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.
dustydeste: HOWEVER, andiamo, at least, basically means “let us go,” and is not something one would use to refer to oneself in the singular.
The french is “Allez” which is “Go!” in the formal second person impertative. The directionality is away from the speaker.
I think yty is (I think) supposed to be the Slavic “idti”, which is the imperative, “go”. It’s a command to head to someplace else, in the singular second. For “bring it on” the idiomatic would be different (and my colloquial russian is weak, because I’ve not spent time there; only in L’viv and Kyiv). The more formal, “come to me” would be transliterated more on the lines of either k’mnye or s’mnoy
As you said, the directionality seems away from the speaker.
Is Erin our little incel buddy? The one who wants the government to hook him up?
“”Anyway, you have an awesome blog and I admire your work, David, but I’m not too thrilled with your little attack dogs. They send an awesome message to lurkers and other people who would like to contribute, but don’t because they’re afraid to get on the wrong side of the mean girls clique. They don’t contribute anything and they’re driving people like me away.”
…Really?”
Yes really.
In the few days I’ve read this blog I’ve seen at least 4 other commenters with contrary views mobbed and attacked for daring to take a contrary position or question someone’s faulty logic.
Many of you are just as screwed up as the woman haters you love to mock.
And Erin is a dude. I’ll bet he has had violent thoughts. I’ll bet he’s also a hit with the ladies. I’ll wager both of those are why he’s hung up on me.
I am just a regular guy who would go nuts if he saw a guy trying to take advantage of a girl.
Unless that dude was only talking about how he’d done it, and encouraging others to do it. Then he’s just a harmless fool on the internet, and only fools and cowards are concerned about him, and those like him, and those they encourage.
Some ally.
You [people] are mean though. I wasn’t expecting that. Phewww!
Not, at least, if you pretended to be a woman. After all, it’s men that feminists hate, right? So you were safe if you, as a woman told them not all men are like that. Only problem is that feminists don’t actually care if you are a man/woman. What we care about is how you treat women.
That, bucko, is why Hugo got flamed and I didn’t. It’s why you got flamed and I didn’t. I don’t abuse women. You do.
Oh fuck, I wasn’t dismissing a rapist. How many times do I have to tell you that Roosh’s stories are made up?
Right… you don’t think he is a rapist, so it must not be true.
But understand that half the shit he says is bullshit
Which half? How do you know.
There are much better ways to educate men about not sleeping with drunk girls than making a big deal over a made up story.
This, you utter moron, is the problem. Men like you saying that raping women isn’t a big deal. I get that you don’t believe him. I get that you want to think he isn’t a rapist*. But telling people to ignore people who think that rape is just fine isn’t helping. It’s making it worse.
Why can Roosh confess to rape and not worry about it? Because people like you don’t care, and tell other people to not care.
Dustedeste, spare that wall of text. That piece of shit told another human being that they hoped they didn’t get raped and no one even flinched.
Because wishing someone not be raped isn’t a terrible thing. Because (from years of interaction) we know she meant it exactly as it was said.
e. I tell someone that the world is not populated by guys who are willing to shoot women who don’t put out and I get accused of being dismissive of rape and all kinds of other nasty shit.
Because in a world where men do shoot women who don’t put out, where men do rape drunk women. My favorite was the Canadian who raped a woman passed out in the snow, and tried to claim he couldn’t be guilty of rape because he thought she was dead: his lawyer actually tried to get the charge reduced to necrophilia. In a world where the system will allow for such a defense to be entertained (no matter how briefly), or where (as I linked up thread) a trio of women who declined to have sex were shot at… the night after Rodger killed people for not cold-approaching him it’s facile, and morally reprehensible to say, “not all men are like that” as if it somehow makes it all better.
No, not all men are like that, but some are. A fuckton more than you want to admit. And you know it. If you didn’t know it you wouldn’t have pretended to be a woman.
I think what chaps your hide is that I know it too. It really pisses you off that women know it (not that it’s possible for them not to know it). You don’t like that I can have had violent thoughts toward a woman (which you lie about never having had, ever, toward anyone), and people don’t lump me in with the Rooshes of the world (despite you saying the Rooshes of the world are only dangerous because we let them be by taking them at face value when they say raping women is good thing, and that they’ve done it).
They don’t lump me with them because there is that difference you keep ignoring… I’ve not done it. I’ve never killed a girlfriend. I’ve never abused a partner. I’ve never raped anyone.
And, unlike you, I don’t condone rape, nor rapists, nor those who say rape is fine. I think they are a threat to everyone, and a significant threat to women.
You say, “pish” they are all talk.
Well talk is real. And some people believe that talk.
We don’t, and told you so; which hurt your delicate feelings.
Sucks to be you.
*what I don’t get is why you want to think he’s not a rapist
Ah.. I see Erin is gone. I hope he enjoys the dissection (because the odds are he’s reading this; it makes the martrydom so much better).
It’s been a while since we had a good meltdown.
Good morning! I’m impressed at how accurate our troll-dar is, collectively.
Also, bookmarking this thread to go back and look at the surrealist art.
And now I go to Brooklyn. I can be content that I won’t be missing any of the fun I might have been having with Erin.
Ah, how the fleeting flower of summer is faded.
*Wakesup after a long night at work*
*Sees that this thread has like 700 new comments*
I can’t even. This thread, this topic, is the one people decide to come into and demand that we be nicer/consider their ableism/rething our stance on PUA/ride their particular hobby horse?
Look at your life, assholes. Look at your choices.
Oof. Erin went out with PUAhate lives!?
Yeah, I’m totally convinced that site is benign and Rodgers was just a bad egg. *sarcasm*
10 to 1 odds he returns as a sock.
rancid nads, I know you’re upset the people here aren’t putting YOUR needs first. Once again, you’re trying to shame people for not behaving how you would like them to behave. You’ve been rude and completely insensitive to everyone here, so spare us the holier-than-thou crap.
You’re a sad little puppy.
Poor you. You can always leave.
1) “For daring to take a contrary position”? Dude, “asshole” is not a “contrary position”.
2) So fucking what? If the commentariat are happy here and David doesn’t have any objections to the way we treat people, I’m not seeing the problem. Not every individual is going to fit in with the vibe on every blog or forum, and the regulars in a given internet space aren’t obligated to change to fit everyone.
And I would like you to take a moment and seriously examine whether you’d be complaining about how “mean” everyone is and demanding they be nicer to you in a (supposedly) male-majority space like 4chan or Reddit, as opposed to this female-majority space.
In fact, why aren’t you on 4chan right now, fighting for civility and niceness? /b/ is notoriously rude and deliberately offensive; why not take your crusade over there?
@erin
I slept great, thanks for asking 😀
@kittehs
I guess you could get Kett out of Kittehs but it seems hard.
Only on their off days, it doesn’t seem that effective to do battle in.
@katz
Sadly I’ve got to re-read the thread first. I’ll just skim, for the sculpture comments. (and yeah I said I’d do it in the morning but it is 12 where I am and I just got up. XD)
@kittehs
Those are really pretty sports bras 😀
@Kim
I don’t see them that often. I used to see owls all the time where I lived, but I don’t remember if we got bats.
@racnad
Racnad, you don’t need to suck up the Erin now, he got banned.
Hey, do you guys mind if I type my sculpture comments down here to recap? Or should I do it somewhere else?
contrapangloss
that’s not very nice. :/ (the salesperson, not you. you are awesome.) everybody has different relations/opinions on how they want their boobs to look/feel. minimizing should be fine for all sizes (same for maximizing).
cassandra
i’m so envious of that bra; it looks really nice. I can only wear strapless bras tho, b/c my trapezius is my #1 spot of pain and any straps over it cause intense ouchies.
I know; that’s not how it read to me (the second time i read it,. the first time thru the thread i think my brain autofiltered it out so i had no idea what Erin was going on about)
kittehserf
I AM SO ENVIOUS THAT IS SO PRETTY.
kim
not really.. i’ve seen one or too hang out in neighbors umbrella stands (you know the kind of table w/ the umbrella in the center?), or flying around the park, but i haven’t seen too many in a couple years b/c i moved.
i’m not caught up yet, but posting now b/c it’s long
You dodge people’s arguments CONSTANTLY, yet somehow we’re the ones at fault. Okay then.
Yes, we’re all just as reprehensible as admitted rapists, advocates of terrorism, and advocates of rape and abuse. Not.
@pecunium:
It’s not really important at this point, but the whole weirdness for us of that group of words was that, yeah, they did seem to be, in general, the imperative “go away” (judging from the ones we knew). Except that “andiamo” isn’t any kind of “go away;” it’s more like “let’s you and me leave, together;” it’s a word used to refer both to the speaker and the person to whom they are speaking. Which is what made it seem weird, in the group with the rest.
@everyone:
I wanted to apologize just in general for calling Erin the diminutive of whore in Italian – it was the first insult that came to mind that I knew wasn’t in Google Translate, and I just kinda wanted to see if he got it (and it seemed kind of appropriate at the time, considering how much he was throwing around the English version, and insisting it wasn’t offensive – it was late and I made the wrong call there; sorry). It did seem to take him longer to get it than I expected, for someone who’s supposedly fluent in Italian, at any rate. For transparency’s sake, other things I called him included spraying diarrhea, and the stench of shit. For those I do not apologize.
Gosh! Well, it’s taken some time but I think I’ve caught up.
A guy pretends to be a woman on a thread about a guy who killed women in order to persuade me that I need not worry that guys kill women and thus, presumably, I should encourage my daughter to get out there and party on because guys don’t rape women either.
I’m having some problems with following the logic on that one; it occurs to me, however, that PUA is a profit centre and Rodgers killing people is bad for business.
It’s even worse for business for the generic MRAs because the thought they clutch to their miserable little selves at night is that if they just had money and an expensive car they would be surrounded by adoring women, and yet a not bad looking guy with money and an expensive car ended up killing people because he wasn’t surrounded by adoring women. This is such a massive disconnect between reality and their delusions that it’s unsurprising that they are desperately flailing around trying to find some way to reconcile the two.
I suspect that the only circumstances in which women would have thrown themselves adoringly at Rodger’s feet are inside an Ayn Rand novel; I do wonder what was on his bookshelves…
Good summary of what transpired, Stevie. The logic was a tad … absent.
Hey, if anyone has stories of male entitlement (aggrieved or otherwise) they feel comfortable sharing, there’s a new tumblr: http://destroyentitlement.tumblr.com/
They’re looking for submissions, but also mods since their inbox is already filling up with “not all men” nonsense.
This. There are lots of cool blogs where I never comment because I wouldn’t get along with the commentariat. You’re not going to fit in with every group of people, not even if they’re cool and you think they should think you’re cool.
Well, here’s my statue for Erin.
I admit it’s kind of rushed, but how could I go longer without making a memory to his glory :
I should probably admit at this point I don’t actually know how to draw chickens.
Also relevant: When Women Refuse, a catalog of news stories and personal anecdotes of violence faced by women who reject men (Racnad, you entitled little fucker, this one’s for you)
Marie, that is fantastic.
Just thought you should know.