Authorities Saturday identified Elliot Rodger, 22, as the gunman of the deadly drive-by shooting near the University of California, Santa Barbara where he was a student in an area college. Rodger apparently had a score to settle with the student population in the popular college town.
Six people were killed and seven more were injured. Although Rodger did not survive the gun battle with police, he lives in infamy on YouTube in a video titled “Elliot Rodger’s Retribution” where he explains that he is wreaking vengeance on the “hot girls of Santa Barbara” because women had been rejecting him since he hit puberty 8 years ago.
“For the last eight years of my life, since I hit puberty, I’ve been forced to endure an existence of loneliness, rejection and unfulfilled desires, all because girls have never been attracted to me. Girls gave their affection and sex and love to other men, never to me,” he expresses. In the video, Rodger also expressed his anger about still being a virgin despite being “the perfect guy.”
“I don’t know why you girls have never been attracted to me, but I will punish you all for it,” he says while sitting behind the wheel of his BMW. “College is the time when everyone experiences those things such as sex and fun and pleasure. In those years I’ve had to rot in loneliness, it’s not fair.”
Elliot Rodger, who was a student a Santa Barbara City College, uploaded several videos in recent months about how lonely he was and how women did not want him despite his flashy and expense outward appearance.
According to Forbes , Elliot also aired his frustrations about his lack of female companionship on forums for bodybuilders and anti-pick-up artists. The latter forum led a Daily Kos writer to blame the “men’s rights movement” for influencing Rodger into “psychopathy and murder,” pointing to the fact that Rodger had subscribed to three different YouTube channels that gave advice on how to pick up women and be an “alpha male.” “Rather than seeking mental help for some obvious issues, he sought out the Men’s Rights Movement,” writes OllieGarkey . “He internalized their hatred of women.”
Judging by his social media footprint, the disturbed student clearly was a loner who had a problem with blending in with the young, hip college town where he lived. Rodger’s Facebook page is full of selfies and photos of his rich but lonely life. There are photos of him, by himself, flying first class and attending a private Katy Perry concert, and with his parents, at the Hunger Games premiere in 2012, where his father was the second unit director of the film . Rodger’s friends are seemingly absent from his photos and make few comments; he likes many of his own photos, and is usually the only one to do so. Judging by his Facebook page, the disturbed student was obsessed with himself and with putting his wealthy lifestyle on-display. However, very few seemed to take notice.
YouTube was the outlet where Rodger expressed his deep feelings of resentment, despair, and even jealousy.
In a message uploaded to YouTube and transcribed by the LA Times , Rodger said, “On the day of retribution, I am going to enter the hottest sorority house at UCSB and I will slaughter every single spoiled, stuck-up, blond slut I see inside there . All those girls I’ve desired so much. They have all rejected me and looked down on me as an inferior man if I ever made a sexual advance toward them, while they throw themselves at these obnoxious brutes.”
He continued:
“I take great pleasure in slaughtering all of you… You will finally see that I am, in truth, the superior one, the true alpha male… I’ll take to the streets of Isla Vista and slay every single person I see there. All those popular kids who live such lives of hedonistic pleasure while I’ve had to rot in loneliness all these years… Well, now I will be a god compared to you, you will all be animals, you are animals and I will slaughter you like animals. I’ll be a god exacting my retribution on all those who deserve it and you do deserve it just for the crime of living a better life than me.”
The writings, videos, and messages left behind by Elliot Rodger paints a disturbing picture of a young man, in the prime of his life, with every thing of material value at his fingertips, but who still could not find peace or happiness within his life.
[Photo Credit: YouTube]