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Notes -
Steven Crowder has leaked portions of the Nashville shooter's "manifesto": https://nitter.cz/scrowder/status/1721545965402726734
I put manifesto in scare quotes because the leaked portions seem to more part of a "schizo mass shooting planning diary" as opposed to "schizo essay on motivations for the shooting." That said, the leaked pages do reveal some insight into the shooter's motivation. The biggest surprise to me is that it doesn't really mention being discriminated against for being trans. Instead it focuses on the shooter's perceived perpetrators being rich privileged white kids with daddy's money. Basically the lyrics to The Dead Kennedys's song Holiday in Cambodia if they were written by a mass shooter. Also semi-surprising to me is their repeated use of the word "faggot" as an insult. I wouldn't have been surprised to see this in a mtf trans shooter's diary, but it's a bit surprising to see from ftm trans. Maybe some sort of performative masculinity?
In any case, the documents appear to be genuine though they haven't been 100% confirmed. Currently there's a lot of hubbub over whether or not they were appropriate to leak in the first place, but I see very little questioning of their authenticity. What are your thoughts?
Why suppress this? I can understand suppressing such writings generally, but AFAIK this is the first time such a thing has actually been kept under wraps for any length of time.
I doubt anyone would be inspired by it, and it's certainly not going to spark a movement or any kind of adoration for the shooter like we saw with Elliott Rodger.
Maybe Crowder isn't printing a genius rhetorical flourish, but I really doubt it given the kind of thinking on display.
Possibly because (1) the parents of the dead wanted it suppressed and (2) it doesn't do the transgender movement any favours (I'm wondering if Hale is getting the 'No True Scotsman' treatment because even NBC news is deadnaming and ABC is misgendering with references not to "Aiden" and "he" but "Audrey" and "she").
This person killed young children, so can't be defended on grounds of "they were bullied into it by the victims!" and can't be presented as a victim themselves (unlike the usual narrative around transgender people), and the 'manifesto' reads more like the stereotypical 'incel rant'. So if presented as a transgender he/him man, it looks bad. But if it's a crazy Christian gun-clutching family who drove their daughter nuts, well - that's different, isn't it?
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In general we shouldn’t publicize mass shootings because the biggest cause of mass shootings is social contagion.
I am going to assume everything in the manifesto is the white hate I expected. It’s useful to publicize this for political gain but it’s also likely to lead to more mass shootings. It would be better not publicize the crazies.
Out of all the publicly released shooter manifestos, this document is so inane and thoughtless, so silly on its face (were it not backed up by devastating horrific actions) that I’d think it less likely to compel imitation than a well-written thesis on fallen glory or overwhelming oppression.
…However, a small part of me fears that this document was suppressed precisely because the suppressors believe such speech is all it would take to turn loose a flood of school shooters — either because they’re out of touch and don’t understand that such speech can be found in every corner of the Internet, or because they themselves felt a compelling need to go out and shoot them some crackers too after reading it.
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The manifesto directly makes reference to the kind of white privilege rhetoric the president of the US has spoken about and endorsed as a reason for the shooting. By the left's own standards, this would implicate Joe Biden as a stochastic terrorist.
This kind of thing is the predictable endgame of the dehumanising white-hating rhetoric like privilege theory that a lot of us have been warning about for years.
People are going to run amok; when they do so they're going to pick up whatever's floating around in their society. Centuries ago, it might've been motivated and couched in religious or supernatural terms; in other times and places, it might be due to real or imagined grievances against other individuals or groups.
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What I've read of Elliott Rodger's writings makes me go "I completely understand why you couldn't get a girlfriend". He's genuinely hurt about it, but he's also genuinely an entitled, whiny, pain in the ass. Not alone does he expect girls to fall at his feet in adoration simply because he's a handsome gentleman, he's nasty to those he considers his social inferiors (parts about turning up with his family at red carpet events where he writes abusively about the staff simply doing their jobs; just because your dad is currently an important director doesn't mean you have any clout or importance of your own).
Part of that was probably the usual adolescent turmoil, but again were I a sixteen or seventeen year old girl at that time I wouldn't have wanted to go out with a perpetually scowling guy who thought the sun shone out of his own backside and who would probably not been concerned with my feelings or wants.
You seem to assume he was walking broadcasting this sentiment 24/7. In long relationship, a woman would likely gain knowledge about his attitudes (but many people successfully hide parts of their personality for long time) but this doesn't explain short-term failures. The text is written after years on unsuccessful attempts, so maybe he was different when he started trying pursuing relationships.
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Ah yes they must have sensed it. It’s the old vaginatron morality detector versus women like assholes theory. I will say that nastyness towards social inferiors is not disqualifying men as sexual partners. I think both sides overrate morality as a factor in sexual success.
It took me some time to understand your joke. Then, I tried uncensored gpt-3 and chatGPT explain it, to see how far could they, and results are poor.
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I'm not a woman but what I read of his manifesto made it abundantly clear why he had no success with women or men. This isn't some kind of secret vagina-based loser-detection system - his attitudes and beliefs were obvious from his writing and videos alone, and you don't even need to be a woman to find someone like that creepy and off-putting. His incredibly poor social skills were absolutely a massive turn-off to women, but it isn't like men particularly enjoy the company of bitter, resentful and entitled narcissists either. There's no moral condemnation here at all - women (though maybe not consciously) are looking at a man with terrible social skills and correctly deducing that he'd be awful to spend extended periods of time with, and furthermore, that his children would also likely be creepy weirdos who have great difficulty reproducing. I agree that morality isn't really a huge factor in sexual success - but it wasn't the Supreme Gentleman's moral failings that prevented him from getting laid (hell, just look at how many marriage proposals convicted murderers get). It was the fact that he was an off-putting loser with terrible social skills that prevented him from getting any action.
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Maybe Mr. Rogers was an asshole. However, he also sucked at being an asshole. Before the murders, he had managed to engage in some low-level assholery, spraying orange juice at passing couples and trying to throw someone off a balcony before being beaten and thrown off himself. He was unable to recruit allies and was a less effective asshole than your local drunken brawler.
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It's not about morality, it's about the fact that being pissy and whiny is hugely unsexy.
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Look, you read anything by Rodgers, and it's a constant torrent of "Waaah! I'm rich, I'm handsome, I'm well-bred, I'm desirable, why doesn't anyone want to go out with me? Waaaah! Also fuck those low-class serfs who only exist to cater to the whims of their natural superiors like me, and why can my sister get a boyfriend and I can't get anyone? And why are my friends all going off with girls instead of hanging round with me? I DESERVE HOT CHICKS BECAUSE I'M THAT GREAT!"
You can feel sorry for him feeling isolated and frustrated, and want to give him a good kick up the backside for being so self-involved. His family do seem to have tried to help him, but he was too stuck in his own spiral of "it's not fair, it's not right, I should get what I want because I'm so great" and not willing to look at "maybe being unpleasant to be around has something to do with why people don't want to be around me?"
Of course he was extremely unpleasant generally, but I felt you were kinda reducing it to: he wasn’t showing the girls proper consideration, therefore he couldn’t get laid, as if that was the true measure and cause of all things.
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I didn't get the impression that @FarNearEverywhere was arguing that all incels are assholes. I think almost everyone on this board would agree that there are plenty of pleasant, well-meaning people who are lonely and romantically/sexually frustrated through no fault of their own, purely as a result of being unattractive or socially awkward.
But Elliot Rodger was a grumpy dickhead, long before he committed his murder spree. Perhaps being a grumpy dickhead wasn't the only or primary reason that he was lonely and romantically frustrated, but I'd be very surprised if it helped.
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If I had to generally say what most (straight) dudes I know who have no troubles with constantly getting women have in common, it would probably be that they are funny guys who are generally fun to hang out even if you're a (straight) guy yourself. Rodger, by no account, was one. You can of course be a dick towards some people, like the staff, and still be gregarious with your friends, but Rodger just seems like a boiling cauldron of loathing towards everyone.
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Most people aren't perfect at code switching between "want to abuse janitor" and "want to impress chick" personality. Also, not all social inferiors are socially inferior in the same way. I've heard of guys being popular because they mogged on some guy in their social group or fended off a bum, not so much for yelling at a girl behind the counter in McDonalds.
In short, when angry guys in the manosphere observe that women don't like them even though they like other assholes just fine, they often fail to observe that they're not the correct sort of asshole.
Sometimes, often, they genuinely aren't assholes though. It's just that their way of not being assholes is not attractive. And that's okay. It's not women's responsibility, anyone's responsibility, to reward kind unassuming people with sex. But from a just world theory standpoint you can’t say that, so the demonizing and counter-demonizing follows.
Yeah, but also when they do try to be assholes their way of being assholes isn't attractive either.
There's also something to be said for not mistaking "kind" for "refraining from being unkind because you'd be bad at it".
I do not blame women from assuming the worst of those guys, really, because I've seen enough to believe that women do really have to deal, or in best case to expect to deal, with a whole lot of repulsive men.
They generally don’t go out, be assholes, and then come back saying that being an asshole doesn’t work. They just stew in the belief that they would be successful if they were assholes. And I have to defend their view again a bit here.
To be successful, they’d have to play the social game, which is essentially zero sum. So they’d have to step on a few toes, clip a few wings on their way to the social middle. Very social, inherently high status people can get to and maintain their righteous place in the social hierarchy with minimal breakage, but that’s not in the cards for the bitter rejects we’re talking about here. They’d have to crudely beat up on some other losers and social inferiors just to get to the social center.
That's just how the game is played, you have to say 'me first' a little.
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i think giving any kind of attention to the shooters increases the probability of future shootings. i think there is very strong evidence that a similar thing happens with suicides. i'm not sure how big of an impact it is or if its worth the trade off to suppress such things but in a free society it is difficult to suppress such things.
Well, that and mass shootings have political benefits to the side the media is on.
Which is why the ones that aren't the demographics they want to tar and feather get dropped relatively quickly compared to the "white men" ones.
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