A mass shooting in Santa Barbara last night left seven dead, including the man suspected of being the killer. Local authorities say that this chilling video, titled Elliot Rodger’s retribution, “appears to be connected” to the shootings. It is a supremely disturbing real-life villain’s monologue in which a young man, evidently the killer, explains on the day before the massacre why he intends to kill: because women have rejected him.
As the person who sent this video to me this morning noted, it sounds almost like a parody of the misogynistic beliefs and rhetoric that I write about on this blog. His language and his melodramatic tone both echo the writings of many of those young men who consider themselves “incels.” His anger is the same anger we see from the rejected men who lash out with insults and threats on OkCupid when their often crude advances are turned down. He reminds me of every so-called “nice guy” who is inwardly seething with resentment born of sexual entitlement denied. He even, at one point, calls himself a “gentleman.” He also calls himself an “alpha.”
It is clear that his resentment at women was stoked by what I call the “new misogyny” and by steeping himself in at least one online community that reaffirmed his exaggerated, unwarranted sense of victimhood. So far we have evidence that he was a commenter at PUAhate, a site ostensibly designed to critique PUAs but which has degenerated into a haven for misogynistic “incels” and angry trolls. I suspect we will find that he was also a reader of, or a commenter at, some of the other sites I critique on this blog.
For those of you who cannot make it through the video — I found it very hard to watch — here is a transcript of what he said.
Hi, Elliot Rodger here.
Well… this is my last video. It all has to come to this.
Tomorrow is the day of retribution. The day in which I will have my revenge against humanity. Against all of you.
For the last 8 years of my life, ever since I’ve hit puberty, I’ve been forced to endure an existence of loneliness, rejection, and unfulfilled desires. All because girls have never been attracted to me.
Girls gave their affection, and sex, and love, to other men but never to me.
I’m 22 years old and I’m still a virgin. I’ve never even kissed a girl.
I’ve been through college for two and a half years, more than that actually, and I’m still a virgin.
It has been very torturous.
College is the time when everyone experiences those things such as sex, and fun, and pleasure. But in those years I’ve had to rot in loneliness.
It’s not fair. You girls have never been attracted to me.
I don’t know why you girls aren’t attracted to me, but I will punish you all for it.
It’s an injustice, a crime, because I don’t know what you don’t see in me. I’m the perfect guy, and yet you throw yourselves at all these obnoxious men, instead of me, the supreme gentlemen.
I will punish all of you for it. (laughs)
On the day of retribution I am going to enter the hottest sorority house of UCSB… and I will slaughter every single spoiled, stuck-up, blonde slut I see inside there.
All those girls that I’ve desired so much, they would’ve all rejected me and looked down upon me as an inferior man if I ever made a sexual advance towards them while they throw themselves at these obnoxious brutes.
I will take great pleasure in slaughtering all of you.
You will finally see that I am in truth the superior one. The true alpha male. (laughs)
Yes, after I’ve annihilated every single girl in the sorority house, I’ll take to the streets of Isla Vista, and slay every single person I see there.
All those popular kids who live such lives of hedonistic pleasure while I’ve had to rot in loneliness for all these years, they’ve all looked down upon me every time I try to go out and join them. They’ve all treated me like a mouse.
Well now, I will be a God compared to you. You will all be animals. You are animals, and I will slaughter you like animals. I will be a God, exacting my retribution, on all those who deserve it.
And you do deserve it, just for the crime of living a better life than me.
All you popular kids. You’ve never accepted me, and now you’ll all pay for it.
And girls, all I’ve ever wanted was to love you, and to be loved by you. I’ve wanted a girlfriend, I’ve wanted sex, I’ve wanted love, affection, adoration, but you think I’m unworthy of it.
That’s a crime that can never be forgiven.
If I can’t have you, girls, I will destroy you. (laughs)
You denied me a happy life, and in turn, I will deny all of you life. (laughs) It’s only fair.
I hate all of you, humanity is a disgusting, wretched, depraved species. If I had it in my power, I would stop at nothing, to reduce every single one of you to mountains of skulls and rivers of blood, and rightfully so.
You deserve to be annihilated. And I’ll give that to you.
You never showed me any mercy, and so I will show you none. (laughs)
You force me to suffer all my life, and now I’ll make you all suffer.
I’ve waited a long time for this.
I’ll give you exactly what you deserve.
I will have more on this as the story develops. My heart goes out to the loved ones of all the victims.
Misogyny kills.
EDITED TO ADD: Elliot Rodger seems to have been a commenter on PUAhate, the anti-PUA message board that is as misogynistic and generally awful as the PUAs it critiques. PUAhate has taken itself offline, so all evidence of this may end up scrubbed. I added a paragraph about this.
I will keep updating as I track down more information on this story. Please post anything you find in the comments as well.
EDIT 2: This will be a NO TROLLS thread. Anything gratuitously argumentative or less than respectful of the victims will be removed.
Which gets us right back where we started – at entitlement. It’s better to be angry and resentful at the rest of the world than patient and practical and to have a bit of introspection. I know that when you’re 22, that the thought of being 30 and looking back a decade is a bit of an ask, but surely, most people know that things will look different as time passes and you get more experience and a few achievements under your belt.
Insisting that you’re suffering “injustice” when it’s just life telling you that you can’t have everything you want, let alone all at once, is downright silly. It feels a bit strange using a word like that when the circumstances are so awful, but it’s right in its own weird way. This bloke’s worries and concerns were trivial, petty, silly, minor issues that most people learn to laugh off as they get older – if they ever had them beyond the age of nine or fourteen in the first place. What age is it that most of us realise that our romantic prospects are unlikely to include film star / rock star contenders? When do we realise that doing a good job of whatever job we get is also a way of meeting people? And that many of those people can introduce you to others, any one of whom could turn out to be a long term friend or maybe a romantic interest.
More importantly, it doesn’t matter anyway. Finding people to spend time with, to become good friends with and, occasionally, to bed for however long or brief a time, is worthwhile at any age and any stage. And this bloke spurned or abandoned all the chances he got to make a decent life for himself, his family and the people around him.
Cliff, congrats on graduating, that’s great news!
Further on Miri’s piece: even though zie follows it with the “women don’t owe him a damn thing” comment, am I the only one rather skeeved out by the wording with the bit about learning to get and keep a partner? That still makes it sound like women are trophies, not people with agency; like if Rodgers had the dreaded cheat code, he’d have known how to programme a woman properly.
A person can be the loveliest in the world, they can have the best social skills ever. It doesn’t guarantee having any relationships, any partners, let alone any long-term ones.
Oh, and said friend who also had a good attitude (whom I have to admire for his incredible patience, based on what I’m reading. He’s a better person than me.) eventually left him because every time they were around, Rodger would always be visibly enraged at any couple around him and would always talk about how much he hates them. Like, he said that he had one conversation in which he asked what he would do if he had total power over the world. He didn’t really say what the friend said, but he described how he would torture and kill everyone who has “wronged” him (basically, anyone who has the audacity to have been on a date or have had sex). That was enough to make that friend leave him, a friend who was with him since he was about 5 or so.
Kittehserf – Yeah, “social skills” are more a solution for “I like people and want friends but I don’t know how to interact.” They’re not going to work for “I hate people and want to use them, and whether I know how to interact is a moot point because I refuse to try.”
It does come ookily close to using “social skills” as a softer, more sensitive euphemism for “Game.”
Bingo!
I just tried to watch the video, and I had to turn it off. It’s incredibly creepy…like I feel like he’s going to kill me. 🙁
[tw: abuse]
As for his argument? Well…I’m a 37-year-old cis male and I’ve dated someone only once, years ago. I’ve had crushes, sure, but between having abuse in my background and having a few friendships end badly (both in high school and early adulthood) because I was being a douchenozzle, I haven’t put a whole lot of emphasis on dating as much as trying to make friends with people and treating people how they want to be treated. Sex isn’t that much of a priority.
This guy, however…you can see the privilege and the entitlement dripping off of him, like my dog when he wants my candy bar. 😛 Apparently, if you’re this guy, it’s perfectly okay to kill people over something that would usually be a minor inconvenience because someone told you it was okay. 😛 (By the way, I’d love to see a legal rampage arise out of this. Anything to see more eggs on more MRAs’ faces.)
A few people have mentioned CWC here; he was pretty privilege-blind, too, and he definitely threw fits and wrote violent stories, but first of all, he had no contact with the MRA community to my knowledge, and second, he was being mercilessly trolled by people who had discovered him on 4chan, which only made him angrier over time. This guy, as far as I know, had a relatively comfortable life, had no developmental or mental issues, didn’t have anyone actively harassing him, and really just wanted to get laid.
Now 6 people are dead, and so is he…and for what? Just because your racist, sexist boner was unhappy? Fuck you too, guy. I think we need to upgrade the Legos to “my dog’s chewed-up Nylabone” for you. 😛
I didn’t read the other comments, and I rarely post, but when I saw this on the news, I had to check in here.
This video is the perfect recap of the whole hateful movement. This guy is uber spoiled, so totally privileged, intent on blaming others for the misfortune, brought upon himself by his own disgust for women, and his feeling of entitlement to their bodies.
He has everything a person could want financially, and is even physically attractive! He must have been dripping with hate in order to drive every single person away. Though I bet he had plenty of female attention, just not from the women he felt he deserved. These PUAs often claim all the want is love and such, but they reject all but Playboy models, and get bitter when they reject him instead! They don’t see woman as human.
He says
“I don’t know why you girls aren’t attracted to me, but I will punish you all for it.”
I am pretty sure that this says it all.
(side note- I hope no one is calling this guy mentally ill. I am pretty sure everyone here knows why I say this, so I won’t elaborate. I just hate that in other spaces, this is the first thing people say. )
@Cliff “‘social skills’ as a… euphemism for ‘Game'” Right!! He wrote off his last set of housemates as “nerds” who had nothing to “offer” him so he didn’t bother even trying to make any kind of connection with them. Though even the year before he seemed to have the ability to meet potential and actual male friends and have fun, talk about ideas, etc. He just decided that wasn’t nearly as important as his sexual fixation and alienated his social circle in the process. Agree with Cthulu’s Intern that his childhood friend sounds like a genuinely good and patient guy who had to cut off an old friend turned completely toxic.
so I think he had at least rudimentary social skills but a horrible, unrealistic worldview and an extremely brittle self-concept. He kept saying if he could not get a hot blonde girlfriend and have children with her there was no sense in living, like… he could not even imagine a satisfactory life for himself either in the short or long run that was anywhere outside that extreeeemely narrow box.
His social skills were probably at least marginally ok– way more awkward guys than that start families every day– but he was just so brittle inside, and he had no grit. I don’t know if women could sense that and it scared them off, or if it’s more that his idea of “trying desperately” to meet girls was basically to roam the streets hoping someone would notice his sunglasses and new shirt so sex would fall into his lap. (Sort of like his idea of going to college was to show up for classes for two weeks, then drop out and spend the semester farting around at Barnes and Noble.)
At any rate, anyone that emotionally brittle is bound to run up against the shoals and break into a zillion bits eventually; I think his parents had bailed him out of virtually every other bit of disappointment in his life but couldn’t bail him out on the sex thing, so that might have just been the first available thing for him to shipwreck on. He could just as well have wrecked over a freshman year breakup, or his first boss at work, or whatever.
Wish he could have just wrecked HIMSELF, though.
His childhood actually seemed really good. Seriously, he had quite a few genuine close friends he did a lot of things with until he started being disturbing about his hostility towards sex.
I just read that whole long thing, and really, the two most striking things in that novel of a manifesto is the utter entitlement and raging narcissism that permeates his thinking.
Everything is for him, it all boils down to him.
Also, begging his mother to marry one of her rich boyfriends. There’s so much with the status – swanky restaurants, mansions, considering it horrible to fly anything other than first class and practically throwing fits over it. Getting mad when his friend also had another friend over. Throwing a fit at his father and stepmother because she got mad at him when he entered their house without knocking – and not speaking to them for months, because he was the oldest son, and he came before the stepmother, but his father was “weak” and “let her make the rules”. Wanting to outlaw sex because it was vile. Hating people who kissed in front of him, because he felt they did it to torture him.
It’s like he didn’t realize that people do things and they’re not about him! And it totally sounds like he expected to get girls by cheat code. I don’t think that anyone would have been able to get through to someone who was so self-absorbed.
I couldn’t watch the video and had trouble getting through the transcript. Such loathing, bitterness, scewed justice and entitlement. The loss of life makes me sad, but I’m glad he is gone. I just find it utterly tragic that he took others with him in the process. And worse, did I understand this was encouraged??? I would have hopped someone would have tried to talk him down and get him help. I try to hold on to hope for humanity, though times like these I wonder.
Personally I am often lonely and wanting a companion. I’ve been in love a couple times and it didn’t work out, hurt like hell; I’m not going to go all homicidal about it. Which also brings me to my next thought, the double standard most people teach their children, well society in general teaches. This guy was SO obsessed with loosing his virginity. Girls, not that much pressure. Actually, too much sex and your a slut! A couple decades ago… you would be getting married in pink! Virginity is still somewhat prized, guys don’t mind it. Girls wont tease you about it, at least not once JR high is out. I didn’t loose mine till I was almost 22, and I was planning on marring the man, had the ring on my finger. Didn’t even get my first kiss till I was 15. Not a friken big deal people! People got to learn things happen at its own pace when the time is right. And these new Hate Groups aint going to change that!
Not All Men are like this. But that’s beside the point: not all men need to be. It only takes one.
Those people saying “if he’d gotten laid, this wouldn’t have happened”. This is tantamount to extortion for sex. “Nice little lives you’ve got here. Shame if anything were to happen to them…”
See, you’re not entitled to a woman, you can’t make a woman want to be intimate with you any more than you can make people enjoy the same things you do… or any more than other people can make you enjoy the same things they enjoy. It literally doesn’t make sense.
It’s not a question of duty or fair dealing, it’s a question of preferences and compatibility. It’s a two-way street: if she doesn’t want to be with you, then any desire you may have, any actions you may take, are moot: she has fulfilled her end of the bargain by being appealing to you, but you have not fulfilled your end of it by being appealing to her in turn. You can’t hold her responsible for something you have failed to do, nor can you hold yourself responsible for something you can’t possibly do without overriding your true self.
The Sun will rise and set whether you want it to or not. Admire the sunset’s beauty; but no matter how much you love it, it will pass into night. It is not yours, nor can it be: the Sun owes you nothing. If you can make peace with the Sun, you can make peace with women, and then with yourself.
You know, reading this manifesto, the people who are saying that this wouldn’t happen if he got laid are dead wrong. If he had gotten laid, he’d almost definitely realize that he’s still not happy with life and he would blame her for it and still hate the world.
If I see one more person claiming that mental illness causes people to be assholes, I WILL FUCKING SCREAM.
My SO was a month short from 30 when he had his first sexual experience with another person (me) and he never complained about anything like this. Probably because he’s ACTUALLY a sweet, kind man who doesn’t feel entitled to other people’s attention or affection. (He was lonely, he has since told me, but he didn’t blame other people for it.)
And the reason why I approached him in the first place was because he was so kind and patient, and it didn’t take long for love to bloom between us. So… yeah.
That guy is completely wrong about everything. He also seems to take into quite a few stereotypes about, for example, college life and youth in general. The level of entitlement is horrifying – no matter what the reason, nobody “owes” you affection of any nature just because you exist. Not even if you actually were nice – which I highly doubt this guy is.
I mean, I don’t know what he expected from life at this point but it’s hard to believe that the reason those expectations weren’t fulfilled is because of women. If not getting laid frustrates one to this extent, there is something seriously wrong with their priorities :/
@ Alice Sanguinaria
I hear that – I haven’t gotten a proper diagnosis yet (depression is a given, but whether or not I have had before that something is still unclear. Currently, ADD/ADHD, DID and possibly some others are being looked at as possibilities 🙁 )
So, I know I used to be a douchecanoe who used ableist and other such words to describe people who were likely not mentally ill as if their behavior was caused by such – but I have seen the error of my ways and regret it and try to better my use of language. Still learning (so please do point out if you see me doing it again…)
I started watching after my language long before I got a diagnosis of any sort but it just got even more personal after they started treating depression AND at the same time, started suspecting that there is more to it than just traumatic experiences.
It was really good to read that, Catfish, after the toxic stews today.
No. Nonono. This is not happening. This is not real. Nope.
And people can’t actually be trying to blame this tragedy on anything but the enormous, all-encompassing problem of male entitlement. Elliot Rodger wasn’t “psychotic” or “frustrated”, or “sick” or anything like that. He had a massive sense of entitlement that was being kept alive and well through the constant reaffirmation of his toxic beliefs by other entitled assholes. When people (women) didn’t bow down to his mighty person, they did not work as they should, and had to be punished for it. Misogyny and male entitlement are among the most dangerous combinations in existence.
I just can’t wrap my head around this mindset. This feeling that “if I go, I’m taking others with me” shit. And the God-complex shown in the transcript… it’s just so baffling.
[TW: suicide]
When I was at my all-time low emotionally and contemplated leaving this world by my own hand, I did research and made plans on how to do it while traumatizing as few people as possible in the process. How to make the least mess and make the body look the least disturbing to the person who would find it, what the warning signs on the door would read to make people call professionals and let them know what to expect before coming in etc. The thought of deliberately causing other people harm… I just don’t understand. I can’t understand this mindset. I just can’t.
My heart goes out to the victims and their families, to Elliot Rodger’s family, to all people who were affected by this. Hugs to all mammotheers who want them. I don’t know if even the fluffiest kitties in the world can provide enough brain bleach, but it’s a start.
http://www.distractify.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads//2014/01//animals-that-are-literally-a-ball-of-fur-warning-may-cause-cuteness-overload-34.jpg
http://cdn.rsvlts.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Type-%E2%80%9CFluffiest-Kitten-in-the-Whole-Wide-World%E2%80%9D.jpeg
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…Aspergers? Not only is that a totally out of date definition… I’m autism-spectrum, from a whole family of autism-spectrum people (me, siblings, a parent, uncle, aunt, great-uncle…), and I can point to some stuff we all (my whole family) do… we’re all into comfortable clothes. We all really adore food we like and hate food we don’t. We all get overstimulated easily in mass social situations. We all play a lot of puzzle games. We’re mostly STEM majors but not all.
Notice I said “my family”… yeah, nearly all the non-ace folks have had sex (!). I’ve been married TWICE. Some of us have kids… actually, we’re kind of prolific. I’ve got 3 siblings, a couple handfuls of first cousins, and more second cousins than I can remember.
None of us have ever murdered anyone. My father resuscitated a hamster with a drinking straw (and it worked, Butterscotch lived another year). None of us WOULD murder anyone unless we were in immediate lethal danger.
It’s almost like being different doesn’t mean dangerous.
But I’m not beautiful and I’m definitely not blonde and I’m female so I guess I don’t motherfucking count.
This is typical, tedious, everyday misogyny. Youtube comments are awash with the exact same attitude. He has TOLD is why he did this and already, as with the Virginia Tech killer before him, we are dismissing him as a madman. Whatever else he was, he was a confirmed woman-hater and he killed people because he hated women and had a sense of entitlement to them. He is only different to all the other woman-haters online in that he acted out his hatred in this way.
@ DreamingRainne
“Those people saying “if he’d gotten laid, this wouldn’t have happened”. This is tantamount to extortion for sex. “Nice little lives you’ve got here. Shame if anything were to happen to them…””
Exactly!
Some are blaming his murderous rampage on women having choices about who they have sex with and suggesting these should be restricted. To “prevent violence”: it’s not clear quite how forcing women to have sex they don’t want would not be in itself violence, and require additional violence to enforce.
Another thing that comes across is that he really, really didn’t like women (yeah – duh!). But he wanted one anyway.
WHY?
Am I being naive?
Because surely most people who are or who want to be sexually active don’t want to have sex with people they despise.
A lot of it seems to be seeing sex as not just the having-an-orgasm-inside-her-body thing, but the idea that he’s imposing on her, he’s won, she’s lost, she’s having to bend to his will. PUA’s heavily into that. It’s about rape as much as anything else. These guys lust after women’s bodies, all right; they simply hate people who aren’t them, aren’t even almost-humans like other men, and yet have the insolence to deny their wishes.
The “imposing on her” / “defiling her” trope is truly disturbing. Sex as revenge for some imaginary crime… brrrr!
I guess it locks into self-hatred too. If a person thought someone has “lost” by having sex with them it doesn’t say much about the person.
Meanwhile, over on the Guardian website, someone put up an article about maybe misogyny having something to do with this guy saying he’ll punish women for not having sex with him right before doing a mass shooting, and is getting accused of “standing on the bodies of the dead to promote a bitter twisted ideology” (talking about misogyny, that is, not actual misogyny).
I think I should get off the internet now.
I was in my local park early this morning and there was a duck with nine fluffy, slightly ridiculous ducklings.
@Anarchonist
I hear you. Years ago, when I considered suicide, the thing that made me change my mind was how much it would hurt my family, and how in the world my family would explain it to my young nephew. I looked at it from his point of view, and figured he would believe I didn’t love him enough to stay.
So I stayed. Because I do.