Elliot Rodger...The Ultimate "Nice Guy."

[Gravekeeper]

It amazes me (honestly) that every few years we have some crazy (in the sense that the person is either mentally ill or objectively delusional) do something horrible like this and every time it happens a rash of political activity springs up and exploits the event.

Its a hell of a lot more than every few years its just the national media isn't as interested unless there's something about it they can exploit to fill air time. As for political exploitation not really, no. Its media exploitation that's the problem. Political activity after a tragedy is typically driven by the public.

There's just a part of me that wishes people would just disabuse this notion we have of things being that significant politically when acted by one person.

You might have a point if the very list you linked didn't indicate an average of 25 school shootings a year in the last 4 years and a significant mass school shooting once every 2. Without even factoring in mass shootings that occurred outside of school grounds.

It's not a movie where it's a requirement that they have rationales that make sense to an audience.

We have a fundemental need to understand why tragedy occurs for the sake of closure, as well as understand why it occurred so that we can avoid it in the future. Also one of the most unsettling features of this case in particular is that this guy DOES make sense. No one may agree with him, but he is lucid and clearly states what his motivations are. He is not a rambling crazy. He's a calculated sociopathic crazy. Who was quite clear on why he did the things he did.

You'll notice the distinct lack of a list for school stabbings in the United States because those victims were obviously killed by people and not weapons. Politics... (and I'm a gun control proponent.)

The list that includes school stabbings is linked from the bottom of the page you just linked. Also Wikipedia is not a poltical entity, its open source. The reason there is a list of school shootings is because the topic was of enough interest for someone to compile.

Perhaps read your own links before you rant about politics. >.>

I know it happens and I know people think they're helping whether it be by starting #YesAllWomen or protecting us from scary immigrants of Middle Eastern descent (no these are not even remotely similar in cause quality).

#YesAllWomen was about victims. It was #NotAllMen that shifted it to being "About them".

Because the only part of this crap that is "about us" is the part that we are responsible for these people's activation in multiple, complex ways but we will not EVER fix that. Ever.

We've already discussed some pretty simple ways that this guy's "activation" could have been fixed. Yes, there are complex issues at work in these situations but declaring they just can't be fixed oh well and accepting this kind of shit as some sort of natural disaster is ridiculous.

Many of them CAN be addressed and have been addressed in other countries.

Could you imagine having your son taken away and reading the coverage of this case?

Its the families of the victims that are the ones that most vocally call for change. One of the leading voices in this current tragedy is the father of one of the victims.

Granted, Joe The Fucking Douche Plumber responded to said father with, and this is a direct quote: "your dead kids don’t trump my Constitutional rights"

[Kheldarson]

Granted, Joe The Fucking Douche Plumber responded to said father with, and this is a direct quote: "your dead kids don’t trump my Constitutional rights"

I really wanted to strangle that guy upon reading that quote.

I've seen a lot of commentary on some of the sites I visit about misogyny being at the root of this. That, as a culture, American men are taught that women are something to be earned. And given that that's a premise of a lot of our media, perhaps there's something to it.

I don't think Hollywood's going to change though...

[Hyena Dandy]

While there are a lot of things that people say similar to him on the relationship front, and that comes from society, I'm not sure I blame society and that type of narrative on him. His problems went beyond that, and I'm not sure how much I could even really say they were exacerbated by it. He didn't only feel hurt about not having hot chicks, he was angry at his mother for not marrying a rich person so he could get more stuff, he was angry at tall people for being tall.

The societal narrative that you "Deserve" to have a hot chick if you're a good person is a problem. The way that the Nice Guy Syndrome becomes toxic is a frustration with what society tells you your life should be, and the disconnect with what it is. You're told that if you're cool, and smart, you'll have pretty ladies. And then when you don't have pretty ladies, it hurts, and you either blame yourself and say you're a loser, or you blame the pretty ladies. Or you stop listening to the societal message altogether.

But society doesn't tell you that your mother should find someone rich and marry them so she can give you money. He would have been a sexist, racist asshole in any society, because women and black people are not him.

[Sleepwalker]

Ehh. Not the larger american society, perhaps, but certainly smaller segments of it. Speaking as someone whose sister was in one of the most expensive private schools in the bay area... yeah. Wealthy home maker culture (I'm including those who marry them, and their mutual families) is a real thing. Not saying that that is what got the idea in his head, but. It is a culture that exists, and women who DO specifically plan on having kids with a rich guy. And there certainly is a popular narrative that you shouldn't marry and have kids with a poor person- and everyone has a different definition of what poor is.

I refuse to listen to his murder rants, so I really don't know how applicable that is.

[D_Yeti_Esquire]

Gravekeeper - here's where you and I won't reconcile at all on this topic. At the end of the day, I think the impulse to kill is innate but less than the impulse to bond. Both impulses exist but one is far greater in most of the population and the other only rears its head generally in war or in fight or flight circumstances. When the impulse to bond either isn't there or is thwarted (which happens in a world where people can choose their platonic connections) you end up with these socially isolated people.

Socially isolated people for YEARS have been known to go this route. They are MORE likely and in fact are targeted by extremist groups. And even when they're not, they can brood in their house to this point. They are not guaranteed to break bad but since the other 99.9999% of society is not required to reintegrate them, their internal equation for violence vs. socialization can become out of whack because they don't have socialization. Hell, we've talked on this very board about prisoners in isolation being damaged by the experience. It doesn't work out particularly better for people who end up isolated because they persistently fail at social interaction. The thing that's supposed to keep violence in check isn't present. That's not the same as saying Rodger needs dates, I'm saying he needed real friends AND he needed the therapy it seems like he was getting at one time. He had a condition to manage. If it was unmanageable, he shouldn't have been on the street in the first place. This is a kid that had no investment in the status quo because his genetics/socialization couldn't navigate it. Yes, I find people like him inevitable because free choice exists and I rather like free choice in regards to socializing. You can feel free to disagree with me but you will not find a country with a murder rate of 0 per 100,000. I don't think Yellowstone will blow it's volcanic top tomorrow, but some day it will happen. It's the difference between common and the edge of the bell curve.

Do you believe that the media operates outside of the public's consumption? I don't. We drive it. Do we need public discourse on a killing for public closure? A N.Y. state trooper was killed yesterday by a man that intentionally hit him with a car (it was reported). That same thing happened outside my house a year ago (it was reported). Apparently no one needs closure for those. Only a measly 333 people had their lives taken by some idiot last year in NYC alone. Did we need closure? No, we don't need closure on any of this BS, but we CHOOSE to emotionally invest in some if for arbitrary reasons.

School Shootings <> total killings or even mass killings. Get to about 1980 on that list though and you're looking at multiple a year school shootings a year. Is the number increasing? Yup. Is there more than one cause for that? Yup. I would not overstate that the farther back in time you go however, the less reliable the news gets based on what got archived. That was an easy list to find and the politics of it are on the surface. How you seem to think the presence of politics in an open forum is somehow arguing against my point that people exploit tragedy is beyond me but ok. But to draw another difference, I don't draw a distinction between the impulse to murder many and their success rate at doing so. People try to kill. Not all of them are successful. The "why's" of the successful are not more relevant than the "why's?" of the failed. "Significant" school shootings to me is about as flimsy a distinction as "significant" childhood abduction. It's a societal distinction made on a multitude of factors and factor 1 tends to be, "were they white?"

You're right, I missed the link. But then again, I'm still missing the link because even a CTRL+F isn't finding it on that page. Feel free to link it. What I had tried to do was search wikipedia with stabbings instead and didn't find it so I assumed. Doing an exhaustive search on that topic was beyond the scope of my point. Should I finish with my own dismissive language and an emoticon? No, that's probably juvenile. Just link me so I can see what you're looking at.


Re: other countries that's actually a pretty long discussion which I both agree with and disagree with depending on part of the topic. It's very suspect to compare many countries to the US when many of them don't even contain the population of Texas. I notice people bring up "other countries" far more than comparing stats between individual US States with the same laws.

I have no problem with #YesAllWomen outside the fact I find it exploitive of someone else's tragedy. If that worked for people, great. I still find it the same behavior. No one was justifying #NotAllMen here (you brought them up.) The reaction against "not all men" predates this by several weeks. If there was some #NotAllMen hashtag response after, I wasn't paying attention because those idiots bore me.

Finally regarding the parents, I DO NOT find them being politically active a problem. That is their pain to own. I don't really give a flip about Joe the Plumber.

[AccountingDrone]

Granted, Joe The Fucking Douche Plumber responded to said father with, and this is a direct quote: "your dead kids don’t trump my Constitutional rights"

Actually, asshole though he is, Joe is right - the poor guys dead kids really *don't* trump the constitution, or someone's constitutional rights. What does trump them is the long process and accomplishment of changing a constitutional amendment, or adding one that changes a previous one.

As much sympathy as I have for the father and mother/insert type of relationship of anybody killed, we still do have the constitutional right to bear arms [or even arm bears - or at least let them use our hammock for chilling] and until the constitution gets changed, *that* trumps the dead kids.

[eltf177]

Actually, asshole though he is, Joe is right - the poor guys dead kids really *don't* trump the constitution, or someone's constitutional rights. What does trump them is the long process and accomplishment of changing a constitutional amendment, or adding one that changes a previous one.

As much sympathy as I have for the father and mother/insert type of relationship of anybody killed, we still do have the constitutional right to bear arms [or even arm bears - or at least let them use our hammock for chilling] and until the constitution gets changed, *that* trumps the dead kids.

Right or not, this was pretty much a slap in the face to said parent. This clown had better expect a lot of flak and blowback from his comments.

I'm 53 and haven't had a date in so long I can't even remember when it was. I got tired of being used and abused, so I gave up on dating. Yes, it's lonely. OTOH I have disposable income, I come and go as I please, and I don't have to answer to anybody.

I'm not saying it's a perfect life, I'd really like someone to be with. But it's the choice I made and it's working - for now at least. So Elliot Roger gets no sympathy from me.

[Hyena Dandy]

Copy-pasting from a comic/essay blog that I follow which puts into better words some of my views on this.

Please don't copy and paste text from other sites. Links only, please.

Link can be found here.

[Gravekeeper]

Gravekeeper - here's where you and I won't reconcile at all on this topic. At the end of the day, I think the impulse to kill is innate but less than the impulse to bond. Both impulses exist but one is far greater in most of the population and the other only rears its head generally in war or in fight or flight circumstances. When the impulse to bond either isn't there or is thwarted (which happens in a world where people can choose their platonic connections) you end up with these socially isolated people.

I'm not sure how we can't reconcile on a topic that I wasn't aware we were discussing. >.>

There are two aspects to this. There is a structural lack of empathy ( sociopathic, which is what this guy was ) and an enviromental lack of empathy ( Shitty parenting, poor upbringing, poor childhood enviroment, head injuries, etc. Which can contribute to the onset of a structural lack of empathy ). In this guy's case you can see the structural lack of empathy and subsequnet narcisissm being magnified by enviromental factors such as obtaining weapons.

However, both aspects of this can be addressed. The problem in regards to guys like this is that there's a systematic failure to put in place any sort of failsafes to prevent them from reaching these extremes.

We don't have an innate impulse to kill, as it doesn't serve an evolutionary purpose to such a complex social species as ours. A sociopath doesn't kill because he/she is acting out some innate impulse, they kill because the defining feature of sociopathy is a complete lack of understanding of why negative actions against other people are a bad thing. Murder is a logical conclusion for them. Not some primal impulse. Its called sociopathy because the person essentially lacks the social component of the human psyche. They see no benefit in social interaction for the sake of social interaction, only a tool for their own gain and they don't understand why everyone else thinks thats wrong.

As for the impulse to "Bond" as you put it, humans are complex social creatures. Our brain specifically evolved to allow us to form complex relationships and to deeply understand the thoughts and feelings of others. So yes, we do suffer when we are socially isolated. But thats a different beast than sociopathy as the sociopathy does not require social interaction. Someone who commits an act of violence from that starting point is usually someone who was driven to that point by their enviroment and/or there peers. Such as cases where kids that have been bullied and socially ostracized get pushed to the brink till they either kill themselves or someone else.

Both of these issues can be addressed by us as a society though and in the US especially where the lack youth developmental support and mental health support is downright shameful for an industrialized nation.

That's not the same as saying Rodger needs dates, I'm saying he needed real friends AND he needed the therapy it seems like he was getting at one time. He had a condition to manage. If it was unmanageable, he shouldn't have been on the street in the first place.

He did have real friends, a supporting family and therapy. After he obtained firearms, he began to change for the worst and his friends broke off contact with him out of fear. Which is two things that could be done better right there. He should not have ever been allowed to buy firearms and yes, he should not have been on the street. Sociopaths are notoriously manipulative and will say or do whatever it takes to make people think they are getting "Better". So yes, someone should have been keeping much tighter tabs on this guy given his history and he probably should have been living in assisted housing.

Yes, I find people like him inevitable because free choice exists and I rather like free choice in regards to socializing.

I'm not saying we can magically get rid of sociopaths. I'm saying we can certainly manage them, as well as others who have antisocial behaviour due to abuse and trauma, much better than we do. Especially in the US.

You can feel free to disagree with me but you will not find a country with a murder rate of 0 per 100,000.

Monaco has a premediated homicide rate of 0 per 100,000 and a homicide rate of, well. 1 murder per decade. ( Monaco in fact has the lowest crime rates in the world ). There are many countries with a homicide rate below 1 per 100,000 and many cities even lower. Japan is 0.2 per 100,000 example. Even China only has a murder rate of 1 per 100,000.

Its the US that has 4.8 per 100,000. So obviously there's some problems and some work to be done there. Whether its systematic, culturally or both. You have less of a chance of being murdered in Iran than you do the US.

Do you believe that the media operates outside of the public's consumption? I don't. We drive it. Do we need public discourse on a killing for public closure? A N.Y. state trooper was killed yesterday by a man that intentionally hit him with a car (it was reported). That same thing happened outside my house a year ago (it was reported). Apparently no one needs closure for those. Only a measly 333 people had their lives taken by some idiot last year in NYC alone. Did we need closure? No, we don't need closure on any of this BS, but we CHOOSE to emotionally invest in some if for arbitrary reasons.

A) That was kind of my point about the media.
B) 1 officer being killed in the line of duty by a regular criminal doesn't register on a national level.
C) Said criminal did not write a 140 page manifesto and go on a killing spree.

It becomes a national story when it reachs a level that gains the nation's attention. Weekly homicides in NYC are not out of the ordinary. Someone on a shooting spree on school grounds is. When things of that level happen, people what answers and they want action to reassure them it won't happen again.

How you seem to think the presence of politics in an open forum is somehow arguing against my point that people exploit tragedy is beyond me but ok.

I never said no one exploits tragedy. Quite the opposite. I was objecting to you saying it always gets politically exploited. A tragedy resulting in political action is not the same as one being politically exploited. Political action to try and address and correct what led to a tragedy is not exploitation. Political exploitation is using 9/11 as punctuation.

You're right, I missed the link. But then again, I'm still missing the link because even a CTRL+F isn't finding it on that page. Feel free to link it. What I had tried to do was search wikipedia with stabbings instead and didn't find it so I assumed. Doing an exhaustive search on that topic was beyond the scope of my point.

Wikipedia does have a list of mass stabbings, but they are so rare its only an index of like 12 for the entire world. As for the school attack lists the include stabbings, they are linked from the bottom of the page to school related attacks. Which gives you the lists that include stabbings.

Should I finish with my own dismissive language and an emoticon? No, that's probably juvenile. Just link me so I can see what you're looking at.

Sorry, if you fail to read your own links and then make declarative statements about politics based on it, against wikipedia no less, you don't get to complain when you get called out on it.

It's very suspect to compare many countries to the US when many of them don't even contain the population of Texas. I notice people bring up "other countries" far more than comparing stats between individual US States with the same laws.

Thats why statistics use that whole per capita thing. If you want to discuss it in terms of population there are only two countries with a higher population than the US. China and India. They both have significantly lower homicide rates. If you want to look at it in terms of population density, there are even more countries with higher densities and significantly lower homicide rates than the US. If you want to compare based on individual state population densities nope, there are only 4 states/territories of the US that have population densities higher than sardine countries like Japan, and Japan is still 0.2 per capita.

Its not a matter of population, density, individual states or varying laws.

If you want to look at it as state v state, southern states due tend to murder each other more often than anyone else in the country. Surprisingly so, actually so you can thank them for dragging up your average. But that said the lowest state homicide rate in the US is still just above China. ( New Hampshire, just as safe as China!(tm) ).

There are only 8 states with a per capita below 2. So only 8 states have a lower per capita than Iraq. -.-

I have no problem with #YesAllWomen outside the fact I find it exploitive of someone else's tragedy. If that worked for people, great. I still find it the same behavior.

I don't see how discussing a subject is exploitive of someone else's tragedy. Especially given how unsettlingly illuminating that discussion has been.

[kaycivine]

My only, maybe somewhat self centered thought, was after hearing and seeing some of this guys rants online....

I was thinking about someone who I dealt with personally who would bemoan similar things. Only he wanted one girl who never was interested-....ME.


After this incident came out and I looked more into it, I started to keep my distance.

This person, Rodgers, was disturbed...and I can't say much more.

[Rageaholic]

Thought this was funny in the wake of a tragedy.

[protege]

This person, Rodgers, was disturbed...and I can't say much more.

Rodger was pretty fucked up. I tried to read his "manifesto," but had to quit about a quarter through. I settled for the Wikiquotes version. In that one, I don't recall him ever even mentioning *approaching* a girl. With that said, I can't feel sorry for the guy for not being able to talk to them...let alone his entitlement issues.

Sure, my love life kinda sucks right now. But, at least I've put some *effort* into it. Yes, going down in flames sucks...but so does not having anyone because you're too much of a pussy to even talk.

[smileyeagle1021]

Actually, asshole though he is, Joe is right - the poor guys dead kids really *don't* trump the constitution, or someone's constitutional rights. What does trump them is the long process and accomplishment of changing a constitutional amendment, or adding one that changes a previous one.

As much sympathy as I have for the father and mother/insert type of relationship of anybody killed, we still do have the constitutional right to bear arms [or even arm bears - or at least let them use our hammock for chilling] and until the constitution gets changed, *that* trumps the dead kids.

Just because he's right doesn't mean he's not wrong.
There is a world of difference between "Your dead kid doesn't trump my constitutional rights" and "your son's death was tragic and we need to discuss what can be done to prevent it in the future, but that doesn't change the Constitution." Both sentences mean the same thing, but only one of them doesn't make you a raging douche who probably will do more damage to your cause in the long run.

[AccountingDrone]

Just because he's right doesn't mean he's not wrong.
There is a world of difference between "Your dead kid doesn't trump my constitutional rights" and "your son's death was tragic and we need to discuss what can be done to prevent it in the future, but that doesn't change the Constitution." Both sentences mean the same thing, but only one of them doesn't make you a raging douche who probably will do more damage to your cause in the long run.

yup. As I said, asshole.

[siead_lietrathua]

i know i'm late to the party, but the title of this thread (and concept of it) is kinda bugging me.

"nice guys" actually talk to girls, do nice things for them, actually put some effort into trying to get a girl and just never have it seem to work out. the only reason a "nice guy" would feel entitled to a specific girl is because he expended a friggton of effort woo-ing her and it bombed.
elliot expected any and all girls to fall to his feet with no expended effort, just because he was him. and when it didn't happen he wanted to eradicate the need for sex from the world on some twisted "if i can't have it, noone can" powertrip.

elliot wasn't a "nice guy". he was a reclusive sociopath with a god complex.