Why Elliot Rodger Killed 6 People...

and Himself
girlschase.com /content/why-elliot-rodger-killed-6-people-and-himself
In case you havent seen it yet, a 22-year-old named Elliot Rodger went on a killing spree, stabbing to
death three people, shooting three more, and then turning the gun on himself.
Before doing so, he posted a video on YouTube in which he talks about his rationale:
Out of curiosity, I watched it, though I usually prefer avoiding the news since theres always another
death, always another killing... yet in a rather mixed batch of emotions, covering everything from horror
to rage to sadness to recognition, I knew exactly what I was seeing.
Because I think a lot of young males in Western society go through what Elliot went through I know
certainly I did and while its easy (and undoubtedly true) to say that had he hung in there a few more
years, his life wouldve gone dramatically differently, as would have the lives of his victims, its worth
taking a moment to understand what was going on inside the man that prompted him to do things he
could never take back...
... and also, for anyone bothered by thoughts of following a similar path, what he should have done
instead.

What I notice when I watch that video of Elliot is that his speaking patterns, the way he describes his
life, and much more sounds a LOT like how I used to sound back in my pre-pickup days... a LOT.
Everything from about how excluded he is, to how everyone else has done this to him, to how much
enjoyment everyone else is getting out of his or her life and how hes the only one who isnt a part of
things.
I know this is not an uncommon mindset. There are not a ton of young guys going through this,
percentage wise, but theres enough that this isnt some rare place to be in your life.
Its not just an American phenomenon. Ive seen young guys in Asia going through it too. It happens in
Europe. Ive had guys contact me from Africa to talk about being frustrated and hopeless with women,
and I dont doubt there are some there feeling exactly this bad as well.
Every time this feeling erupts forth into real world violence, the news media acts like its some
shocking, surprising, totally unexpected event, and that the perpetrator is an inhuman monster who
cannot be related to.
The problem though isnt that he isnt relatable he is, if you take a moment to understand where hes
coming from.
The problem is that he did not take the time to relate to others himself and this is the source of all the
woes that men in his position (my former self included) experience.

Why Couldnt He Wait?

I learned about Elliot when one of my buddies shared his video, saying, This guy killed a bunch of
people because he never kissed a girl guess he didnt know how to use Google.
I watched the video. Its clear Elliot was smart. He has a good voice, and hes very articulate. He looks
pretty cool, honestly. Hes got that cooped up, edgy Ive never been laid and I know you can tell
energy about him, but everybodys got that until hes taken his first lover. Thats how it goes.
Thing is, when I watch this video, all I can think is, God DAMN it, Elliot, if youd just hung in there a
few more years you wouldve been up to your EYEBALLS in pussy, I guarantee it!
6 innocent people are dead now and hes killed himself too because he couldnt wait.
Why couldnt he wait?
Why didnt he find Girls Chase? Why didnt he use this site?
Or perhaps, even had he found it, he wouldve just thrown it out as hype and nonsense. Who needs
that... Id rather go just kill somebody.
[EDIT: I just checked out Rooshs article on Elliot over at ROK (good article; you should read it), and
apparently Elliot was an active member of PUAHate.com, which until this past weekend was a place
where guys whod mostly never tried hung out saying that it was impossible to pick up women... they
didnt discuss GC much on there, though they did say that my article Dont Let Her Go implies I am a
weirdo rapist or something... so I guess thats why it isnt that he didnt know how to Google, its that
he did, and just didnt believe it]
The problem is depression. What depression does, among its myriad of horrible effects, is that it
FORCES you into a hard present time orientation.
When you are deeply depressed, you are firmly focused on the present time only, with perhaps some
regretful nostalgia for the past, and zero ability to conceptualize a remotely appealing future.

You look ahead, and all you see is darkness after interminable darkness... one long, endless stretch of
days that never end, filled with suffering and humiliation and defeat, watching everyone else around
you enjoy the things that you can never have.
So, of course, you get desperate for a way out, and you become filled with resentment, wanting to get
revenge on all those stupid, ignorant people out there who are enjoying themselves mindlessly without
knowing or caring what you are going through and dealing with.
What you MISS is that other people are NOT stupid or mindless.
Theyre NOT insensitive.
Theyre NOT living perfect lives.
But you dont see this, because the further into depression you are, the more focused on yourself you
become in a sort of desperate fight for self-preservation, and the farther and farther your ability to
empathize with other people falls into the pit.

Convinced into a Corner

I spent a lot of time in a very dark place as a teen. Each day was torture of trying to be cool, but
knowing I was probably failing; trying to get girls attention, but usually not getting it; trying to be
smooth, but usually being stilted.
Time went by slower then than at any other time in my life. The days ticked by, each second seeming to
last an eternity. I felt like I was trapped in some kind of prison of the infinite, from which I could never
escape. The only time I was free from it was when I was asleep.
I struggled with bitterness and resentment everyone around me had friends; I was hearing all the
stories about boys kissing girls; before long I knew they were going to be having sex. I was being left
behind. Me! An honors student whom everyone said was the funniest person they knew, the coolest
guy they knew, the most independent guy they knew, the most creative guy they knew... it wasnt just
unfair. It was horrific. It was some sort of great cosmic joke... just like Elliot, Id worked hard to make
myself into someone great, and instead I found myself standing there entirely left out.
So, one day, the inevitable thought occurred to me: well, Im probably going to kill myself anyway, so I
might as well take some of these people all enjoying their idyllic lives with me.
I thought about it for a few minutes at first I felt relieved; okay, now I know what I have to do.
But as I turned it over and examined it logically, I realized something that made the thought
immediately shift from relieving to utterly horrifying:
all these people are working just as hard as I am to fit in they all are fighting to win at dating and
mating and popularity and life JUST as hard.
It isnt some kind of game where Im the only player. EVERYONE is a player. And the ones who are
winning are winning because theyve figured out what it takes to win.
If Im not winning, the logical conclusion isnt that its because the world is unfair and Im doing what Im
supposed to to win and just being cruelly deprived of that...
... instead, its that Im NOT doing what it takes to win, and that I need to take things back to the
drawing board instead, and figure out exactly what it is the guys who are cleaning up have figured out
that I have not, and exactly what I need to be doing differently to get the results that I want.
I had convinced myself into a corner of inaction, Id realized, following a success formula Id picked up

somewhere that didnt work, and now I needed to throw that formula out and find one that DID work and
do that instead.
The world I was living was a lie. I needed to wake up.
Thus, instead of going farther down the path of desperation, I reinvented myself that year. And while
that reinvention didnt give me the tools I needed just yet to bring women into my life, it set me on a
path one that would finally enable me to start succeeding later on into the future from then, and
eventually led to me reaching a place where Id outpaced all those guys I used to sit and stew about
doing so much better than I was with women.
And when I watch Elliots video, all I see in it is a version of myself that didnt stumble on that
realization... and I just want to slap him across the face and yell, Wake up, you fool!!
Because the way is clear, and its already laid out in front of you.
All you have to do is open your bloody eyes. Its all around you.
Elliot was too blinded by his own smarts and calculations and self-satisfaction to see it, though.

So who owes you, anyway?

Do I owe you? What do I owe you? Whatve you done for me that I owe you it?
How about that girl over there? Whats she owe you? She owe you some sex, does she?
Heres the problem with the entitlement mentality lots of people end up with in depression, and that
often DRIVES that depression:
its that they start viewing other people as some big, agglomerated group of oneness .
As if she and her and that guy and this other guy over here and that girl in the checkered shirt are all in
alliance together with each other, and against you.
And thats why the killing spree happens. Because heres the trippy part about mass shootings: these
are nearly always tied to suicide, which Denys de Catanzaro has hypothesized (and published a lot of
research on) comes down to a mathematical calculation we do in our heads about our own likelihood to
reproduce.
What a mass shooting seems to be, so far as I can tell, is someone whos already calculated that hes
on the way out deciding that before he goes,
hes going to thin out the members of an out-group of competing individuals who are not part of his ingroup.

Thinning the Competition

This is my own theory, so bear with me while I flesh it out. If you arent familiar with the theory around
evolution and suicide, this probably sounds pretty alien, so let me cite the backing for this.
In Reproductive status, family interactions, and suicidal ideation: Surveys of the general public and

high-risk groups, published in the journal Ethology and Sociobiology, de Catanzaro writes:

Evolutionary modeling predicts an erosion of self-preservative genetic expression in the

conjunction of low reproductive potential and burdensomeness toward kin. Although
culture and pathology clearly bear on human suicide, some of its emotional
concomitants could reflect such evolution. A survey probing reproductive behavior,
quality of family contacts, and suicidal ideation was administered to samples of the
general public of Ontario and high-suicide-risk groups, including elderly, psychiatric,
criminal psychiatric, and homosexual individuals. Within each sample, variance in
suicidal ideation related to reproductive and family-social variables. Social isolation and
perceived burdensomeness toward family were especially correlated with suicidal
ideation.

... and in Evolutionary limits to self- preservation, also in Ethology and Sociobiology, he writes:

A simple mathematical formula can be derived, on the basis of inclusive fitness theory
and notions of reproductive value, to represent the residual capacity of an individual to
influence his inclusive fitness. This formula involves the individuals remaining
reproductive potential in his expected natural lifetime, plus the summated impacts of his
continued existence on the remaining reproductive potentials of each of his kin, each
weighted by the coefficient of relationship. In theory, this quantity should predict the
extent to which self-preservation is optimally expressed in that individual. For asocial
species, the value will vary from zero up to the maximal reproductive value observable,
and the logic of the Medawar-Williams theory of senescence should apply directly.
However, for highly social species like our own, it can be demonstrated that negative
values can also obtain, given the conjunction of low residual reproductive potential and
burdensomeness toward kin. Much empirical evidence suggests that outright selfdestructiveness is often found in circumstances of such conjunction.

In other words, what de Catanzaro is saying is that it seems that suicide occurs when an individuals
subconscious has gauged his likelihood to reproduce vs. his overall impact on the survivability of his
genes, taking into account any possible burdens he places on his familys reproductive odds.
That is, an individual who calculates that the likelihood he reproduces is almost nil, and that the burden
he will place upon his family to provide for him, direct their time and energy away from helping other
children of the family or additional family members, and things of that nature, is too great,
will decide that he is a failed organism who is dragging down his genes likelihood of being passed on
by negatively affecting his family and other closely related individuals so will remove himself as a
burden.
What I theorize is happening in these mass shootings notice that the individual almost never targets
his own family is that his subconscious is calculating that these individuals he is excluded by and
cannot relate to are out-group competitors, and by taking a few of them with him he is opening up more
opportunity for his surviving family members.
For a simple example, lets say you have a tiny village in the middle of nowhere comprised of three
families, Family A, Family B, and Family C. Family A has a son whos depressed, and keeps getting
rejected by the girls in Families B and C and is excluded from hanging out together by the boys in
Families B and C. Ultimately he decides he will never get anywhere with them, and always be alone,
and in a bitter, resentful rampage he goes and spears a bunch of people in Families B and C, then

drowns himself.
Now whats likely to happen?
Everyone mourns... but there is a lot more of Family As members left than there are Family Bs and
Family Cs. Therefore, despite the anchor he was on Family As likelihood to reproduce for a while, on
the way out he actually managed to increase the likelihood that Family As genes prosper, since there
will be more of them to reproduce now than there are of Family Bs and Family Cs.
Also, notice that these murderous rampages are almost always of individuals in the prime of their
reproductive years?
No one drives to an old folks home and goes killing people.
Nor do old folks feel the need to go on murderous rampages themselves.
Its always young men, in the prime of their lives, who are sexually unsuccessful, and they always
target as their victims out-group (to them) individuals who seem unrelatable and othered to them and
who are otherwise apparently sexually successful.
Theyre thinning out the competition to make more room for their surviving, successful relatives to pass
on their genes.

Snap Out of It They ARENT the Competition

I doubt many people reading this article are considering embarking on a mass killing spree.
But Id bet my bottom dollar there still ARE plenty of people who feel some degree of resentment
toward others out there enjoying things they themselves are not enjoying.
Could be women.
Could be money.
Could be anything.
That othering youre doing leads you to out-group these people as unrelatable. You quit empathizing
with them, and just resent them, as if they owe you something.
Well, they dont owe you nuthin. Not a damn thing.
Wake up. If youre living in a world where you think that everyone else is enjoying life and only you
are left out like I used to, like Elliot did youre living a lie.

Because everyone else is suffering. Theyre all confused and unsure. Most of them are copying one
another, trying their best to fit in. Youre probably trying to be different and wondering why it isnt
working, but different only works a small percentage of the time, and thats true with anything you
want to learn music, or tennis, or sales, you do it by copying the best and going from there, not by
trying to be unique. Only once youre already good at doing what the best do do you branch out and
express yourself.
No one cares about what makes you special just like you dont care about what makes anyone ELSE
special. Seriously did you EVER sit there thinking, Wow, John is just so special because he [Johns
good qualities]?
Of course not. So if YOU dont think that about anyone, why would anyone think that about you
because Hollywood told you so?
No. Wake up.
Theyre not the enemy and theres no reason to resent them. But theyre not going to save you either.
Theyre just people.
Read the article on depression:
How to Overcome Depression
Read the article on victim mentality:
How Victim Mentality Can Stifle Your Life and Luck with Women
Read the article on obsessing over one special girl:
Cant Stop Thinking About Her? Heres Why You Need to Meet More Girls
And read the article on what REALLY works with women, and why:

How to Get Girls: The Last Post Youll Ever Need

I got into this line of work in large part because I know how close I came to a lot of bad things going
down in my life when I was younger and without guidance, and I wanted to get stuff out there that could
show anyone who is where I WAS that the only reason hes even there in the first place is because his
thinking is all tangled up and hes looking at things with blinders on.
All you see when you are in this mentality is the view from a tunnel. Its like being trapped in Platos
allegory of the cave and thinking that the shadows are people.
Theyre not. Theyre the lie. The truth is what you cannot see.
Stop waiting for something to happen thats never going to happen, quit blaming other people, and get
out there and go make your life better.
Follow the examples of people who are already doing what works, and stop listening to media bullcrap
about how you have to be a nice guy or really funny or whatever Everybody Loves Raymond is telling
you works with women. It doesnt. This does. Or get a natural friend and copy him. Or move to some
exotic country where women are easier for men of your background and demographic, like Eastern
Europe or South America or Asia is for many men.
Fact is, among all those other people out there having fun, nearly all of them is leading a far less fun,
exciting life than you think they are on the outside, and you wont know that until you really get to know
them.
And when you really put the screws on and upgrade your life by emulating guys who know what theyre
doing,
you will find you so quickly outpace all but the very best of those guys you used to think had it all that
you wont believe it.
They arent the competition. Know what the competition is?
Its the faulty mental models youre working with trying to do whatever it is youre trying to do (get girls,
make friends, make money, whatever).
Frankly, I wish someone wouldve put me in the car right next to Elliot Rodger when he was filming that
YouTube video. I wouldve smacked him in the face, then immediately taken him out to the boardwalk
or a bar and had him kissing a girl within an hour or two.
I cant personally run around the world saving everyone whos on the brink, of course, but I shouldnt
have to thats why I built this site and put articles like this on here.
So if youre feeling in the least bit desperate or resentful, this is my slap in the face to you.
And if youre 22 and you still havent kissed a girl, read this, and make this your mission in life until you
pull the damn thing off:
How to Kiss Girls in Public and Have It Go Great .
You have no excuse. And other people are not the enemy, or competition.
Its your own damn head that is.
So fix it.
Chase

Related Articles from GirlsChase.com