The Saga Continues, and We Still Haven't Learned...

Judgy Bitch wrote up a good article on the shootings inCalifornia, more or less excoriating the feminist crowd for focusing on the women killed, and the misogyny in the manifesto written by the killer, thus ignoring the fact that men were also killed. The manifesto was also full of misandry, and basically, the killer was an unhinged nutbag, equal-opportunity hater, who was as angry at women for not doing his bidding as he was at men for not doing the same.

More specifically, the men that he was angry at seemed to be the much maligned PUAs (pick up artists).  It was a good article, full of good information, and it was specifically written from a standpoint of speaking out against the feminist reaction.    

I would like to take a wider view of the incident. 

Starting off, I want to make one thing clear:  the only person to blame for this is the person who committed the act.  Period.  The MHRM is not to blame.  PUAs are not to blame.  Feminism is not to blame.  No one is to blame here, save Elliot, the pathetic, cowardly failure of a man who sought fame through death and destruction, because he was impotent in his efforts to seek it by any other means. 

Second, that being said, there were definitely influences that caused Elliot to veer off the path of sanity.  No one knows for sure what the leading factors were (no one really understands crazy the way that crazy people understand it), but his own words speak to his anger about not being able to get women to respond to him in a way that he liked.  His writing seemed to be that of a supremely solipsistic person; one who saw all of the other people on Earth as bit actors in his own, personal drama.  The problems started when the bit actors started giving the wrong lines, and it drove him off the deep end. 

He had no idea how to act with people.  None, whatsoever.  He couldn’t fathom how he could possibly not attract a woman, and blamed women for not being attracted to him, and PUAs for taking all the women who might be.  But the problem was that his solipsism disallowed him to turn his gaze inward to understand what was turning people off to him.  My father used to have an apt saying, which was that if everyone is being mean to you, perhaps the problem is not everyone, but rather, you.    

As Tam to aptly put it over at her place, like many PUAs, he thought if he just put his tokens in the slot, and started doing the proper dance and twisting the right knobs, that the pinball machines that he saw women as, would dispense a high score and a bit of pussy at the end of the game.  What he had no concept of was the fact that women are not computer games, and there are no “cheat codes” that you can enter to make the game do as you please, as the PUAs so often claim.  The act of following the formula that the PUAs gave him made him all the more creepy. 

He was creepy and un-fuckable, and instead of recognizing that HE was the problem, he just kept entering the cheat codes that the PUAs told him would work, without recognizing that the PUA cheat codes reduce women to machines with glitches that can be exploited to make them do your bidding, instead of sentient, self-aware individuals with unique likes, dislikes, and preferences that cannot be “hacked” in the manner that PUAs claim they can be.  He could not accept that HE was the problem, and so he lashed out. 

He lashed out at the PUAs that “lied” to him.  He lashed out at the women who “denied” him, and he lashed out violently, because he knew that the news media, and people like us, would finally recognize his torture and speak about it ad nauseum for the next 6 weeks.  He would finally be somebody. 

I’m causing this.  You’re causing this.  We’re all perpetuating a system of withdrawal and temporary infamy that is particularly attractive to these unhinged monsters, because they get to be famous for being unhinged monsters.  They spent their entire lives failing at everything that they touched, and finally, at the end, the only thing that they can do to get the recognition that they KNOW they deserve is to follow a specific formula:

Get a weapon.  Write a manifesto.  Kill people.  Kill yourself.  Be famous.  Find release. 

Elliot is to blame for HIS actions, but we’re all to blame for the next guy who will inevitably do this again, because we’re perpetuating the cycle by even talking about it. 

Finally, I would like to point out that every single idea had by the Connecticut state legislature after Sandy Hook, including the magazine capacity restrictions, the various ban on aesthetic qualities of certain weapons, the registrations, and so forth, were in place in California, and still, in spite of that, this shootings, and hundreds of others, occur in California regularly.  Three of the victims in this murder spree were killed with a knife.  There is no feasible way that this could possibly have been prevented by any of the “common sense” gun control measures being proposed by the sundry politicians, who will certainly use this to gain political ground in their fight for control over the people’s right to keep and bear arms, and I know this for a fact because all of these measures are already in place in California.  The killer could have just used a knife.