I’m not really sure where to begin with the killings in Santa Barbara.
About 6 years ago my niece attended UCSB and I became peripherally aware of the social landscape there from what she’d relate either to the family or via FaceBook. It wasn’t really anything less than I’d expect from a notorious ‘party school’ populated by the kids of affluent families – beautiful people, beautiful environment and all the displays of conspicuous consumption you’d probably expect. And it would be the perfect hell for a guy like Eliot Rodger.
Until now I’ve tactically avoided throwing my hat in the ring about this incident because I know the dangers inherent in going off half-cocked about a developing story. If you’re looking for details and information about how this kid evolved into what he was I’ll refer you to Heartiste’s, RoK’s and JustFourGuys breakdown of it. That said I’m going to tap out a few of my own personal thoughts about the kid and the social impact of not just how he came to be, but also what you can expect from a feminine-primary media.
PUAHate
As I’m sure most of the primary manosphere sites have, the members of the PUAHate forum found select posts at Rational Male as a particular targets of their vitriol. When I initially became aware of the forum (via link backs) it was due to their being very publicly linked to the Manboobz blog (now We Hunted the Mammoth).
After perusing the forum for a bit I wrote it off as a collection of guys commiserating about their shared social disenfranchisement and, not to be too blunt, but their shared lack of social intelligence. That these guys were angry with the manosphere was pretty much a given. For the most, they fit a particular personality pattern that’s characteristic of boys / men looking for an easy solution to their social ostracization and noted rejection from female intimacy.
I know the personality well since these types of guys are usually the first to email/PM me for advice for the easiest path between where they are now and where they want to be. They initially believe that Game / red pill awareness / PUA techniques are the panacea they’re looking for to cure their largely sexless and lonely existences.
When, due to their functional autism, Asperger’s syndrome or simply a social awkwardness, they find that the only thing that posed to be a ‘plan’ to help them “get their girl” doesn’t work the way they’d hoped, the reaction is a hostile rejection of what they believe ‘promised’ them the results of curing their sexless state.
To compound things the same PUAs they sought help from, become caricatures of the men who are successfully hooking up with the girls they wanted really nothing more than to be a loyal boyfriend to. They resort back to the only thing they knew, Beta Game – identify and qualify with women – only now they not only reinvest themselves in it they want to become activists against any form of Game that isn’t what they believe women should respond to.
I don’t have any corroboration of it, but my guess is that a guy like Eliot would’ve made the ridicule list for the now defunct Tumblr “Nice Guys of OKCupid“. I’d suggest reading that post as a primer for anyone wanting to get a better grasp of how this personality type thinks and is ridiculed for.
The PUAs they’d hoped would let them in on the ‘secret’ to a woman’s intimacy, are revealed to them as the charlatan Bad Boy, ‘Alpha males’ they’ve always resented, who they believe mock them with every successful lay they manage.
What’s worse, what fuels their PUAHate activism, is that they ever believed their ‘enemy’ would reveal a way to become like they are. I bring up this observation from experience. I’ve had more than a few of these kinds of guys hit me up, not for advice, but a specific plan that will lead them to some kind of relief from their condition.
Descriptions and Prescriptions
In Preventative Medicine IV a commenter (who, for the record is not an InCel by any stretch) asked me why I had no real prescriptive plan for men to follow with regards to ‘preventing’ or avoiding the bad decisions associated with the time line I laid out in that series. This was my response:
Imagine for a moment I had the temerity to presume that I know exactly what a 60 year old reader like bbb experiences in his personal life with a post-menopausal wife. I could take a good stab at it (in fact I have a post in the can about menopause) but anything specific I could prescribe for him would be based on my best-guess speculations and according to how I’ve observed and detailed things in this series or any of my past posts.
From my earliest posts at SoSuave I’ve had men ask me for some ‘medicine’ for their condition; some personalized plan that will work for them. This sentiment is exactly what makes PUA and manosphere ‘self-help’ speakers sell DVDs and seats at seminars. They claim to have the cure. I say that’s bullshit.
I’m not in the business of cures, I’m in the business of diagnoses. Imagine David D’ Angelo, the “new” Tucker Max or Tyler Durden attempting to force fit their plans to accommodate bbb’s situation. Athol Kay makes attempts to remedy married men’s (non) sex lives, but what’s his real success rate? Is it even measurable? Even Athol recognizes that his MMSL outline is just a map, a diagnosis, that men have to modify for themselves per their individual experience and demographic. You see, your cure, your plan of action isn’t what bbb’s will be, or your future son’s, or anyone else reading my work. I can give you a map, but you still have to make your own trail. I’m not a savior, you are your savior
Short version: I’m not interested in making men be better men, I’m interested in men making themselves better Men.
What’s more legitimate, my prescribing some course or template to follow that leads a man to a success that ultimately I define for a reader, or my laying out an accurate landscape for his better understanding and he creates his own success with it?
Are you your success or my success? I’d rather a Man be his own.
Most men already know what the keys are, and most even know how to use them, but what they really want is confirmation that they actually have the keys.
My approach to Game is defined in much broader terms than simply ‘how to get girls’, and I think for the better part of the manosphere the understanding of Game has evolved beyond rote memorization of scripts and plans. It’s gotten to a stage where even the most enthusiastic proponents of PUA techniques acknowledge a need for an individualized approach to relating and interacting with women based on a broader applied understanding of feminine psychology, sociology and the particular conditions that apply to themselves as well as the women they’re interacting with.
It’s been noted before, my approach to Game is descriptive, not prescriptive.
What’s Next?
In the next month or so I expect there will be a lot of armchair psychologists making their best attempt to suss out what Eliot’s killings represent without ever really having experienced in any depth the mental schemas of minds like his. A fem-centric media and society will want its easy, binary answers and I suspect they’ll get no less in passing Eliot’s neurosis off on whatever conveniently fits the narrative that makes for the easiest to swallow and move on.
Right now I expect that’s going to be the manosphere, but Eliot wasn’t our monster, he was the product of his own psychosis and his neurotic belief in the First Set of Books. Eliot was a more violent version of what happens when socially maladaptive men root themselves in a transactional, reciprocal, model of what would solve his loneliness, sexual frustration and desperation.
Eliot and those of his mindset believed that everyone ought to be playing by the set of rules he was conditioned to believe everyone else was playing by and he dutifully subscribed to. They want a prescription, not a painful, ego destroying description.
Under those rules, he embodied his own definition of an Alpha – the guy who played it right and would be gratefully appreciated by any normal person adhering to the way things should be. But he couldn’t come to terms with the fact that everyone else wasn’t playing by that rule set, and he wouldn’t be rewarded for his self-righteous dedication to his conditioning with sex or justice or even basic human interaction. Six people died because he couldn’t come to terms with the fact that much of the opposite of what that conditioning taught him was what he saw was being rewarded.
Would a better grasp of Game have changed Eliot’s mind? I doubt it.
That’s not an indictment of Game or red pill awareness, but rather an understanding of the mindset he developed. I know the obsessiveness of the kind of guy Eliot was. A devoted girlfriend, and her sexual affections wouldn’t have steered his course any differently.
His hate required his destitution, and vice versa. That hate wasn’t about women or misogyny, or Alpha jocks getting after it with the girls he wanted, or even PUAs selling him a new set of rules he couldn’t stomach; his hate was about his inability to reconcile his ego with the ugly realities that a brief exposure to red pill truths revealed to him.
Game saves lives, and not just the lives of the person awakening to a red pill awareness. I know this firsthand from twelve years of private email testimonials and heartbreaking confessions.
Game saves lives, particularly in an era where hypergamy and the new gender paradigm, established since the sexual revolution, ruthlessly selects-out men who might otherwise expect to be considered intimately acceptable by their dedication and adherence to the set of beliefs their feminized conditioning has promised them would be their reward – but the men who need it most have to come to terms with the pain, remorse and resentment of having ever needed to cut themselves away from their prior system belief.
That severance from their conditioned ego-investment is a test that will either prompt them to see the old system for what it was and adapt, or simply put a gun to their head (or the heads of others beforehand).
It is very difficult to make men aware of Game, but the acceptance of it is more difficult when it challenges a man’s sense of self that’s been literally built upon the belief that the system he’s cut himself away from was part of who he really is.
The Bitter Taste of the Red Pill
The truth will set you free, but it doesn’t make truth hurt any less, nor does it make truth any prettier, and it certainly doesn’t absolve you of the responsibilities that truth requires. One of the biggest obstacles guys face in unplugging is accepting the hard truths that Game forces upon them. Among these is bearing the burden of realizing what you’ve been conditioned to believe for so long were comfortable ideals and loving expectations are really liabilities. Call them lies if you want, but there’s a certain hopeless nihilism that accompanies categorizing what really amounts to a system that you are now cut away from. It is not that you’re hopeless, it’s that you lack the insight at this point to see that you can create hope in a new system – one in which you have more direct control over.
As an end note here I think in the coming weeks there will be a greater scrutiny placed on Game and the manosphere in general. There will undoubtedly be more back and forth about the how’s and why’s of Eliot’s killings, and I sincerely doubt all the effort expended to prove that this kid was an antisocial, psychotic and really needed the unplugging an acceptance of Game would’ve benefitted him with. You simply wont teach those unwilling to learn.
However, as always, my comment thread here will be unmoderated for those who want to offer their take on all this. I would ask though that if you have a personal testimonial about how Game, or The Rational Male (book or blog) or any other manosphere writer, or idea / experience changed the course of your life, please considering leaving it here for the benefit of others. Nothing is TL;DR as far as I’m concerned.
As I mentioned earlier, I have an email ‘save’ box reserved for inspirational emails I receive from readers. Many of these are confessionals about aborted suicide attempts due in part or whole to something I wrote or caused some man to rethink. I wouldn’t dream of breaking any man’s confidence by copy and pasting them into a blog post, but if you have some experience you comfortable with sharing in the comments I’d encourage you to do so during this time.
Thank you.