I'm curious to what might of helped him? in relation to his aspergers! or just in general.

It has to be the family -- either dad or grandparents. He just never actually mentions it. The only time he discusses his dad talking about finances is after losing all his money on the documentary gamble.

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For people who read the manifesto

Uncle Dan -- did this situation seem at all strange to you?


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Regarding the coffee attacks I thought they might be in his head but I eventually went with real. The description is fairly pathetic -- throw something at someone and then run. I think if he was making it up he'd be more triumphant in his execution. I did find the supersoaker attack hard to believe -- even accounting for the range these things have I couldn't see him getting to his car and escaping. I imagine if this happened it was pretty feeble and that he didn't really soak them all that much if at all -- picture him shooting at them from beyond range of gun and then just running.

He gunned down a bunch of people and people can confirm that he tried to push a group of girls off a ledge, why is it so hard to believe that he had a habit of chucking drinks over people?

Reading the manifesto I get the opinion that he is as far from a liar as humanly possible. He's very candid about speaking of his embarrassing situations and and extreme honesty is thought to be a trait of autism.

I mean, he's obviously going to have thought processes that differ from what actually happened, but there's no reason to doubt that the physical and verbal events that he recalls are 100% true.

Read the entire manifesto also.

I think a clear factor not being discussed anywhere (except by Henry in this thread) is the impact of video games on this kid's life.

Think of how many thousands of hours he spent in a single room playing video games throughout his adolescence. That's thousands of hours of human social interaction that he never experienced, during his most formative years. He was doing reasonably well beforehand -- he was a semi-popular skateboarder and had friends. He even had female friends who would hug him as a greeting.

But then he gets into videogames, and instead of spending time interacting with other kids, skateboarding, etc. he is now sheltered in a room staring at a screen. He doesn't develop any social skills. By the time he gets to college he is a grade-A weirdo with no empathy. His perception of reality, especially with regard to human interaction, is all messed up. His idea of how to meet women is to go sit in a park and wait for them to approach him. He literally doesn't know any better, he thinks this is how you meet women. If he had spent those thousands of hours around other teens instead of in front of a screen, would he still think that by the time he gets to college? Obviously not.

This is happening right now to millions of kids. Just spend a few hours reading Reddit and you'll see for yourself. Barely any of them will turn out to be mass murderers, but there will be a huge problem for them socially when they are out of school and enter the "real world."

I know this is true because I lived on the verge of it myself. I was addicted to videogames throughout middle school and early high school. I didn't have a wide group of friends and never went to a party. Luckily, I was also very active in forensics, which gave me another social outlet and eventually took over my former videogame time in my last couple years. I don't have Aspberger's or autism, but if I had continued down that path I could see my social life having turned out very similar to his.

lol assburgers.

That's bs and video games are always a scapegoat. There are plenty of people who play thousands of hours of those games and whose social skills are unharmed, myself included.

It's also patently untrue, because WoW in particular is a very social game and it's almost impossible to get anything done in the game without cooperating with and befriending others.

Lol at the video game angle. I've played thousands of hours. I'm sure every guy under 40 has. If video games were the problem, you'd see these mass murders occurring all over the world.

Never said videogames were the cause, I said they were a factor and an impact in the kid's life. I also never said that all people who play this amount of videogames turn out like this, or even that they're necessarily harmful for all people.

I've played WoW, there is nothing social about joining a guild and showing up for scheduled events (or coordinating during a raid). The fact that this can even be called "friendship" is ludicrous and supports what I am saying 100%.

Well of course I meant compared to the US public, what else would I be comparing it to?

If you can afford to fly your family to Britain (even not first class Virgin) that's still putting you in probably the top quintile.

I get what you are trying to say but if it wasn't video games, it would have been something else. He probably would have read for hours at a time or whatever. Video games were just an outlet for him to avoid facing reality of the real world.Dude had aspergers. People with aspergers have a difficult time socializing and making friends. It's not like if he didn't play video games he would have been social.

No, it really doesn't, and you're clueless.

Already found some literature providing support for exactly what I am talking about (although there isn't much research in this arena yet).

Van Rooij, Antonius J., et al. "Online video game addiction: identification of addicted adolescent gamers." Addiction 106.1 (2011): 205-212.

Full article: http://online.santarosa.edu/homepage..._Addiction.pdf

Some relevant discussion (although I recommend reading the whole article for context if you really care to evaluate this position):

"Subsequently, psychosocial correlates were examined for the addicted online video gamers. Visual inspection of the data shows higher scores on depressive mood, loneliness, social anxiety and negative self-esteem for addicted online gamers compared to other online gamers. However,post-hoc testing revealed that most of the actual bilateral relationships are non-significant from the perspective of the addicted online gamers. When compared to non-addicted heavy gamers, only one significant difference was found: in 2009 the addicted heavy gamers were more depressed than the non-addicted heavy gamers.
These ambiguous results illustrate the complexity of the relationship between online video game use, online video game addiction and psychosocial health. Especially in the case of outcome variables with a strong social element, such as loneliness and self-esteem, video gaming may well have a dualistic effect. First, it expands the horizon of the gamer by offering a second environment in which to experiment [52] and, later on, it may constrain social options in ‘real life’ when the second life starts to overshadow the first [8]. In this way, depressive symptoms, loneliness and negative self-esteem might decrease for some gamers as they find refuge in online games; on the other hand, these correlates may increase for others because relying exclusively on online relationships may fail to provide the full spectrum of social contacts and support the gamer’s needs in real life. This hypothesis fits well with earlier theoretical work on ‘problematic internet use’ by Caplan [17,18]. Further examination of these complex relationships in the case of online gaming might benefit from using statistical methods focusing upon modelling, such as structural equation modelling. Clinical studies will need to be utilized to establish the actual harm and treatability of the problems associated with ‘online video game addiction’." (page 210)

Now, don't respond to this post with a bunch of blah blah "it says MAY, this isn't 100% ironclad proof that videogames are harmful!!" No ****, I know that. It does show that there is a segment of videogamers whose heavy videogame use is correlated with negative social factors, and suggests further research.

WoW is probably the worst harm bc it's such a huge time suck. I was obsessed from about 16-19 and it basically ruined my life. I gained a ton of weight and didn't care about anything. Probably the only reason I didn't become a total social recluse was that 2 of my best friends played with me (it also affected their lives negatively). I had to get a retail job for money that was socially stimulating - lots of hot girls worked there who talked to me - which helped. Quitting video games entirely (save a couple random Wii sessions) dramatically improved my life. I lost 80 pounds, made lots more friends, started hooking up with girls, etc. I'm at work so I can't fully elaborate but video games are truly horrible and can destroy teens socially. There's a big difference between some guy like you in your mid 20s who's played a couple thousand hrs lifetime and a kid who literally just eat sleep and plays WoW.

My point is you can substitute "video games" with just about any addictive behavior/substance you can imagine. Heavy, addicted use of just about anything is socially isolating, so good job for breakin some new ground there.

You're taking that and suggesting that WoW is inherently isolating which is just lolworthy.

you are inferring that the video games were a factor in the shooting? his parents were somewhat wealthy, he had a ps3 or xbox or whatever like all the other kids and played games like whenever, where did you ever come up with the idea that this was a factor in the shootings?

How do you really know anything about his family life, or how much his parents controlled his time, or how much they let him play or anything. For all that you really know, the games could have just as easily given him relief from the torment of his existence.

We'll never know but if his mom never let him play WoW and made him get a job or something, that would have been more beneficial to him.

I agree that he was completely insane and that video games shouldn't be the lone scapegoat, but they def negatively affected him.

You obviously haven't read his 140-page manifesto / autobiography detailing his life from age 0 to the shooting, most of which is about his home life. He talks about videogames throughout, giving a detailed timeline of when he got different systems, how much he played them with friends, when he got into WoW, etc.

In his manifesto it appears that Elliot is hesitant to get back into WOW because he feels that it would hinder his progress in regards to integrating within society.

Maybe he felt that the way things worked in his video games were how life ought to be, I don't know, I don't play many of them myself.

not sure I agree with you here. Obviously WoW doesn't have a largely negative impact on the lives of most people but saying that you can substitute a MMORP for any addiction/substance is obscuring the picture a bit, don't you think? I mean, besides doing drugs, what addictive behaviors are you thinking of here? It's sure as hell not the same as being addicted to soccer or golf. Or music or literature, etc. Of the people who play WoW religiously, there's a subset that find the interaction socially fulfilling (just like there's 2p2'ers that find the forum generally fulfilling), and there's a subset where the addiction exists but they aren't getting much out of it socially. This kid idealized the extroverted lifestyle. He's not the type that was going to respond well to sinking thousands of hours into World of warcraft.

now its an autobiography?

your the expert.

There is a middle ground between "Video games are amazing; they cause no problems." and "Video games are directly responsible for mass shootings."

The middle ground is pretty obvious to anybody that has played a lot of video games. While video games don't necessarily cause violence or mental illness, they tend to be a time-suck for a lot of people. The time that can be used for something productive is wasted on something that, in the end, contributed little of value to your life.

If you have to, you can substitute many things with video games, and get the same result. Spending all of your time watching television can cause the same thing. Spending all of your free time in a casino or grinding online can have the same negative effects. I'd imagine that creating 1000 posts a month on this site might take away from your life.

WoW is singled out by a lot of people because of the enormous time-suck and the addictive nature of the game. It is undeniable, even by the "video games are perfect and cause no problems" crowd.

It's kind of along the same lines of "drinking beer will cause you to becone an alcoholic and lose your job!"

Well, yea, for some people. Not sure what bringing sports into this is supposed to prove. Those aren't behaviors people commonly become addicted to. I'm talking about behaviors like gambling/sex/drug use/alcohol/whatever.

Literally nobody in this thread, myself included, said or implied this at any point. Get some reading comprehension FFS.

LOL you absolutely did imply it by saying he would have been totally fine if he just kept skateboarding (because that's an awesome crowd typically) and not played video games, and that the same thing is happening to MILLIONS of kids right now.

Nice goalpost shift though.