The Pick-Up Artist Community’s Predictable, Horrible Response to a Mass Murder

[ZombieHorde]

By Amanda Hess

On Friday night, a gunman killed six people in Santa Barbara, and the killer himself was found dead with a gunshot wound to his head. Soon after police began investigating the crime, 22-year-old student Elliot Rodger emerged as the main suspect. Like many modern mass murders, this one left a robust digital trail, including a video Rodger recently posted to YouTube where he parks his BMW in front of a bank of palm trees and describes his plan to seek retribution from the women who have rejected him. Rodger calls himself the “perfect guy” and a “supreme gentleman” who’s been overlooked by women who prefer “obnoxious brutes.” Then he lays out his plans to “enter the hottest sorority house of [the University of California, Santa Barbara], and … slaughter every single spoiled, stuck-up blonde slut I see inside there.” To “all those girls I’ve desired so much,” he says, “you will finally see that I am the superior one, the true alpha male.”

Rodger’s language is familiar to anyone who’s spent time exploring the Pick-Up Artist or Men’s Rights Activist communities. Rodger was a “Nice Guy,” a man who feels he is entitled to sex based on positive personality traits known only to him. (“I've wanted love, affection, adoration. You think I’m unworthy of it. That's a crime that can never be forgiven,” he said). He aspired to be an “Alpha," the most attractive, dominant man in his group, but felt he’s been wrongly dismissed as an inferior “Beta.” Pick-Up Artists, by the way, refer to women they would like to have sex with as their “targets.”

Rodger was also allegedly a member of PUAHate.com, a website for men who feel they’ve been tricked by the Pick-Up Artist pyramid scheme, which takes men’s money and promises to teach them how to have sex with women. (And not just any woman, but one who scores at least a 7 on the PUA decimal rating scale of female attractiveness.) PUA Hate is a community devoted to criticizing the Pick-Up Artist movement and “the scams, deception, and misleading marketing techniques used by dating gurus and the seduction community to deceive men and profit from them." It is not, however, interested in putting an end to the PUA community’s objectification of women; it simply complains that the tips and tricks don’t work.

~snip~

http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2014/05/24/elliot_rodger_the_pick_up_artist_community_s_predictable_horrible_response.html

[shenmue]

1. ...

[redqueen]

2. "It is not, however, interested in putting an end to the PUA community’s objectification of women;

it simply complains that the tips and tricks don’t work."

Exactly. People here complaining that it's wrong to link PUA and MRA communities, and using the fact that he was aligned with a forum called "PUAHate.com" to try to claim he disliked PUA bullshit, and was therefore not an MRA (or something) are completely failing to comprehend what these groups are about.

Sexual objectification is part and parcel of this entitlement that so many men feel toward women's bodies.

It goes hand in hand with misogyny and iIt's time to stop pretending it's some fuzzy, ill-defined, confusing concept - and start treating it like the serious issue it is.

[Gravitycollapse]

3. I think PUA's and MRA's are a symptom of the problem and not necessarily the source.

Although it all ultimately co-mingles. What I'm saying, however, is that groups like pick-up artists and men's rights advocates seem to have distinct dysfunction, like narcissistic personality disorder, that interacts with misogyny to create these inevitable outcomes.

I don't think this latest spree killer is the product of the PUA movement. I don't think the PUA movement generates narcissists. It attracts them and helps their narcissism grow, if that makes sense.

We have to treat movements like the PUA as a legitimate social illness which creates an atmosphere of false-victimization and then uses misogyny to make women the enemy. Rather than simply stating it's all a product of misogyny.

[redqueen]

5. I didn't 'simply state it was a product of misogyny'

not sure what your point is.

Society itself is deeply misogynist. It is woven into the fabric of patriarchal society. Its messages permeate almost all forms of communication.

All this shit is connected, and simply treating the symptoms will not cure the disease.

[Gravitycollapse]

6. I think we're actually in agreement. Apologies for the confusion.

I see two distinct issues here. Misogyny and, in the case of this person and the PUA movement, narcissistic personality disorder. We have to treat both if we want to do away with either.

[seabeyond]

8. i personally see it

as an obsession with male sexuality to such an extent that all of us learn, and especially boys, how extraordinarily special and awesome male sexuality is. i do not know how any man can grow up in htis society without an extent of entitlement and womens purpose is use.... even the best of guys.

it is so pervasive and all consuming, all the time, from day one. women presented to men, for use, one way or another.

i think that is the bottom line addressing needs to be done. admitted, recognized and addressed.

the pua and mra of the world merely feeds on this to the point of unhealthy when there will be one to do damage like this. on line allows people to connect in opinion and ideas that validate.

like with the evo psych... ow that flourishes, only to reinforce this belief and behavior that it is innately males right.

i am not even suggesting that all men are to the extreme levels, but i am saying, that all of us, men women, boys girls, are conditioned with the ever obsessive focus on male sexuality.

we cannot even say that it is women, with al the naked women put out there, cause that is solely the purpose of being used.... for male sexuality. nothing to do with a womans sexuality.

[Aerows]

7. I agree - take someone that is already a narcissist

and has entitlement issues, then introduce them to a community that allows both of those to flourish along with their misogyny, and it is a recipe for disaster.

Then add in that such things like PUA and the MRA that believe that *they* are the true victims (nevermind whatever they did to harm or drive women away in the first place) and it exposes a deep, societal sickness.

That societal sickness must be addressed, though, to be honest, as mentally ill as Rodgers was, I'm pretty sure he would have ended up in one conflagration or another anyway, no matter how much help, support and counseling he got.

[Katashi_itto]

23. agree

[cui bono]

4. +1

[joshcryer]

9. To be fair, while there is overlap, they're distinct.

The vast majority of PUA/RedPill people think women need to be treated as subservient pigs and the only way to deal with them properly is to be alpha males, etc.

Counter to MRAs who want to treat women equally as men and find areas where they think there is an equality gap (for example, Male Abortion; this is a real thing; the desire of a male to recuse himself from having to facilitate the raising of a child). These MRAs would advocate women getting 100% pay for 100% work, really, they would. They're consistent in that view.

There is a subgroup, however, of MRAs who are PUA/RedPill people, who actually think that it requires certain behaviors to interact with women and that if they don't treat women ostensibly as shit, then they aren't being alpha enough. In general this subgroup is rejected by the larger MRA movement as a whole because they obviously see it as a distraction. Here's a post where a PUA/RedPill person got "downvoted" on Reddit (it's like being "unrec'd&quot .

Note: I am not an MRA though I can see some appeal in some of the arguments (if only from a logical perspective), I think it's a misguided approach. Importantly, I think, while I disagree with almost all of DUers MRA advocates here (some of whom are some of my least liked posters on this forum), I think the arguments are coherent. PUA/RedPill advocates, however, are pretty much scum, there is nothing they have of value to contribute to anything.

[uponit7771]

12. I've just read the redpill stuff and see where's there is 30% truth and 70% BS to justify degrading

... or objectifying women. It's like some have to hold women in context to justify the redpill logic

[bettyellen]

19. I looked at red pill yesterday, and have seen some of the same crap there posted at DU

so maybe that's the reason the MRAers are here are so unpopular.

[redqueen]

22. No MRA ideas have any appeal, especially not a logical one. They are all ignorant as shit

and they are all rooted in either outright misogyny or a sad failure (or childish, stubborn unwillingness) to recognize that their problem is with patriarchal ideas - not women and certainly not feminists.

[Triana]

10. It wasn't the sole factor, but IMO his involvement with MRA's and their attitudes . . .

. . . are a contributing one. Case in point:



This is from that PUAHate site, which has since taken his posts down, but they're supposedly (I haven't looked) archived here: http://archive.today/oV0ck

[joshcryer]

11. That's nothing, from his manifesto (trigger warnings):

There's a lot more but this was the worst that I saw. I know people will not like this but I feel sorry for him, he's beyond pathetic. This is the part that just made me sickened by his utter failure as a human being:



This is all around fucked up and pitiful.

[standingtall]

13. I had no sympathy for him

And after reading that I have even less if possible. He thought he was like a god. I already knew he thought that way. That just confirmed my opinion of him. 'Put all the women in concentration camps and starve most of them to death and gleefully watch them die.' Sick! 'Artificially inseminate the rest for reproductive purposes in a secret lab.' Absurd. Not to mention the paraphrase of the classic if I can't have you no one can line that just about every stalker/slash rape murderer uses at some point.

[LiberalLoner]

15. Ditto. +1

[Mojorabbit]

16. Holy Moly! nt

[nomorenomore08]

20. Much like the eugenicists of (not-so-)old, he has a grade-schooler's understanding of genetics.

Among many other things, obviously.

*Edit: "Sexuality will completely cease to exist"? "Love will cease to exist"? Sure as hell doesn't sound like a world worth living in...

[Triana]

21. How much do MRA attitudes as expressed by Elliot Rodger affect legislation today?

in Re: women's repro rights. I think a LOT. (War on Women)

Yet this misogyny, this hatred of and desire for total control of women and their repro rights, is totally ignored by the media.

Isn't it interesting that conservatives also think women should have no say about their repro rights or who they 'breed' with?

How do I know what they "think"? We can see what they DO in the form of legislation, which takes all choice from women in these same areas. It's no coincidence.

Misogyny isn't the only issue in the Elliot Rodger massacre. But it will be the most ignored one.

[standingtall]

14. I had never heard of

PUAHATE until now. After reading those post. What a bunch of idiots.

[951-Riverside]

17. Blame everyone except the one's truely responsible

The NRA

[img][/img]

[JJChambers]

18. Isn't the one "truly responsible" the one who pulled the trigger?