Elliot Rodger

...I love women.

Be back soon with some writing type stuff.

Haven't forgotten about you Found Soul.

I want my response to your request to be thoughtful. It will come.

Foundy, I really think his story is that of someone who always felt socially marginalized and socially inadequate, not fully accepted into any peer group--he tells us that was the case even in pre-school when he pretended to be some sort of assistant goalie, because he couldn't play football, or even understand the game, as well as the other boys--he was pretending, even at the age of 5, to try to cover up his feelings of inadequacy.

Then he immigrated to another country, and he was anxious to acquire an American accent, because he didn't want to seem different. Then he wanted to be a blonde, something most Asians, or bi-racial Asians, are not, so this may have been an attempt to be seen as more Caucasian. Again, I can see these things as early attempts to deal with his own feelings of inadequacy, that also involve some degree of pretense in his case. And they are identity issues.

As he moved into Middle School, he couldn't compete with peers, not just with the cool kids, in terms of simply having friends and some sort of social life, so he retreated into the game World of Warcraft which gave him an alternate reality that was "more fair" to him, he could compete and participate in it on an equal level, and have something to discuss and share with others involved in WOW. But, eventually, he felt the discussions by other players were dominated by "normal" people, and it was too much like the real world, so it was no longer a place of refuge, and he abandoned it.

By the time he was in high school, he couldn't cope with any sort of perceived competition with other boys, not even at an all-boys school, where the presence of females was not an issue. And, when moved to a coed school, he began to really be obsessed with not being able to attract girls, or to even be noticed by them. This then became a serious identity issue for him--as a male--and working out identity issues is one of the main psychosocial tasks of adolescence. He tried to compensate by seeing the successful boys, mostly the jocks, as "brutes" while he saw himself as superior intellectually, but he wasn't having any real academic or intellectual successes either, so his alleged/fantasized superiority in that area didn't give him any satisfaction or social boost either, it was just something in his own mind he tried to comfort himself with.

His grandiosity/feelings of superiority, in response to his being a social loser, and misfit, wasn't effective as either compensation or psychological defense, and I think, by the time he got out of high school, he knew his future as an adult--in all areas of life--was likely not to be successful by his standards--and he'd never achieve the status and recognition in life he felt he deserved in all areas. By this point, his thinking was already clearly disturbed, he was obsessively focused, to a pathological degree, on only one thing, and his obsessions made it impossible for him to function in a college classroom or to complete courses, and he dropped out of the two colleges he tried to attend on a part-time basis.

At that point, his mother got him a job coach--she obviously wanted him to have some kind of independent life in adulthood, particularly since getting a college degree seemed unlikely, so he'd need to get a job. He rejected everything the job coach came up with--menial work was "beneath" him, he'd be "mortified" to work in "retail", etc. His snobbery, and self-delusion/grandiosity, further prevented him from being able to deal with reality, on top of his other problems. He took a temporary job, he could manage, just to shut his mother up, but that still left his future as cloudy as ever, so he talked his parents into letting him escape adult reality again, by allowing him to go to school at Santa Barbara, and live there, even though there was no reason to believe he'd function any better there than at the first 2 colleges. Maybe they were hoping for a miracle, maybe they needed a break from having to deal with him all the time, but letting him go there was like throwing someone who can't swim into the deep end of a pool--and he did psychologically drown there.

At Santa Barbara his obsessions continued to spin out of control, and his paranoia led to violent revenge fantasies. He couldn't function as a student, and he wound up pretending to be a student rather than being one. Other than shopping for designer clothes, and wanting a beautiful blonde next to him, mainly to complete his "image", his thinking and emotional state was more a cesspool of self-pity and contempt for others than any true desire for a relationship with anyone.

He couldn't reconcile his fantasy of what he felt he was entitled to in life with the reality of what he was able to obtain/attain through his own abilities, which was next to nothing. And he knew he had no talent that would rescue him from a life of jobs that he considered menial or "beneath" him, particularly since he'd never earn a college degree, nor did he have whatever it took to get himself laid by a beautiful blonde, or to have one as a girlfriend, so he saw nothing but misery and suffering in his future. I think only his violent revenge fantasies kept him from committing suicide sooner.

His thinking and inner world was very twisted. Considering how long he planned his Day of Retribution, that was largely unrealistic fantasy as well--most of it could never have been carried out, and beyond the killing of his roommates and their friend, it wasn't a well thought out plan. Did he really think the women in the sorority house would just open the door for him? Considering the carnage he wanted to pile up, he was, mercifully, nowhere near as effective a mass killer as he wanted to be.

We're never going to really know why he killed the roommates, and why he did so in a particularly grisly manner with dismemberment of their bodies. I wonder if he genitally mutilated them as well, or tried to flay them? The police did find the crime scene pretty horrendous, and they didn't want to discuss it in detail. Originally he wanted to get the roommates out of the way so he could lure others to the room and torture them, not that being able to lure others would have been at all realistic either. But he abandoned that idea, so we'll never really know why he committed these particularly horrible murders against 3 people who weren't his prime targets, and toward whom he didn't express much hostility in his manifesto. He didn't want to just kill these people--he wanted to, and did, rend them limb from limb. Was it because they were Asian? The men at that party he got beaten up at were Asian too--was this his symbolic payback to them?

Anyway Foundy, I think I've gone as far as I can, and want to, in trying to figure Elliot Rodger out. I'll continue to follow your posts with interest.

Autism is a spectrum, and we're all on it to some degree. Autistic people have difficulties, (in varying degrees,) with speech, social interaction, and dealing with non routine issues. Aspergers is just one or two of the above. All autistic people are different, no two are alike.

Rodger's problem with social interaction may have been a contributory factor in his behaviour, but there would be a lot more to it than that

Is it based in genetics??
Is it based in blood chemistry ?

Does explanation or discussion have any chance of success ?

In Elliot's manifesto, he continually, pervasively implied
that girls have a social duty to arise, to approach him
and to take the initiative in creating a social relationship with him.

I find it hard to believe that during his life NO ONE told him
that in our society, the social paradigm is that the male
takes the initiative in establishing social relationships,
tho there was no hint that he had been so informed
within his rather detailed manifesto. He gives no one
credit for providing him with that information.

Just wondering. Did he actually know that he had an Autism spectrum disorder? Was it even actually suspected by anyone who knew him, or the mental health professionals he dealt with?

Elliot never commented on it in his manifesto, so we don't know what he knew. He never really commented on his psychiatric symptoms either although he was seeing therapists and a psychiatrist had suggested medication for him, so it's not clear how well he understood his emotional problems either, or why he was seeing the therapists.

Asperger's was suspected, but possibly never formally diagnosed. He did have difficulty functioning socially from childhood on. But he also clearly exhibited signs of mental health problems--particularly anxiety and depression--by the time he entered high school. It's not known how the mental health professionals who treated him regarded him diagnostically, they haven't spoken out, and I doubt they will.

We KNOW that he was shy n bashful; socially paralyzed with fear.

But that doesn't indicate Asperger's.

Even Elliot admitted he lacked social skills--apart from being shy and anxious--he really didn't know how to act socially--and that's what may have indicated Asperger's. That's why his parents got him the job coach, had his father's friend advise him on how to initiate communication with females, had counselors spend time with him when he was at Santa Barbara, etc. These were all attempts to help him with his social difficulties, quite apart from his mental health or psychiatric problems.

He knew how to dress to look cool, he could understand superficial external things like that, but he didn't know how to show real interest in other people. It's not clear he had any real interest in other people, beyond their utility to him. He also seems to have had a fairly limited range of personal interests. He may also have had diminished ability to accurately read social cues from others, or to express a normal range of social cues when relating to others. Again, that can indicate Asperger's. And the OCD his father mentioned often occurs as a component of Asperger's.

He certainly had a lot more wrong with him than just Asperger's, if he had that, but he does seem to have had some characteristics of that syndrome, in addition to his psychiatric symptoms. My guess is that his social interactions and social awareness were limited by some degree of Asperger's, and that would have made social functioning more confusing and distressful for him, and that's why he became so anxious and shy in social situations, he couldn't fully understand them. So he became even more withdrawn.

We know more about his emotional problems than we do about any pervasive developmental disorder he may have suffered from. I'd trust the school principle at the last high school he attended when she describes him as having classic signs of Asperger's--she was a behavioral specialist at the previous high school he attended, and she witnessed one of his panic attacks there, and then she became principle of the special high school he went to--for "troubled" students. So she saw both his anxiety, and emotional difficulties, as well as his usual detached and awkward social functioning, even when others were trying to include him. I'm inclined to give some weight to her perception of him.

I was reading a doc say that based upon what is available it looks like schizophrenia. I dont know if it is possible to sit in front of pros week after week, year after year and have them not see this even if you are stonewalling them. But Elliot did have this monster pride in himself and his ability to deceive others, maybe he was able to pull this off by way of willpower. This ability would have been breaking down though, which might have determined the timing of his " day of retribution". If this is what happened for sure schizophrenic advocates are damn glad he never got a diagnosis, as they spend a lot of time trying to convince us that schizophrenics are not dangerous.

Schizophrenics (hallucinating) have violently, lethally proven themselves
to be extremely dangerous. Not even their own families
have been safe around them.

Actually I believe the vast majority of schizophrenics are non-violent.

The few who are violent though, can cause lots of harm.

I think what they say is that most schizophrenics are not dangerous. They acknowledge that a few are dangerous.

Not always, I have seen advocates claim that there is no statistical difference between schizophrenics and the average person when it comes to violence. No, I did not believe it.

I read that too but I'm not convinced. He had something going on in his brain that was un-wired that's for sure but he never showed two personalities, rather ego and the desire to be a millionaire and a problem with being Eurasian and short, coupled with " he believed the average penis size was 4 inches" when he was told it was 5 inches , he wasn't happy with that. So I also believed he had that issue as well.

Yes, I agree.

But, a lot of kids as they develop all of a sudden realise they are shorter than others or there are "cool kids" and you are not one of them based either on how you look " not cute enough" he was, for sure and better really with the blonde hair, kinda cute' or too short, or a lot of things but they don't do this, he's wired. His brain is wired.

He stated this did you read that?

" I was always creating stories in my mind to fuel my fantasies" that speaks volume.

He went on to state that he wanted to make them best sellers and turn them into movies and be a millionaire .

His obsession with money started at a young age. Even though he lived in poorer homes, did this commence when the house got bigger that he moved into? When his Father all of a sudden "made it" in his eyes?

" Usually stories depicted someone like myself rising to power after a life of being treated unfairly by the World. "

Elliot took. He read. He googled. He joined every site that interested him to learn, gather his fantasy or to spit hate.

Juan Corona was the "machete murderer"
There was a Forum ' "Favourite mass murderers " weapon" KMC FORUMS which held horror movies. Elliot was into WOW and everything to do with killing. Here they talked about a machete .

On Yahoo someone asked how to kill with one. Got the answers, stated they were writing a comic book.

Elliot googled we know that for a fact. And, read and or/ joined in along the way.

He stated that he loved to fantasise and created stories in his mind so he took life lessons, internet research his Grandfather's findings of dead people and affect... WOW and Valthanon who was his name on many a site that he chose to be, death, hero. "ElliotR1) joined 2011.

A kid really in a fairy tale book.... A God.

Elliot Rodger also joined Forum calling himself by name, he said " Starvation from food tortures the body, sex tortures the mind and soul.

I believe he googled mass murderers actually I know he did, I found his posts on that at the beginning and his comments. So I believe he also googled how to kill in various ways to ensure he is heard, known, goes down in history.

The thing is, Elliot did not care what he did to those poor three boys. He cleaned up.

He went on and killed more and hurt more without even blinking an eyelid.

I'm looking up Juan Corona and Adam lee Hall at present and Sandy Hook.

I can't find anything of a "symbol" for using a machete ...

I think either he googled Machete and came up with the Yahoo search or has combined Mass Murders to "be the best".

Elliot HAD to be the best.

He failed.

Foundy, I don't think anything we know about Rodger really explains why he felt he needed to commit mass murder, and why he was able to dehumanize his targets to such an extent that he felt no moral compunctions about killing them--other than his pathological narcissism, his belief that he was superior, but was being mistreated as though he was inferior, and that was a wrong he had to punish.

We have his manifesto, but that's his subjective version of events, and it's essentially his justification for both homicide and suicide, and his desire for revenge was based on all the "horrible injustices" and "insults" he felt were inflicted on him from puberty onward. The manifesto was written after he decided to commit mass murder, and his intention was to present himself as a tragic and suffering sympathetic figure who had been mistreated, abused, and deprived and who would now exact retribution against those who had done this to him, those who made his life intolerable for him.

I really don't think he wanted to go down in the annals of notorious mass murderers, I think this was all about a suicidal individual who wanted to go out in a blaze of glory, where he could satisfy his own needs for revenge before putting a bullet in his own head, so his life wouldn't end in surrender and defeat and powerlessness. And the beating he got at that party, by more than one group, along with being called a "faggot", and having his gold necklace stolen that night, was the event that made him determined to kill as payback. When he went to the party, he considered it his "last chance" to try to lose his virginity, if it didn't happen, he was clearly thinking about killing himself, but after what happened to him there, that's when his thinking shifted to murder. And I think the manner in which he killed his roommates likely reflected what he wanted to do to the group of Asian men who beat him up at that party that night.

What's distressing, and quite disturbing, are the people who immediately began regarding Rodger as a hero, and set up Facebook fan pages to glorify him. As fast as Facebook took these pages down, more went up.



Why would anyone want to glorify a mass murderer who was essentially nothing more than a terrorist? What was there in Elliot Rodger's behavior that was worthy of praise--committing the cold-blooded premeditated murder of people who had never personally harmed him, and most of whom he didn't even know?

Does this kind of hero-worship thinking about a murderer help to encourage more violence? It certainly seems to have emboldened this U. of Washington student to make his internet threats:



I wonder how many other fans of Elliot Rodger might be thinking of emulating him. Just regarding him as a hero reveals there are people with toxic attitudes just like his, and their thinking may be just as paranoid and twisted as his was, and their access to guns is just as easy as his was. These people do encourage each other, just as Rodger was encouraged by the anti-woman hatred he heard at the anti-pickup artist sites, and by celebrating him, they are condoning violence. Maybe we need to understand that phenomenon to understand Elliot Rodger--and the next one like him who comes along. Mass murder seems excusable, among Rodger's fans, as long as you sympathize with the hatred for the targets--and that's what terrorism is all about.

Hey FF. I " would agree with you totally" and a good portion if this makes sense, however I do believe that he did for the following observations :-



1. If he wanted to go out in a blaze of glory, satisfying his own needs for revenge before putting a bullet to his head, in my opinion, that's the attempt to get into the College and shoot everyone in sight, it's the driving by shooting, knocking kids of push bikes, pedestrians as they walked... The "prior" to this, the killing of his flat mates, trying to be-head them and that is what I believe and using those heads to roll down the streets as he "stated" is beyond that.

2. He did look up mass murderers and he responded to posts, more than one, he googled it and contributed his thoughts.

3. His manifesto is not the only one that exists amongst mass murders.

4. In a way Elliot was a copy cat, he tried to beat everyone at what ever they did, learnt what they did, copied all the while, all the way through he failed.

I don't deny he was homicidal or suicidal that he wanted to go out with a blaze of glory that he wanted to take as many as he could, just as any mass murderer has wanted to do.

But he was interested in mass murderers, absolutely what they did, how they did it and he never spoke down about them, ever. All he said was "there is no God idiot". He looked up two. He wanted fame after death.. Guarantee it, so he did google mass murders and wanted to add in a mix that was so evil that he would be famous after death and you've just proven my point by your post .

I've seen the face-book page and read it a few times. He got one component that he wanted.. Famous.

Let's face it that was his entire life, wanting to be a millionaire but today not tomorrow, wanting to be famous as I said he dreamt even of making comics that would turn into movies based on how he felt, based on him.

For all I know, he probably hoped there would be a movie about him as well.

We are going to have to beg to differ on that note

.

That's a logical thought. But, I don't think so personally.. You are forgetting he wanted to be-head them, and roll their heads down the street, from the car watching the girls reactions...

Maybe that's all it was, the above. It didn't work, he couldn't cut them enough, couldn't be-head them. But, Elliot took everything he read, learnt and if it fit his "fantasy" he added it in. Mass Murderers fitted his fantasy and he read up on it and used it.

He was God. Off course he wanted to be known he wasn't known in his real life, it had to happen in death.

I don't think we are in disagreement as much as we're simply looking at this from different perspectives.

I guess I'm most struck by the fact he called it his Day of Retribution. This was the day he planned to deliver punishment, punishment he felt was deserved, in a cold-blooded premeditated manner. I think it was more about payback for "injustices" done to him than about fame as a mass murderer. He didn't just want to kill a lot of people--as James Holmes the Aurora Theater shooter apparently did--Rodger focused on specific groups or individuals, for specific and personal reasons.

And he entertained, and enjoyed thinking about, many aggressive fantasies toward these groups or individuals, beside the ones he planned on carrying out on that day--like holding women down and raping them, flaying couples, rolling heads down streets etc. He began to enjoy sadist fantasies, and just having them was satisfying for him. He wasn't motivated by a heated emotional rage, as much as he was by a completely callous and pleasurable enjoyment of extremely sadistic fantasies, by the time his manifesto ended. And it wasn't toward all of humanity, he didn't want to go shoot up a shopping mall somewhere, his sadism remained mainly focused on other students--his roommates, the ones in that sorority house, and the many students who he knew would be out on that street on a Friday night.

And, in both his planned acts, and the ones he actually carried out on his Day of Retribution, he was much more a serial killer/spree killer than a mass murderer who generally kills a lot of people in one location. He had planned out a series of killings in various places and locations, and he carried out a series of killings and injuries with various weapons--machete, knives, guns, his car--in more than one location. I think he was a spree killer and not a mass murderer. Racking up a high body count in one location was not his motivation, had it been, he could probably have killed even more people on the street just with his guns. But he really hadn't planned an act of mass murder, he planned a series of acts of murder, in different places and ways, and the only common factor between them was that the intended victims were his personal target groups. That's why, compared to a true mass murderer, his body count was relatively low--he never had an organized plan for mass murder.

His YouTube videos and his manifesto were his efforts to gain fame and attention, and sympathy, and to explain why he needed to seek retribution. He didn't want to be seen as an evil killer, he wanted to be seen as justified, and he wanted others to feel guilty for what they had driven him to do--including his suicide--because he considered them to blame for what had become "My Twisted World". The media was wrong in calling it his "manifesto"--it was primarily his autobiography--and apologia for murder--and it was entirely self-serving, presenting him as far more sinned against than sinning--and as the blameless victim who was simply, at the end, seeking to exact retribution for the cosmic "injustices" done to him in his life.

Just re-read the two paragraph introduction to My Twisted World--it's all there, his grandiosity, his arrogance, his feeling of being entirely justified in the crimes of murder he has planned, and a shifting of blame to his intended victims--"Humanity forced my hand". This isn't a "manifesto", it's really an apologia for murder. And he didn't call the planned event My Day of Rage, or My Day of Outrage, it was my Day of Retribution, and I think that's significant. He felt as entitled to mete out murder, as retribution, as he felt entitled to everything else. And that's how he wanted the reader to feel when they finished the 141 pages--that he was entitled to that retribution too--that it was fully justified, and not due to irrational rage, or depravity, the victims had brought this retribution on themselves, they earned and deserved it, and, like some offended God, he would deliver it.

He knows what he will do is a "tragedy"--including his own death--but he is concerned with how the world will view him afterward, when his statement is read, after his deeds have been carried out. So this is also about the image of himself he wants to leave with the world--as a long-suffering victim who was forced to take action against the "cruel injustice' that humanity--mainly women--had inflicted on him. He really wants everyone to feel sorry for him even after the murderous spree has been carried out. He was one monumentally self-centered and self-absorbed dude.

And that's why it's so disturbing that some people have chosen to view him as some sort of hero and create those fan pages for him--that's exactly the sort of validation and memorial he wanted--and it suggests that others share his warped and twisted thinking, suffused with hatred, and permeated with envy, and with as little regard for human life as he ultimately displayed.