drop a few hints
with current events a sorority girl might take one for the team

thank you. i hate when the majority or those in the apparent position of power act like they have a right to be up in arms, whether it's over gender, race, any kind of issue. then it gets turned around to them like they're some kind of hero for not doing the thing you're supposed to do anyway (well hey, i'm not a rapist/misogynist/homophobe). that's all great, it is. but that's not really the issue. the issue isn't that there's good people in the world who aren't jerks, it's that there's people who are.

as for the video itself and his "manifesto", i feel like there's nothing i can say that's very eloquent or anything that hasn't already been said. this guy was clearly a monster and oblivious to how he was likely perceived by others. once you reach a certain age of your life (assuming you desire to be in a relationship, some don't) and you've never had any sort of affection in a sexual way, even if it's just a kiss, there's a common thread: you, not everyone else around you.

that might not be a bad thing, just that you need to branch out. maybe you're incredibly shy and aren't good at face-to-face interactions and would do better at online dating websites. maybe you're spending too much time with the wrong group of friends and the places you go aren't conducive to meeting potential partners. or in this guy's case, solely judging his personality from this video and his writings, he was a very awkward guy yet expected to be able to completely dominate a woman and likely came off as a complete jerk. given that he kept focusing on the "blonde bimbo" types, perhaps the reason he couldn't get a girlfriend was also because his standards were too high. who knows.

but instead of taking a hard look at himself and figuring out why he couldn't get women, and seeing if he needed to change something about himself, he looked outward. clearly it's the rest of the world's fault for not instantly recognising this man was a sex god (even though he had no proof of this) and women should've been throwing themselves at him. but only the blonde bimbos. no fat chicks.

They're the ONLY WOMEN HE WAS ATTRACTED TOOO!!!!

or something to that effect. Again, I read way too much of his shit last night.

Har har har. You know, in light of current events maybe joking about sorority girls going out with someone out of fear might not be the best idea.

Rap Genius has his entire manifesto up for annotation :huh:

Unfortunately, there are a lot of guys like Rodger. I've met a few over the years, and they are both freakish and scary. Freakish because of their appalling social skills and inability to realize that what they say or do is inappropriate. They are also scary because of their obsession with getting a girlfriend and their anger towards women for not succeeding. Of course, when they say they want a girlfriend, what they really want is to get laid. These guys have a weird combination of low self-esteem yet also have a narcissistic sense that they deserve sex round the clock. I can't even wrap my mind around that mentality a lot of guys have. Even worse, they swear they're nice guys. That's both hilarious and absurd. Sadly, I have a feeling Rodger won't be the last guy like this to take "revenge" against women. There's just too many guys like him. Even some guys who get the idea that self-esteem and confidence are a way to attract women seem bitter that they have to work for women's attention. Jeez....

I think this is letting the MRAs off the hook a bit. Because even while they may have been responding directly to a few of his posts by saying they thought he was a bit off, he was still exposed to the rest of their literature in which they probably confirmed a lot of his own thoughts about how unfair women are to men.

MRAs deserve every bit of criticism they get, and there appears to be some real solid evidence that they had some level of influence here.

The thing that strikes me about Rodger is that he never actually tried. In all of his huge manifesto, he never once talks about actually trying to get to know a girl, or show interest in one beyond superficial looks. There was one section where he mentions that a beautiful girl smiled at him, and he was so happy, but then later on in the day became depressed because he was sure that girl would never actually go out with him. Well, how the hell would she if you won't even try?

In his twisted world view, simply being an attractive white male should be enough to make women try to be his girlfriend, without him putting any effort in at all. He viewed women not as equals with free agency to make their own choices, but as mere accessories that he should have gained due to his perceived status. It's one thing to be all woe-is-me defeatist if you've actually tried to engage with women as equals and consistently struck out. At least then you're not objectifying women and treating them as inferior beings who should be so lucky as to be your girlfriend. But he was so far up the misogynistic MRA/PUA rabbit hole that he couldn't see that his so-called "tortuous" life was entirely his own doing.

Obviously hanging expensive sunglasses from his shirt collar everywhere he went while imitating a combination of the creepiest characters ever played by Cillian Murphy should have been enough.

MRAs do deserve lots of criticism, after reading a bit more about this situation, I quite agree with you. But our current culture remains quite misogynistic, MRAs aren't created in a vacuum, it's easy to pin it on the MRAs without looking at how our wider culture probably created them.

I think I was probably wrong to look to blame this on a possible mental illness, that in itself does a disservice to people with mental health issues. Plus there are plenty of people who do bad things for extreme reasons, with no mental health problems. As has been pointed out to me, a muslim kills people, it's a terrorism problem (the man who killed the soldier in London in last year, has a history of mental health problems), black man kills someone, it's problem with a thuggish culture, white (or white presenting since Elliot was half asian) it's obviously just mental health.

It's really an intersection of a number of things that created this guy, racism and misogyny still prevalent in our culture and an unknown degree of mental health issues, you can probably throw in easy access to guns in there for good measure to. Chicken and egg scenario, though the misogyny does seem fairly decisive.

"There is no greater threat to women than men" - Louis CK - YouTube



also, guns.

MRAs are most certainly not created in a vacuum, you're absolutely right. But now that they've forged a community on these forums and on Reddit or wherever, they're creating one for themselves to settle into.

Here's what happened here: a young adult male went online, had his already disturbing views radicalized by a small but vocal community that has expressed strong hate for other groups, wrote a manifesto about violence and then acted upon that violence. Typically I read a story like that and I hear terrorist, but here I'm only hearing about Asperger's.

And I find the eagerness to blame all of this on mental health problems is really bad for people with mental illness. There are repercussions to this too. (https://twitter.com/mikaylatology/st...57843631685632)

FWIW, some of these guys I've met over the years were almost the same way. I can go on with many examples I've had with online dating and in real life. A lot of these guys are not as bad as Rodger, but their hatred and entitled attitude towards women is almost the same. Rodger is an extreme case, but there are a lot of men of various ages who don't seem to understand that women have a right to not be interested in them. It's mindboggling and even frightening.

I used to post on a bunch of video game forums and such when I was a bit younger, and was exposed to MRA teachings before I was even exposed to feminism in university. I couldn't even reveal my gender because casual, and at times violent misogyny was just the norm. It was so widespread that I didn't even question it. It still is, more than ever, every time I go back on one to check out some news or a thread I've been following. And these are fucking huge communities.

If I cannot thrive among them, then I will destroy them all.
 

While you're at it, knives too

True. We are plagued by mass knifings.

Nothing could be done as we all stood still while the assailant stabbed thirty of us.

KNIFE CRIME is holding us back as a nation.

The only thing that has ever stopped a bad man with a knife is a good man with a knife.

Or walker, Texas ranger.