By now we've all heard about the tragedy in Isla Vista over the weekend. We've all heard about Elliot Rodger, the troubled 22-year-old who went on a shooting spree that killed at least six people before killing himself. We've over-heard of it, and we're sick of thinking about it. I know that I, personally, look forward to the next full day I can go without thinking about this tragedy and others like it.
But that day has not yet come, at least not for me. There's something present in the media coverage of this particular mass shooting that wasn't there in some of the other recent ones. (Caveat: I hate that we live in a world where I can compare mass shootings in a manner similar to natural disasters or national elections: they impact us all and come almost as frequently.) Various articles written about Rodger--specifically those that chronicle his history of simultaneously hating and lusting after women--bring up his participation in various forums on the internet, most notably one called PUAhate.com (I believe it has been taken down this week? I can't find it, anyway). For more on what PUAhate is and how Rodger was involved, click here, here, or here.
I don't want to get into the particulars of PUAhate.com, especially since I haven't been able to look at the site myself. I don't believe that Pick-up artists or their haters are responsible for the lives that Rodger took. I don't believe gun owners are responsible for the lives that Rodger took. I don't believe that some poor model is responsible for the lives that Rodger took. I know that Elliot Rodger is responsible for his actions and that, beyond the man himself, the system of influences that lead him to make the choices he did is too complex to be able to point at a single element of his life and call it the primary culprit.
Nonetheless, I think that this tragedy should cause us to look more carefully at our lives on the internet. I've outlined my thoughts on internet social life before, and I've even written on this blog about the importance of public goods as a method of keeping people from losing touch with other people. Elliot Rodger brings these previous thoughts of mine back to the forefront of my mind, and suddenly, I feel like there are few greater causes to champion than those of community membership and worldly citizenship.
The other day, while reading one of the aforementioned articles about Rodger's PUAhate.com involvement, I stumbled upon WizardChan.org. (Caveat: I urge you not to go there yourself unless and until you're fully emotionally prepared for it; I can say that I wasn't ready for the hate and fear that I met there, and it has greatly and negatively affected me this week.) WizardChan.org is a forum website populated primarily by men who seem to be aged from teens to upper-twenties, perhaps older. From what I've read on the site, these men hang a large portion of their identity on the fact that they are virgins and that that separates them from society in a large, often crippling way. They call themselves Wizards, which is where the name of the site comes from, and they refer to other people (I suppose under the assumption that all other people, even who just don't consider their sexual-inactivity to be fundamental to their being, are sexually active) as "normies."
All of that, taken by itself, sounds pretty harmless, if a bit unfortunate and strange. I can't speak to why these men think that their virginity is such an enormous and terrible part of their lives, and I don't know what makes these men choose to form a community around such a trait, but those oddities are not things I want to talk about here.
If you've been to WizardChan or other sites like it--sites (most often forum sites) based around one strangely specific common interest, personality trait, etc.--you'll know that they've developed their own language, their own etiquette, their own systems of self-moderation and social hierarchies. They are not unsophisticated communities. Users on these sites are often more entrenched in the forum life than, say, I am on the forum sites I've used to find answers to questions about how to jump my Prius' battery, change out the HD on my laptop, or get emoji on my phone.
If you've been to WizardChan or other sites like it--many of the above sites, but specifically the ones with a large population of very negative, frightening, even at times violent and threatening posts--you know that these communities are not overall friendly. The user base is not necessarily made up entirely of people who, like Elliot Rodger, will act on violent thoughts and words, but the threatening nature of the forums cannot be denied. WizardChan is full of posts spewing hatred and bitterness towards "normies," many of which condone violence and rape in an offhand, desensitized manner.
WizardChan makes me physically sick. Sick because I cannot square the circle of these people's perspective on life and other people. Sick because I want so badly for there to be a way to destroy the lens of hate and fear that they use to see the world. Sick because, even those these people are in the minority, I fear meeting them in the real world and possibly becoming one of the "whores" they rail against, simply because I made pleasant conversation with no intention of turning it into a romantic or sexual interaction.
But even forums without an outright violent bend give me considerable pause. This is a livejournal post from years ago that hearkens back to an old forum I used to frequent: AntiShurtugal. The forum itself is no longer running, but it was a bastion of editorials and conversations discussing, negatively, Christopher Paolini's Inheritance series of books. Some time in high school, I went from moderately liking Eragon and its sequels to absolutely detesting them. (For the record, I believe it was a relatively slow descent, and it probably had at least a little to do with the fact that I was a teenaged writer who felt trapped in an inability to publish my books.) I briefly found a community of like-minded people in AntiShurtugal: these people would write long articles analyzing the series piece by piece, tearing it apart for its lack of artistry, for its plot holes and inconsistencies, and doing so joyfully. I don't know that I made many contributions, but I consumed others' like water in a desert.
I had friends in real life who shared my dislike of Eragon, but commiserations with them never got me very far: it wasn't a conversation they wanted to belabor because it just wasn't as important to them as it was to me. Had there been no AntiShurtugal, I honestly might not have hated Eragon as much as I did, since hatred takes energy, and AntiShurtugal was the only renewable source I had.
And that's why specific community forum sites on the internet always scare me to a degree. Even if a forum site were based around unicorns and butterflies and making vegan gluten free candies to give to homeless veterans, I would worry about its members. These internet communities that base themselves around what might otherwise be a single, even unimportant facet of a human life give those facets greater importance than they would otherwise be able to sustain. Thus, they warp the users' perspectives of the world; it was easy to forget that Eragon wasn't universally hated and that there were legitimate reasons to enjoy the series, because I spent so much of my time around people who took its lack of quality for granted.
Forming communities on the internet is not in and of itself a bad thing. When paired with healthy and full lives spent with real people in the real world, especially with people who think differently and have different interests and beliefs than we do, internet communities can be pleasant and even important places in society.
But even the best internet communities can cultivate dark sides full of hate and bitterness that spreads negative thoughts and worldviews. I'd like to reiterate that I don't think that PUAhate or WizardChan or their users are responsible for Elliot Rodger's actions. But they are responsible for making sure they don't allow themselves to follow in his footsteps. Hate and anger like Rodger's doesn't need mental illness in order to be unhealthy and lead to tragedy. And lives of solitude spent finding solace in like-minded lonely people on the internet doesn't need much help to foster such hate and anger.
