The Isla Vista Shooter Couldn't Establish Relationships with Women Because

[MineralMan]

He was just plain weird. It's that simple. Most people have a pretty good awareness of people by the time they're in their 20s. People recognize weirdness in other people and most often try to avoid such people.

Looking at this shooter's YouTube videos, and I've watched all of them, it's clear that he's far enough off-center to set off alarm signals in most people who might have come into contact with him. So, it's not surprising that he was unable to establish romantic or sexual relationships with young women.

Women are their own agents. They make their own decisions. They don't have to date or have relationships with anyone. They choose. And people with genuine weirdness in their personalities trigger avoidance reactions in others. This Roger guy emits warning signals like a rotating radar antenna. That's why he didn't meet women who were interested in having any sort of relationship with him.

He has some mental disorder that hasn't been specified in any of the news reports. For people who met him, no diagnosis was necessary. His disorder, whatever its name might be, causes him to behave in ways that make people withdraw from him. Men and women alike sensed his issues and simply avoided him. He is an individual. He doesn't represent any group or set of opinions. He's just weird. Weird people have problems with establishing relationships of any kind.

Now, he's dead, probably at his own hand. Before he died, though, he expressed his essential weirdness by killing other people.

[stone space]

1. Pretty much the same reason why nobody woud give him a gun, I imagine.

Oh, wait...

[MineralMan]

2. Not really. Buying firearms legally

doesn't require legal sellers to check customers for "weirdness." There are checks, but they're for criminal history, age, and hospitalization for mental illness in some cases. "Weird" doesn't count. It does count if you ask someone on a date, but not when you go into a gun shop to purchase a firearm.

Personally, I think it's too easy to buy firearms, but I don't make the laws.

You will not hear this in a gun shop: "No, I'm not going to sell you a firearm. You're weird."

[stone space]

17. The law also didn't prevent women from dating him.

The law doesn't mandate that women check potential dates for weirdness.

That's something that they did on their own, without any legal requirement that they do so.

[MineralMan]

22. Completely different situations.

The gun seller wants to sell firearms. That's how he or she makes a living. As long as a person meets the qualifications for ownership, it's likely that the sale will take place.

Dating is something altogether different. People's emotional responses are generally not for sale.

[stone space]

24. You make it sound like the people who gave him the guns are not human beings with...

...very real human emotions.

Like they somehow lose their human agency, and that they don't have the right to make human choices.

[xfundy]

42. He bought the guns himself. Legally.

[stone space]

46. The guns he bought legally didn't pop into existence out of thin air.

Human beings chose to give him all of those guns. And all of those bullets.

These are real human beings, with real emotions and feelings and who have real human agency and who retain the right to say "no".

They are not mindless automata who have no capacity for choice. Describing these transactions without acknowledging the humanity of everybody involved is dehumanizing.

[MineralMan]

61. Nobody GAVE him any guns.

The firearms he bought cost hundreds of dollars. After he purchased them, he had to wait several days before he could pick them up. It was a purchase. Nobody GAVE him anything.

[stone space]

63. They gave him guns and bullets. The fact that he gave them something in return for...

...them giving him deadly weapons does absolutely nothing to negate the fact that they gave him guns and bullets.

Why are you so intent to claim that it does?

[MineralMan]

64. No. He bought them from a place that

Sells guns and ammo to anyone who can legally buy them. Nobody GAVE him anything. He bought them.

Gun shops sell guns. That's the business they're in. What do you not understand about that? He could legally buy them, so the store sold them to him. They d sell guns to you, too, if you meet the legal standards in CA.

[stone space]

66. I give up. You win. He put his money in a vending machine and out popped 3 semi-automatics...

...and a shitload of ammo.

[MineralMan]

43. Not at all. People who sell firearms

typically spend very little time evaluating the customer. They are in business to sell firearms, and someone arriving at their business who speaks reasonably and wishes to purchase what they sell isn't trying to develop a relationship. It's just a business transaction. As long as the customer is able to communicate information about what he or she wants to buy, fills out the background check form, and is willing to wait during the waiting period for a handgun, That's about the extent of the relationship.

From the videos, it's clear that this person was perfectly able to communicate his wishes. It's very unlikely that he explained anything about his reasons for purchasing a weapon. More likely, he went into the shop, looked at firearms and told the person that he wanted this or that firearm. He filled out the background check document, paid his money and went away to wait for the time required before returning to pick it up.

Why would the firearms seller have any reason to inquire into his mental well being? On other hand, a woman being approached by any man is smart to look at the person closely and evaluate her impressions of that person. Before any further relationship can begin, she must assure herself that she's not putting her safety or anything else at risk. She is looking at the person in a very different way than the person in the gun shop. If something seems weird or off with the person who approaches her, she can easily say, "No, thanks" to pursuing things any further. And, if she's at all alarmed by anything, she's right to do just that.

[NutmegYankee]

3. If the guy was a sociopath, he may not have come across as weird in that short interaction.

You only see narcissism and psychopathy come out if you've known them for a little while.

[Duckhunter935]

9. You can diagnose this

in a 10 to 15 minute transaction?

You must be much better than me at this.

[JJChambers]

4. So people with Aspergers are "weird" now?

He was socially awkward due to a mental disorder.

[MoonRiver]

8. Thank you. I brought this up yesterday, and worried it offended some.

The vast majority of people suffering from AD are completely peaceful and law abiding. But this disorder can be devastating to individuals who have it, and their ability to establish relationships.

I also recall that the Newtown shooter had been diagnosed with Autism.

[KitSileya]

20. And even if he, and Lanza, were on the autism spectrum,

no one is obliged to be friends with anyone. No women are obliged to be girlfriends of anyone. Having a diagnosis would hopefully mean they would get help to interact with other people, but people still have the right to decide who to be friends with, and who to get together with. Unfortunately, that is something that isn't well communicated in our culture, where a lot of women get the message that they owe men dates and relationships if the men are 'nice', or if they are socially awkward. It is very visible in street harassment, where women are told that they owe men time and attention just for being out in public.

[MoonRiver]

23. Agreed

[MineralMan]

15. They may seem so to people. Nobody wears a sign around the neck

that says, "I have Aspergers," "I have social phobias," or "I suffer from narcissistic personality disorder." I personally know a couple of people with Aspergers. With one of those people, I have a pretty good relationship, and we often have lengthy conversations about topics of interest to both of us. With the other person, though, it's very difficult.

"Weird" is not a diagnosis of anything. It's a description people apply to others who seem strange to them. It's not a professional diagnosis or anything of the sort. It's a description of behaviors that are out of the norm that make people wary. Since people make their own decisions about how they relate to others, it's just a personal description that is often used to explain why someone doesn't care for someone else in some way and why they hesitate to form a relationship. Most people will not have a romantic or sexual relationship with someone they consider to be "weird" for any reason.

[Louisiana1976]

53. Well said.

[seveneyes]

18. What the hell does Aspergers have to do with murdering people in cold blood?

If there is any confirmed relationship between Aspergers and killing people, there is some work that needs done and secure facilities that will need created.

[Jamastiene]

59. None. n/t

[Spider Jerusalem]

27. Autism isn't a mental disorder.

it's a neurological disorder. Autistics have fundamentally different brain wiring to non-autistics; you can't make them "not autistic" with medication or therapy.

[mathematic]

31. He had a LOT more than aspergers

Somebody posted an excerpt from his memoir where he describes a firm conviction that his lotto ticket was the winner, based on the universe owing it to him. He describes his heart racing when he found out that the winning ticket was sold in California.

This man was severely disturbed. Weird wasn't even the half of it.

[Gidney N Cloyd]

5. Every pot has a lid. nt

[dawg]

6. He was probably trying to punch above his weight, too.

Granted, he was a weird guy. But there were probably plenty of weird girls at that college who would have been willing to date him at least once. They weren't the pretty and popular girls though. Therefore, they were *beneath* him.

[Xipe Totec]

7. There were doubtless women who were interested in him, but he was too self-absorbed to notice

Watching his video you get a sense that he's not aware of anything other than himself.

[leftyohiolib]

13. narcissistic?

[Xipe Totec]

14. I'm no shrink but, yea, something like that, or chronic afluenza nt

[Nuclear Unicorn]

10. "Women are their own agents...They choose."

Perhaps that is the problem. Some people can't accept a world where they are not God.

[VanillaRhapsody]

12. or the real "Alpha Male"!

[Nuclear Unicorn]

19. In nature the alpha male competes for the alpha female

Alpha females need not accept any suitor, her attentions must be won.

No, what he wanted was something completely different. He wanted the absence of all other free will. He wanted his conceptions of reality to be the only reality possible and to deny him was to shatter the totality of his universe.

[bettyellen]

34. Yo have to wonder what trash he was reading in Barnes and Noble that led him to his grand

theories of destroying women. Sad to think there was anything in that vein inspiring for him to find.

[GeorgeGist]

11. The Psych 101 reunion is a riot.

[MineralMan]

44. Hmm...no.

That's a sucky call-out, there itsrobert. I did not claim to be a psychologist. I'm not a psychologist.

But, I took a dozen or so psychology classes at my university. I found the subject interesting and had elective subjects I could choose. I've also been reading in that area for almost 50 years. But, I'm not a psychologist, and "weird" is not a psychological diagnosis.

Incidentally, if I don't reply to your next reply, it's because I'm finishing up a website contract, writing all of the content for a new website for a clinical psychologist. All that reading is making that pretty easy for me to do.

Please don't call out other DUers like that. It's impolite, at best. It's also a waste of your time.

[itsrobert]

47. I am not a comedian

Incidentally, If I don't reply to your next reply, it's because I'm finishing up watching a Bob Newhart Show marathon. After which, I maybe able to walk the line between humor and psychology. But until than, you may have to put up with my failed humor.

[ck4829]

16. 'Weird' doesn't describe him, he was very disturbed and a narcissistic person who was full of rage

Plenty of weird people out there and they do pretty good for themselves and their communities.

His 'manifesto' is full how he was entitled to wealth and sex, narcissistic rage, and admissions of violence.

Things of:
How he thought several times that he was entitled to win the lottery, last time he even said it was 'MY money'
His fits and tantrums leading to his stepmother, Soumaya, not even wanting him to stay at their house anymore
His fights, like throwing a glass of orange juice at a guy (Because he was black and had described his sexual encounters), throwing a cup of coffee at another couple because the 'inferior' guy was with an attractive woman, and even trying to kill some people at a party by pushing them off a ledge which led to other people fighting him and breaking his leg.
How women shouldn't be entitled to choose their mates and describing them as pretty much objects for him
And more

Weird and eccentric people out there, they aren't like this, he was a walking stick of dynamite and the spree shooting was the explosion for him.

[MineralMan]

21. I'm talking about people's quick judgments of others.

Weird is a descriptor of someone who someone else just doesn't want to have anything to do with. It's not something that is defined well, and means different things to different people. People form quick opinions of strangers they come in contact with. Those opinions are not based on any sort of actual knowledge of that person, but on a quick impression.

If that quick impression is the person is "weird" in any way, odds are that it ends right there, without any further explanation.

It's not a diagnosis of anything. It is simple an immediate reaction for someone.

[malaise]

28. Psychopathic affluenza??

My wants are my needs and I am entitled to them and there will be retribution for anyone who does not share that view. Twisted does not describe this young man.

[ck4829]

30. That does pretty much sum up his 140 page screed

[Downwinder]

39. Perhaps in combination with "No. 1 son?"

[Hekate]

52. Trying to shove a girl "off a ledge" can be fatal in Isla Vista: it's perched on a steep cliff

Damn near every year someone falls off, usually while drinking at night, with fatal results.

[Shankapotomus]

25. He was very immature

Last edited Sun May 25, 2014, 05:02 PM - Edit history (1)

and under developed emotionally. That's my take. Deep down he probably didn't really want to have a relationship with anyone or he would have had one. He had issues with people the way they were and that's why he ended up isolated where most people just plow through the ignorance.

He didn't really have a healthy sense of what he liked in a woman either as evidence that he still desired women who desired men he didn't respect. He didn't see the contradiction and only became more frustrated. Basically, short-circuited himself. It's like he thought he had to live his relationships at the pace of everyone else but some people can't do that. Everyone has to go at their own pace and figure out what kind of people and social environment they really like and are compatible with without the input of social pressure.

[bettyellen]

35. "he still desired woman who desired men he didn't respect. He didn't see the contradiction.."

I see this a lot, even here at DU. His "problems" were exaggerated by his illness, but they seem to be more common delusions than we want to admit.

[Shankapotomus]

48. Yes, we are all susceptible to those mistakes

His just became compounded.

[bettyellen]

50. yes, and you learn from experiences to get over it. he never got to that point, so the fantasy

loomed ever larger over the years.
I thought it was interesting how badly he wanted peer acceptance, that he just mimiced what he saw others do. They skateboarded and were blonde, he wanted it. They wore whatever and went someplace, he followed. He didn't notice girls first, he noticed his friends all wanting girls, and pretended he did too... until he really did. I suppose he could not grasp at all why he didn't fit in and was looking for easy fixes. there was so much focus on the shallow external aspects though, it is creepy. As if he had none of his own ideas, or preferences at all.

[Shankapotomus]

54. He was indeed so shallow

it seemed insincere at first, as if he were doing a caricature of a shallow person. He couldn't even mimic diabolical convincingly in his videos. Sometimes people need to be shaken and told they don't need to be what they think the world expects them to be. I suspect no one ever told him that or it didn't sink in.

[bettyellen]

55. I think there is some big cognitive malfunction and he never felt empathy at all. His earliest

memories are just fixating on things, having to have them and getting angry and jealous and having tantrums.
It is so foreign to me, then I remembered my nephew is exactly the same way. His first reaction to everything is "Me, me mine!" or "I hate it", there is no in between, and he does not seem to care about much else. Unless it's about things he wants, he does not engage with anyone. He is impossible to talk to, nothing registers. Freaks me out.

[Shankapotomus]

56. I actually also have a nephew going through that phase

You can't ask too much of them at that stage. I just ask that he doesn't hurt himself or anyone else and that seems to cover the essentials. If it ever got to something serious, of course, I'd step in. Other than that, I try not to get too tangled up in the drama or micromanage. That will only make it worse.

[bettyellen]

60. thre definately is a stage they go through like that. but for this Elliot guy it never ended.

[bluestateguy]

26. You may be right

but if people like him are simply cast off and written off by society as losers there will eventually be consequences for that.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

29. I'm sure there's a DSM category

that an expert could find for this guy, and some expert probably has already. Obviously he had a severe psychological problem, whatever it might have been. But I think MM's point is that he probably had an odd vibe that creeped women out - he sure came across as creepy and weird in his video. I think we have all met people who just made us uncomfortable in some way that made us not want to hang out with them - not that they seemed dangerous, just peculiar and unpleasant to be around. Maybe, for example, Rodger made blatant and inappropriate sexual remarks to women he hardly knew, or maybe he just stared at them in a way that made them uncomfortable.

And part of the guy's pathology was his bizarre sense of entitlement that apparently made him think that he should be attracting the best-looking, most "desirable" women - it wasn't just that he couldn't find any girlfriend, it was that he wasn't able to attract the kind of woman he thought he was entitled to - even though he had money, nice clothes and an expensive car. He complained about the "ugly Indian guy" who was driving around with an attractive woman in an ordinary old car and couldn't figure out why with his money and his BMW he couldn't date someone like that. The specific nature of his psychological disorder is for the experts to figure out, but I'd bet kröner to kruggerands that the direct reason he couldn't find a girlfriend was that women just found him creepy. Most "weird" people do not become mass murderers, and I'll leave it to the experts to try to explain why this one did.

[bettyellen]

33. yes, creepy. he also imagined that every woman he saw with a man, was having sex with that man....

and his reaction was "Me me me, I should be having that". This was the reaction he had since his third birthday, when someone else go the first piece of his cake.
But the idea that every woman walking down the street or having coffee with a guy is fucking him? He had some idiot ideas, because he had no social experiences because he feared and envied other people.

He reminds me of my brother who was diagnosed with schizophrenia at 17, but many years before that he had an off detached affect, tantrums and trouble controlling his sadness and anger, and some crazy exaggerated ideas. He'd always had trouble making friends because of it, and when the delusions and voices started happening as a teen, he was already very socially isolated. I am sure he felt like society was throwing him away too, and lashed out with anti-social behavior. And the anti-psychotic meds weren't around then, so doctors were unable to help. He jumped off the roof of the hospital he was in a few months before his 20th birthday.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

40. The question will always be, why?

What was it that caused this particular guy to jump the rails and kill people? Lots of young guys are socially inept and unpopular and seem to be a bit "weird." Many, many guys' parents were divorced when they were young. Lots of guys are short. Lots of guys can't find girlfriends. Yet they don't buy a bunch of guns and plot for a year to get even with all the women who wouldn't date them, and the men who were dating those women, by killing as many of them as possible. Most "unpopular" people - men and women - may be unhappy or depressed but they don't kill people. A lot of people have had terrible childhoods and they never go on mass murder rampages. And apparently he was also a narcissistic asshole, but the world is full of narcissistic assholes who don't kill people (unless you count the corporate CEOs and legislators who cause things to happen that indirectly kill people - but they don't go on shooting sprees).

So why this guy? How, exactly, was he different from all the thousands of other unpopular, angry young men who couldn't find girlfriends and yet managed not to express their disappointment and frustration by randomly murdering people?

[MineralMan]

45. Thanks. I wasn't offering a diagnosis, just a sense of how

people might have seen him. "Weird" is not a diagnosis. It's a feeling, and women rightly act on their feelings when it comes to forming relationships.

[SoCalDem]

36. He was not wealthy.. His PARENTS were

Granted, he was past 21, but when his parents called the cops to get help, they should have also taken all of his weapons, warned his roommates, taken his car and closed his bank accounts.

They should have showed him that until he got psychiatric help, he was cut off.

Hindsight is always 20-20. but they DID has forewarning, and apparently no one did enough

[maced666]

38. He was wealthy.

Obviously it was his parents money, obviously he had access to it.

[SoCalDem]

41. That allowed him to get weapons and to foster his ideas of superiority

[maced666]

37. If you are going to try to nutshell after one day, I'd say damn good job.

Saw couple of videos - 'what a creep' is what I thought as I'm sure girls and women aged 14-24 would think as they came across his radar over last decade.
Women are brilliant observers - Confidence is attractive. He is obviously narcissistic and cocky. Turn off. What followed was rejection and he responded by being creepy then exploding.

He didn't get a girl because they saw his unstable and dangerous personality in him BEFORE he showed it with murder.

[Hekate]

51. "This Roger guy emits warning signals like a rotating radar antenna." So girls avoided him...

... and rightly so. Ultimately they were proven right.

[moondust]

57. What about the BMW?

Isn't that supposed to be a "chick magnet" or something like that in the parlance of fraternities/sororities? Of course the kind of person attracted to a BMW might also be "discouraged" to learn that he was a "townie" at the local junior college.

[MineralMan]

62. If you've ever been in that community,

you'd know that BMWs are the KIA Souls of Isla Vista. Nothing that stands out, really.

[Whisp]

58. He was listening to the wrong messages.

And had no one as a counterbalance. But I don't know, I don't think anything really does at this point or any point. It's the way it is - some men have an insatiable lust to hate and harm women.

Women are evil succubuses that are here on earth to torture men/boys with their sexuality that some men hate so much being overpowered by.

Ads and media don't help much either. It's unhealthy to focus on sexuality so much

[applegrove]

65. Had a weirdo interested in me when I was 23. I saw the danger signs. I got out of the situation. But

he came after me in multiple ways later. Played me off against everyone in my life. I think there is something that happens when some people don't have much capacity to love or accept love. Their episodic memories (memories that have a 'where' you were or 'when' attached to them) are not filled with happy childhood memories or any happy memories at all. They are filled with grievances. And because your episodic memory is your narrative...and because they don't accept and then emit love... they have nothing but shaky episodic memories of grievances and nothing to mitigate bad feelings. No love/wonder makes it in. So they have low self esteem and anger issues. So they emit that and people don't want to be with them. So they get rejected. So they attack. Whereas people with endless episodic memories, dyslexics, have enormous capacity to love and connect to the world in various ways and are very kind people. But dyslexics have to learn the hard way there are dangerous people in the world and how to have the proper boundaries so they don't get exploited by others for all their goodness and happy childhood episodic memories. We need to find a way to fill those dangerous types of people with memories of good events. That wake up their narrative to humanity. I don't know how. Maybe an App? Maybe course of meds? I don't know.

[wickerwoman]

67. That seems like an unnecessarily harsh appraisal of the situation.

Lots of "weird" people are able to establish relationships with people who are less judgmental. Some of the happiest couples I know are pairs of weirdos.

On the other hand, there are people who give out warning signs in that they seem unstable, unpredictable and dangerous. Anger, arrogance, meanness, pettiness - those are "red flags". Not "weirdness".

I'm quite attracted to "weird" people in the sense of people who have a different take on life and march to the beat of their own drummer. I wouldn't avoid someone for having piercings or purple hair or a speech impediment or BO or an intense interest in skinks. I've always found that those are some of the most interesting people with the most to teach me.

I avoid people who's behaviour I can't predict and who could potentially harm me (including "normal" people when they are very drunk or high).