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 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.