Ditto here . He had money, he had a shiny car, He had it all. All cept for the China. That's all he was missing. And yet he thought it totally justified murder. Though what Goddess are you talking about, out of curiosity?
He was pathologically insane. We're not insane, we don't need to believe the bullshit he used to "justify" what he did.
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Unrelated thought here:
I was on a forum reading about this. It wasn't Wizardchan, but I'd characterize it as wizardchan-lite.
Someone mentioned identifying with one aspect of Rodger's insanity, which was that acquiring certain objects would = getting laid. You can see this showing up in multiple posts he's made,
like this one. How can that guy who has these low level power items get that lovely girl?
In the manifesto, he talks about buying expensive clothes in the last couple of years (though not a full wardrobe - he mentions wearing the same item over and over), upgrading from his old car (which he doesn't even deign to identify) to the BMW, etc. almost as if these were Warcraft armor upgrades.
That's what the forum person focused on. Like Elliot, he'd grown up as a Warcrack addict and felt like he had overcome a peculiar video game mentality of
do this, then this, then acquire this item, then this, and finally you've finished the quest - collect your vagina reward. Even though he was not insane and had a suspicion that the world didn't work that way, it seemed to be his default "problem solving" skill. Another variation might be
acquire degree = collect massive amounts of money. Obviously the world isn't a bit of code running in a computer (as far as we know...) Some people who complete the quest aren't going to get that sweet +2 Armor of Metrosexuality.
I'm not blaming a game or a company or anything like that, but wondering if that mentality can become a distorting lens for how a kid views the real world as he or she matures. Is that a real thing?