A mass shooting in Santa Barbara last night left seven dead, including the man suspected of being the killer. Local authorities say that this chilling video, titled Elliot Rodger’s retribution, “appears to be connected” to the shootings. It is a supremely disturbing real-life villain’s monologue in which a young man, evidently the killer, explains on the day before the massacre why he intends to kill: because women have rejected him.
As the person who sent this video to me this morning noted, it sounds almost like a parody of the misogynistic beliefs and rhetoric that I write about on this blog. His language and his melodramatic tone both echo the writings of many of those young men who consider themselves “incels.” His anger is the same anger we see from the rejected men who lash out with insults and threats on OkCupid when their often crude advances are turned down. He reminds me of every so-called “nice guy” who is inwardly seething with resentment born of sexual entitlement denied. He even, at one point, calls himself a “gentleman.” He also calls himself an “alpha.”
It is clear that his resentment at women was stoked by what I call the “new misogyny” and by steeping himself in at least one online community that reaffirmed his exaggerated, unwarranted sense of victimhood. So far we have evidence that he was a commenter at PUAhate, a site ostensibly designed to critique PUAs but which has degenerated into a haven for misogynistic “incels” and angry trolls. I suspect we will find that he was also a reader of, or a commenter at, some of the other sites I critique on this blog.
For those of you who cannot make it through the video — I found it very hard to watch — here is a transcript of what he said.
Hi, Elliot Rodger here.
Well… this is my last video. It all has to come to this.
Tomorrow is the day of retribution. The day in which I will have my revenge against humanity. Against all of you.
For the last 8 years of my life, ever since I’ve hit puberty, I’ve been forced to endure an existence of loneliness, rejection, and unfulfilled desires. All because girls have never been attracted to me.
Girls gave their affection, and sex, and love, to other men but never to me.
I’m 22 years old and I’m still a virgin. I’ve never even kissed a girl.
I’ve been through college for two and a half years, more than that actually, and I’m still a virgin.
It has been very torturous.
College is the time when everyone experiences those things such as sex, and fun, and pleasure. But in those years I’ve had to rot in loneliness.
It’s not fair. You girls have never been attracted to me.
I don’t know why you girls aren’t attracted to me, but I will punish you all for it.
It’s an injustice, a crime, because I don’t know what you don’t see in me. I’m the perfect guy, and yet you throw yourselves at all these obnoxious men, instead of me, the supreme gentlemen.
I will punish all of you for it. (laughs)
On the day of retribution I am going to enter the hottest sorority house of UCSB… and I will slaughter every single spoiled, stuck-up, blonde slut I see inside there.
All those girls that I’ve desired so much, they would’ve all rejected me and looked down upon me as an inferior man if I ever made a sexual advance towards them while they throw themselves at these obnoxious brutes.
I will take great pleasure in slaughtering all of you.
You will finally see that I am in truth the superior one. The true alpha male. (laughs)
Yes, after I’ve annihilated every single girl in the sorority house, I’ll take to the streets of Isla Vista, and slay every single person I see there.
All those popular kids who live such lives of hedonistic pleasure while I’ve had to rot in loneliness for all these years, they’ve all looked down upon me every time I try to go out and join them. They’ve all treated me like a mouse.
Well now, I will be a God compared to you. You will all be animals. You are animals, and I will slaughter you like animals. I will be a God, exacting my retribution, on all those who deserve it.
And you do deserve it, just for the crime of living a better life than me.
All you popular kids. You’ve never accepted me, and now you’ll all pay for it.
And girls, all I’ve ever wanted was to love you, and to be loved by you. I’ve wanted a girlfriend, I’ve wanted sex, I’ve wanted love, affection, adoration, but you think I’m unworthy of it.
That’s a crime that can never be forgiven.
If I can’t have you, girls, I will destroy you. (laughs)
You denied me a happy life, and in turn, I will deny all of you life. (laughs) It’s only fair.
I hate all of you, humanity is a disgusting, wretched, depraved species. If I had it in my power, I would stop at nothing, to reduce every single one of you to mountains of skulls and rivers of blood, and rightfully so.
You deserve to be annihilated. And I’ll give that to you.
You never showed me any mercy, and so I will show you none. (laughs)
You force me to suffer all my life, and now I’ll make you all suffer.
I’ve waited a long time for this.
I’ll give you exactly what you deserve.
I will have more on this as the story develops. My heart goes out to the loved ones of all the victims.
Misogyny kills.
EDITED TO ADD: Elliot Rodger seems to have been a commenter on PUAhate, the anti-PUA message board that is as misogynistic and generally awful as the PUAs it critiques. PUAhate has taken itself offline, so all evidence of this may end up scrubbed. I added a paragraph about this.
I will keep updating as I track down more information on this story. Please post anything you find in the comments as well.
EDIT 2: This will be a NO TROLLS thread. Anything gratuitously argumentative or less than respectful of the victims will be removed.
@ dianeski
Please, please read the Update #4 in the Welcome Package.
Please don’t use ‘crazy’, especially not like that.
People who have mental illnesses are no more likely than the general population to be violent misogynists, and in fact are more likely to be victims of violent crime. Do not try to correlate violence and mental illness. It’s hurtful in general, but specifically to many people here who are diagnosed.
Stick around and learn, I know I had no clue about the depths of the damage abelism could cause, and I credit this blog’s commentators with helping me learn.
Maybe you’ll learn some other things for helping with your son. Check out some of the other blogs on the right side under ‘Antidotes’ too. Captain Awkward is a good one.
@dianeski:
Umm… Did you just seriously compare a single person’s motivations (that he made completely sure everyody understood) to a social event that involved masses of people interacting over a period of time?
What fromafar 2013 said about ableism. That’s the go-to answer for everybody who wants to mitigate the institutional misogyny factor in this horrible act.
Do I think he was a wee bit batshit crazy?
Fuckit. Sure, lets say I do. How does that help anyone understand anything in this context? It’s a cop out, a way to negate responsibility and move discourse away from preventable causes or root reasons. “He is batshit” tells no one anything, since literally millions of “crazy” people with issues and problems way, way worse very pointedly never hurt anyone.
Instead it becomes this quick little way of just making the conversation about how random acts of happenstance can strike down anyone in our midst and we can do nothing, because crazy. Nothing about entitlement, rage, cultural narratives, narcicissm, nothing, because crazy, so lets all just not wonder about the motives of a murderer.
It’s useless, an insult to actually mentally ill people (again, millions of which never hurt anyone) and it makes and actual conversation impossible to have. Is the history of someone important? Yes.
But few things are mono casual. And sneaking in tangents of insanity allows anyone disintetrsted in having an actual concersation to say “gay plush face crazy beta”, actual example, and go right on spewing the same bull.
Armchair diagnoses help no one, no matter how much of a relief it is to think “well! At least im fucking normal! Unlike that guy!”
I’ll jut leave this here (emphasis mine):
Hey, guess I picked the right time to return eh? Just your resident batshit crazy popping in to remind everyone that I’m not homicidally inclined and seriously unlikely to hurt anyone besides myself (or mosquitoes, it’s apparently already Eat Argenti season!)
*waves* hi y’all! I’ll start catching up on more recent threads, I swear!
Hi Argenti! How’ve you been?
Hi, Argenti, good to see you back again!
It really doesn’t matter what we think. This kid did everything short of taking out billboards to announce his hatred of women, yet a lot of people want to sweep his misogyny and entitlement under the rug and focus on whether or not he was mentally ill. Don’t do that, not here.
Argenti, I was just talking about you! There’s a question about sexing fish in the Heartiste thread, and it made me think of you.
:: waves at Argenti like a 6-year-old ::
Other than getting my face drilled into earlier, and getting more dentist fun done tomorrow, I’ve been pretty good, by and large. Puff has grown up enough to be eating clams, and my cory babies are getting BIG. And there’s a robin’s nest on the BF’s back porch, no babies yet though.
How about you? And, uh, the site formerly known as manboobz? I miss anything interesting?
emilygoddess — I’ll pop over there next then!
A massive influx of terrible disablist, misogynistic, manipulative trolls over the past several days.
Marie made a lovely statue.
I drew an attack chicken.
And of course also [REDACTED], which led to [REDACTED] so that we now all [NO DATA] along with [NO DATA] the feminist overmistress hyenas.
It’s been fun! 😀
😀
:[
A feminist overmistress hyena demanding a spa treatment.
“Yessss, human. A little lower.”
Fibi, you creep me out. I’ve spent the last week reading SCP and debating if I was ready to come back here (I got all depressive in there, but more importantly, had basically moved in with the BF and *gasp* did not have to deal with bigotry! It was a nice break from reality.)
So yes, can we perform a procedure that [expunged] the trolls?
Whoot, you’ve moved in with BF? Is this the friend you’d just met before you went offline?
fromafar, that photo’s gorgeous. Never seen hyenas and humans interacting before. I guess once a Furrinato, always a Furrinato …
Kitteh — yes to the second, no to the first. I was basically living there, but his job has gotten extra chaotic, and fish chaos, so I’m spending more time at my parents’ again (the 55g filter decided to spring a leak and do a bit of water damage, it got replaced and I did some work on the sump since I was all fishy already anyways)
Well, bummer to having to spend more time at your parents’ place again.
Good to hear the fishy babies are growing up, though!
Argenti’s back!
It’s a brave person who washes a hyena with bare hands.
Hi, Argenti! Welcome back!
I’ve actually been amazed and heartened by how much media coverage I’ve seen talking about the misogyny instead of/in addition to the mental health stuff.
Less heartened by the tornado warnings all over the fucking Prairies. It’s only May!
@dianeski
No, but I do think you should go fuck off :3
daaammmnnnn yooouuuu blooocccckkkkqqquoootttteeee mmmammmooottttth!!! damn you to heeeeellllll!!!!
What a material of un-ambiguity and preserveness of precious knowledge on the topic of
unexpected emotions.
What.
Sometimes spam is too good to keep to myself.
My brain keeps trying to interpret “preserveness” as a kind of jam.
Oh, wow, that’s spamalicious. I mean, WOW. It’s like a buzzwords convention. 😀
“Preserveness”
Imagine opening a fortune cookie containing that message.
There’s a kind of found art poetry in there, isn’t there? I know it stirred up some unexpected emotions in me. 😀
@Howard
That’s the un-ambiguity.
Well, that was different!