?”
Anyone who cannot resist their violent urges should ask for professional help in learning to control and resist their urges. Amazingly, impulse control can be taught. They may need to isolate themselves until they can.
HOWEVER, please note, this guy planned it all, meticulously. It’s not like picking up a candy bar in the check-out aisle at the grocery store. It was on the (#*$&ing LIST!
This goes beyond someone who just “snapped.” This goes so far beyond that.
The hatred in him is staggering. And the hatred is the real problem. Trying to scapegoat is not going to cut it. It was planned, and he IS responsible.
Yes, they do. Now go do some research before you decide to lecture people about something you clearly know very little about.
Oh, and btw, even after you’ve done your research? Many of us still probably won’t want to hear from you. You’ve pretty much burned that bridge already.
@ saurabh
“Rodgers describes being sickened by the thought that he has to commit this act (mostly because he does not want to die, he wants to live happy) but being unable to see an alternative. That seems to me to be someone who is compelled by their condition, not someone who is fully in control of themselves.”
Seriously?
It sounds to me exactly like someone who is seeking justification for an act they know is actually wrong, but intend to do anyway.
It’s really common justification among abusers: “you made me do it”, “I couldn’t help myself”, “I was out of control”. As many have pointed out, the facts seldom bear this out. The man who kicked open a closed door to punch me in the head told me I’d “made him do it”. He didn’t explain how my moving to another room to avoid his aggression forced him to become more aggressive.
And honestly, are you saying he “could not see an alternative” to putting a gun in the car, driving to a sorority house to kill women and when denied admittance, shooting up the street?
How about, um, driving to the nearest hospital, or handing himself in to the police? Or, you know, just shooting himself at home and leaving all those other people alone.
I had a friend in college who was plagued by compulsive thoughts that she would kill her younger siblings. (She was not helped by various Christian groups who told her that she must be in the power of the devil if she was having such ideas). She was certainly not in her right mind, but even so, she saw there was an alternative to following these promptings and committed herself to a psychiatric ward. Her condition did not improve there – she continued to believe she was evil and a danger to her loved ones – and she committed suicide, by jumping from the one window in the building that was over a roof. In other words, and I’m sure deliberately, she chose the only place where there was no risk she could hurt another person even by accident.
At the autopsy it turned out she had an undiagnosed inflammation of the brain lining.
She was evidently mentally ill, but she remained a decent person even so.
For other oldtimers – is it disturbing anyone else as much as it is me how much this dude’s manifesto sounds like some of the stuff our most persistent blog virus comes out with?
FTFY
FTFY
If only we could fucking stop you…
I want a “block commenter” button, so that I can just click it and then not even have to scroll past people who’ve already proven themselves to be too full of shit to be worth engaging with.
I mentioned the urges, because almost everyone has a violent urge from time to time. Almost everyone can relate, on a very, Very, VERY small level with this guy, because if they are honest with themselves, they’ll say that at least once in their lives, they have had the urge to act out violently.
Almost none of them have had the urge to go on an actual killing spree, though. Most of the time, the darkness in our souls is more along the lines of “I want to slap that person,” or possibly even “I dug my keys into the side of his pretty little souped-up four-wheel drive, carved my name into his leather seats!”
Just the barest connection, though, is enough to frighten people, and so they want to make his as “other” from him as they can. They’re Noping, all over the place. “NOT ME! NOT ALL OF US ARE LIKE THAT! I’M NOT LIKE THAT!” Which is, of course, glaringly obvious truth. But panic is like that.
So, they try to explain why he’s like that, and they’re not. Mental illness is the go-to othering scapegoat, and it’s really painful. You see, people who are personally connected with mental illness can’t “other” with it. And so, when you use that as a scapegoat, everyone who shares any connection with it, feels like you are also making them the scapegoat.
In other words, it is possible that Rodger was mentally ill. We don’t know, because we are not in a position to give any accurate diagnosis. But we do know it hurts a lot of people on this thread. That’s why we want to avoid saying, and using it as a scapegoat. Because it’s all painful enough, already, and there’s no need to add to the pain.
Thank you.
@cassandrakitty, part of why this is so disturbing is because this all sounds exactly like one of the old blog herpes, right down to having had a female therapist.
(And yes, I realize that this is never going to happen, and I’m not actually expecting David to magically create one. I just wish the option existed.)
What does FTFY mean, please? I’m kind of scared to Google right now.
I always expected to see that kid on the evening news eventually, to be honest.
Oh, bluecoat, I’m offering all the hugs you care to accept. That is just awful.
Also, yeah, decent people, including mentally ill ones, do the decent thing.
Oh, and next time someone downplays death and rape threat trolls on the internet and tells women not to be so stupidly paranoid, it’s just words and they’re being attention-seeking professional victims to complain about it: THIS!
@cassandrakitty – Yes, it’s really disturbing how familiar all his rantings really are.
@Michelle, Fixed That For You
@titianblue – You mean we should take warnings seriously? What a shocking concept.
Thanks, titianblue!
@ cassandrakitty
it not just blog virus, it MRM shit in general.or a least what that’s what i thought it was like.
When people tell you about themselves, believe them. This dude told the world that he hated women so much that he wanted to kill them, and yet just look at everyone trying to find alternate explanations for why he did exactly what he said he was going to do.
Fuck off, saurabh. You said you were tired of getting shouted at, yet here you are, still wanking. Just fuck off, you’re not wanted and not contributing anything.
I hadn’t thought about it, but damn, yes it does.
Ken L. – the blog herpes in this case refers to a particular troll we had, a very persistent, constantly sockpuppetting creep who alternated between whining and rage-smashing the keyboard about how horrible women were to him.
The thing about a woman in the elevator not greeting him warmly enough and him wanting to poke out her eyes was one of the first things I though of when reading Rodger’s crap.
@cassandrakitty – you mean the part where he passed a woman on the street, and said, “Hi,” and she did not respond, and immediately he called her a foul $^#@%? Because it never occurred to him that she might not have even seen or heard him? Nor that he was not actually entitled to anything from a complete stranger on the street?
Yeah. Same old, same old. Scary.
Sarah, your faithful reprinting of the defining characterises of narcissists is simply a catalog of the traits of assholes.
At this point, I think it’s important to note that there are a great number of assholes in life and that while many of them are harmful to be around those assholes don’t resort to mass murder. Narcissists may believe they are entitled to a great many things, but our society greatly encourages men to believe they are entitled to which ever body part on a woman he’s attracted to. Misogyny was definitely the trigger in this situation, his character flaws were the gun. Not mental illness, not a personality disorder.
It’s funny, when someone with a history of vicious anti-semitism shoots up a synagogue, nobody tries to claim that the perpetrator didn’t do it because they hate Jewish people. When a right wing nutjob murders a gay person or a gay rights activist after years of claiming his or her country could only be saved by instituting the death penalty for “sodomites” everyone pretty much agrees that the murderer was homophobe.
Yet when someone with a heavy interest in MRA ideology and dogma posts a video proclaiming their all consuming rage and hatred towards the female sex, all the while sounding like a supervillain* parody of every Nice Guy ever, and then kills a bunch of women, people don’t seem to believe the very reasons the killer claimed as his motivation.
*The Fedora Fiend?
Michelle – the elevator bit was our blog herpes.
@cassandrakitty
Comment Snob purports to do what you want, though you need to put in blacklisted words rather than just being able to click. Except I can’t seem to get it to work. Maybe someone else can and tell me how they did it. They have a Firefox version too.
@ Kim
You’re awesome!
LOL!