But listening to so many pundits, politicians, and so-called "experts" weighing in the last couple of weeks, I couldn't help but think all of them are out of the touch with the Millenials of this generation. Democrats are trying to politicize this tragedy to push for gun control. Feminists have been ups-in-arms on Twitter with the #YesAllWomen hashtag. Psychologists try to psychoanalyze Elliot Rodger and point to possible mental illness. All of them have such a poor grasp of the real underlying reason that caused Rodger to snap. It isn't misogyny. It isn't white privilege/racism. It isn't Asperger (which he didn't even have). And it definitely isn't guns when half of his victims were stabbed to death.
The most pertinent question we should be asking is: Why would a rich, relatively good-looking young man with his whole life ahead of him felt he had no way out but to kill himself and dragged a few unlucky stranger with him? As someone who grew up in Rodger's generation, someone who has been both on the giving and receiving end of bullying, someone who spent a fair number of his formative years in the scenic beaches of Southern California, and someone who read his 141-page manifesto "My Twisted World" in its entirety, I believe I am uniquely qualified to give a more nuanced explanation about what really happened. It is his loneliness. It is the shallow, materialistic pop culture (reinforce by the social media revolution), the culture of bullying to those we deem socially inferior, not as "perfect" or in any way "different, the culture that places outer appearances above all else, that drove him to his murderous rampage. Yes, the shooting at Isla Vista is a terrible tragedy, but Elliot Rodger is also a victim. He is a victim of our sick, twisted pop culture that encourages bullying and places superficiality above all else.
Let's examine the facts of the case: Elliot Rodger was severely depressed for many, many years. His parents are divorced. He didn't get along with his stepmother. Everyone else in his immediate family (his father, mother, and younger sister Georgia) has no problem attracting members of the opposite sex. He was bullied relentlessly as a child. He was lonely. He played Worlds of Warcraft to numb the pain. He wanted a "beautiful, white, blonde" girlfriend, but was incapable of winning their affection despite being the son of the assistant director of "The Hunger Game" and driving a BMW. He wanted to get rich so he drove all the way to Arizona numerous times to buy the lottery there and contemplated other "get rich quick" schemes. He was ashamed of his short stature, half-Asian heritage, virginity, social anxiety, and lack of athleticism. Those are the recurring themes of his story. Yet the media chooses to ignore them and instead give undue weight on "gotcha" posts he made on internet forums and sensationalize the whole story on his supposed sexism and racism.
I don't believe Elliot Rodgers was a misogynist or a racist—at least not anymore than most other guys his age. He is simply the product of his environment. People who think of him as a racist or a misogynist need to go to a frat house or a high school locker room and listen to the conversations there. The world isn't as politically-correct as most of your liberals want it to be. In fact, from "My Twisted World", there were many instances where he demonstrated behaviors that were opposite of a sexist or racist.
For instance, on page 92, he spoke fondly of befriending a Chinese student named Andy Chan, who he found to have "some intelligence and substance". He demonstrated a great relationship with his maternal grandmother, Ah Mah, who is of Malaysian descent (page 2, 8, 34, 122). He even spoke highly of his stepmother's mother Khadija (page 23), who is from Morocco, calling her "a third grandmother to me". In addition, on page 29, he wrote about his best friend James Ellis losing his mother Kim to breast cancer. "He just lost his own mother! It made me think of how horrible I would feel if the same thing happened to my own mother, just the thought alone filled me with pain." This seems like the word of somebody capable of empathy and compassion. Does it sound like a racist/misogynist to you?
His racist, hate-filled rant, highlighted by page 84,
"How could an inferior, ugly black boy be able to get a white girl and not me? I am beautiful, and I am half white myself. I am descended from British aristocracy. He is descended from slaves. I deserve it more. I tried not to believe his foul words, but they were already said, and it was hard to erase from my mind. If this is actually true, if this ugly black filth was able to have sex with a blonde white girl at the age of thirteen while I’ve had to suffer virginity all my life, then this just proves how ridiculous the female gender is. They would give themselves to this filthy scum, but they reject ME? The injustice!"
seems more like self-delusion, a desperation attempt to feel better about his inadequacy, than genuine racism, doesn't it?
With that out of the way, I also don't believe for a second that this relatively-rich kid decided to kill a bunch of random people only because he was a 22-year-old virgin. He wanted to kill people because, in his mind, he was being ostracized by all (both guys and girls) and the whole world was against him. If he were "popular", he could be a fat, ugly guy and girls would still throw themselves at him. Anybody who's been through high school and went to a college with major "Greek" presence could relate to this clique mentality. Why would he be so obsessed with having a "beautiful, blonde" sorority girl as his girlfriend? Why not a pretty black girl or Latina or Asian? He wanted them for the appearance, as a confidence booster, as a way to prove to his bullies that he could pull girls as beautiful as they do, as a way to invalidate his low self-worth. He didn't even seem to want sex that much. He was socially-conditioned and brainwashed into believing that having a girlfriend who look the part is the only way to social prominence by our sick pop culture.
Some food for thought, would we be more inclined to sympathize with him if he had specifically chosen the people who had bullied him as targets instead of killing indiscriminately? What if his victims were the guys who had broken his legs and snatched his necklace (page 122), Ryan and Angel (page 90), Chance (page 84), Monette Moio (page 41), Connor Hanrahan (page 30), and a great number of others he called out in his novel? Would this "revenge-of-the-nerds" type of fantasy have been less "uncalled for"? Again, I'm not advocating violence against anyone, but when we're bullying others, maybe sometimes we ought to ask ourselves if we're going too far. Are we pushing them to the brink? Is there a limit to our razzing and ganging up?
Like I said earlier, I have been bullied in the past and regularly bullied others as well, so I'm far from a saint. Reading over Rodger's manifesto, I recalled many similar instances in my personal life when I bullied the "weak", someone who was in a similar predicament as Elliot Rodger, just to get a laugh and score some brownie points with the pretty girls in the "in-crowd". And I realized there are a lot of Elliot Rodgers out there, on the verge of snapping, being treated like shit day in and day out, and suppressing their intense anger and urge to act out. In a kindler, gentler era, Elliot Rodger was someone who could've found his calling, his niche, his place in the world. Based on his writing, he was certainly smart enough to carve out a life for himself. In a better world, Katherine Cooper, Veronika Weiss, Christopher Michaels-Martinez, Cheng Yuan "James" Hong, George Chen, Weihan "David" Wang, and, yes, even Elliot Rodger would still be with us today. Rodgers himself repeatedly stated that, "I didn't want to die. I wanted something to live for." (page 106). This didn't have to happen. I wish I could've been there to give him a hug and let him know that he wasn't all alone. There are a few special people who came into my life and reached out to me when I felt like I was down and out. And I wish I could've paid it forward. I wish I could've hear him out and show him a way to free himself from being affected by the toxic influence of that vicious culture of bullying.
Blame guns, misogyny, and racism all you want, but we are all guilty of this. And it is highly likely that there will be more school shootings like this if we don't fundamentally change our culture and the way we treat each other. Instead of talking about legislations, we should start by changing our own attitude. If we can all treat our fellow human being with a little more caring and compassion, this kind of stuff would never happen. Next time, when you make eye contact with somebody while waiting outside of class, smile and ask him how he's doing. Little friendly gestures like this can go a long way into preventing tragedy of this magnitude.
I'll leave you with a quote from page 76 of Rodger's manifesto,
"I did, however, pass by one young girl, and she was like a goddess who came down from heaven. She was walking alone, in her bathing suit, with her luscious blonde hair blowing in the wind. I couldn’t help but slyly admire her beauty as we passed by each other. I was scared. I was scared that she might view me as nothing but an inferior insect who’s presence ruins her atmosphere. Her beauty was intoxicating! And then, just as we passed each other, she actually looked at me. She looked at me and smiled. Most girls never even deigned to look at me, and this one actually looked at me and smiled. I had never felt so euphoric in my life. One smile. One smile was all it took to brighten my entire day. The power that beautiful women have is unbelievable. They can temporarily turn a desperate boy’s whole world around just by smiling."
A smile. A lousy stamp of approval. That is really all these lonely hearts want. The buffer between a healthy outlook and a descent into insanity.
