Isla Vista Shooting - Page 44

On May 30 2014 05:28 Cynry wrote:


I guess my question then is : where was he seeking answers ? Was he putting himself in the victim position, which seems to be the case (that's because of what was done to me, that's because women are dumb and thus reject me etc) or did he ever consider himself to be the problem ?

On May 30 2014 05:37 Rho_ wrote:


His life wasn't even that sad.

On May 29 2014 18:56 Jumperer wrote:
if I want to get better at something I look at the top people in that field and see what similar traits that they have, what are they generally doing and go from there. I don't really care if a method is scientifically-correct or not. If it works then it works. If it doesn't work then I discard it and move on.

On May 30 2014 05:40 MoltkeWarding wrote:

However, what do you do when the answer to "what is wrong with me" is something immutable in yourself?

Which leads me to question whether the two things which he did not really attempt to explain were really compulsive qualities in his psyche: his obsessive pursuit of "sex and love", and his extreme social pessimism.

On May 30 2014 05:39 Zealously wrote:


From our perspectives, it might not have been, but he felt tortured by his life. No amount of wealth or privilege can do anything about that if you're unhappy with more or less every aspect of your life. I suppose saying that his life was sad doesn't quite capture the full reality of it, but he definitely was.

On May 30 2014 05:41 Plansix wrote:

I'm just saying it's sad that he felt so isolated and clearly had issues relating to people. His choices are not sad, mostly just crazy and self intrested, which is what we would expect from a murderer.

At one time towards the end of the trip, when I had a sleepover with Ayman at Soumaya's father's house, he showed me some European porn videos in the middle of the night. I could observe the act of sex in much more detail than that one glimpse I had at Planet Cyber. I didn't want to look, but my curiosity got the better of me. To see a video of human being doing such weird and unspeakable things with each other revolted me. I couldn't understand what I was seeing. And yet, I noticed I was feeling aroused. I felt desire to do these things, to have sex with the naked women I saw in the video. It was a funny feeling that overwhelmed my entire body. I could feel my penis getting hard. This was when I noticed that I was finally going through puberty. Heavens save me.

I developed a very high sex drive, and it would always remain like this. This was the start of hell for me. Going through puberty utterly doomed my existence. It condemned me to live a life of suffering and unfulfilled desires. Even at that young age, I felt depressed because I wanted sex, yet I felt unworthy of it. I didn't think I was ever going to experience sex in reality, and I was right. I never did. I was finally interested in girls, but there was no way I could ever get them. And so my starvation began.

The boys in my grade talked about sex a lot. Some of them even told me that they had sex with their girlfriends. This was the most devastating and traumatic thing I've ever heard in my life. Boys having sex at my age of Fourteen? I couldn't fathom it. How is it that they were able to have such intimate and pleasurable experiences with girls while I could only fantasize about it?

This past weekend, a student named Elliot Rodger from Santa Barbara City College killed six and injured 13, the latest in a long series of school shootings that are all but becoming a normal part of American tradition. As usual, the killer left a cache of material behind to explain his intentions and milk as much publicity for his personal grievances as possible. This time, the focus was on women, and how they wouldn’t have sex with him.

Like they always do, the media have descended to explain away the madness. And like a Rorschach Test, each outlet had its own pet cause primed and ready to be read into the situation.

Gun control advocates used the event as an opportunity to campaign for stricter gun control, despite the fact that Rodger bought his guns legally and easily passed the background checks.
Mental health advocates used it as an opportunity to urge better mental health care, despite the fact that Rodger had had a small army of therapists and social workers working with him for practically his entire life.
Feminists used it as an opportunity to promote awareness for violence against women, despite the fact that Rodger killed indiscriminately and the majority of the victims turned out to be men.
Social justice advocates used it as an opportunity to rail against white male entitlement, despite the fact that Rodger was mixed race and a significant number of school shooters have also been minorities (Two examples: Seung-Hui Cho and Kimveer Gill).

All of these issues are legitimate and deserve conversation. But they are not the singular cause. They’re not the point.

Because of my book, I’m connected within the men’s dating advice industry. And many of them are scrambling right now. Elliot Rodger was a member of a number of sites, email lists and Facebook groups. And all of these authors and dating coaches — some of them legitimately decent men, others shady marketers — are all frantically trying to cover their tracks as best as possible.

But this “witch hunt” we go through every time a school shooting happens is a total ruse. Elliot Rodger didn’t become a killer because he was a misogynist; he became a misogynist because he was a killer. Just like Eric Harris didn’t become a killer because he loved violent video games; he loved violent video games because he was a killer. Just like Adam Lanza didn’t become a killer because he loved guns; he loved guns because he was a killer.

Every school shooting incident comes in the same dreary package: an angry, politically-charged rant, shrink-wrapped around a core of mental illness and neglect. These shooters leave behind journals, videos, diagrams, manifestos and treatises. They broadcast their plans and intentions to their friends and family. They email news outlets minutes before they start firing. They write down their plans and make checklists so that others may follow in their footsteps. They go on angry rants against materialism, hedonism, the government, mass media, women, and sometimes even the people close to them.

And each time, as a culture, we work ourselves into a frenzy debating the angry exterior message, while ignoring the interior life and context of each killer. We miss the point entirely.

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Mass Shootings as Non-Political Terrorism

For a country that is so single-mindedly obsessed with terrorism, it’s jaw-dropping that almost nobody recognizes that school shooters use the exact same strategies to disseminate fear and their twisted agendas throughout society. Terrorists use violence and mass media coverage to promote political or religious beliefs; school shooters use violence and mass media coverage to promote their personal grievances and glorification.

When viewed in this way, our responses to the school shooters looks juvenile in comparison. Can you imagine arguing over whether misogyny made Osama Bin Laden plan September 11th? Or whether video games caused Dhokhar Tsarnaev to plant bombs at the Boston Marathon? Or whether heavy music inspired Timothy McVeigh to blow up the federal building in Oklahoma City?

You would be laughed at.

And in fact, when anyone goes as far as to suggest that Islam causes terrorism, they are immediately and rightfully scolded for it. Yet when it comes to school shootings, these types of discussions are not only tolerated, but engaged in willfully.

It’s not that we should respond to school shootings the same way we respond to terrorist attacks. It’s that we already do. We just don’t realize it.

When Elliot’s creepy YouTube videos went public, declaring vengeance upon every college girl that wouldn’t sleep with him, every woman who had ever heard a guy mutter something similar suddenly felt a chill run up her spine. And that chill caused the video to be posted and reposted, sending more chills up more women’s spines until it had spread across the country. My guess is that’s exactly what Elliot would have wanted.

And we’ve seen this viral dissemination over and over again. After every school shooting episode, writings and videos of the killers get passed around on the internet. Television specials show and reshow the footage. Books are written. Experts are hired. Rinse and repeat.

Last year, I wrote that terrorism works because it takes advantages of psychological inefficiencies in our brains: we pay a disproportionate amount of attention to threatening events and we always overestimate how likely it is for a random event to happen to us. School shootings transfix us by leveraging the exact same inefficiencies in our minds. And once they’ve dominated this mindspace, we can’t seem to shake them out of it.

Yet, for some reason, while we seem to imagine potential terrorists everywhere — in airport lines, at stadium gates, in subway cars — we never see the school shooters coming. We’re always caught by surprise.

On May 30 2014 07:16 xM(Z wrote:
first you break him, split (not literally) the mind from the body, don't let him think/rationalize then work on his body, totally ignoring the mind; physically crush him.
the mind will have to adjust and in turn shift its perspective. then and only then work on the mind since it'll be (more) open to a different view.
uproot, confuse, paradigm shift, recovery.

(throughout his memorandum he showed an affinity for control; he seemed in total control (rationally). when you're in control you create whatever answers you want to whichever questions you come up with. they're all lies so just break him, break the control)

On May 30 2014 08:18 docvoc wrote:
So now my question is, where is this argument about him going. What are we actually going to do about it, and what should actually be done other than pray this never happens again until it inevitably does soon after.

On May 30 2014 08:18 docvoc wrote:
I've read a bunch of stuff about this guy so far and I think the one thing I find funniest is that the wave of fighting about what needs to be worked on here to prevent this from happening.

I have seen feminists argue vehemently it was his feeling of entitlement to women's bodies that caused this when it was his frustration and feeling of alienation from females, quite the opposite, that he writes most about. They argue he was a misogynist that felt as though women rejected him because they were dumb, when in reality he was a misanthrope who hated himself, attractive women (for him blond and blue eyed white girls), and men who were able to "seduce" those attractive women.

I have seen gun control advocate argue that it was guns that did this, when in reality the guy purchased his gun legally, and killed with knives, a gun, and a car. They argue he was a loose cannon who should have never been able to buy a gun, when he absolutely had no reason to be denied a gun before this whole spree given anything short of prophetic visions by the seller. Furthermore he did more damage with knives and cars than guns it seems.

I have seen mental health advocates argue that he should have been seen well before hand and this could have been prevented, when in reality he had seen many mental health professionals for years and I don't know how much more could have been done of this front.

There are finally those that blame this on his white privilege, and I'm not even going to bother with that because this guy is mixed race.

So now my question is, where is this argument about him going. What are we actually going to do about it, and what should actually be done other than pray this never happens again until it inevitably does soon after.

On May 30 2014 09:06 Nyxisto wrote:


Make a psychiatric assessment the requirement for anyone under the age of 25 who wants to own firearms, outlaw guns completely for any person that has a history of mental illness that could impair his capability of handling guns.

On May 30 2014 09:09 Millitron wrote:
He saw numerous psychologists, none of whom thought he was a danger to anyone.

On May 30 2014 09:14 Nyxisto wrote:

Yeah , apparently they were wrong. That's why I'm saying mentally ill people shouldn't be handling guns.

On May 30 2014 09:32 Millitron wrote:

And if they were wrong this time, how is making it illegal for the mentally ill to own guns going to stop any more events like this? You just admitted they missed him, they could easily miss again.

I think the whole call for gun control every time there's a shooting is kinda shortsighted. You don't hear any outcries for banning knives or cars, even though he used both in his murders. In fact, he stabbed just as many people as he shot!