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.
I know Saurabh seems to have no friends right now, but let me say that I think many people here are being unreasonable by dubbing her statements “disgusting”.
Based on my personal experience with a particular mental illness, Schizophrenia, I would have to agree with at least part of her thinking. I have two people who during my life have been VERY close to me, one an immediate family member and the other a best friend, who have been diagnosed with Schizophrenia within the past 2 years. And the difference in their behavior from before to after was unbelievable (when not taking their medication, that is). My family member went so far as to believe that he knew his future, our future, and had many, many ideas of what his destiny was, including out of this world situations that could only be explained as delusions.
My friend is in a similar situation and has been experiencing things around him that have not been reality. I know this, because I have been present as he “experiences” them. Such as, the way certain people he would interact with would treat him. He also believes and has for many weeks now, that unnamed people have been trying to poison him, steal from him, and kill him. Now, I do not mean to say that we are not taking these claims seriously and still do ensure that if, by some chance he is speaking truth, that he is safe. But the truth of the matter is, that his situation up to this point leaves these claims totally unprecedented and his behavior is widely out of the range of normal.
About the fact that it is wrong to make a connection between his mental illness and his actions:
It is very, very true that mental illness DOES NOT cause a person to become a murder/rapist/etc. However, I do believe that with the right combination of self-hatred, regret and desperation, a mental disease such as Schizophrenia can loosen a person’s judgement of right and wrong when they are in the thick of it and not taking the appropriate medication. I have seen exactly that scenario in both of these people I have described. Both of them fit that description and they become extremely more contemplative of violent actions when they become delusional. The thing is that when they are in this state, it is very difficult to convince them that they are not entirely stable, because they think that they are seeing things perfectly clearly. Therefore, getting them to take their meds becomes incredibly more difficult, which I think can be seen in many of the descriptions of Elliot Rodger’s choices in regard to that.
I am only trying to give readers another point of view.
@Ken L
Wow every single misogynistic man doesn’t kill? Color me surprised. It’s a huge part-fucking yes. I can’t even tell ifyou’re trying to argue this.
@brooked
Wow. I already had a terrible view of fox but did not know it could get so much worse.
@brooked
what’s scary is that this Doctor is actually an “expert” in the larger sense. she is a learned person, having gone to real schools of higher education. and can hold these view is shocking.
@Ken L
A willingness to kill is not a pathology. Hundreds of thousands of people kill others every year all around the world.
Ken L.
What’s different about Elliot Rodger is that he decided to pick up a gun and kill women. That is what sets home apart. His choice to murder.
And I know you didn’t specifically say pathology, but it reads like that’s what you’re hinting towards. If I misinterpreted, you have my apologies
Ninja’d by Shadow.
@brooked
I expected Westboro to blame homosexuality. I thought for sure that Fox would go for their usual trifecta of mental illness, video games and rap music. I set the bar so low for them that literally taking a step is enough to clear it, and they still fail.
Ken, I strongly suggest that you go read the article by Laurie Penny that someone linked in the other thread before you comment on this again, because right now you’re being part of the problem.
I’m almost morbidly curious enough to read that just to figure out how they got from angry rants about women who wouldn’t fuck the guy to the conclusion that he must be gay and that’s why he killed people. Almost, but not quite.
I am arguing nothing. I am simple saying that Occam’s Razor’s does not work in this case and that it is not just misogyny that cause these guys to kill. There is something that make these specific misogynists more violent then the rest. I honestly don’t know what it but it must be something. I am not implying a pathology per say or anything real specific, I am not making excuses I am asking a serious question. what is different about these misogynist then you average internet asshole? or put another way what stops most MRM from being killers? when they share the same ideology.
How do you know that more of them won’t end up taking the same path?
Ok everyone, forgive me for hand holding Saraubh, but i see my former self in zies comments.
I understand the knee jerk inclination to say whoever does heinous shit is mentally ill, because something is “not right.” The “thinking”is not right, the actions are not right, everything about it is wrong, so it’s easy to be like “wow, clearly something is WRONG with that dudes head” and not wrong with me who would never do that. But the right and wrong “in the head” and the wrong “thinking” has nothing to do with mental illness. It took me awhile to jump on this bandwagon too. Just now, I was tempted to write “this drives me crazy” or “bonkers” and undermine my whole point. It’s so intrenched, this complete refusal to take a hard look at men’s violence against women.
I’ve struggled with clinical depression all my life. I have to live in fear of people finding out and automatically thinking I’m unfit for all kinds of things like being a parent and working a job. I was once prescribed a supplemental antipsychotic with my antidepressants and the thought made me feel just horribly about myself. Why? Because mental illness is considered synonymous with “not right” and wrong bad behavior. Being “unstable” and not fit for things.
Mental illness has no relevance to bad behavior anymore than allergies or diabetes. It does not explain, predict, preclude or justify bad behavior.
Despite the harm it did to me, i too use to think mental illness was to blame for most abhorrent acts. Now that I “get it” I am more and more triggered by news reports bring up mental illness as “evidence” of why someone did horrible shit.
It may take you awhile, but hopefully you’ll get it someday too.
@Ken L
really? Then what else besides misogyny?
@Ken L
To me Occam’s razor absolutely applies. A significant portion of the global population is willing to take a/many human lives. The reasons and targets are different depending on the person. In some cases it’s bigotry, in some cases it’s war, in some cases it’s crime etc. In this particular case it’s misogyny.
Seriously, Ken, go read the Laurie Penney article. You are getting very close to working my last nerve, and I’m guessing I may not be the only one feeling that way.
@nitram
Eh. If you want to hand-hold Saurabh, I won’t stop you, so long as you don’t expect the rest of us to. (which wasn’t the vibe I was getting from you, so you probably don’t need to worry.)
@Cassandra
I already had low patience for Ken + low patience for this, so yeah. My last nerve is feeling worked.
Honestly, while I think most MRAs are not murderers and will not go on to murder people, the kind of toxic anger they support/enable makes the tiny minority that have murderous impulses feel supported so they’re complicit as far as I’m concerned. People like Paul Elam with his “satirical” pieces about beating and raping women, and his frequent statements that while he doesn’t condone violence it’s just so understandable, you know–the potential abusers & rapists & murderers in their midst get to see their worst impulses normalized & condoned.
Ken L.
Means and opportunity. No seriously. Rodger had guns and wanted to kill women. That is why he did it.
How do you know those other Internet misogynists aren’t hurting women? How do you know that they aren’t abusing and raping and harassing the women in their lives? Because, this is all part of a bigger picture of biolenec against women. Why are we flailing at everything but the ideology that sees women as non-human objects that men should be able to use in whatever ways they see fit; and that blames women and feminism for every personal and social wrong in the world, from famine to hangnails? What is anyone surprised when a man who buys into this ideology decides to take up a gun and kill women?
I’m not even sure who I was responding to there. I had this window open for a while and forgot to refresh, and the conversation has totally moved on. Pardon my non sequitur!
cassandrakitty:
No, you are not.
It may be as simple as how much the individual angry misogynist thinks he has to lose. Regardless, the misogyny remains the motivating factor.
On my phone so not attempting to blockquote.
I’ve seen a lot of people theorize that Rodgers was a closeted gay man.
My response to that and Ken are the same.
Anything to derail from the terrifying truth huh? That misogyny and male entitlement are very real and taken to their logical extreme, this is the result.
@cassandra
I don’t, I just hope they don’t. Unfortunately the odds are some will.
@Shadow
I would ask the same question of them, taking a life does not become rational just because a lot of people would do it. Killing other people is not something that is a given to our nature.
Also, like the mental illness derail, it’s partly about distancing oneself from the killer. I, Fox News pundit, am not a closeted gay man, so this murder case has nothing to do with me. Now back to today’s show about how women who have sex are evil whores who should be punished via forced childbirth.