Probably was His Own Greatest Enemy

Changed_Man

Joskin_Nodd said:

@cdddd: " How you go from that to killing people..."

You don't. Anybody whose brain is functioning correctly does not. The guy was mentally ill, which likely means anything from a brain tumor to some sort of brain damage to radically messed up hormones (which can make people do all sorts of crazy things: the right hormone cocktail can screw you up worse than being high on PCP). When bad things happen, people want to blame the "other" tribe (that is, whoever is "other" to them: the "other" political party, the "other" ideology, the "other" religion or the "other" gender). If someone is out there obsessing over the manosphere, when something like this happens, there reaction is to automatically find fault with some group they are already busy not liking. 

But it wasn't the blue pill or the red pill or feminism or the manosphere, it was a short circuit in his brain. Not a problem with what he had learned or what he was thinking but with physical equipment he was thinking with. Lots of people get angry about how unfair life is (just look at the manosphere) but very few commit violence as a means of expression . . . right there, something was screwing up the inhibitory powers of the neocortex that help keep us from doing every retarded thing that it occurs to us to do. 

IMO. 2¢. Pay at the door. 

Agreed.

Everybody is looking for somebody to blame... the manosphere, NRA, his parents, Obamacare, etc. The reality is the kid was mentally ill... period.

If this country ever needed to have a serious debate that will have meaningful impact, it's not gun control or misogyny (really Alan Alda?), it's how to identify mentally ill people, while being mindful of their individual rights, getting them the help they need, and protect them (and the rest of us) from themselves.

Monkeys_Uncle

Britguy68 said:

And predictably the MSM media does an 'expose' on the Manosphere, even Ian Ironwood's site gets a mention.....

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2014/05/27/inside-the-manosphere-that-inspired-santa-barbara-shooter-elliot-rodger/?tid=pm_pop

Well, people following the links to Heartiste and reading the comments section over there certainly aren't going to feel like the WaPost exaggerated about anything in the article.

Sorta hate to see Ian Ironwood get lumped in to that mess though. 

cdddd

I think you can certainly find things to blame, and I'm not completely convinced this guy had a true organic brain disease. He sounds more like he had a thought disorder where a lifetime of being raised like a spoiled brat coupled with dysfunctional thinking and experiences coupled with maybe being on the Spectrum led to a break with reality. 

I'm no shrink, of course, but I think blaming this entirely on something being wrong with his brain that he couldn't help is just exculpating him while simultaneously promoting the sensational aspect of it. People like him would love for normal people to know they're mentally deranged, and for us all to be disturbed or shocked or sympathetic to their special snowflakeness. It's feeding into the narcissism.

My gut is still saying the guy was maybe an Asperger who was raised a narcissist, and regardless of what manosphere sites he was reading he took bluepill resentment thinking to the extreme. 

I guess I could be wrong about how much his thinking jived with the manosphere. This is the only part of the manosphere I ever read. 

Joskin_Nodd

@Britguy68:"And predictably the MSM media does an 'expose' on the Manosphere, even Ian Ironwood's site gets a mention....."

I always knew those men couldn't be trusted! From the opinion piece: 

"That said, Rodger’s misogynistic rhetoric seems undeniably influenced by the manosphere"

It was also undeniably influenced by the dictionary. I love statements like this, because they are completely irrelevant. If an ecoterrorist burns down a hummer dealership, you could argue his rhetoric and actions were shaped by "environmentalism" but it might also have been shaped by, say, a history of pyromania. Which would be the more logical place to look.

Cherry-picking affiliations and elements a person is exposed to out of millions in their life and talking about how their behavior or rhetoric was shaped by one of hundreds is just (irony!) a rhetorical trick. Not a substantive datum.  

"and his manifesto has kicked off a loud debate about how modern society treats women"

Better than ever in history? And better in the Western world than many places on earth right now?

"If there was ever a time to take a closer look at online misogyny"

Said someone who was just dismissive of the term "misandry". Hmm. 

"“A lot of loneyy beta males will identify with him,” Roosh followed up. (Notice that he calls Rodger a beta, despite Rodger’s videotaped insistence that he was “an alpha male.”)"

Dude was not alpha or beta, he was crazy. This does not seem like a stretch to me. 

The first manosphere defense comment asserted that the guy needed a mentor and a guide. No, he needed mental help and medication, possibly an antipsychotic. Lord. 

cdddd

I mean you can blame guns or misogyny or crazy people but other countries have those in spades. Why does this kind of thing keep happening here? 

If I had to hazard a guess I'd say it's due to, first, at least two generations of white males being raised without good examples of manhood/fatherhood, and second...the media. 

Obviously modifying the constitution is on the table if we want to lock up guns or insane people, so why not muzzle the journalists? Mass shootings wouldn't be so exciting if the American media wasn't so good at promoting them.

Joskin_Nodd

It happens elsewhere (the frickin' Netherlands). We get a little more than our share because of easier access to weapons and a large population. After that, it's the culture. A culture of coddling and media sensationalization. The DC sniper were not white males, and neither was the Fort Bragg shooter. But there are a lot of vectors. Muzzling people whose point of view we don't like is not the answer. Virginia Tech shooter was also not a white male. 

All men, though. Even in the Netherlands. 

_io

cdddd said:

I mean you can blame guns or misogyny or crazy people but other countries have those in spades. Why does this kind of thing keep happening here? 

If I had to hazard a guess I'd say it's due to, first, at least two generations of white males being raised without good examples of manhood/fatherhood, and second...the media. 

Obviously modifying the constitution is on the table if we want to lock up guns or insane people, so why not muzzle the journalists? Mass shootings wouldn't be so exciting if the American media wasn't so good at promoting them.

This guy wasn't a white male, or at least he was as much an Indonesian male as much as a white male.  His mother was Malaysian.

maprunnr65355

I'd just like to note on wrt to the gun thing, that most of the people weren't killed guns.... his roommates were killed by a knife and some of the victims were hit with his car.

Ben

Something that gets almost suspiciously overlooked in a lot of the media coverage is the racial aspect of his particular brand of crazy.  He was a half-Asian half-Caucasian who hated himself / considered himself inferior for not being "truly white" while resenting those with no Caucasian ancestry who dated Caucasian women who he felt they had even less "right" to than he did by virtue of his partially Caucasian ancestry.

That's harder to work into the narrative the media wants to tell than the misogyny angle, though, so it gets ignored.

Changed_Man

Interesting blog post from a young comic on this tragedy. He's still quite 'plugged in' but it's pretty clear that he intuitively gets it.

Whole bunch of wisdom for fellow young guys on being your 'best version' and not falling into the 'nice guy' trap.

http://thechrisgethardshow.tumblr.com/post/87041806996/overcome-your-programming-and-be-a-better-man

Personally, I don't care who the messenger is or how it's framed to be more palatable... truth is truth.

Kheldar

I particularly liked this: "If you feel like a round peg and the world feels like a square hole, shooting at the square hole with a gun does nothing."

Also, the discussion about how everyone has their own shit to deal with was good. Recognizing that and not whining about who has it worse is a positive thing.

Crashaxe

And as always, let's be sure to give him lots of attention in the press so we can be sure to encourage the next guy thinking about going postal. It is best that we make sure we let the next potential killer that he can have his 15 minutes of fame too. /heavy sarcasm towards our press/

If I had my way, these guys would NEVER have their names mentioned in the press.

Templar

cdddd said:

I mean you can blame guns or misogyny or crazy people but other countries have those in spades. Why does this kind of thing keep happening here? 

Look at the mass stabbings in China that happen a few times a year. European schools do have occasional issues like this as well. You just have to read foreign media to find the reports. They don't fit the American MSM storyline so you seldom see them.

Here are a couple links:

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-26402367

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

Kheldar

In fairness, American media rarely reports on other countries at all. If it weren't for wars, most Americans wouldn't learn geography at all. 

Templar

Kheldar said:

In fairness, American media rarely reports on other countries at all. If it weren't for wars, most Americans wouldn't learn geography at all. 

I think most kids think there are 2 countries - America and The Rest of the World

Angeline

 

Monkeys_Uncle

 Even though my wife and I don't consider ourselves to be Christians, one of the reasons we encourage our daughter to attend various local churches with friends is because it's one of the few outlets in this area that has regular contact with and news about the world outside of the USA, especially concerning areas where peoples day-to-day lives are dramatically different from her and her peers. 

never_again

@Monkeys_Uncle it can be even simpler than that.  One of the things my ex and I used to do was try to take my step-kids to a different truly ethnic restaurant every couple of weeks for our Friday dinners out.  Not only widens the kids experience with different foods and tastes, but exposes them to the people from different cultures.

Monkeys_Uncle

We have to drive an hour to get to an ethnic restaurant that isn't "Mexican" or "Chinese", but we do like to experiment with that stuff when we can.

Templar

My parish is rather large and rather diverse. Not only are there people of all races, but also from many countries. The most recent immigrants whose countries of origin I know for sure are Ethiopia, Kuwait, India, Korea, the Philippines, Canada, Mexico, Guatemala, Cuba and the U.K. Those are just the ones I know for sure. I make it a point to talk about world news with the family. The kids learn perspective and also learn to appreciate what they have.