@panzade,
Quote:It's possible, but autism and Aspergers sufferers are more likely to be victimized than to victimize others.
I think he had mental health problems in addition to Asperger's, or other mental health problems that were more severe than the Asperger's.
And he wasn't victimized at college, others did try to include him when they were just hanging out and talking. But, he'd either sit staring into space, sometimes for hours, while they talked, or he'd incessantly complain about not being able to get a date or get laid. If he was in supported-housing, efforts were made to help him socialize. He just wasn't able to do it appropriately. It's not hard to understand why girls weren't interested in him, let alone the "beautiful hot girls." He acted weird, he wasn't fun to be with.
And he had taken to victimizing others, in minor ways, like deliberately spilling drinks on people. Read this, that's partly where my understanding of him is coming from--from the things he recorded, the things he revealed.
Quote:Rodger also authored a 141-page autobiography titled “My Twisted World,” which was sent to a local news station. He describes the events of his life since birth, blaming an obsession with World of Warcraft for lack of social development in middle and early high school; blaming his father for not teaching him how to woo women; blaming his mother for not re-marrying into the rich, upper class after his parents separated; and blaming his own social awkwardness for getting in the way of his making friends and meeting women. Despite his seemingly-affluent lifestyle, he felt less rich than and inferior to others in the circles in which he traveled, lamenting that his father was not a more successful director. In college, he starts playing the Megamillions Lottery obsessively, spending hundreds of dollars at a time in the hopes of becoming a multi-millionaire, which he thinks will allow him to finally “get a woman.” He visited a shooting range for the first time at age 21 after he failed to win the lottery when there was a $120 million jackpot.
He expresses jealousy of people in sexual relationships; he seems more hateful of and angry at specific men — friends and social acquaintances — than at particular women. Women are vaguer to him, objects of desire; he sees them as both superior to him and inferior at the same time. The jealousy gets more and more deranged as the manifesto goes on. As he becomes a fan of Game of Thrones, he expresses a desire to a friend to “flay” a couple he sees in a mall food court; he seems especially enraged when men of other races are dating white women (despite his being half-Malaysian).
He feels the jealousy and sadness that all of us feel at some point when we are alone, without a romantic partner, except his loneliness manifests as a desire to cause violence for people who are happy. He starts acting out by spilling beverages on people he dislikes: coffee on a couple making out in a Starbucks, ice tea on a couple he saw in a mall whom he followed with his car. When he was 20, after two women at a bus stop didn’t smile back at him when he drove by, he turned his car around and splashed them with his Starbucks latte, taking pleasure in it staining their jeans, driving away quickly before they could get his license plate. And months later, when he spotted a happy group of “popular college kids” — “typical fraternity jocks, tall and muscular” and “beautiful blonde girls” — playing kickball in a park, he went to a K-mart and bought a Supersoaker, which he filled with orange juice and sprayed them, driving away when they chased him, an ominous foreshadowing of the devastation he would wreak later with a real gun.
At 21, he called his parents ranting about his loneliness and virginity. They insisted he see a psychiatrist. The next month, he bought his first gun.
He writes that he discovered PUAHate.com — the anti-pick-up-artist site — in the Spring of 2013 and that many people there “shared [his] hatred of women [but] would be too cowardly to act on it” and that the site “confirmed his theories about how wicked and degenerate women really are.” He had already started having violent thoughts and planning his “day of retribution” before visiting the site. He was seeing a psychiatrist as well as a series of “counselors,” who were supposed to essentially act as friends and help him socialize, but Rodger’s deranged jealousy was such that it only made him more distraught when women were attracted to his counselor and though he bonded with a female counselor, she moved away, and he didn’t want another because it felt like prostitution to hire a woman to spend time with him. The psychiatrist prescribed Risperidone, but Rodger refused to take it after Googling it.
During a last ditch effort to lose his virginity at 21 in the fall of 2013, he got drunk and went to a party, but he wound up getting violent and trying to push people off a ledge. He wound up getting pushed instead, and beaten, and broke his leg. The rest of his story is increasingly bitter and psychotic as he plans his “Day of Retribution,” including plans to lure people to his house and torture them in the style of Theon Greyjoy, though he does not actually name the Game of Thrones character. We all know how the story ends. Most of his YouTube videos were filmed during that time. Someone actually saw them and reported them leading police to be sent to Rodger’s apartment. He reassured the police that he was fine, and they left, but he notes that if they had searched his room, “they would have ended everything.”
http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2014/05/24/the-disturbing-internet-footprint-of-santa-barbara-shooter-elliot-rodger/
The article is mistaken in one regard--the police visited him in April, and there were no disturbing YouTube videos posted by then. He wasn't announcing any violent intentions, or intentions of harming anyone, until shortly before he acted last Friday. I think his parents concern in April was more likely a fear he might be suicidal.
His inner world was twisted, and it became moreso as he continued to decompensate. But he really wasn't being victimized in reality. And his self image at times was unrealistically grandiose--he describes himself as being "godly". He seems to have had more problems than just Asperger's. Psychosis is not typical of Asperger's either, and he did become psychotic, his thinking became delusional and paranoid. And that, unfortunately, didn't interfere with his ability to legally purchase 3 guns and a large supply of ammo.
I'm not sure there is much point in trying to figure him out now--it won't change anything. We know he was one sick puppy. He left behind a 141 page document to tell us that.
