The LA Times has a copy of the shooter’s 137 page manifesto for all of us to read, and it is as creepy and as predictable as one would expect. This passage, where he describes buying his first gun, really stood out:
My first act of preparation was the purchase my first handgun. I did this quickly and hastily, at a local gun shop called Goleta Gun and Supply. I had already done some research on handguns, and I decided to purchase the Glock 34 semiautomatic pistol, an efficient and highly accurate weapon. I signed all of the papers and was told that my pickup day was in mid-December.
After I picked up the handgun, I brought it back to my room and felt a new sense of power. I was now armed. Who’s the alpha male now, bitches
While he may be a deranged lunatic, he’s still self aware enough to say why he liked owning a gun, unlike all the other sociopaths like Zimmerman running around with firearms.
David Koch
It’s like when Stephen Colbert talks to his gun, only real.
David
I’m sick of this shit. I sent money to the Violence Policy Center today and hope others will consider doing the same.
Just Some Fuckhead
He must be a liberal. Conservatives feel freedom when they fondle their gun.
Schlemizel
I had a run in with a wingnut this past week when I said the NRA was a PR agency for gun manufacturers. When replying to him I didn’t refer to them as guns but as “the precious”:
We wants it, we needs it. Must have the precious.
So bright… so beautiful… our precious.
I knew I had the right reference I just never knew one of them would express it so well.
Tommy
“we killed each other wholesale.”
That is a part of the start of Ken Burns doc on the Civil War. My dad has a PhD in said topic. Going to start with him on that …..
Brandon
He clearly knew what he was doing and why. If he was ill, his diagnosis is an entitled sociopath not deserving of any sympathy and only scorn.
Mnemosyne
So much for the claim by gun-fondlers that for them guns aren’t a peni$ substitute that stays hard and ready all the time.
Villago Delenda Est
@Just Some Fuckhead: Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to loose.
Mnemosyne
@Brandon:
Andrea Yates clearly knew that her children were going to be claimed by Satan if she didn’t kill them, and she meticulously planned their murders. Delusional thinking and planning the crime are not necessarily mutually exclusive.
Tommy
@Brandon: My experience as a male, he was in a nice BMW. Had money. Dad a pretty high profile producer. The guy couldn’t get laid in college. We got a lot of other things going on ….
chopper
that there’s gun culture in a nutshell, innit?
Mr. Twister
This asshat was the text book example of legal gun owner. If this is what a legal gun owner can do, then it is time to rethink legal gun ownership. As in no more gun ownership or incredibly onerous gun ownership. We’re getting played by the NRA and everyone else who is yapping about mental health. Obviously anyone who kills another human is “crazy”. But this little f*ck was not crazy, he as an asshole. No one needs a gun, and if you do you can check it out from the local police department or local National Guard Armory, after you have been issued the proper permits, gone through numerous and rigorous background checks, and paid a hefty tax. Casual gun ownership and promiscuous ammosexuality must come to an end.
rikyrah
@Tommy:
Didn’t they see what a catch he was?
Rolling up in that BMW?
How could they pass such a catch by?
Brandon
@Mnemosyne: let me pose different facts to see if responses would be different: maladjusted inner city Black kid has delusions of being big time, writes pages of rap lyrics talking about capping fools, then goes out and kills in a drive by. I don’t see the difference here.
@Tommy: Exactly. He only wanted models, but models didn’t want him because he was an obvious creep. Instead of self-reflection, he decides to kill. And since he had no obvious job and a BMW, his parents clearly helped coddle him. Most people understand that a nice car and affluent parents don’t entitle you to squat.
Linnaeus
It’s not just gun culture, though. There’s a fair dose of misogyny there.
chopper
@Tommy:
i’m not gonna say that the ladies should have been lining up because of his car or his money or whatever, but there’s obviously something about the kid’s personality or something that led to him not getting any. maybe he had no self confidence and couldn’t even talk to a woman or maybe he was a lecherous prick who couldn’t hide it from anyone he talked to.
but he looked way better than i did at that age and i still managed to get laid during college. something was off about this prick.
chopper
@chopper:
or maybe he felt entitled to date only supermodels.
iami
He was apparently a “high-functioning Aspie” according to his folks, He was a “beta” according to the “men’s rights” asshats.
Ruckus
@rikyrah:
Stuff makes you desirable to women doesn’t it?
And the better the stuff, the more desirable, right?
Right?
I think I may see an issue here. Women aren’t just another thing to acquire are they?
The Dangerman
@Brandon:
The weird thing about this case is the strange parallels to a case in 2001 (Attias); both sons of Hollywood elite that couldn’t function in Santa Barbara.
Anoniminous
The little shit shouldn’t have had a cap pistol.
Not Adding Much to the Community
I read enough of this pathetic thing’s ‘manifesto’ to draw parralells to another murdering scumbag who couldn’t get laid and had to kill the bitches responsible: “Who knows why? I am not ugly or too weird. No sex since July 1990 either (I was 29),” he writes. “Last time I slept all night with a girlfriend it was 1982. Girls and women don’t even give me a second look ANYWHERE.”
As for this latest specimen, one guy told him (at an online body building forum) that if he didn’t come across so creepy, he would probably have dates. Too bad he was too much of a narcissist to just shoot himself and get it over with.
wasabi gasp
If guns were mirrors, might be creepy selling him one.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Brandon:
Drive-by shootings in the inner city are done as a group, with the other guys in the car with you egging you on. Why are you giving a free pass to the online MRAs and PUAs who did the same thing for this guy?
This guy was not a lone asshole. He was egged on to do this, just like an inner-city drive-by shooter is. And if you think problems like ADHD, autism, and mental illness are magically less in the inner city than they are in affluent suburbs, I’m afraid I have some shocking news for you …
WereBear
I really liked TBogg’s piece; it’s what I have heard from sensible sportsmen my whole life.
And it’s not about this young man getting some, because there are professionals who can provide that, and he certainly had the money. He wanted his way, and if he couldn’t get it, then spite and revenge would follow.
We must, as a culture, decide what we value more… the ability of sociopaths to make money, or our loved ones.
Ruckus
@efgoldman:
It’s probably not that you don’t have feelings. They are most likely just ground down to raw. It gets to the point that you just can’t respond any more without going a little crazy, so you don’t. It’s your brain protecting you from the shitstorm that is modern life.
Earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, these things may be horrible and affect you deeply, they have been happening forever, but they have endings, and life moves on.
Repeated high profile shootings, crazy politics, global warming, etc and no end in sight. There is a difference.
ruemara
@chopper: He gave off the danger vibes. I’ve seen it. There’s just something and if you have an ounce of self-preservation, you avoid it like the plague.
Schlemizel
This article is around 2 years old but I think of it when I hear stories like these sootings
http://www.cracked.com/article_19785_5-ways-modern-men-are-trained-to-hate-women.html/
sad to think that “Cracked” has better in-depth thought pieces that major media – its no longer surprising, just sad.
RandomMonster
I know 22 is legally an adult, but I look at that young man who looks to me (approaching 50) for all the world like a high school student…Just the fact that he can walk into a store and buy a handgun with very little waiting period…I just don’t understand our fucking society.
WereBear
@Schlemizel: I have come to feel that Cracked is actually a valuable resource, one that provides vital information to the younger people in our society. In a way that makes them laugh… and pay attention.
I’m a big fan!
The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik
I find it so intensely frustrating that discussions about this elsewhere are so much along the lines of ‘He was clearly deranged, how dare you try to make it about guns/misogyny/etc.!’
Can we not walk and chew bubble gum at the same time in this country? Must every issue and incident be distilled down to a single solitary culprit at the expense of any other possible influences or causes? I mean…for christ’s sake.
This guy clearly needed mental help, that’s clear. But at the same time, shit like this does not happen in a vacuum. He was influenced by crazy fucks who have distilled women down to commodities while claiming victimhood, as well as a gun culture which views gun ownership as an unassailable right that you literally shouldn’t be allowed to say who could be denied a gun for safety purposes (and claiming victimhood, how about that, what a common thread).
MazeDancer
If you haven’t clicked on the #YesAllWomen hasthtag on Twitter, you might want to consider doing so. It was created in response to the shootings.
Profound things are being said. Eloquent insights abound. Women are revealing abuses they’ve endured and never spoke about before. Anger is being released for the first time. Some of the tweets are inspiring. Some are heartbreaking.
No, they’re not all brilliant. But most of them seem to be heartfelt. And they’re pouring in rapidly. Click on the hashtag and 20 more are new before you even start reading.
scav
@The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik: There’s a fair bit also wrapped up in proving he’s an alpha male: when the adoration of blonds and possession of stuff didn’t pan out as tribal markers, a demonstration by lethal violence. Lots of violence (gun and car). He’s proving it to the world by ensuring it gets into the media (see also manifestos), but also to other men — perhaps especially to other men? Those were the intimate murders, the targeted, personal murders, the knife ones, the first ones done in his space. Any old blond female seemed to substitute if necessary, and some extras of anyone nearby to rack up the movieland copy-cat body-count required. But he seemed to spend a fair bit of time ranting about the other men that had his accessories of adoration and blond kisses. There is a twisted ideal of what it is to be a man under all this.
Keith G
Let’s not.
How about a moratorium on the topic til the next multiple fatal shooting. That gives us a day or two to enjoy a reflective holiday (fer fuck’s sake).
In that spirit, I just read this piece at 538 on how to place an economic value on college quarterbacks. It is a thought exercise on the process of thinking about how and what college football players might/should be paid. The article is interesting as are the comments by a very thoughtful collections of readers.
sharl
@MazeDancer: Yeah, that hashtag has been buzzing since yesterday – here’s a direct link: #YesAllWomen
And yes to what Kryptik said – maladies that affect behavior don’t operate in an isolated/quarantined environment, but are shaped, directed, and amplified (or attenuated) by someone’s environment, which seems to have been the case here.
ruemara
@WereBear: True. It’s surprisingly smart social commentary. I detested Crack’d as a magazine. Yet I find the site engrossing.
Comrade Luke
Sadly, I think the results will be pretty predictable:
– PUAs: Don’t look at us – dude was mentally ill and shouldn’t have had a gun
– NRA: Don’t look at us – dude was a misogynist, and mentally ill
– Health care community: Dude was mentally ill, but also a misogynist and gun nut
– FOX News will spend all it’s time talking about his mental health, and searching like hell to find proof he has liberal in his background
– Liberal news networks will talk about all the angles, say something needs to be done, and get yelled at from each of the other groups listed above, before folding their tails between their legs and moving on to the next outrage
In the end, the whole thing will be forgotten a week after the first funeral.
hilzoy
I read the manifesto. He was (imho) crazy. Not psychotic, but crazy nonetheless. — One reason he didn’t have sex is that he doesn’t seem to have asked anyone out. He just knew they were going to reject him. The sight of couples bothered him so much that he dropped several college courses because the students included a “hot girl” and her boyfriend, and he couldn’t deal with it. (Note: not a “hot girl” he knew, had a crush on, whatever. Just the sight of a happy couple seems to have been enough to set him off.) He also describes several occasions on which the sight of a couple (again, strangers) bothered him so much that he threw drinks on them.
At a certain point, with his customary deep insight into What Women Want, he decided that the only way he was ever going to have sex was if he became a multimillionaire, and then he decided (being apparently unable to think of any other way to become a multimillionaire) to play the lottery, and then he decided that it was Destiny that he win, and *then* he drove on four separate occasions from Santa Barbara to Arizona to buy Powerball tickets — again, being sure that he would win.
He was going to kill his (considerably) younger brother, whom he claims to like and who looked up to him, because that little brother didn’t have trouble making friends, and so at some point that little brother would have a girlfriend, and he (ER) would still be a virgin, and that would be too much to bear.
Honestly: not a well guy.
Ash Can
@Comrade Luke:
It sounds like they’re going with “homosexual,” at least for now. (H/t LGF commenters)
Comrade Luke
@Ash Can: The Amanda Hess article says the PUAs are using the same excuse.
Just a desperate attempt to deflect any accountability.
Roger Moore
He’s not the only one. Plenty of other gun owners talk about the power involved. I suspect you’d find a lot more of these mass murderers saying about the same thing if they wrote in as much detail.
max
@Brandon: If he was ill, his diagnosis is an entitled sociopath not deserving of any sympathy and only scorn.
Narcissistic, with learnt psychopathy.
@iami: He was apparently a “high-functioning Aspie” according to his folks, He was a “beta” according to the “men’s rights” asshats.
Which is the point. Dude is 22, he’s a spoilt brat, he hooks up with the PUA crowd, they tell him all about how he’s supposed an alpha (whatever that means) and not a beta, and what with that needy narcissism thing going, he decides he’s an alpha and although he can’t get laid, he decides to throw a lethal temper tantrum to prove it. Plus lots of manifestos and videos so everyone will give him the attention he wants.
Given how much money this kid had, he could’ve just spent it on a hooker and skipped the massacre, but that wouldn’t be ‘alpha’.
This one’s on the PUA crowd; you can talk about him being mentally ill, and he’s pathological, but not in any way different from say, Karl Rove. No, he’s got to hook up with these dudes who feed him some ideological bullshit about how to get laid (and why he deserves to get laid because he knows some tricks and he’s pure and shit) and it doesn’t work, so he’s gonna prove himself. (And by his lights, he did – which is where the PUA ideological BS comes in.)
Not functionally different from Al Qaeda and basically a suicide terrorist attack.
The NRA comes into it at the weapon acquisition.
max
[‘Can we stop posting his BS now? Some other fool will copycat.’]
Roger Moore
@chopper:
Or maybe he wanted the unattainable. There are plenty of guys who are attracted to women in inverse proportion to how likely they are to get anywhere with them, and he sounds suspiciously as if he was one of that type. He wanted the most attractive, most sought after women because that would prove his status as an alpha male.
Ruckus
You want to be a little more despondent? Try reading the SPLC website links about hate groups
If that doesn’t make you want to revoke your membership in the human race I have no idea what will.
FlipYrWhig
He doesn’t sound crazy to me. He just sounds like an asshole.
hilzoy
@max: Trust me: I have no sympathy at all for the PUA crowd. That said, this is not right:
This started years and years before he read any PUA stuff. He was throwing horrible temper tantrums at the very sight of couples being happy in high school. He was deciding he needed to get revenge on people he knew, break off some of the very few friendships he had, etc., because they had girlfriends and he didn’t — also in high school.
FlipYrWhig
@Roger Moore: it doesn’t even sound like he particularly wanted women. He wanted to amass signs that he wasn’t a loser, and if he collected them all, he would be able to prove to the world that he wasn’t.
MsSKWEsq
@Mnemosyne: right you are. I work with sociopaths both in the criminal justice system and in mental health commitments. The serious problems start around 18-25 years of age and many have paranoid delusions and sometimes have the beginnings of a psychotic disorder. They hear voices and often have hallucinations. I read that this young man heard voices and refused his meds. I saw on NBC news tonight a “mental health advocate” and a FBI expert say there was nothing the authorities could have done to stop him. Not true. By his not taking his meds and posting his direct threats of homicide they could have definitely had him involuntarily hospitalized. The system failed miserably.
ItAintEazy
Speaking of peepee guns…
http://i.imgur.com/cZvf8Jx.png
You can set a watch to these guys.
SiubhanDuinne
Haven’t seen any comments on the latest mass shooting, although it happened several hours ago, but three are dead and (depending on which news source you follow), one, two, or five others are injured in Myrtle Beach, SC.
This hits close to home because Myrtle Beach is kind of “Canada South” and my (former) office always has a major presence there every year during Myrtle Beach CanAm Days. (I have no reason to believe that any of the casualties were Canadian. But I have no reason to believe that they weren’t.)
ItAintEazy
Speaking of guys (ahem) overcompensating with guns…
http://i.imgur.com/cZvf8Jx.png
I swear these people are so predictable you can set a watch to them.
sharl
@ItAintEazy: Hoooo, boy. :-(
Brandon
@max: completely agree with everything you wrote X2.
SiubhanDuinne
@efgoldman:
Yes. That is my fear. Just numbing out to the latest gun-related atrocity.
Ho hum, another mass shooting? Must be the weekend. La di da, la di da.
gorram
@chopper: That plus (if you believe his manifesto) he expected them to be virgins. It comes down to him being really misogynistic but also obsessed with getting with women in the end?
gorram
@hilzoy: The PUA stuff has been around since the 80s though. He seems to have basically picked up early the not-all-that-controversial-sadly idea that women existed for his entertainment and other needs. If you read the manifesto that’s appallingly obvious. He literally says that we shouldn’t consider women’s consent important when it comes to sex.
SiubhanDuinne
@Comrade Luke:
WTF does that even mean?
Wil
@SiubhanDuinne:
I’m wondering that too. I can guess that for these guys, gay=bad, and ‘brow ridge’=manly in some neanderthalic way, but what does “short lower third” even mean?
rikyrah
I just want ONE story of a Black person, whose family has called the police on them, being ‘ visited’ by the police, and the police just ‘leaving’.
I don’t need 10.
I just need ONE.
Liberty60
I’m to the point where I am reconsidering the 2nd Amendment entirely.
Is there a natural right to owning a firearm? Given the world we live in- 24/7 police protection, industrialized meat procurement- I don’t see there being a moral right to own one.
Which is not the same as banning them. Everyone is allowed to drive a car, but its not a right codified into the Constitution.
I could easily see a strong case for overtuning the 2nd, and instituting strict laws, similar to automobile licenses, restricting who is allowed to own a gun.
And FYI, I own a 22 rifle and enjoy the fuck out of shooting targets. I just don’t see it as on par with exercising my right to pray or speak freely.
Like TNC’s reparations proposal, I don’t see a ghost of a chance within my lifetime of it happening- but its a good thing to open up, and move the window towards.
Jay C
@Ash Can:
Well, Jim “Dumbest Man On The Internet” Hoft has already gone there and weighed in: Elliot Rodger was a “Leftist”!
I’d print Hoft’s “rationale” for this assessment, but I thought it would be better to click through and be amazed/appalled/LOLed at the imbecility of it all….
SiubhanDuinne
As happens so frequently, Randall Munroe is waa-a-a-aay ahead of events.
Keith G
It great when progressive types attack the mentally ill. This sounds like one of those asses from Texas who get off on executing the mentally disabled. Nice.
It’s sad that the above comment is not unlike others in this thread.
Bravo.
ItAintEazy
@SiubhanDuinne: @Wil: Apparently that’s Man Code for not having a strong enough jawline or something.
Lyrebird
@efgoldman: You have an awesome grown-up daughter you helped raise. That’s something.
sm*t cl*de
I did this quickly and hastily, at a local gun shop called Goleta Gun and Supply.
It reads like a old-fashioned losing-one’s-virginity-and-feeling-different-afterwards narrative, with just a few words changed.
Lyrebird
@rikyrah:
Sigh. Yeah.
Lyrebird
@Liberty60: I know I’m way too late, but anyhow, my ultra-conservative history US teacher taught us that that amendment just ensures the rights of an organized local militia — as in your nearest National Guard unit — to possess & use arms.
Kay
@MsSKWEsq:
Police didn’t have the manifesto at the time they made the well check. The well check was weeks prior to Friday night, which is when he sent the manifesto.
They can’t do an involuntary hold here based on someone telling them someone else isn’t taking meds.
It’s like we’ve decided to shove the entire emergency mental health intervention system off on police, then we’re outraged they’re not making a diagnosis on the fly.
They probably had the least information of any person involved. His parents didn’t know or they would have filed to have him adjudicated incompetent. He had two therapists who didn’t know. The police probably spent 20 minutes with him. They would know next to nothing.
Wil
@ItAintEazy:
Ah, I see. Ok, thanks. What a weird little subgroup of people.
Liberty60
@Lyrebird: MIne too- but since the current SCOTUS seems hell bent on turning “well regulated militia” into “unfettered right to any and all weapons” I think we need to consider why this amendment needs to exist period.
Kay
@MsSKWEsq:
I’m surprised at your faith in the system not failing given how much the system relies on absolute lucky guesses and the consent or actual request of the mentally ill person for help.
I just don’t think we should kid ourselves that if we set up a really crack system it will “work” since 99% of the time it only works with the cooperation or actual assistance of the person who is ill, in my experience.
We should have a better intervention process because it’s humane and because it’s public health, but it probably will fail a lot in the case of mass shootings, just like it fails a lot in the case of gun suicides.
ulee
Did this guy ever actually ask anyone for a date? I read his manifesto, and it is very exhaustive about his disappointments and rejections but I don’t think I saw anything about him trying to date.
ulee
I guess he kind of did. He got drunk and went to a party and tried to push some people off a click out of frustration and got his leg broken for his efforts. That sort of counts.
Wil
@ulee:
Is the entire thing online somewhere? The latimes does not seem to have the whole thing, but just their chosen excerpts.
ulee
@Wil: I read it from Mediaite.
Wil
@ulee: Ok, thanks.
Steve from Antioch
@Liberty60:
That’s silly. The recent rulings haven’t significantly impaired the government’s ability to impose reasonable restrictions on gun ownership.
ulee
I’ve studied your cartoon, radio, music, tv, movies, magazines
ulee
you wore a shirt of violent green.
TriassicSands
@chopper:
Watch his video. It only takes a few seconds to realize that not only was he creepy, he was a real asshole. In a mere six minutes or so, he makes it clear why no sane female would want anything to do with him.
According to him, not only did he want love and affection from “girls,” he expected “adoration,” too.
I have no idea how he got to be the mess he obviously was, but it’s no mystery why “girls” wouldn’t want anything to do with him. I can easily imagine numerous young women being superficially attracted to him and discovering after two or three minutes of conversation that they had made a huge mistake in talking to him. And then thinking that moving to another state might not be a bad idea.
ulee
I never understood the frequency.
Jebediah, RBG
@RandomMonster:
This, exactly.
balconesfault
We see a creepy sociopath who should never have been allowed near a gun.
The creepy sociopaths out there who should never be allowed near a gun will see a false flag operation by a government determined to take their guns away.
Applejinx
I’m angry and sad. I was this kid at 18, but without a gun and without PUA ‘immoral support’ pumping my head full of lies. I’m just as autistic, and back then I was just as cute and younglooking and certainly as self-absorbed.
I lost my virginity at 28, to another guy. I got to try heterosexuality thanks to a unabashedly slutty lady I met online (still one of the most rewarding experiences of my life). I married someone as screwed up as I was (female, mind you) and divorced after a nasty breakup where she did bad stuff because she assumed I was a monster who would hurt her given the slightest opportunity. (she fled the state, but from what I’m told actually came back to live IN the same town I live in, which I find frightening as I wasn’t the only wackjob in that marriage)
I’m now 45 and still go unlaid for years and years, and still have not managed to team up with a woman so I fight all my battles alone or with the casual help of a bunch of caring friends (which is way better than nothing). I’ve got sexual preferences, though they’re not ‘blondes’ or status oriented: I’m way into petite elfin women and have never made more than a sincere friendship connection with anyone who fits that description. America isn’t a happy place for my libido as I’m not into fat. I lift weights and put genuine effort into making myself a desirable object to objectify, but it doesn’t help as I struggle to make those personal connections and stay pretty isolated all the time—and when I do play the social game fairly well, small failures shatter me because in some way I’m being dishonest just to have a fighting chance even just to meet a stranger (and as we’ve all learned these social requirements are well-founded).
I have spent literally years longing for suicide and do many things, whether it’s art or sort of intellectual self-judo, to work around the sense of emptiness and loneliness in my life so I can survive, largely because I have friends and family who are certain they don’t want me killing myself. I defuse my sexual desires in many ways, over and over again, because I am not acceptable and have a hard time understanding why, and have spent years working on understanding that for the sake of society and the poor women who might be stuck having to cool me off and communicate ‘not you’ to that piteous and overly needy character, me.
I am that fucking kid, but I attacked myself, not ‘women’, and I stayed relatively sane, and in this society I am the one who may end up dying unmourned after a life of great and unsolvable frustration and loneliness, and THAT kid is a fucking star. You’re still talking about him and reading his manifesto. His manifesto sucks and brings nobody any enlightenment ever.
Falling back on ‘yeah I am the alpha of omegas but I’m not a murderer’ is not delightful, and I am all pissed off. (technically it looks like I’m more of a ‘gamma’ in their terminology)
Matt
Annnnnd here we have the explanation for why the NRA has been collectively losing its shit about “gun grabbers”. It’s castration anxiety all the way down.
These fucks don’t need gunz, they need fucking THERAPY.
The Tragically Flip
@Liberty60:
You’re totally right of course, which is why no other free country bothers with a codified right to bear arms. It’s always been a preposterous idea that gun rights were morally on the same level as free speech, thought, association etc.
Lyrebird
@Liberty60:
QFT. Unfortunately I live in an area where ammo-paranoia is common, even though every serious hunter I’ve talked to acknowledges that military-grade weapons are totally wrong for hunting deer, turkey, etc.
So sad… I just wanna make them watch the interview with [the SB dad who just lost his son to this murderer] over and over. Sure, we need better mental health care, but that’s not gonna fix everything… we need to push back against this gun-idolatry the country’s been practicing, where a dubious “right” to support violent fantasies is more important than everyone else’s right to live their lives.
Lyrebird
@Applejinx:
I hear ya. I’ve been the one that guys will either avoid or pour their hearts out to about how girls won’t respond to them… guys not thinking how delightful it is to be reminded that they barely even realize I’m a “girl” too. Not gonna read the manifesto. Did also get angry (and scared) reading what excerpts I’ve seen.
I’m also now a social scientist with enough training to say that PUA ranking system is crap. (our notion of gorilla mating changed drastically when they… wait for this… started watching the females as well as the silverbacks!)
Sounds like you have way more to your credit than being a non-asshole non-murderer. Even that’s good, tho.
The Tragically Flip
@Applejinx: I don’t have anything really insightful to add, just want to acknowledge this as a deep personal testimonial. Some people really do get left behind in the dating/mating “game” and I don’t know what, if anything, we can do about it, but it’s worth taking note of this kind of misery (among many other kinds, some much more urgent) and at least thinking what we might do to prevent & ease this kind of suffering.
Yes, it’s a “first world problem” but to very lonely people suffering through it, knowing others have worse problems doesn’t really help.
wil
@The Tragically Flip: Legalize sex workers. Remove the stigma, both for the workers and their customers/clients. Make it legal, make it safe, and normalize it. Put it right up there with teachers as an honorable and necessary profession.
Remove the stigma that is attached to it. Also remove the control that women now exercise over sex, and just make it available to everyone without the social hurdles that some people can never meet.
@Applejinx: I’m not exactly sure what to say to you, and I am your age and can relate somewhat, but I feel your pain…at least part of it…not to go all Clinton on you or anything.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
You mean honest enough.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Tommy:
I was wondering about that. Hollywood can be a pretty competitive and sleazy place in a were-all-John-Galt kind of way. I wonder if this idiot was told if he didn’t bang a sorority girl at collage he was a loser.
Mnemosyne
@wil:
Ah, yes, this is where I was pretty sure you were going:
Bitchez thinking they should be allowed to control their own bodies when they should be spreading ’em for every guy who wants it, amirite? It’s not like women have their own desires or sexual preferences, so they should just give it to any guy who wants it.
Mnemosyne
@Applejinx:
I can’t give very much helpful advice, except that it really is much, much harder for people with social impairments like autism to form relationships. If you haven’t found a good therapist who’s experienced in dealing with adults on the autism spectrum, I would definitely recommend you locate one who can help you learn how to “read” people better.
Raven on the Hill
Question to me is, what’s the difference between how this guy thought and how our hawks think, except that they have more and bigger guns?
sharl
Applejinx & Lyrebird, ~~~~ <3 ~~~~
My best to both of you good folks.
demit
@Mnemosyne: I did a double-take on that line too.
Wil
@Mnemosyne:
Love how you just put a bunch of words in my mouth that I never said.
That seems to be a pattern with you and your hair-trigger sensitivities.
Legal sex work, whether you call it prostitution (a word with a stigma of its own), or something else, has nothing to do with your: “Bitchez thinking they should be allowed to control their own bodies when they should be spreading ‘em for every guy who wants it, amirite?”
It’s about serving a need in society that is obviously there.
What a nasty person you are.
When it comes to Applejinx, you and your view “can’t give any helpful advice.” Of course you can’t. That’s where my view works and yours comes up empty.
Applejinx
Wil, I don’t mean to shortchange your view which is surely well intentioned, and I appreciate your desire to help: but women do not have any control over my sexual release, because I have at least one hand o_O
Women (and men, for that matter) have more of a say in whether I find companionship but the thing is, I manage that okay, even as an autistic person.
Now, combining those two things is a whole other story, and I admit that when I have had the good fortune to pleasure and be pleasured in bed with somebody else it was very nice (kind of intense but that’s because it is so alarmingly rare for me to experience). But plain old sexual release isn’t super hard to do. For that matter, if I was more gay I’m sure I’d be busier, sexually. It’s not like I didn’t try, and it wasn’t bad, I’m just not wired to be super into it with my own gender.
If sex work was all that socially condoned I think I’d want to be giving it, not getting it (except that this would lead to a series of horrifying though profitable encounters with folks I probably wouldn’t be picking out if it was up to me)
Maybe that’s the core of the matter, really. I do not think it is up to me, or ever will be. I’m sure many males need to believe that it is up to them, but I don’t have the luxury of that, at my age. It will be sheer luck and a long shot if I ended up teaming up with someone in that manner, no matter HOW enlightened I choose to become about it.
I guess the difference is, at this time in this culture I don’t see that as wrong. I’m a six foot tall white male. Those like me have called all the shots for centuries, and look how well that’s working. Let ‘women’ have that power, they can’t do worse and it’s about time. I’ve spent many years in anguish over my ‘failure’ and wouldn’t have been able to describe what a good, working, healthy relationship was if asked. Due to bad upbringing I have no picture of that to draw on, wouldn’t be able to step up and deliver if asked for a great healthy relationship, and in fact failed to manage it when I (unwisely) married once. I got nothin’, quite legitimately.
Now, can you guys not fight over who’s giving me the worse advice? It would be nice if this conversation didn’t disintegrate into exactly the problem that makes the whole issue a minefield for me.
mclaren
Perfect embodiment of sick twisted America’s view of itself: the Alpha Male is the guy who can’t get a girlfriend and winds up shooting himself in the head.
Absolutely typical.
poptaracus
@David:
your wasting your time
poptaracus
@David:
your wasting your time
poptaracus
@Schlemizel:
right on
poptaracus
Anyone thinks that if this sorry cheesedick had gotten laid it would have changed anything your fooling yourselves
Wil
@Applejinx:
That’s okay. ;) My attitude was more related to this kid who apparently was unable to relate to any women at all, and was unable to even try to ask them out. He also figured out the one-hand solution, but that’s not really a replacement.
Who knows what might have made a difference between his problem and his decision to resolve his problem with a bunch of bullets? Resolving this one problem of his (and before he was at the end of the line) might have helped a bit, but his problems were far deeper than that.
Thank you for the rational response, though. There have been very few, and a lot of kneejerk angry emotional responses like Mnemosyne’s. As far as this:
I’d rather see a brothel on every corner, and that power removed from women. There are simply always going to be people who are unable to jump through the hoops required to get that kind of physical need met…whether unable for emotional reasons, physical disability, physical appearance or scarring, or any number of other reasons.
They shouldn’t have to play that game and try to please the gatekeepers, and women like Mnemosyne shouldn’t be in the position of gatekeeper. They should be able to get their needs met in a legal and safe manner.
That wouldn’t solve your desire for long-term companionship, but it would solve a number of other men’s needs.
—
On a related note, I was reading recently about a woman who started a business where for $60 per hour or so, she will come over and just lay with someone…fully clothed, no sex, nothing like that…and just provide that intimacy–for a fee–that so many people are missing. I think she’s in Portland, Oregon. She’s had to hire a few employees to meet the demand, so there is a market for companionship/intimacy of this sort. Her business is called Hug-something-something…or has the word Hug in it, I think. Rent-a-Hug? I don’t recall.
We just have to tell the would-be gatekeepers and the moralizers to stuff it, and explore some less traditional options outside of the bounds of the 1950s worldview so many in this country are still wedded to.
—
I won’t try to offer you direct advice, but if I could offer some indirect advice…you said you have some close and caring friends. Maybe you could enlist their help?
Paul in KY
@The Tragically Flip: Sometimes I think this kind of stuff (weirdo dude from good family who can’t/won’t get laid) is why some other cultures go with the arranged marriages.
Paul in KY
@Applejinx: Excellent comment.
demit
@Wil: You are unbelievable. Gatekeeper? I’m a ‘gatekeeper’ to my body? You want to remove that power from me? So that people (men) can get their needs met without ‘jumping through the hoops required’?
You make my skin crawl.
WaterGirl
@Applejinx: Reading this thread late, on the train, but I want to thank you for your comments and for your bravery in being so honest.
I have been out of town with family this week, didn’t see a lick of news, and I had no idea this had even happened until I got my computer out on the train as I return home. It’s been a heck of a train ride home.
Wil
@demit:
Maybe if you took the time to read what I wrote instead of having an emotional kneejerk reaction, you’d see that I wasn’t talking about anyone’s body specifically, and certainly not yours.
One of the advantages of having legal and safe sex workers is that men could get their needs met without having to deal with women like you at all.