Elliot Rodgers, UCSB, Isla Vista shooter

Are any of you guys following the analysis of Elliot Rodgers of the University of California Santa Barbara?

I find this video interesting:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYr0V04dsa8

I don't think most of the commentators understand Rodgers. I don't think he really was a misogynist or a racist, or a narcissist either. I think he is just being self effacing in his videos. I think there is something much deeper going on.

He did seem to have two incompatible plans. The first was that he would lure people to his Isla Vista apartment, and then make them vanish. This is reminiscent of Jeffrey Dalmer of Milwaukee. I am not sure who Rodgers was going to target, men or women, or why. This plan would not have worked very well. Dalmer was targeting male prostitutes who usually had no family connections and operated out of gay bars. Their disappearances were very hard to investigate, if they were even reported. The UCSB student population would have been exactly the opposite of this. Rodgers would not have lasted very long.

The second plan, shooting up the sorority house, if he had planned it better, and if that was really what he wanted, could have worked. It is reminiscent of Gian Luigi Ferri shooting up the Pettit and Martin law firm.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gian_Luigi_Ferri

If Rodgers had done this, and then was taken alive, he would be receiving fan mail and marriage proposals.

The sorority girls are clearly just symbols for Rodgers, as they are for our entire society. Years ago I used to dislike strippers who adopted a blonde suburban Barbie Doll look. Then later I realized that they were not actually such, they were a parody of such. After that realization I was able to engage with them.

Rodgers laments that other men have beautiful women on their arms, and they don't have cars as nice as his or are of a racial minority. Rodgers wants that popularity with the college girls.

But what he doesn't do is exit the college town culture and find women who will give it up easily. That is, he doesn't really seem to want pussy, he wants popularity in a very narrow social world.

To me his acts are more reminiscent of the shootings at the high school in Columbine Colorado. These shooters targeted jocks. I think it was more boys than girls.

So Rodgers turns mean, and he strikes back. Well, if our society is unfair, the only way to change it is to strike back. We need to have people like John Brown, who hacked slave owners to pieces in Kansas Territory and then tried to start a slave revolt by capturing the arsenal at Harpers Ferry Virginia. Best though if one is not acting alone, and best if one does things which draw allies, instead of making vast numbers of enemies. But if someone is forced to live in an untouchable under cast, then they need to make common cause with others and strike back. I would never find fault with someone who did this.

When US Postal Service workers were going on shooting sprees, we did start to look closer and find the faults with their work environment. I think there are serious problems with high school and college social environments.

Rodgers was not the result of racial or social class prejudice. But he probably was effected by prejudice against nerds and wimps. His basic thesis was that women go for jerks. I can testify to having seen this myself, and on a regular basis. It is also the subject of Robert Crumb's comic series, My Troubles with Women. Also, in the last episode of My So Called Life, with Clare Dane, they show this starting to unfold.

I think there does need to be some sort of nerd's revenge, not like what Rodger did, but some sort of forceful appropriation of power.

Likewise, I think there needs to be some strike back against the categorizations of Autism / Asperger's, which is being applied to Rodgers. My position on this matter is based largely on reading the works of John Elder Robison, who claims that he was an outcast his whole life because of having such a condition, and that those with Autism / Asperger's are not in tuned with social cues. I read his works and watch his videos and I disagree. I think he is extremely high in social functioning. What he is not is someone interested in most common banter. He is also the product of psychological abuse at the hands of both his mother and his father. He says that he doesn't look people in the eye because of his condition. I disagree. I say that someone doesn't look people in the eye because they know that at their core there is pain and abuse, and so they need to protect themselves from further harm. So the answer then is not to accept some sort of label of deficiency, rather it should be to seek and obtain redress for the original abuse and for the related types of abuse which are on going.

http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2014/06/return-of-nerd-culture

What Happens When Society Decides That Nerds Are Dangerous?

Any thoughts about the PUA forum and PUA hate? How about on Involuntary Celibacy, INCEL? It is probably this later which will be most interesting to me.

san_jose_guy