Well, this is pretty freaking disturbing. Metronews.ca reports that
Toronto police are looking closely at video of a Toronto pick-up artist who filmed himself muttering about stabbing a girl who turned him down. …
“She deserves to f**kin’ like stabbed and cut up into tiny pieces for that s**t,” he says. “Like, I would f**king take her and her boyfriend and all her f**king friends down. F**king worthless pieces of s**t. She thinks she’s all that, just because she has the looks and s**t. I’ll show all these little bitches one day.”
In a second clip, [“xsouldeath”] appears to try to purchase a knife from a grocery store.
After news of this began to spread, someone who described himself as
E.J., the head coach of TdotPickup, a group that holds PUA bootcamps and coaching in the Yonge and Dundas area, called Metro Monday evening after speaking with xsouldeath. He said some of his comments had been misunderstood.
“This whole thing about getting them back, all he was talking about is basically getting them back by getting a really good-looking girl and rubbing it in their face,” he said.
Apparently, there is some mysterious language that resembles English in which “she deserves to f**kin’ like stabbed and cut up into tiny pieces for that s**t” actually means “rubbing it in their face.”
As for talking about stabbing a woman and cutting her up, E.J. said xsouldeath is not the type of person to do that.
So reassuring.
The video in which xsouldeath talks about looking for a knife at a grocery store was taken out of context, E.J. said. “Basically the whole reason he was asking for this knife was to find the cutlery section and they were not really understanding the English,” he said.
And then there was this plot twist:
Update: xsouldeath, the creator of the YouTube videos, appears to be EJ, the head coach of TdotPickup.
Creepy as hell.
While xsouldeath’s YouTube channel has been taken down, what appears to be his Google+ profile is still up (I’ve archived it here). In addition to posts about his own videos and a wide assortment of popular Youtube “prank” videos, xsouldeath posts videos from other PUAs as well as from antifeminist “philosopher” and self-described Men’s Rights Activist Stefan Molyneux and from obsessively antifeminist Youtuber Bane666au, whose frequently hour-long videos feature him as a talking skull in a pitcher of Koolaid.
What appears to be his Twitter account has been made private.
On the Toronto subreddit, meanwhile, someone writes:
I’ve known this person since High School. There are some stories I would rather not share about him on this page to save him dignity. But he needs Help. I am just really creeped out to approach him anymore.
I’ll post more later as the story develops.
@binjareel This search for an explanation works as systemic racism in a way though. As others have noted, they don’t look for an explanation in cases where the accused is a person of color, probably because they see the race as explanation enough. I don’t want to pretend I don’t have the same thoughts at times, but being confronted over unexamined racism and ableism has really helped me.
I guess considering the news in the OP, the response of the police is the best news to be expected.
I remember being upset with women for not giving a clear no in the past. However, the same fears I have in asking out a woman are included in the fears women have in rejecting a man. (Expressed as Heteronormative, because I dont want to pretend I fully understand the different way this plays out for all sexualities.) Turns out empathy for the plight of others has helped me more gracefully deal with rejection.
Sorry I am rambly, just seeing this brings up thoughts about times when I was an asshole. Not this bad. Fuck though this creeps me out.
@Binjabreel:
That is an interesting sociological effect, you’re right. Since the PUA community is an internet thing, everyone might end up applying their own local standards to it, meaning that race may end up not being a factor or may end up being disagreed over. That might be worth watching.
HI, SFHC!
I still don’t know what’s going on with me, but I definitely fit under the umbrella of “crazy”. Even the doctors and therapists I’ve been to over the last 25 yrs haven’t been able to agree on a diagnosis. I hardly think some stranger online is going to give me an accurate diagnosis.
Also, I have managed not to rape, murder or be a disgusting bigot.
Did you know anemia, calcium and vit D deficiency can mess you up in a staggering variety of ways and that some PTSD thrown in there will not help the situation? Yet, I have only recently actually had, at my insistence, a blood test that verified those as causes for all sorts of symptoms. That’s likely due to the stigma that was attached to me upon the first misdiagnosis.
Did you know too much antidepressant will make that shit worse? I do now.
Did you know that rapid weight gain can be a sign that your body thinks you are starving to death? I do now. All those symptoms could have one easily fixed cause, but once declared “crazy” you will always get the side eye, even from medical professionals.
Here is the really fucked up part: My brain is an organ. Should my symptoms be caused entirely by chemical imbalance not solely happening in my brain I will no longer be called “crazy”. Yet the problem is no less physiological if it is. I will still be on medications the rest of my life, just as if the chemical imbalance had to do with serotonin instead of nutrition. It is no more a moral failing if the sickness is due to lack of dopamine reuptake inhibitors ect.
No one sees a murder and says, “Well, they’re clearly diabetic” or “His body must be eating his bones to stay alive”. Nope, only mental illness gets equated with being dangerous.
It is triggering to me and I need it to stop.
In the Metro article, I noticed that the screenshot of his YouTube channel shows him* in a video of an “Indian desi guy” trying on various too-blue-to-be-true** contact lenses. The Portuguese have something like 4-5 centuries’ experience as colonists in India. Maybe he’s Indo-Portuguese? Funny that he’d choose to emphasize the one on Twitter, the other on YouTube. And in the context of disguises and pseudonyms, too, no less.
*And if that’s NOT him, it sure looks like him. The facial shape and profile are the same.
**Nobody, of any complexion, has “sapphire blue” eyes; it’s a shade that human irises don’t come in. I doubt this look would fool anyone. But how typically PUAish to make a bid for attention that way. Peacocking, y’all!
Bina,
There are black people with very blue eyes. I want to say it happens on a certain island especially but as I can’t name it, you may consider me wrong.
The internalized racism in people like Rogers is really toxic, isn’t it? Almost white but not quite seems to do something to people who aren’t getting the privilege they think they should have for being closer to passing as the oppressor class than others.
-Isms are the worst. They hurt people in so many nasty ways.
@sevenofnine
I did say that he shouldn’t be labled one way or the other. If he’s I’ll, he needs help. If he’s not he needs to be charged, tried according to Canadian law. Hopefully they’ll catch him soon, before he does any real harm.
And for the record guys like this who consider killing or doing harm to people out of spite and unwarranted rage are not entitled assholes.
Entitled assholes are the guys who spill their drinks women in excuse to grope them, or stare at their breasts rather than looking women in the eye when they talk. That’s an entitled asshole.
The Isla Vista and Montreal murders? That was the work of souless fucking monsters who turned in their humanity card and whose names should be tossed on the ash heap of history, never to be remembered.
To everyone who is stating this guy is crazy and defending their right to say it because reasons:
What good is it saying that he needs mental help on this website, then? Like, really, what is it going to do if we call him crazy and shit? A bunch of anonymous commenters on a website mocking misogynist does what good to determine his mental state?
I mean, tell us why and how us saying he has a mental problem helps anything at all. Enlighten us.
Penny:
Which is a completely banal observation. Of course he needs help if he’s mentally ill. Of course he needs to be charged with a crime. This “is he mentally ill” wankery adds exactly nothing to the discussion, other than causing distress to actually mentally ill people who are sick to the teeth of being thrown under the bus like this.
How the fuck is thinking murder and dismemberment is a proportional response to being rejected by a woman not entitlement? He thinks he’s entitled to actually take this person’s life because she wouldn’t fuck him. WORDS!
No. They are human. They are us. They are your neighbor that you always thought was a nice guy. We remember what they did so we can work out how to stop it happening again. We don’t get to revoke their humanity cards. We fucking own them.
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” – George Santayana.
Could be both, you know? He might need psychological help and ALSO need to be arrested and charged.
SevenofNine
“How the fuck is thinking murder and dismemberment is a proportional response to being rejected by a woman not entitlement? He thinks he’s entitled to actually take this person’s life because she wouldn’t fuck him. WORDS!”
Because, ‘entitled asshole’ (the entire phrase) doesn’t go far enough. Someone decides to do harm in the fashion we’re talking about goes far beyond the context of some whiny man-child who doesn’t know what to do with his hormones and thus treats women like shit.
“No. They are human. They are us. They are your neighbor that you always thought was a nice guy. We remember what they did so we can work out how to stop it happening again. We don’t get to revoke their humanity cards. We fucking own them.”
The moment they decided to take a human lives out of malice they choose to stop being human. These guys aren’t much different than any other terrorists. And they are terrorists. They dehumanize themselves and became monsters by dint of their own actions.
And yes, I’m well aware of the “banality of evil”, it would be nice if these guys were easy to spot, but they aren’t.
Othering these people and calling them monsters just sweeps the causes of their violence under the rug. If we call them bad apples who just aren’t human anymore, we ignore the culture of toxic masculinity and misogyny that got them to this point.
SFHC
I know the quote well, and figured someone would drag it up. Not suggesting we don’t remember what they did. But their names don’t deserve to live on. They don’t deserved to be remembered for themselves only their crimes.
WWTH
Not always the case. The question of “what made them monsters?” comes to play. What made them choose to do this. Not saying they were born monsters. Saying they chose to become them when the decided to kill with malice aforethought (and yes, I am specifically using that term).
But killing, maiming or raping women who step out of line and/or reject them is an extreme manifestation of the same attitudes displayed by the whiny nice guy who thinks women are shallow bitches for not fucking them. Or the guy who feels the need to tell random women on the street to smile. Or the guy who constantly gives unsolicited boner updates.
It’s all part of the same issue. Women are objects. Our bodies don’t belong to us, they belong to men who are justified in being very angry and upset when we act as if we have minds of our own. Our pain isn’t as real, big, or important as men’s pain because we aren’t humans, not as much as men are. So the pain of the rejected man is important. More important than the pain of the raped, stalked or murdered woman. Just as the right of a man to be pleased by smiles, long hair or thinness on women is more important than our right to live our lives as we see fit the way men can.
There’s a reason women aren’t murdering out of entitled rage in anywhere approaching the same numbers as men. It’s called patriarchy.
Are these people as incapable of following really Goddamn simple rules offline as they are online, or is it just the GIFT in action? I keep imagining them getting belligerent when asked to piss in the toilet, not in the pot plants.
No, really, someone answer how calling this guy crazy actually does anything? Like, at all.
No. Those guys are the same kind of person as the murderers are. They’re cut from the same cloth, have the same toxic beliefs and entitlement complex, and they feed off each other and egg each other on in a feedback loop of dehumanization and rage. And guess wha? None of them think of themselves a monsters. Not even the ones who killed people. They think they are righteous, that they are being denied what should be theirs by right and their actions all speak of the same entitlement. The murderers just took the hate to its logical conclusion.
Calling them monsters gives these assholes an out, says that it wasn’t the murderers’ beliefs (the same ones the ‘ whiny man children’ have) that are to blame for these atrocities, but the intrinsic quality of being a “monster”. And these guys aren’t monsters, so they don’t have to worry about addressing their toxic beliefs! What a relief!
SFHC
I’m posting under my real name, and will happily give you my surname if you want to look me up. Hell, I’ll I’ve tell you I live in the Northern suburbs of Chicago, if you want closer than that I’ll share that with you as well,
WWHT
My issue with the term is the language itself. The word “asshole” for me doesn’t have the connotation of violence you’re talking about. Asshole is generally an extreme way of calling someone a jerk.
Someone who commits rape, who mains and abuses people, who commits murder with malice aforethought is a great deal more than a extreme form of jerk. They lack, what I feel, is a key component of humanity: empathy.
The word “asshole” sound too soft, too easy. It’s a word you use when someone cuts you off on the road. If it’s really bad you add “fucking” (and yes, general ‘you’, not specific to anyone here) I have no problem with the term entitlement itself, it’s appropriate, but as I said, the two together conjures up images the kind of guys I mention, and NOT someone who would act with the kind of violence that we’re talking about. If we’re going to talk about a person who is going to commit acts of rape, abuse, assault and murder, need a better term than asshole.
So, use a term other than asshole. The only other option isn’t saying they’re not human. Saying somebody has behaved monstrously is fine, I have an issue with you separating monstrous acts from other acts of entitlement and misogyny and denying that human beings raised in our culture are capable of mass murder.
This right here is the exact same reasoning used to justify labeling every extreme crime as the product of mental illness. “No human could possibly do something so heinous” is the same attitude as “no sane person could ever commit such an atrocity.”
It’s the same mode of thought underlying Darren Wilson’s testimony that the tall black teen he shot to death was “like a demon” and therefore made the police officer with a gun in a car afraid for his life.
The motivation is the same as when a person belonging to a group does something horrible, and everybody in that group immediately tries to deny that person was ever part of the group in the first place.
It creates a fundamental us versus them, where “we” couldn’t possibly do something so horrible, so therefore it must have been “them.” You relegate every bad action to “them,” and create a cultural fear and stigmatization of “them.” And you demonize who they are rather than what they did.
Take this attitude to an extreme, and you end up justifying the very acts of inhumanity you used as an excuse to take away your target’s humanity.
“Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster.”
There’s another quote you might be familiar with.
@Kirby
I thought it was “he who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster”? Or is that another quite, same message kind of thing?
Penny:
Consider that people here who are actually affected by your words have asked you to stop. Instead you’re insisting that your desire to use an outdated linguistic shortcut is more important than their comfort is. Is that really the person you want to be? Because that’s entitlement in a nutshell.
@Pandapool:
Yeah, there are different translations of the original… german? It’s still Nietzsche.