(tw: school shooting, Youtube comments, condemnation of certain actions by certain social movements, strong opinions.)

I normally don’t write about things like this, but after a week I’m still alternating between wanting to cry and wanting to puke, so maybe this will be cathartic.

I

On Friday night, 22 year old SBCC student Elliot Rodger stabbed three students to death outside his apartment. He then drove through a busy section of Isla Vista and opened fire with a semi-automatic pistol, killing three more and injuring thirteen. The police engaged him. Elliot sped away, crashed his BMW, and shot himself in the head.

Shortly thereafter, the police found that Elliot had written a lengthy .pdf manifesto and posted a series of ominous Youtube videos. In the final video, “Elliot Rodger’s Retribution,” Elliot states “Ever since I 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,” and promises “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 blond slut I see inside there.”

These are the horrible and tragic facts. Seven young people with talents and dreams and potential are gone forever.

II

According to The Media, there are four possible causes of the Isla Vista Massacre.

EITHER: Not enough gun control. (“Elliot Rodger Was a Product of America’s Gun Culture,” reads one headline.)

OR: Too much gun control. (“Elliot Rodger Is Liberalism Personified,” reads another.)

AND: Elliot was crazy. The government needs to overhaul the mental health system.

OR: Mental illness wasn’t the problem. The bigger issue is that men feel entitled to sex and affection from women and then react with violence when they’re rejected.

Two pairs of diametrically opposed arguments, each criticizing Someone Else, each with innumerable links to blindly supportive websites. In this way the status quo remains unchanged.

I work in the emergency room. I have seen many, many, many crazy people. And I have observed that one of the most common hallucinations is that you are “special”: grandiosity, paranoia, or both. So if you start talking about how you are one of the Noble And Plucky Rebels persecuted by A Vast And Powerful Evil Empire, then forgive me for being skeptical. Real life is not Star Wars, it is not Lord of the Rings, and questions of right-and-wrong rarely have easy answers.

Let’s go through the popular arguments one by one.

1. Not enough gun control. Elliot Rodger did not use an assault rifle. He used a knife and three handguns, each of which he purchased legally. The chances of banning handguns in America is somewhere between zilch and nil. “Fine, but we need better mental health screening before gun purchase.” Probably, but Elliot was investigated by the police a week before the shooting, due to concern from his parents. The police spoke to Elliot and then reported to Mr. and Mrs. Rodger that Elliot was a “perfectly polite, kind and wonderful human.” If Elliot could fool the police, he could almost certainly fool a Scantron. (Also, as we enter the age of 3D printing, it is going to be even more impossible to stop access to weapons.)

2. Too much gun control. One of my friends posted “If more students carried guns with them, then people would think twice about doing a drive-by shooting. The school should hold gun classes, and give tuition discounts to students who agree to carry their gun with them all the time.”) Ignoring the expense of this plan + high likelihood of drunken inter-frat shootouts, Elliot Rodger had no intention of living past his atrocity, and would not have “thought twice” because of gun-wielding freshmen. If anything, he would have used an alternate route for his massacre, such as planting a (much more deadly) explosive. (Also, note that the police arrived on scene six minutes after the first shot was fired, and dealt with the situation quickly and effectively. It could have been a lot worse.)

3. We need better care for the mentally ill. Yes, very much so. However, per Elliot’s manifesto, he was already receiving treatment from multiple therapists. Clearly these therapists weren’t all that great, but there was no access to care issue. Furthermore, his diagnosis—high functioning Asperger’s—does not in-of-itself suggest violence. Elliot clearly held human lives in little regard, but he displays none of the tell-tale signs of psychopathy. So, Elliot did struggle with mental health issues, but the murder was more influenced by his personality: cowardly, jealous, and viciously selfish.

4. “Men feel entitled to sex and affection from women and then react with violence when they’re rejected.” Here’s the truth: most heterosexual young men feel entitled to sex and affection from women. For that matter, most heterosexual young women feel entitled to sex and affection from men, because most any-sexual people of any age feel entitled to happiness, and physical and emotional connection are pretty essential to being happy. Try going six months without a single intimate connection with another human being—you will forget why life is worth living. Feeling entitled to sex from one person is rapey, feeling entitled to sex and love “from someone oh please God I’m not a bad person” is desperate but pretty much normal. “But only men react with violence when they’re rejected.” Men are rejected all the time. In response to rejection, some of these men post on reddit, some drink whiskey, some form indie rock bands, and some shrug and move on. Very, very few go on shooting sprees.

We live in a world that glorifies violence against women, and this has horrible, tragic effects. However, tweeting that the massacre is a result of “toxic cultural misogyny” and then moving on is a cop-out, a way to frame the world as Noble Feminist Rebels vs. The Evil Patriarchal Empire, a way to pat yourself on the back and avoid having to actually work to fix the problem. It’s a bit like saying “World War II happened because Hitler was racist and mean.” You are correct. You have also failed to explain anything.

Elliot was misogynistic—why? I mean, at one point in time, Elliot was a happy kid who liked dinosaurs and Star Wars and his holographic Charizard, not a hateful sexist monster. What happened? Furthermore, most misogynists vent online and maybe catcall—they’re awful but not murderers—so what pushed Elliot over the edge? And why, if sexual frustration was the source of his woes, didn’t he just get a prostitute?

Answer: because he wasn’t looking for love and affection from women at all.

III

Outside, you have to act polite. The soul of America is in the Youtube comments.

In the three days before the shooting, Elliot posted nine Youtube vlogs (video-logs), in which he boasts about his car, boasts about his clothes, admires the beauty of Santa Barbara, and swears vengeance. If we ignore the comments blaming SSRIs (even though he wasn’t taking any), liberals, atheism, gays, and/or the Illuminati, then we can start to diagnose the problem.

The first peculiar species of comment is surprised that Elliot was Forever Alone:

“Elliot in his BMW and his shades practically looks like a male model himself. What surprises me is he actually didn’t get laid based on his looks in spite of his mental illness.”

“He was hot, he could have had plenty of sex if he’d wanted to. Methinks he’s a liar.”

Judging by Youtube profile pictures, these comments are almost exclusively written by men. You know who is impressed by a BMW, Armani, and $300 glasses? Men. Most women do not care, not for one millisecond past when you open your mouth. If you wanna brag that you have a 12 inch penis, that your League of Legends skills are nonpareil, or that your dad is Joe Biden, you’re going not going to find much love. You might, however, impress some men:

“He’s rich has hell, his dad worked on the hunger games, he drives around in limos, and rides 1st class planes and goes to hollywood event. he could have easily picked up a girl at the bar.”

Elliot, an image-obsessed narcissist, chose these particular boasts for a reason. “I’m a really cool guy; it’s not my fault girls don’t like me.” What websites did Elliot frequent? bodybuilding.com—self explanatory—and PUAHate.com, a forum for those angry with successful male pick-up artists. Note his phrasing: he says “girls aren’t attracted to me” quite a lot, says it in practically every paragraph of his one hundred forty-one page manifesto, but only in his final video does he say “YOU girls aren’t attracted to me”. Who was the manifesto meant for? Men.

I’m not saying Elliot was gay. I’m saying that, if you’re wondering:

“Hasn’t he heard of prostitution. damn he should of just called up a hooker if he wanted to get laid so bad.”

then you’re missing the point; he’s not trying to get laid, he’s trying to be a Man. Why should The Supreme Gentleman have to pay for something other men get for free? (Elliot says exactly this on page 120 of his manifesto.) Similarly, if you’re wondering “Why didn’t he just lower his standards?” you should consider this altercation with his roommate:

So far, Spencer and I had gotten along quite well despite the fact that we never talked much. An incident happened at the end of January that changed all of this. I one day discovered that Spencer had a girl in this room. I couldn’t believe it. The short, chubby guy was able to get a girl into his room before I did! I was so shocked and outraged that I waited outside his room until the girl left, so I could get a glimpse of how she looked. To my relief, she wasn’t that attractive. What made me even more angry is that Spencer gave me a smug look when I saw the girl, even though she was ugly. He had the nerve to feel like he was better than me, just because he managed to get a girl over to the apartment before I did! I confronted him in the kitchen on that same night, telling him that he is foolish to feel proud about having an ugly whore in his room. This made him angry and offended, which is what I wanted. I wanted to offend him as punishment for his insolence.

Take a step back from our culture. If a woman is “hot”, that does not maker her a better lover. It does not make her a nicer person. It does not make her better at chess, checkers, or croquet. Yes, it’s important to have some initial physical attraction to your partner, but in the long run anyone you love will look like a total babe. The Quest for The Hottest Girlfriend is driven by one thing—the desire to impress other men.

There are many privileges to being male in America, but there is also a price: you are stuck playing a game you can never win. There is always someone better then you; anything you can do, someone else can do better; you see it on the news, you see it on TV, you see it in the movies, you see it every time you go outside; in fact, there’s probably a guy you know, maybe his name’s Christopher, and Christopher is better than you not just in one way but at LITERALLY EVERYTHING, and sometimes even when you’re cuddling with your girlfriend there’s a nagging in the back of your skull that if Christopher was here she’d jump into his arms and leave you in an instant, and since that’s the case, you can never, ever feel secure.

Elliot was naturally obsessive—listen to his repetitive speech pattern, his perseveration on blondes (universal status symbol!), physical appearance, and no gf. In the manifesto, every time Elliot meets another male, Elliot can’t help but compare himself. Every time he compares himself, Elliot becomes miserable and angry, going into his default loop:

You are not good enough.

You are not good enough.

You are not good enough.

Misogyny is a defense against the soul-crushing fear of inadequacy; it is evil and inexcusable, but it is a defense. “I’m every bit as good as those guys! It’s those shallow bitches that are the problem!” It’s a fantasy: you imagine that you are a Jedi Master, hiding in your swamp-like apartment from the Evil Empire of Womyn. This is a delusion. Hating women, wanting to inflict violence on women—these are the hallmarks of frightened men.

You can’t escape IntraMale Competition, it starts at birth. Check out Elliot’s manifesto:

I breathed in the first breath of life as I entered this world, weighing only 5.4 pounds.

At six years old:

I loved dinosaurs…I had just recently watched the movie Jurassic Park,and when I found out that there was a Jurassic Park themed ride at Universal Studios, I couldn’t wait to go on it. We queued up in the line and waited for an hour. When reached the front, the park staff presented me with a measuring stick, and I didn’t fit the requirements. I saw other boys my age admitted onto the ride, but I was denied because I was too short! The ride that I was so excited to enjoy at the theme park was forbidden to me. I immediately fell into a crying tantrum, and my mother had to comfort me.

Later that year:

My father’s successful directing career was taking off quite well too, and he would go away a lot to direct commercials for prestigious companies, leaving my mother and the nanny to look after me. The only downside of this was my father’s absence from my life. Despite this, I always looked up to him as a powerful and successful man.

Then, at seven, shortly after his parents’ divorce:

Because of my father’s acquisition of a new girlfriend, my little mind got the impression that my father was a man that women found attractive, as he was able to find a new girlfriend in such a short period of time from divorcing my mother. I subconsciously held him in higher regard because of this. It is very interesting how this phenomenon works… that males who can easily find female mates garner more respect from their fellow men, even children. How ironic is it that my father, one of those men who could easily find a girlfriend, has a son who would struggle all his life to find a girlfriend.

Elliot’s narcissistic posturing (“I’m magnificent,” “The Supreme Gentleman,” etc.) is a pufferfish trying to frighten away predators. I could find a dozen more examples of his insecurity (he was bullied, he had few friends, he was ashamed to be biracial) but the one that stabbed my heart was:

My little brother really looked up to me. He was one of the few people who treated me with adoration, and that made me feel at least a small twinge of self-worth. It was quite surprising that he respected me so much, since I had nothing in my life to boast about to him. He even asked me once if I had ever had a girlfriend, and I angrily told him that the matter was none of his concern. I didn’t want to admit to him that girl’s thought I was a loser. If he found out about that, he would respect me less. In order to boost his high opinion of me, I often sugarcoated all of my early accomplishments, such as telling him that I was an expert skateboarder and video game player. People having a high opinion of me is what I’ve always wanted in life.

Later in the manifesto, Elliot, jealous of his brother’s social status, makes plans to murder him. Male-Male competition is not a game you or anyone else can win.

IV

In the trenches of comment sections everywhere, there is a “gender war.”

“Im glad he did what he did. Women are destroying society, women NEED to be woken up to the fact that their actions cause men to go crazy. Women attack people psychologically as they cannot use physicality. The only way a man can fight back is psychically. I applaud what this guy did and encourage more yong men to take womens lives, its the only way we can fight feminism. Women have declared war on us guys, we have to fight back. Well done Rodger, what you did was the right thing to do. More women have to die.”

It goes without saying that this comment is as gratuitously evil as it is orthographically incorrect. It’s so bad that it almost justifies the opposite but equally unhelpful:

“Many men are socialized young to believe they are owed sex and attention from women. They are led to believe that if they are nice, or a gentleman, or do favors, or are a “nice guy”, that this entitles them to sex. The whole idea of “friendzoning” and the indignation around the fear of being an attentive and good friend to a woman and not being rewarded with vagina in return (as if the only thing worthwhile about companionship with another human being is whether or not you get laid as a result), is indicative of this dehumanizing socialization that can lead to extreme and horrifying outcomes like this.”

This is a straw man argument. First off, nearly every time that Elliot Rodger mentioned “girls have never been attracted to me,” he followed it with a variation of “and yet you throw yourselves at all these obnoxious men.” Elliot would have no problem being platonic friends with a woman—he didn’t hate his female counselor, nor Maddy, his female childhood friend—he would just be infuriated if a woman he wanted was interested in anyone else. (You are not good enough…)

Second, Elliot is in the most insane 0.0001% of all “nice guys.” By lumping all “nice guys” together, by creating a world of The Fellowship of the Feminists vs. The Uruk-Neckbeards, these commenters have stifled any possibility of actual debate and have probably made the situation worse. Once you label someone as a villain they stop listening.

The majority of “nice guys” are actually nice guys, considerate dudes who simply have no idea how to make a romantic advance. You can’t blame them. It’s intuitively reasonable that that the same methods that work for making friends should work for getting a girlfriend. But that’s not how the world works, and rejection is painful. (You are not good enough…)

Most nice guys eventually stumble into a relationship, breathe a sigh of relief that the whole “courtship” thing is over, and have happy and fulfilling romantic lives. But there’s also some small percentage of “nice guys”—maybe 5%—that get angry. After all, there’s a lot of Bad People in loving relationships—every day in the hospital I see a Neo-Nazi or a heroin dealer holding hands with a doe-eyed lover. Nice guys don’t feel especially “entitled” to love, they just don’t understand why they are alone while rapists and abusers have no problem getting girlfriends. And when you’re even a little bit bitter, it’s preferable to decide “something’s wrong with them” than “something’s wrong with me”, too easy to stop going outside, stop talking to women, and swim deeper and deeper into an abyss of confirmation bias.

If you relate to this at all—if you post stuff below Elliot’s videos like:

“This man was in immense pain. He was completely isolated and shunned by women and society. I see people bickering back and forth about what the problem is. I can tell you what the problem was. The guy wasn’t receiving female attention and wasn’t getting laid. No matter how hard he tried society turned its back on him. Why didn’t anyone help him?”

Then please be aware that the universe is vast and uncaring and nobody’s gonna help you; you have to help yourself.

Elliot Rodger was not shunned by society and he was certainly not rejected by women, because, in his entire one hundred forty-one page autobiography, Elliot never asked a girl out. Not even once. In his “Retribution” video, Elliot even says:

All those girls I’ve desired so much, they would have 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. [Emphasis mine.]

How did he know that they would have looked down on him?

One time, as I was walking across the huge bridge that connected the two campuses, I passed by a girl I thought was pretty and said “Hi” as we neared each other. She kept on walking and didn’t even have the grace to respond to me. How dare she! That foul bitch. I felt so humiliated that I went to one of the school bathrooms, locked myself in a toilet stall, and cried for an hour.

It would be funny if it wasn’t so incredibly horrific.

The only secret to dating is to ask women out on dates. Anything else is secondary. Yes, attraction is fickle and stupid and has more to do with physical appearance and superficial personality traits than it does with moral character, but there is a huge range of preference for physical appearance and personality. No matter who you are, it is possible to find love. The mistake is to waste your life waiting for love to find you.

V

Even at the very end, Elliot Rodger didn’t want to do it.

The Day of Retribution was originally scheduled for Halloween 2013, then November 2013, and then April 26th, 2014. However, on April 24th, Elliot came down with a cold.

Alas, there was no way I could carry out my plans if I had a cold. Everything had to be perfect.

People generally do not postpone mass murder due to sniffles. More likely:

But for some strange reason, having a few more weeks of life made me feel relieved. I took in a deep breath and relaxed. Coupled with my hate-fueled eagerness to carry out my act of revenge, there was also an extreme sense of fear inside me. Part of me still didn’t want to do it. It will mean my death, and I have always been afraid of death.

And while this is no doubt true, I don’t think it explains all of Elliot’s reluctance, a reluctance most evident in the bizarrely stilted speech of “Elliot Rodger’s Retribution”. According to Youtube’s experts:

“This guy is acting. I don’t believe no girl showed interest in him, being that young with such an expensive car, famous dad etc. He is lying, this whole thing is an act. His entire youtube account. Where is his body? The whole thing stinks..”

“All the signs of a hoax. Acting is Like a bad b movie.”

“ok if the editorials didn’t throw up red flags about this being a false flag hoax by the media, these videos he made absolutely do! No way even a person with mental problems presents himself this way and in this manner. it screams scripted!”

It’s a common fantasy: that you are Neo and everyone else has been tricked by the Matrix. Elliot was a fan of that fantasy too:

In the midst of my suffering, I have been able to see the world much clearer than others. I have vision that other people lack. Through my suffering, I have been able to see just how twisted and wrong this world really is.

The only hoax here is Elliot lying to himself. Check out 1:45 in the video, when Elliot looks away from the camera, puffs up his chest, deepens his voice, and says “I don’t know what you don’t see in me…I’m the perfect guy.” At 1:56, he deepens his voice again, just before he says “The Supreme Gentleman”. He looks away from the camera again at 2:34, just before “They would have all rejected me,” and glances away again at 2:40 before “…if I ever made a sexual advance.” Check out the nervous swallow/sigh at 3:02, just before “You will finally see that I am in truth the superior one,” and the glance + shaky voice at 6:28, before “All you girls who rejected me…”

He doesn’t believe what he’s saying.

Oh, I’m sure he thought he believed his speech. But watch an interview with a suicide bomber, or a video of Osama Bin Laden making threats of jihad. Osama is casual, almost bored. He is not acting. Elliot can’t be genuine when he praises himself and he can’t make eye contact when he talks about being rejected, because, you know, he wasn’t. So, if Elliot didn’t quite believe what he was saying, if he had to play a character, then why did he do it?

“Weird, this guy almost reminds me of Hayden Christensen, the guy who played Anakin Skywalker in the Star Wars prequels.”

Elliot Rodger was clueless about a lot of things, but he knew movies. His father, Peter Rodger, was in the film business, the assistant director of The Hunger Games, and in the manifesto, Elliot talks about exclusive “red carpet premieres” and his favorite movies: Jurassic Park, Lord of the Rings, Alpha Dog, and of course:

As a huge Star Wars fan, this was a big day for me. Episode 3 would complete the whole Star Wars saga. It was the most anticipated movie. To be able to see it before everyone else made me feel special. I really liked the character Anakin Skywalker, and I was amazed to see his epic transformation into Darth Vader on the high quality big screen.

Elliot was a profound narcissist. This, combined with a certain Asperger’s-like social cluelessness, made it very difficult for him to understand the thought processes of other people. So how does he make sense of the men and women around him? Easy. They’re side characters in his movie.

Anakin: They’re like animals, and I slaughtered them like animals. I hate them!

Elliot: You are animals, and I will slaughter you like animals…I hate all of you.

Elliot was delusional, but he got good grades. He wasn’t stupid. He knew that movies have Good Guys and Bad Guys. So, did he see himself as hero or villain?

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. (Evil laugh.)

Elliot knew that what he was doing was evil. He did it anyway. He wrote a manifesto called “My Twisted World” and made a series of terrifying Youtube videos in an effort to persuade you and me that Elliot Rodger is the most villainous villain of our generation.

You will finally see that I am in truth the superior one. The true alpha male.

This is the horror of American masculinity. Charles Manson was a terrible human being but no one would say he wasn’t manly. Mike Tyson did some questionable stuff but he could throw a mean punch. Hannibal Lecter is a creep but still a supreme gentleman. You can argue with Schwarzenegger’s politics but you can’t argue with his muscles. And no one in their right mind would call Darth Vader a pussy. Until we consider gentleness a prerequisite for manhood, the world is going to keep making copies of Elliot Rodger.

More than anything else, Elliot wanted to win the game of Male-Male Competition. He wanted to be a man, like his heritage promised him, like his wealth owed him, like his father showed him. Elliot was lazy—when he became obsessed with achieving great wealth, his grand strategy was to buy as many lottery tickets as possible; certain he would win, of course, since the world was his movie. When it came to manhood, Elliot took the easy way out once again. Rather than embark on the hard, slow work of self-improvement, he tapped into an existing masculine archetype: The Vengeful Villain.

The last tragic irony in a story of tragic ironies is that Elliot’s plan isn’t going to work at all. Do you remember George Sodini? No? In 2009, a 48 year old white male named George Sodini wrote a lengthy manifesto, chronicling his “rejections by women” and severe sexual frustration. (“Who knows why? I am not ugly or too weird.”) Sodini then drove to a local fitness club, shot three women to death, and shot himself in the head. Sound familiar? That was five years ago. In twenty years, Elliot Rodger’s name will be a footnote, his masculinity will be erased, and all that will be left is the sadness he brought into the world.

Finally, at long last, I can show the world my true worth.

No man, you didn’t. Not at all.

VI

If Elliot had not clung so tightly to his identity as a wronged party, if he had tried to be empathetic, if he had, God forbid, walked up to a girl and asked “Hey, I’m trying to get a girlfriend. Any advice?” then there’s a fair chance that seven people would be alive today.

Near the end of his manifesto, Elliot decides to give women “one last chance.” He gets plastered off vodka, goes to a house party, stares at a couple, shoves the man aside, and tries “to act cocky and arrogant to both the boy and the girl.” Elliot is so drunk that he almost falls over, the couple offers him water, and he becomes furious and leaves. Elliot thinks he’s giving women a “last chance,” but he’s not, he’s far too gone into his Vader transformation, more machine than man. Elliot goes to the party assuming that the world is his enemy, and his experience thus only reaffirms his belief that everyone else is the problem.

If there is anything to be learned from the sad story of Elliot Rodger, it’s that "everyone else” is never the problem. It’s easy to think that way, and technology makes it even easier, as we fire off talking points and skip the responses and only read articles with which we already agree.

But if you want to make a difference, if you want to find a girlfriend or fight misogyny or stop gun violence or anything else, then this illusion is not going to help you. When you want to shout your views to the world, ask yourself: how would someone who disagreed with me hear this? If the answer is “They would be angry,” or “They would ignore it,” then you are little different from Elliot acting “cocky and arrogant” at the party, setting himself up for a result that will confirm his righteous fury.

Do not take the easy way out and write off groups of people as unilaterally Good or Evil. Good and Evil exist within each one of us. Only a Sith deals in absolutes.