Posthumous Advice for Elliot Rodger

American spree-killers over the last few decades are so ubiquitous that it’s easy to lose track of who did what, where and when, the number of dead and the supposed reasons for the blood-letting. So, Elliot, why should I look any closer at you than, say, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold or Nidal Hasan or Adam Lanza or Nikolas Cruz or Dimitrios Pagourtzis or Dylann Roof or Devin Patrick Kelley or Omar Mateen or Stephen Paddock or Seung-hui Cho or Kip Kinkel? Even in such a collection of loathsome losers, you are unique.

Just over eight years ago—May 23, 2014, to be precise—you enacted your so-called day of retribution in Isla Vista, California. You stabbed two roommates and one of their friends to death, went to Starbucks for a triple vanilla latte and then proceeded to use your Glock 34 to shoot people and your black Beamer to run them over. Six died and 14 were injured. The post-coffee carnage, which ended with you putting the gun to your head, took just nine minutes.

Not only have I watched several of the videos you posted on YouTube, I have read portions of your 141-page rant entitled My Twisted World: The Story of Elliot Rodger. In it, you come across as emotionally stunted, misogynistic, racist and 100% clueless. I have known self-absorbed people, Elliot, but none like you. In your paper, you blamed women for all your problems and portrayed yourself as the eternal victim: a valiant, good-hearted man who is so very misunderstood. You were nothing if not redundant, mentioning “jealous” or “jealousy” 18 times, “cruel” or “cruelty” 31 times, “miserable” or “misery” 47 times and “lonely” or “loneliness” a whopping 79 times. And what came up 66 times? “Virgin” or “virginity.”

A 22-year-old never-been-kissed virgin, is, I agree, rather sad. But Elliot, you should have realized that other people—male and female alike—have such problems. You were not the only one! Had you been less shallow, less obtuse and less determined to play the victim, you might have seen that. You wandered the University of California at Santa Barbara campus and the nearby beach, and ogled the pretty girls, but you feared making contact. You ought to have understood that rejection is part of the game. Not all of them are going to jump into your arms.

Look, you were a rather handsome guy—especially when wearing the $300 Armani sunglasses of which you were so proud. Your British father and Chinese-Malaysian mother produced a fine-looking son. There is no reason why you should have been such an utter failure when it came to male-female relations. All the whining I heard in your videos and read in your account rendered you quite unappealing. I wish you could have learned a few basic things before you went on your murdering binge. Elliot, the first would have been to relax. Your urgency, your insecurity and your little-boy fear must have been all too evident to the women you sought to reach. You should have just gone easy. Be natural. Learn to talk to a woman in a normal way, a big part of which is not so much talking as listening. If you had asked her questions and truly listened to what she had to say, she might have liked you. She probably would have reciprocated by asking you questions, and soon you and she would have been engaged in a back-and-forth conversation. As a life-long heterosexual, I can tell you that few things are more enjoyable.

In talking with such a female, you would have probably wanted to go straight to a huggy-huggy, kissy-kissy thing. Bad move, Elliot. That would have been the time to give her a little room and let her assess her feelings about you. Intimacy, if she wanted it, could have come later. Don’t rush it, man!

Another thing you ought to have been aware of while you were alive and before you started killing innocent people is that men and women are similar and yet different. This is a fundamental matter and one that requires careful handling. There are exceptions to every rule, of course, but men tend to be more physically aggressive and become sexually aroused more easily than women; scientific tests have proven this rather obvious fact. We are more tactile than them and respond more to visual stimuli. Women, by contrast, are naturally more passive, or should I say reactive. What a shame that you did not know about these differences and accept them, and that you failed to work through them as most people do.

You and other male “incels” (involuntary celibates) could never grasp that there are many yearning and frustrated women, women who desire to be in healthy and functioning relationships with men. They have wants and needs, same as you did. With a little maturity, you could have met such women, got to know them and found that they are not the enemy as indicated in your videos and paper. They, too, are flesh-and-blood human beings.

The hundreds if not thousands of hours you wasted playing World of Warcraft and other such inane video games would have been better devoted to exercising daily, reading nonfiction history books, learning to play a musical instrument or to speak a foreign language, joining campus activities or doing something to help needy people in Santa Barbara. That alone would have helped you stop obsessing about how women mistreated you or failed to recognize your wonderful qualities.

Elliot, I can think of four things you might have done or at least contemplated doing before you became a mass murderer. The first is that you could have gotten down on your knees and prayed to God for guidance and blessings. Second, you could have registered with a dating service. You would be mistaken if you thought that only losers go that route. Some strong relationships and indeed marriages have resulted from dating services. The third—and my friend Ms. J.T. will blast me for saying this—is that you could have found a prostitute. Yes, two hours in bed with a hooker would at least have gotten you over that no-kiss, no-sex hurdle. Not as good as the real thing? Quite true, but in your extreme situation it might have benefited you. Finally, I would never advocate suicide but it is better than killing your roomies and a bunch of strangers.

Among your victims, you might remember George Chen (a computer science student at UCSB who loved working with children), Cheng Yuan Hong (a native of Taiwan and also a computer science major) and Weihan Wang (a computer science student who was hoping to visit Yellowstone National Park that summer). You knifed them inside your apartment. Those whom you shot were Christopher Ross Michaels-Martinez (a son of two attorneys who planned to continue the family tradition by attending law school), Katherine Breann Cooper (weeks away from graduating with a degree in art history) and Veronika Elizabeth Weiss (a straight-A freshman and avid water polo player). Ranging in age from 19 to 22, none of them deserved to die on May 23, 2014. You snuffing it would have been unfortunate, but the killings of these students were truly tragic. Their deaths were and still are mourned.

My sympathy lies overwhelmingly with them, Elliot. And yet I confess to feeling some for you. It did not have to be this way. You were intelligent enough to realize that your life was careening out of control. You could have done some of the things I have suggested here, or you could have sought help. (The “life coach” your mother hired for you obviously availed little.) It’s too late for you. Far more regretfully, it’s too late for Mr. Chen, Mr. Hong, Mr. Wang, Mr. Michaels-Martinez, Ms. Cooper and Ms. Weiss.

Christopher Ross Michaels-Martinez….