By Jake S.
Whenever there’s a mass shooting, especially in the gun-crazy United States, there inevitably follows a lengthy blame-assignment period in which everyone wants to lay the tragedy at the feet of whatever group they ultimately deem responsible, which often doesn’t include the actual shooter. The Isla Vista shootings of May 25, which left 7 people dead – including the murderer, Elliot Rodger – are no exception. In addition to the usual suspects (parents, school administrators, therapists, the media, the gun culture, Hollywood, and internet pornography), this case reveals a vast hive of scum and villainy, both online and off, that features “pickup artists,” bodybuilders, people who hate pickup artists (and bodybuilders), racists, misogynists, the Mega Millions Lottery, and perhaps even Justin Bieber. (We’ll get to him momentarily.)
Naturally I looked for a way to blame Wikipedia, too, but in the end, I just couldn’t do it. Perhaps my best-known aphorism is “Wikipedia is a revenge platform,” and it was in this case, but it also wasn’t enough. Elliot Rodger half-heartedly tried, and utterly failed, to satisfy his desire for payback against the so-called “manosphere” by Wikipedia editing alone, and the rest, you already know. So I’m writing this more as a “cautionary tale”; do with it what you will.
The Boy With The Thorn In His Side
Rodger had a Wikipedia account, “ElliotR1,” created on Feb. 12, 2013, which he initially used to remove this image of the winner of a wrestling match in Nuba from the article about his grandfather, George Rodger, a famous photographer. At the time, he explained that the photograph was “too silly and inappropriate for wikipedia” and that “people might mistake it for a picture of the photographer.” We now know that Elliot Rodger
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