172 Comments

• 1. captain america  |  August 5th, 2009 at 7:47 pm

  i’m working on my second divorce right now, and wondering a lot of what this sodini wondered. honestly wouldn’t surprise me if i were never with another woman at this point. i guess the difference is that it would be a choice for me. i haven’t counted, but i think i’ve made love (or “gotten laid” in the parlance of the exile) several thousand times over the last decade (all free of charge too!). don’t get me wrong, i love sex, but i’ve had enough of it now that it’s become clear to me that there’s more to life.

  i guess that’s the difference between pitiable guys like sodini and guys who’ve been in and out of several intense relationships with sex-hungry women over the years. whenever i see these poor guys talking like their troubles would be over if they just had a woman in their lives, i want to explain to them how things really are, but there’s just no way to do that.

  one other point, i’ve got a bag full of pretty cool guns too, but i’d never turn them on anyone but myself, or an attacker who initiates violence against me. in spite of my circumstances, to do that would be to choose evil, as sodini did.

• 2. Joe  |  August 5th, 2009 at 8:08 pm

  Maybe economics had some role in this one, but I think it was mainly he couldn’t cope with the crushing disappointment. Hundreds of thousands of guys are in the same situation as he was. They didn’t have the social skills to find someone and now time has passed them by. Their lack of social skills may be no fault of their own. Per the guy’s blog he kept trying with no results. He was too damaged or defective. Maybe he didn’t deserve his condtion, but deserve doesn’t have anything to do with it. Most guys in this situation just deal with the reality and move on.

• 3. AIG  |  August 5th, 2009 at 8:10 pm

  cmon Soldini had options. That asshole had a net work of over 250K, so he says. That type of financial security can get him a Mail order bride or regular sex tourist. He can have a 19 year old russian or cambodian girl in 10 seconds to sleep with.

  But no, its clear he worships the white woman. He only wants a white “mate”. His racism undid him in the end

• 4. jafraldo  |  August 5th, 2009 at 8:20 pm

  Hey thanks for taking the time to understand this guy as a human being. I do wish the part where he empathizes with black people received equal air time with the rant.

  But you missed my insight into this guy’s psyche: He didn’t want to get laid or be normal, he wanted to shoot and kill people. You can read it in his entries, like May 18th where he says he went on a date but the only thoughts he records are about his plan and his isolation, nothing about trying to understand another person or make a connection.

  And then more damningly, entries like the last (Aug 3) where he says,

  “Unfortunately I talked to my neighbor today, who is very positive and upbeat. I need to remain focused and absorbed COMPLETELY.”

  Our killer wasn’t interested in living a happy life or changing, he was interested in censoring his world till the only thing left for him was to kill people he hadn’t even met before.

  I’m not sure this was totally a case of the world being cruel to this guy, because I read a lot of absolute bloodlust in his writing, and how he led a life to take himself to the situation he arrived at.

• 5. אברהם  |  August 5th, 2009 at 8:29 pm

  @captain america

  Evil? Based on his diary entries it looks more like the last desperate actions of a rat in a cage, which Sodini was.

  As for the guys you see who think their lives would be gravy if they had girlfriends, I think that was what Ames was referring to when he wrote of “Tom Hanks blockbuster[s].” Reification of cultural myths and all that.

• 6. FSB Agent 008  |  August 5th, 2009 at 8:33 pm

  OK, if a “systems analyst in a law firm’s finance department” can’t get laid, then something is wrong with Pittsburgh girls. Then again, after the incident, maybe not.
  Anyway , money can buy you as much luv as you want. Instead of masturbating with AK-47 on the side, I’d suggest Craigslist “casual encounters” section. Just don’t tell the potential date about your arsenal and love of explosives.

• 7. ghost  |  August 5th, 2009 at 8:37 pm

  his situation kind of resembles mine: I’m a 28 year old virgin who apparently has no reason not to have had sex. I’m athletic, semi-attractive, can hold some conversation, hang out with a few women… but I just can’t get anyone to be my girlfriend!

  Barely anyone understands this kind of suffering. The worst is not the derision of men, but the lack of understanding of women! The few I have told this to think it’s my fault, that if only I were more positive, that anyways my suffering is nothing compared with that of people in war or in Africa (or some other stupid character they saw on tv or the movies).

  There are days I can barely even move. Sometimes I think, I won’t be able to survive my thirties even if I wanted to.

• 8. Erdem  |  August 5th, 2009 at 8:44 pm

  Mark,

  You have left out the most important bit – the bullying he received from his brother.

  His brother – as we read from his diary – was a mean asshole, and the world rewarded him for being an asshole.

  Another thing. Dying alone. And living alone and getting old.

  It’s the reason why we used to have families and the kids were taught to take care of the elderly. You gained recpect as you aged.

  Now it’s the other way around. Even if you have a functioning family – which is rare – you lose respect as you age and become a non-wanted person, a liability.

  It’s a fucked up culture and a fucked up civilization. And it’s not only America or the West. It’s fucking global and the only salvation would be large enough meteorite coming our way.

• 9. Macaca Mulatta  |  August 5th, 2009 at 8:49 pm

  captain america: does that mean me and the posse get your castoffs?

  In the parlance of the eXile, “Lube up, Mädchen!”

• 10. Gaucho  |  August 5th, 2009 at 9:38 pm

  “an attacker who initiates violence against me.”

  Who the fuck talks like that?

• 11. Elvis  |  August 5th, 2009 at 9:41 pm

  Call me crazy, but I think the reason the media paid more attention to his issues with women as opposed to his job is because (duh!) he went postal at a women’s aerobics class, not at his job. He laid out specific plans to kill women because he hated them, and then he did it; he did not (so far as I’m aware) express any plans to hurt anyone at his workplace. I do think there’s a lot to this “wage slave revolt” theory of workplace violence, but there are circumstances where it does not apply, and this looks to be one of them.

• 12. Warren Moon  |  August 6th, 2009 at 12:49 am

  Sodini is the voice of a generation.

• 13. subzero  |  August 6th, 2009 at 1:30 am

  He offed himself with $250K in assets because he never got laid? Why didn’t he go to Pattaya – Thailand and screw a new girl every day and jump from a highrise, or swallow a bullet for that matter, when the money had run out? $250K. He could’ve had many good years left. What a dumbass!

• 14. kirilov  |  August 6th, 2009 at 1:59 am

  ghost, go see a hooker. all the expectation and frustration and pent up emotional shit is standing in your way now and only makes things worse. you will overanalyze everything and piss away any opportunities. if you don’t want your first time to be with a whore, take a note from the article – no wife-material 10 is going to come along and swoop you off your feet, so abandon that illusion. you’ve already wasted 10+ years that you should have been fucking through, so your pride about losing your virginity to a whore is pointless. just go and get laid, and stop feeling inferior.

• 15. coldequation  |  August 6th, 2009 at 2:33 am

  It’s really reaching to point to class warfare as a reason that this guy went postal. He had $250,000. He was doing fine economically.

  The liberals have no way to change the fact that girls don’t like depressed nerds. How are they supposed to capitalize on this anger? Misdirect it towards Republicans? Maybe that’s possible, but it doesn’t solve the problem. I also think it’s being done. Go read a comment thread at Daily Kos.

  The only true political solution to the fact that women don’t choose certain men would be to take away their choice by doing something like instituting arranged marriage. But that’s far, far more reactionary than anything the most rightwing Republican would dream of.

  You could have a partial solution by eliminating the social safety net. Some women would have thrown herself at this geek for his money out of necessity if she had no other choice.

• 16. Clint  |  August 6th, 2009 at 2:35 am

  Seriously? You must have some severe problems yourself if you can come up with that bullshit based on Sodini’s diary? Where did you come up with that drivel? The media is ignoring the point you mentioned, because it has absolutely nothing to do with what happened. Sodini wasn’t worried about class, or right-wing extremists. He was horny and lonely, and ignored by women, although based on the things in his diary, he wasn’t ignored by women, he just didn’t know how to interact with them.

  Please go see a therapist, I think you need it almost as much as Sodini did.

• 17. Reager  |  August 6th, 2009 at 2:41 am

  The guy just was NOT sexy. Look at his picture, compare to Mark of Levine.

  Desperate virgins must establish their lodges, where they buy hookers wholesale.

  Noboby seems to fuck fat chicks in America, this is also a problem.

• 18. Strahlungsamt  |  August 6th, 2009 at 2:50 am

  @FSB Agent 008:

  *I’d suggest Craigslist “casual encounters” section.*

  I wouldn’t go there even if I was desperate. Here’s why:

  A few times, for a laugh, I posted as an 18yo French female college student “New to the City” on Craigslist NYC w4m. I distinctly said I wanted 21-35yo guys only. Another time I said I needed $30,000 to pay off my student loans. Yet another time, after that German cannibal episode, I said I was into cannibalism and looking for someone to disembowel and eat alive. Made no difference.

  I got literally HUNDEREDS of loser men replying. All of them over 36, about half the posts looked like copy/paste and every tenth post came with a dick pic.

  I figure there are at least 50 males to every 1 female on Craigslist. The place is one huge spambot. If Craig isn’t running a load of porn sites, I will be surprised.

  The only way a woman is real there is if she is over 300 pounds, insane, over 50 or a single mother with no child support. The rest are hookers, porn sites, fags (looking for dick pics) or shitheads like me playing jokes with lonely men.

• 19. Anonymous  |  August 6th, 2009 at 2:58 am

  #11 sounds right to me; this one’s not really economic, except very incidentally.

  #16, Ames is right about Sodini not being racist, at least.

  #15, I have struggled for years with diagnosed clinical depression, in and out of therapy and everything, and I am a programmer. I am unquestionably a depressed nerd. And yet, bizarrely and inexplicably to me, girls and guys want sex with me fairly often. Maybe it’s because I’m brutally honest all the time and don’t try to be nice. Or because people interest me, and I try to understand them and help them or at least avoid harming them. Or maybe there’s just a few who go for tall skinny talkative pale guys with deep voices and big vocabularies, no matter what cynical, remote, sad sacks of shit they are.

  #4, that was true at the end, but earlier entries make it clear that he only gave up on change after a lot of failures.

  Maybe Sodini’s right about the life coach thing. Sounds like poster #7 could use one. Are there any real life people like that guy in that movie Hitch? Maybe that’s what therapy is for.

  I’d take a guess that 7 could get a date, and Sodini could have, if they were either (1) happy dumb golden retriever types who had genuine enthusiasm for ordinary things, and wanted to date a girl who was similar, or more likely, (2) honest and open about their enthusiasm for sex, their lust and rage, and wanted to date a girl who was a bit of a freak. Bonus points either way if you have genuine passion for art– movies, books, comics, TV, rock music, whatever– and she shares it. I suggest that if you go with (2), you try it with a pseudo-anonymous account on some dating site, try hard to make your tag lines brief, sharply written, and interesting, try to avoid your friends and family knowing the account is yours, and act normal when you and your hypothetical future freak girlfriend go to family and work gatherings.

  However, I might be wrong; angry, lonely guys like Sodini who’ve been through a lot of bullying and have poor social skills may need some bigger change that isn’t occurring to me before they can date.

  Maybe they need more empathy and self-awareness? Reading good novels to awaken empathy, practicing putting yourself in the shoes of people you know and imagining “what it’s like to be them” more often? Practicing asking yourself how others are seeing you, and how you’d react to yourself in their shoes?

  Maybe #14 is right, and it’s just the sex thing, and any sex at all, even hookers or anonymous BDSM hookups with girls from fetlife or collarme, would fix the anger and loneliness enough so they could trade up to real girlfriends if they wanted to.

  Other posters, what do you guys think? How do some victims of bullying manage to get over it and settle into decent relationships?

• 20. Tam  |  August 6th, 2009 at 2:59 am

  @Ghost

  Dan Savage had a excellent column about this sort of thing which you may find helpful. He’s got some sensible advice and some of the comments are pretty good too.

  http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/SavageLove?oid=1930394

  Hope this helps you, mate…

• 21. Roquentin  |  August 6th, 2009 at 3:35 am

  It’s like something out of a Houellebecq novel….

• 22. Expat in BY  |  August 6th, 2009 at 4:58 am

  I think this is an accurate analysis.

  It appears to me the man was at what he felt was the top of his game (such as it was), that his attractiveness to what he wanted most from life wasn’t going to improve with the years, and faced with an impending decline in his situation, he took what he thought was a justified revenge for his impending miserable future from the very people (a whole gender) that he felt could care less about his desires/needs.

  He clearly was insane – no sane American man would carry out a “shoot em up” like this against “the women-folk” – but when you consider how desparately frustrating loneliness can be when the cards appear stacked against you, the insanity is very “there but for the grace of God go I”. (If you can’t understand it, it’s probably because you’ve never felt that desparate feeling that you are being left out of something in life, and you should consider yourself lucky to be sheltered from it.)

  This was a good analysis, and the article shed some light on why America, despite being such a violent culture, is nonetheless such a submissive one. Liberals won’t do anything but debate, and conservatives support the rich, even as they are ripping them off. It also says something about how precarious America may yet become under the Dems. The crazies with the guns just need the right moment to try and violently overthrow the elected Liberals. This is the most obvious tie-in to the whole class warfare in America argument.

  On a personal and more positive note, it’s good to have a wife and child, and be safely out of that very unhappy country.

• 23. Erik L  |  August 6th, 2009 at 5:09 am

  Clint- second. I see a lot of odd projection and extrapolation. Read the diary. It sounds as if his job was going well. He got a promotion rather than a layoff and liked the way his new boss acted. The diary makes it clear that all his frustrations had to do with lack of girlfriend.

  Also, this situation is probably very common, except that almost no one reacts the way this guy did. He is a statistical outlier, probably with severe mental illness.

• 24. Party member  |  August 6th, 2009 at 5:26 am

  He had 250,000 yet people who had 250,000,000,000 ordered all the women in America not to f#ck with him. Thas is simple math. Sign “<“. What’s so strange in it?

  To: kirill

  AIDS rates among general population are 0.5-1.5%. Whores suck sperm that contain virions, they do.

  So what do you propose: to lose virginity you must stick you penis into vagina. yeah?

• 25. geo8rge  |  August 6th, 2009 at 5:43 am

  Going Postal? This wasn’t a workplace shooting. More like École Polytechnique massacre.

  Hope there aren’t copy cats.

  You keep harping on Reagan. Reagan cut his loses in the middle east which allowed him to keep the thing going. The problem with Bush-Blair-Obama is they cannot back off a losing hand. Pouring resources into the government to ensure the loyalty of at least some people means taking them from other places like the IT dept at K&L Gates. Actually Sodini’s mistake was trying to be a productive citizen, if he had got a civil service job, any civil service job he would have retired by now. You will notice the postal workers are not going postal, but guess what, USPS days are numbered.

• 26. manda  |  August 6th, 2009 at 5:54 am

  We live in a sad and lonely world. Media separates us from what is real. We used to have community, a place with social interactions. People are too busy for that now, our standards are ridiculously high thanks to the ad man. We fail to see people as they are, we fail to comfort them as we all need. We’re all here to get us through this lonely crazy thing. That’s the point.

  I make no excuses for Sodini, but I can’t say i’m surprised. It wasn’t getting laid that was his ultimate downfall, he’s a product of a new way of living. Lost in a sea of people. He shouldn’t have turned to this realization. Obviously, something snapped, but you better hold on tight, because it’ll keep happening. You wanna do your part? reach out to the lonely. Everybody needs somebody. Even if it’s just a friend.

• 27. Homer Erotic  |  August 6th, 2009 at 6:13 am

  I am an overweight, somewhat socially awkward homosexual man who is more or less living the sort of “Auschwitz Life” this man described. I am now 42, and I have never had sex with or been in a relationship with another man and probably won’t thanks to the pregnancy-like gut Insulin Resistance (a pre-diabetic condition) has given me.

  But I would never go on a homocidal rampage. That’s just not who I am. That kind of thing is for shallow, empty people such as the late and unmourned Andrew Cunanan.

  Cunanan was the alienated gay guy who went across the country murdering people, Gianni Versaci among them, 12 years ago in 1997. His last victim was himself. And he was pretty much a victim of himself long before his suicide.

  However low I may manage to sink, it will never, ever be that low.

• 28. Clint  |  August 6th, 2009 at 6:29 am

  Let’s see, I can either actually think about the stuff in this article, or I can simply call Sodini a loser and blast away at Ames for trying to tear down my delusions. I think I’ll go with the second option.

• 29. Bernard M  |  August 6th, 2009 at 6:34 am

  I read his webpage yesterday and thought about it last night. I thought your article about it was great. While this guy was obsessed with his problems, I thought his analysis was often moving and it really put a face to people in his situation.

• 30. 16 Shells from a 30.06  |  August 6th, 2009 at 6:37 am

  Why do you assume that the $250,000 thing is true. I’d bet he was lying (to himself) and held no place near that kinda jing.

• 31. Sarah P  |  August 6th, 2009 at 6:58 am

  “The liberals have no way to change the fact that girls don’t like depressed nerds. How are they supposed to capitalize on this anger? Misdirect it towards Republicans?”

  YES! YES! That’s exactly what me and Todd figured out last night when we was looking out the kitchen window and seen Russia and Minnesota in the setting sun. Then we drove over to the Wasila Shop Rite, grabbed some lentils, headed over to the Sportsman’s Warehouse and loaded up on C-4 and night crawlers. On the way out, Todd dropped Trig on his head. Fourth time this week.

  “Girls don’t like nerds.”

  I’ll use that line.

• 32. Modern Demagogue  |  August 6th, 2009 at 7:07 am

  Very well written and spot on. I thought pretty much all of the same things as I read his diary yesterday, and similarly found myself feeling badly for him. Shocking. You treated the economic aspect well because he did get a promotion later, and some would argue that should mitigate his frustration but I don’t think it harms his rational assessment of what his law firm was doing to people in general, or is ultimately really relevant to his underlying motives and overall disenchanment.

  Finally, he made other social commentaries, such as the jealousy over his neighbor having a young woman, and his brother being successful because he said things with confidence. People believe things if you say them with confidence, he said.

  I think a lot of people who are commenting on prostitutes or mail order brides are missing that these were not options for him no more than killing people was. His nice guy mentality prevented him from any socially abnormal behavior that might get him ostracized. He discusses he’d like to try pot again, but thats illegal and he doesn’t know anyone who has any, and won’t go ask for some. These our society’s rules creating a structure which he saw no way out. I’m not saying it wouldn’t have been better for him to go do those things, but I simply don’t think he thought of it, or saw it is a truly viable and acceptable option. He worked in a law firm, and nobody talks about the guy who gets arrested for pot, except he loses his job and gets fired. Same with the guy who goes to prostitutes. However, the media does glamorize and fetishize shooting up a building — that’s one option he was certainly well aware of.

  I’m not defending his actions what-so-ever. Make no mistake, its completely unforgivable to impose your own torture onto other human beings, and ultimately reveals him as a solipsist and sociopath who does not view the women who were his victims as human beings.

  But I think this article strikes to the core of the only valuable thing a society can do in the aftermath of events like this, and that is to learn from it and assess it honestly and nakedly. The media so far has no interest in doing so, because to read that diary is frankly more than a little scary and more than a little unsettling. It is not the insane rantings of the guy who shot up Virginia Tech. It’s self-reflexively aware, horrifyingly rational, and sadly for our society… dare I say it, too close to normal.

• 33. cryofan  |  August 6th, 2009 at 7:08 am

  Mr Ames: you are getting closer to some form of valid, revealed truth about america. Closer, but not yet. You are of course treading on dangerous ground, career-wise. But keep going.

  Look up some of my past posts on reddit.
  I think you will find my thoughts interesting.

• 34. guy  |  August 6th, 2009 at 7:11 am

  He shoulda went to that gym and signed up for the class he shot up… you get more b’s with honey. What a douche.

• 35. Andrew H  |  August 6th, 2009 at 8:14 am

  I wish I was a girl.

• 36. Kevin  |  August 6th, 2009 at 8:22 am

  Clearly you haven’t read What’s the Matter with Kevin.

• 37. alex  |  August 6th, 2009 at 8:35 am

  Holy fuck, man. I cant have sympathy for this guy. Take some fucking responsibility for your situation. Dont blame ‘women’ because you cant attract them. That’s blaming the dog for not liking your funk.

  Take some fucking responsibility for your life. Move to fucking Canada or something.
  Here I can smoke joints with cops and eat maple syrup until Im so sick that I have to go to the free emergency room.

• 38. Xtra  |  August 6th, 2009 at 8:46 am

  You guys are paying too much attention to the net worth thing. Not to say he was poor, he wasn’t, but most of that was probably in his house and car. You guys are acting like he could take out 100K from the bank and blow it in Rio during a hot week if he wanted. He also obviously had serious job security concerns and therefore probably wasn’t loaded to the gills. I think its reasonable to include this incident in the “class warfare” category; hell he even makes the case for it himself with statistics in his entry on job security/American economic situations.

• 39. definitelynotabadperson  |  August 6th, 2009 at 8:51 am

  28
  why do you think he’d be lying?
  he had a good job and no children of wife.

• 40. Mary  |  August 6th, 2009 at 8:53 am

  This man reminds me of several men I’ve worked with. 50ish, unattractive white guys who didn’t even try to take care of themselves, and thanks to (unconscious) feelings of white male/middle class privilege and too much porn have totally unrealistic ideas of which women they could/should get with. Guys who wouldn’t even look at an early 40s woman like me even though I’m better looking than them. Not that I was upset by that. Let them chase the younger chicks and leave me alone. I do notice that men of color seem to have more realistic views of both women’s bodies and their own levels of charm/attractiveness than some of these guys. As Chris Rock has pointed out, it tends to be the white guys who go cwazee like this.

  I did like “Going Postal” and I do sympathize with his having been bullied and having no one to learn adult interaction from. However, this guy wasn’t the Alabama chicken factory guy. He had a lot of problems that had nothing to do with wage slave hell.

• 41. mr.edwards  |  August 6th, 2009 at 8:58 am

  man!!! this reminds me of that classic beatles song ‘all the lonely people where do they all come from’

• 42. Kevin  |  August 6th, 2009 at 9:25 am

  From the move Fight Club:

  Man, I see in fight club the strongest and smartest men who’ve ever lived. I see all this potential, and I see squandering. God damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables; slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don’t need. We’re the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War’s a spiritual war… our Great Depression is our lives. We’ve all been raised on television to believe that one day we’d all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won’t. And we’re slowly learning that fact. And we’re very, very pissed off.

• 43. drp  |  August 6th, 2009 at 9:28 am

  “What the media has focused on instead is Sodini’s anti-Obama, anti-liberal racist entry”

  You’re an idiot. I live in Pittsburgh, I’ve watched, heard and read every report on this since Tuesday night. The guy was a loser who couldn’t get laid, pure and simple, that’s how the media is reporting it. Who’s making this a political issue? No one, ‘cos it isn’t one.

• 44. Timo  |  August 6th, 2009 at 9:30 am

  The good thing about the Deep Violent Depression coming soon will be: sex life will improve because almost everybody is dirt poor and there is little else to enjoy than SEX.

  Like in the East Germany during DDR times, TV was crap, nobody had any money, your house was the same crap as everybody else, your car was crap, your job was crap and the only thing left to enjoy was…SEX! Or so the big boys told me 🙂

• 45. Joe Blow  |  August 6th, 2009 at 9:34 am

  I feel a bit for the guy. Wound up tight, self-loathing, stupid no-plans guy. He was trapped somehow, in the molasses of USA no-friends society.

  I don’t have too many friends. a few. I’m old, kinda dumpy. My wife and I split after years of un-fullfilling/no sex. (in was fun in the beginning) one nice kid, a boy. Now I am working out, moved into a nice apartment in the city. Looking to get right with myself and find some sex starved 50 year old to visit…

  so anyway, its the same advice you give someone considering suicide: “Dude, there is ALWAYS a way out. You have to make it happen. Death is final and you don’t get any more chances. Try something new. Get you ass out of here and go somewhere else.”

  This guy should have just taken a vacation for a while and if he got fired jest said f it I don’t give a rats ass. Its like he was too worried about being happy in the future or the past and forgot about being happy now.

• 46. abc123  |  August 6th, 2009 at 9:36 am

  I have read this book. It certainly explains some aspects of George’s life and what he eventually rationalized had to be done. Your conclusion is ultimately wrong I believe.

  Here is a better book and it is free. http://www.love-shy.com/Gilmartin/toc.html

  Being “Love Shy” afflicts millions of men. The alpha males of society will call them pussies since they are not able to understand. Almost all of American society is geared toward the macho assertive rough and tumble type guy. Guys are brainwashed into being that way to get the girl. Girls are brainwashed into thinking they have to have that to be happy. For those unfortunate men who are born with the melancholy temperament and then systematically torn down because of societies expectations of them, they lose all confidence in themselves and it sets off a never ending spiral of depression that starts from early teenage years and goes on till they die or in some extreme cases end like George. Very tragic.

  Download the free book. Read the preface and Chapter 1. The last section talks about ways to help these people.

  The good news is these men can be helped. In a nutshell they have to be given a nurturing environment to learn how to interact with women in a social setting. That’s it. Once they have that, most of the paralyzing anxiety is gone, women will start to notice them, and eventually they will get a girl that will form into a meaningful relationship.

  The problem is the only place to get that kind of help is through very special and caring friends, or specialized therapy. Those are very hard to come by. It is out there, but you have to look for it. Most therapists/psychologists will want to diagnose this as depression or some other schizoid condition that has to be treated with drugs to ‘fix’ the brain. That might be needed in extreme cases. But it really isn’t the core problem. The core problem is these men lack the emotional and social development that most teenagers get ‘the natural way’. Once these men get these life lessons, then their life can continue and they can be normal contributing adults.

  How do I know all of this? Because I am a “Love Shy” man. An event happened in my life about 4 months ago which shook me to my core, and then right about then I lost my job. The only thing holding me together was my job but I didn’t realize it. Then my life has absolutely no meaning. I was heading for a psychotic break or mental breakdown. Fortunately I had the presence of mind to realize this and I sought out help.

  So here I am, a 42 year old male, that has finally figured out what is wrong with him and how easy the solution is. But I have to reach out to get it. That’s where the friends / therapist comes in. Slowly I am learning how to live in the moment and not totally lock up around groups of people and especially women.

  Blaming society or bad parenting really doesn’t do anybody any good. While it is true those helped to contribute to the personal problem, those are external stressors that can be minimized so they can go on with their lives.

  ‘Normal’ people just don’t get this. They don’t understand how anybody can be such a retard to not get that. All you need to do is grow a set of balls and quit being such a cry baby. People fear and strike out what they don’t understand and that is what is happening here.

  For those men afflicted with this problem. You are not hopeless. All you need is some coaching to help you learn the interpersonal skills that you never got. Unless you have some sort of personal epiphany, you need to seek out professional help and tell them what you need. If they refuse to help you or try to misdiagnose the problem, leave and find another one to talk to. You are in control of your own life.

  Now take control.

• 47. Slavich  |  August 6th, 2009 at 9:53 am

  Excellent article. I’m going to Amazon and ordering your book right now.

• 48. darter22  |  August 6th, 2009 at 10:20 am

  If he was Muslim he could be with 70 virgins right now. Or was that a 70 year old virgin?

• 49. Hunter  |  August 6th, 2009 at 10:27 am

  Empathizing with the pain of lonely people is different than feeling sorry for this particular snapped tweak. It is maybe the only good to come of this incident.
  As the economic situation unravels, and veterans start returning en masse, we will unfortunately see more of this.
  So sad.

• 50. Rob  |  August 6th, 2009 at 10:57 am

  Any society where the only way out of the loneliness trap is to see a hooker or buy a foriegn slave-wife is a sick society.

  As Ames has pointed out before, the disappearance of old social safety nets – church, neighbourhood, etc. – has given an inflated importance to the workplace. So the chance of a lonely, introverted, sexually inexperienced 48 year old cutting ties with his only remaining “tribe” by going to live it up in Thailand or by getting busted for soliciting are zero. Combine that with the unrealistic expectations fed to us all by the media that Ames mentions and it’s no wonder he did this – and no surprise that he did it to “the womenfolk” that as a nice guy he felt he deserved. Especially when he saw his dickwad brother leading a normal life.

  What’s more, as a 26 year old virgin with few romantic prospects but who happens to live in a close community I can tell you that this would never happen in a place with the kind of social safety net we have here. All frustrations are alleviated by understanding and freindship.

• 51. Jackson Coltrane  |  August 6th, 2009 at 11:00 am

  The same mean streak that allows the top 1% of the nation to pursue a social strategy of every man for himself runs through all of us. We each believe we’re entitled to be that top 1%, and when we don’t get what we think we deserve, we turn violent. Class warfare is a too simple and incomplete answer, especially for this case.

• 52. withnail  |  August 6th, 2009 at 11:02 am

  This guy had a sever form of “Love-Shyness”. Google it. Here are the symptoms: bullied as a kid. Stares compulsively at women. Cynical and pessimistic about women. Lonely and alienated. Long period of involuntary celibacy.

  To those suggesting hookers. This guy couldn’t deal with women on a fundamental level. Hookers probably wouldn’t have helped. The therapist who introduced Love-SHyness suggested sex surrogates. A sex surrogate could have definitely helped ease his way back into humanity and sexuality.

• 53. booltox  |  August 6th, 2009 at 11:12 am

  I come here to get a decent perspective and Mark never disappoints. I know a small army of software developers that are exactly like Sodini, they lived a loveless life of toil and their only outlet is to watch tv or play videogames. And they don’t actually make them feel any better

• 54. ben  |  August 6th, 2009 at 11:13 am

  Why cant you fucking idiots get into your head that American Bitches know they are in high in demand in their 20s.

  You should have found your mate in your 20s, if you missed it then you can still go to south america, cuba, east europe, philliphines, china, vietnam, cambodia and get married to young attractive females.

  Quit bitching like this idiot and keep putting 20s something US girls on a pedestal.

  Outsource your lust / people.

  None is going to love unless you love yoursef.

  30 hr work week / Universal Health care will solve lot of the issues. There is a reason you dont see this kind of craziness in much maligned France.

• 55. Prystupnik  |  August 6th, 2009 at 11:17 am

  All I can say is “What a waste !” Here’s a guy who has felt the pain, knows where it comes from, and apparently knows who to blame. Is reconciled to his end but wants to make a fireworks show out of it. And he takes out a bunch of gym rats ??? How in hell would there have been any satisfaction in that for him ? I mean, why not make a sport of it already ? Why couldn’t he have aimed for Andrew Hall (elsewhere here), Lloyd C. Blankfein, James L. Dimon or even a couple of senior partners that PA is so full of ? Sheeet – you americans can’t even pull off what any self-respecting raghead can do .

• 56. ez.pz.  |  August 6th, 2009 at 11:19 am

  I am not sure what to make of this article, but I feel certain that it is a hugely important analysis of a hugely important problem.

  Can this article be promoted/disseminated on the web? I don’t know how to do it, but it should be done. No question.

• 57. Mike  |  August 6th, 2009 at 11:46 am

  The article offers a glimpse into a desparation that modern society has no outlet for. But why do you keep artifically inserting ties to the right? I do not see any conservative connections. Most of this is the result of decades of failed social engineering. Sex as popular entertainment. Sex as a measure of accomplishment. Class warfare. None of these are conservative values. Reaganomics to blame? How about a stimulus plan that’s as much about benefiting political allies as creating jobs.

• 58. Nelly  |  August 6th, 2009 at 11:51 am

  Appreciated very much that Mark Ames actually took the time to read and quote the guy’s Blog diary, as well as his humane take on it, unlike most of the media reports.

  There is no doubt that there are plenty of options, treatments and avenues to explore for the situation of lonely/depressed people. But that’s the whole point: they lack the social skills, emotional stability and outside support to explore them – which I believe is the case with Sodini. He lacked the coping skills, period.
  As for the paid sex that was offered as an option here, clearly not everyone is up for that, for all sorts of reasons.
  I’ve actually been to Pattaya myself – but a flight to Thailand is not something you can do regularly/frequently year round, if only time-wise.

  99% of the self-help stuff out there, including the professional help from counsellors/therapists on things ranging from dating to treating depression say things like ‘talk about it with a friend ‘ or ‘someone you trust’ – but that’s precisely the problem: those seeking help don’t have any friends they can talk to. Most of that money-making Help machine is useless in my opinion.

  I totally agree with Ames on the widening gap between rich and poor, in the US and beyond [same thing in Europe]. I’m just back from a return flight from LA to Boston with American Airlines. In the waiting area at LA’s airport just before boarding, I noticed there were only barely a third of seats for the total number of passengers on the plane. Same thing in the other waiting areas for other destinations. As a result, loads of people were sitting on the floor – a scene which made me think this is third-world’, as I’m sure I’ve seen scenes like this in places in Cambodia, Pakistan, the slums of India and Rio. Only two air hostess on the LA-Boston flight, whom we barely saw, no free dinner or even snack.
  Everywhere I look the services for the middle class/the little people are being reduced, for ever increasing fares and prices, resulting in longer lines at understaffed counters, etc. leading to more stressful lives for already overworked, underslept working people, single parents, etc. Meanwhile, my mother told me she saw on TV how a rich American movie star at a party somewhere in the south of France had one of her medications that she left at home fetched for her by plane!!! Just one plane to get her medicine!

  As far as I understand, I think this is the kind of maddening and widening discrepancy between classes that Ames is referring to. And I do believe it can have a part in leading some people like Sodini to react as he did.

• 59. erik in manhattan  |  August 6th, 2009 at 12:02 pm

  Sodini has a serious mother complex, and sought female rejection. Anyway, read JUNG – classic mother complex. Not crazy, but clearly driven by compulsion. Btw, there is simply no such thing as a male who cannot get laid. Even certain male bums living in a park near me have girlfriends… we have this bum-love thing going on in summer. Women are NOT hard to get by any means.

• 60. Mr Burke  |  August 6th, 2009 at 12:20 pm

  Thanks for this piece.

  There are probably thousands of men in their 30s and 40s who can empathize a bit with Sodini and know they need help before they unravel completely. But can they afford it? Can they deal with the stigma that comes with seeking mental health care in America?

• 61. Prystupnik  |  August 6th, 2009 at 12:24 pm

  More seriously though, motivation to kill out of sexual frustration. especially when that frustration is a result of exclusion based on sexual status and NOT because of some pathological abarrancy, is entirely understandable and ought to be acted on, just as it is amoung all other animals in the jungle. We, after all, are now entirely enveloped in a jungle of capitalism’s claptrap, and so the laws of the jungle should be applied: the excess alpha-types, dominant and sub-dominant males (and females , I should add) must be combated visibly for their discreditation, and/or removal. The health of the species, to say nothing of the health of our civilization, seems to be crying out for this.

• 62. Frank Kottner  |  August 6th, 2009 at 12:51 pm

  He should have killed bankers.

• 63. Tommy Jefferson  |  August 6th, 2009 at 12:57 pm

  Interesting points Rob and Modern Demagogue.

  I agree with the analysis that this was the result of a combination of Fight Club and social retardation.

  Sodini feels no connection to society. In past eras it would have been *impossible* for a human to acheive 48 years of life without learning to establish and maintain the complex economic and personal relationships that give life meaning.

  It is sick that in 21st century America a man can do that.

  Notice that Sodini thought sobriety was so important he bragged about not drinking for 20 years. Notice that he worried about “drinking and driving” on his way to a massacre. (!?)

  Notice that Sodini had faith in God and Jesus, all the way to the end.

  This guy was crippled into isolation by his fear of breaking the rules; rules against goofing off, rules against taking advantage of skanks, rules against getting wasted, and rules against being unattractive.

  In other words, Sodini is the logical result of the soul-crushing boredom our corporate socialist society requires of its livestock.

• 64. timmy  |  August 6th, 2009 at 1:56 pm

  I must take exception to Mary’s comment in 40
  that white men tend to go amuk – there have been a great deal of black mass/rage killings. Unlike street crime, where blacks and latinos commit offenses at a much greater rate than whites, mass killers and serial killers follow a more ‘expected’ distribution by race.

  The media, hollywood, etc tars white men with this impression which Mary has clearly internalized – that white men are the sickos who become mass or serial murderers, or who molest children.
  As a result of this smear, love shy white men face additional hardship when meeting women. Once a woman meets them and figures out that they’re slightly strange and rather shy the woman’s imagination runs wild. This compounds the troubles that awkward men experience and is an unfair burden.

• 65. nick frei  |  August 6th, 2009 at 2:16 pm

  I dont get it why Mark tries to fabricate a class-struggle story out of this. The poor shmock simply had one simple problem – he didnt get laid often enough, and quite frankly, who wouldnt pick up a gun and go on a bit of shooting spree in his situation? 20 years, jesus H. christ!!

• 66. brian  |  August 6th, 2009 at 2:24 pm

  here’s another angle, from Bruce Wilson of talk2action.org :

  As George Sodini wrote on December 29, 2008, “Just got back from tanning, been doing this for a while. No gym today, my elbow is sore again. I actually look good. I dress good, am clean-shaven, bathe, touch of cologne – yet 30 million women rejected me – over an 18 or 25-year period.”

  On Tuesday August 4th, 2009, computer systems analyst Sodini walked into a Pittsburgh gym, pulled guns out of a duffle bag, turned off the lights, and sprayed bullets into a LA Fitness Center woman’s aerobics class of roughly thirty, killing three. The leader of the class, who had just announced that she was pregnant, was wounded along with at least eight others, some of whom were shot multiple times.

  Media analysis has so far ignored or glossed over Sodini’s religious affiliations but the shooter’s Internet diary suggest his last readings were the Bible and a book by a Texas evangelist, R.B. Thieme, Jr. who has written that husbands own their wives, as literal property and promoted an odd teaching that for each man on Earth there exists only one correct “right woman” in all creation.

  According to Thieme, men can recognize their divinely-appointed opposites without physical contact, through something Thieme called “soul climax” [ see R.B. Thieme, Jr.’s “Doctrines of The Bible: Doctrine of Right Man and Right Woman” (Microsoft Word Document format) ]

  After perpetrating the massacre, Sodini committed suicide. He left behind chilling weblog entries outlining his intended plan. According to forensic psychologists such as former FBI agent and ABC News consultant Brad Garrett, Sodini fit a classic “shooter” profile. Garrett told ABC that Sodini, “spends a lot of time in his blog talking about how he was mistreated as a child. He felt he went through life feeling no one cared for him, loved him or nurtured him. As he got older, he likely isolated himself more and more and was able to justify his disturbing behavior. His perceived rejection justifies his actions.”

  George Sodini’s weblog lays considerable blame for his self-admitted psychological problems on the Pittsburgh-based Tetelestai Church which by his account Sodini attended for 13 years, up through 2006. The pastor of Tetelestai, James R. Knapp, is one of a few luminaries in the small fundamentalist universe under the sway of Texas evangelist and prolific author R.B. Thieme, Jr. — a retired US Air Force Colonel known to wear his old military uniform while giving sermons who has been accused of cultic and authoritarian practices and wrote doctrine asserting that “[a] married woman is the property of the man she marries.”

  Sodini broke with Tetelestai in 2006 but his weblog writings indicate that he recently held considerable anger towards the church. As George Sodini wrote December 31, 2008,

  ” “Be Ye Holy, even as I have been Ye holy! Thus saith the lord thy God!”, as pastor Rick Knapp would proclaim. Holy shit, religion is a waste. But this guy teaches (and convinced me) you can commit mass murder then still go to heaven…. guilt and fear kept me there 13 long years until Nov 2006. I think his crap did the most damage.”

  In his final weblog entry on August 3rd, 2009, written before carrying out the LA Fitness Center slaughter, Sodini wrote, “I was reading the Bible and The Integrity of God beginning yesterday, because soon I will see them.” The Integrity of God was a privately published book by R.B. Thieme, Jr. and the apparent reference suggests that while George Sodini was estranged from the Tetelestai Church he was still under the influence of Thieme’s writing, which may have exacerbated Sodini’s social maladjustment and inability to meet women because of an extreme, idealistic doctrine Thieme espoused known as “right man/right woman”.

  According to R.B. Thieme Jr.’s Right Man/Right Woman doctrine, “there is only one right man for one right woman and vice versa, 1 Cor 7:2-4.” Thieme’s doctrine was decidedly male-centric: “The husband is the authority in marriage”. It also suggested women civilize savage males: “God protects women from tyranny by the training of the little boy by his mother. His mother teaches the man respect for womanhood, and keeps him from becoming an animal.” Thieme wrote that, “God always brings the right woman to the right man…. [ Bible] Doctrine is your right woman until God leads her to you.” [ emphasis by R.B. Thieme, Jr. ]

  Thieme also declared that “Bitchiness in a woman is an indication of the wrong woman,” and his doctrine claimed that prospective “right men” could intuit their respective “right women” through something Thieme termed a “soul climax.” But, pastor Thieme emphasized, “Sex before marriage destroys your capacity to have a soul climax.”

  George Sodini complained of never having slept a night next to a woman for over two decades, and so a maxim from R.B. Thieme, Jr.’s “Doctrine of Adultery” [ Word Document of Thieme doctrine ] may have been especially depressing: “People who are losers in life are losers in marriage… Losers are not people who fail but people who do nothing about their failures.” Sodini specifically noted in the heading of his weblog diary, “Never married”.

  In a July 20th, 2009 entry -less than two weeks before he shot a hail of bullets into an exercise class of women and then turned his gun on himself- George Sodini wrote,

  “I guess some of us were simply meant to walk a lonely path. I have slept alone for over 20 years. Last time I slept all night with a girlfriend it was 1982. Proof I am a total malfunction. Girls and women don’t even give me a second look ANYWHERE. There is something BLATANTLY wrong with me that NO goddam person will tell me what it is…

  I can just start being self-righteous and say I live a good, clean life. I am holy, that’s all Rick Knapp stuff.”

  An August 6th ABC News story reveals that Sodini might have been willing to reconsider his plans to attack the LA Fitness Center if he had been able to meet women :

  “At the gym I saw a woman I like. I see her at the park and ride sometimes, so she isn’t a stranger. Occationaly [sic] she makes good eye contact and smiles, etc. She is maybe 40ish, and attractive to me,” Sodini wrote on his blog and then hid from public view with a veil of computer code.

  “I made brief conversation to her and a younger woman she was with today. To get a friend like her (and for night time action) I would cancel this plan, or put on hold, at least for a while.”

  For such a deeply socially estranged man did R.B. Thieme Jr.’s teachings, which saddle male-female relations with almost impossibly idealistic expectations, exacerbate preexisting socio-sexual alienation to the point where George Sodini felt unable to relate to the female sex in any other manner than down the barrel of a loaded gun ?

• 67. Jon Manatos  |  August 6th, 2009 at 3:04 pm

  Your article was insightful. I noticed the same media ostrichism during the Cho Virginia Tech shootings. Once I reached by 40s, I began to understand many of the marginalized people who “go postal” so to speak. The formula is rather simple.

  First, in order to motivate us as good little capitalist worker ants, our government educators inculcate us from birth to think that we too, yes even us, can be the next Bill Gates if only we work hard enough and pray to Jesus. What they didn’t tell us is that from the very fact that we attended public schools we obviously were not in the right socioeconomic class to ever become president, much less senator.

  Second, as further motivation, we were told that we could even be the next Brittany or Eminem. Fame and fortune awaited us all.

  Third, as we grew older, these thoughts remained deep in our (sub)consciousness, turning us into the selfish, narcissistic asshole Americans that we have became. But we didn’t care because we were going to be rich and famous.

  Fourth, because of the media bias towards youth and beauty, no one ever tells us that we will be cast aside at 40 as used, worn-out goods, so we are not prepared for what is to come in the near future.

  Fifth, sometime in our late 30s or early 40s we realize that the joke is on us. Our shot at the presidency never came to fruition, and we will never see our name in lights. This is the time in life when women begin cheating on their husbands and men start fucking the 16-year-old babysitter. We call it a mid-life crisis, but it is really a desperate grasping. Others, apparently angry by how subtly their marginalization crept into their lives, pick up guns and begin killing people because there really is nothing left.

  This is the reality that the media will not tell you about and why so many people “go postal.” The entire trend could be reversed if we simply stopped lying to our kids from the beginning. The odds are most likely that you will NOT be powerful, you will NOT be rich, you will NOT be famous, and you will NOT be all the other things they sell to us. The odds are most likely that you WILL be a worker ant slaving your life away, you WILL be poor, you WILL be at the middle or bottom of the socioeconomic hierarchy, you WILL be just 1 in 300,000,000, you WILL be written off by society at 40, etc, etc. This is the harsh reality that we should be teaching the future Cho’s and Sodini’s so that the harshness of this reality will not break them when they arrive at that station in life.

• 68. Ali  |  August 6th, 2009 at 3:15 pm

  I read the diary after a link to the cached google page was put on reddit (which, incidentaly, led me to your article).

  While significant portions of what Ames observes and says are correct and he is at times even insightful, this is a classic case of having all the right step but failing at the end to reach the right conclusion.

  Ames failed to realize that he needed to change his own life. One can seem proactive but within our societal structure it is quite as easy to end up where he was as it is to end up on the street.

  Ames seems like a person who always chose the path of least resistance. And in the end that path led him to derangment, mania, and in the end he again, chose the path of least resistance.

  He could have hunted down the CEOs of goldman sachs, AIG, lehman, BofA, etc. Not to mention Barney Franks, Bernanke, Rumsfield, Cheney, Bush, etc.

  Yet that would have been to hard. He chose the easiest targets he could find.

  He CHOSE to be alone, he CHOSE to remain where he was. HE CHOSE.

  I personally know too many people who have raised themselves out of the literal shit they were born in to become happy successful people who are following not just goals, but heroes and ideals.

  Ames situation was a symptom of our societal decline, but his final actions were of his own choosing. He is no hero, just a sad case.

• 69. Mary  |  August 6th, 2009 at 3:58 pm

  From his blog:

  January 5, 2009

  “There is a woman there that gives me a certain look every time I am there. I decided to walk over and make a comment about the crowds but she left when I finished the exercise. Better that I do not get sidetracked from tomorrow’s plan anyways.”

  God forbid I should be proven wrong that no woman will ever want me.

  July 23, 2009:

  “I just looked out my front window and saw a beautiful college-age girl leave Bob Fox’s house, across the street. I guess he got a good lay today. College girls are hoez. I masturbate. Frequently. He is about 45 years old. She was a long haired, hot little hottie with a beautiful bod.”

  He probably couldn’t be bothered with women anywhere near his age.

  “On the same thought, things occured to me today. Michael NEVER had an attractive girlfriend. Debbie, Barb, Kim, … then I lost track. Not to say I had any (execpt Pam, who was about a 7.25). He married a Chinese-descent, petite woman with no body, no ass, no chest and no personality. She never laughs or smiles, neither does he. But she is highly intelligent and an excellent cook. I can testify to that! She home bakes her own DELICIOUS wheat bread! But who cares about that type of small bull crap? Mike even mentioned when we were visiting dad that “she’s not very attractive”.”

  Yeah, everything is “small bull crap” except having a “beautiful bod.”

  “On still another thought, I had 20+ years of sobriety and achieved nothing about friendships, girlfriends, guys, etc. Zilch. What a waste.”

  Gee, wonder why, George? Maybe because you were a shallow, narcissistic, unattractive creep who couldn’t settle for less than a “hoe” half your age and way beyond your league.

  He could have used a sex therapist, but that would have required him to accept that he had some responsibility for the waste his life turned out to be.

  He said the women at the gym “look so beautiful as to not be human”. Psychopaths always dehumanize their victims.

• 70. Pimpin  |  August 6th, 2009 at 4:23 pm

  Guy should have started listening to 50 cent and adopting his style. The young girls love the gangsta walk.

  But really, what an asshole to take his problems out on women in general. Total fucking loser.

• 71. captain america  |  August 6th, 2009 at 4:41 pm

  one other thing, to all the lonely guys out there: lift weights. seriously. a proper, consistent, weight training program, combined with good nutrition, will change your life, and not just with women.

  i love the program in “the new rules of lifting” (ISBN 978-1583333389), but there are probably a lot of other great programs out there. do some research.

  few guys have the discipline necessary to lift for 30 minutes or so three or four times a week, but if you can be one of the few, your life is pretty much guaranteed to improve drastically.

• 72. coldequation  |  August 6th, 2009 at 4:47 pm

  @31, snark is a nice leavening for an argument. But it is not a substitute for one.

  Also, for the people who say this man suffered from “love shyness,” he says he’s been laid 50 times, has had girlfriends, and even had a baby. Sexually he did better than a lot of guys who commented here.

  Maybe his problem was that he ignored women who were attainable for him. If you follow the links here:
  http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/97wnt/reddit_exclusive_george_sodini_documents_la/

  you can see that he was interested in teenage girls instead of the age-appropriate middle-aged divorcees.

• 73. inna  |  August 6th, 2009 at 4:57 pm

  >He can have a 19 year old russian or >cambodian girl in 10 seconds to sleep with.
  >
  >But no, its clear he worships the white >woman. He only wants a white “mate”. His >racism undid him in the end.

  Russians are white, you dummy.

• 74. MQ  |  August 6th, 2009 at 5:04 pm

  In a later entry Sodini explicitly says that if I write a comment on someone’s site, that someone should please shoot me. So, someone?

• 75. inna  |  August 6th, 2009 at 5:06 pm

  >but I just can’t get anyone to be my >girlfriend!

  Just don’t go and kill us, women, for that please! (Just kidding, you are a nice guy, you will never do that, right?)

  By the way, women sometimes may feel that something is wrong with a guy in his head, but they will never tell you that directly. They will tell you that you are a nice guy, but they want something else. Any guesses as to why women are not direct and don’t explain to you what is wrong with you? … Correct, because we are dum and sometimes can’t explain what we know for sure in our guts and also because we don’t want to be killed.

• 76. inna  |  August 6th, 2009 at 5:28 pm

  In Mexico, they have songs that working class men sing about treacherous, evil women, the pains they cause men. In one article, they suggested that the working class men simply displace the feeling of helplessness and lack of control over their lives from the upper class men who owned their asses to women who were a safe and easily reachable target.

  Looks like something like that was going on here. Maybe this is why the guy shot women in an aerobics class instead of his co-workers. After all, they usually have security at the work places.

  I wonder if majority of people dying from the hands of those who go postal are women.

• 77. geo8rge  |  August 6th, 2009 at 5:40 pm

  Don’t worry about the gap between rich and poor, worry about the gap between government and private sector employees. The rich are maybe 1% of the population, if they are idle so what? Government workers and retirees are millions.

  Wikipedia discussions has some interesting stuff on George Sodini.
  His guided tour of his house, I won’t spoil it but look carefully and you will see he had a maturity of about 17.

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1ZQHrKQo5Q#GU5U2spHI_4

• 78. RedBastardGod  |  August 6th, 2009 at 6:24 pm

  Fuck this asshole. He was a psychopath – made or born it doesn’t matter now. There are a lot of good but lonely women who’d love to meet a man that they could share their lives with. He never gave them a chance. What he needed to do was fucking grow up.

• 79. Fissile  |  August 6th, 2009 at 7:11 pm

  A walk around the local mall, or Walmart, will provide all the proof you need to confirm that losers can get women. I see some men who look like extras from the Star Wars bar scene walking around with quite normal looking women. Not all of these men are rich. Why would they be in Walmart if they were rich? Having a good game with women is worth more than tons of money, or looks for that matter.

  I also know men that are married/living with women who make considerably more money than they do. I know unemployed men who are being supported by their wives/girlfriends. Most of these men don’t look like George Clooney.

  On the other hand, in a way, I agree with Ames, the economic changes in post war America have resulted in societal changes that have allowed hundreds of thousands of beta males, like Sodini, to fall through the cracks. In decades past, communities provided a close-knit social safety net for guys like Sodini. Although marriages were not arranged, there were parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, neighbors, etc, who acted as informal match makers. Even if a couple were inept at the inception of their relationship, they had lots of help on smoothing over the rough spots until they hit their stride.

  Educational and career opportunities for women were limited. The majority of men, most without sheepskins, could earn enough to keep body and soul together. Women were more likely to settle for Milquetoast guys than they are now.

  Finally, if there are hundreds of thousands of grade-b men without companionship, there are even more women in the same position, since women outnumber men in that age group. We don’t hear so much about these women for a number of reasons. First, as many of these women hit middle-age, and realize that they will never marry, they tend to blame feminism for their predicament — this embarrasses the liberal media so they don’t talk about it. Since women are not poisoned with testosterone, they generally don’t go on shooting sprees at the local mall. Instead they turn into cougars looking for some teen stud to scratch their itch. Notice all the recent stories about fat, ugly, schoolmarms hooking up with their young male charges? Again, a major embarrassment for the puritan pukes of the left.

  So, yes, the economic/social Darwinism of our modern society has created hundreds of thousands of losers like George, both male and female, but what is the solution? Do we try to go back to an old fashioned form of society? The kind of society that the majority of people felt was stifling, and gladly bailed out of at first opportunity?

• 80. Gaucho  |  August 6th, 2009 at 7:14 pm

  “Guy should have started listening to 50 cent and adopting his style. The young girls love the gangsta walk.

  But really, what an asshole to take his problems out on women in general. Total fucking loser.”

  Yeah but it still might be a good idea to do something about loserdom before too many people are shot.

• 81. ghost  |  August 6th, 2009 at 7:56 pm

  Thanks, Kirilov, Tam, etc. for your responses, but I doubt I can even hire a prostitute or make a sex-friend. I just lack the means to do it, just like #32 said, and not because I don’t think it’s a good idea, but because I don’t even know where to begin or what should I try, nothing! it’s like I’m mutilated or something.

  And somehow everyone can see that and take advantage of it both men and women, I can’t escape. And when I stop to think that I’m the only freak who has never even been kissed and is now nearing his thirties, man I just can’t bear it.

• 82. coping skillz  |  August 6th, 2009 at 8:16 pm

• 83. MacGuffin  |  August 6th, 2009 at 8:55 pm

  I can’t fathom what this guy did, but I see the point Ames is making regarding the media reaction. Earlier, there was a typical five panel talking head discussions on one of cable news channels, who, not only couldn’t express any sense of tragedy whatsoever, but were basically belittling and berating this guy like a bunch of high school kids ostracizing the band geek. ‘Loser,’ ‘nutjob,’ ‘creep’…that’s all there is to see here…random insanity. Just move along.

• 84. LIExpressway  |  August 6th, 2009 at 9:58 pm

  As far as Timmy’s comment in 64:

  Though I agree with you in regards to minority mass killings, I think you are missing the overall point on what she was stating. Our society has given middle class men (mostly white but not exclusively) a sense of unrealistic entitlement. In a modern western society most men must somehow learn to see women as actual individuals and not just objects.

  Scorsese in his commentary on Taxi driver said that his movie isn’t the type of media that affects fella’s like Sodini or Travis Bickle. It’s the entire media that does this.
  Remember the scene were Travis is watching the dance Soul Train style show on TV and he is getting particularly enraged by a white women dancing with a black man. It almost parallels Sodini’s rant on black men with white women too perfectly.

  I never saw Travis in the movie as a complete racist, and don’t think Scorsese meant him to be. He was an average but very thoughtful dude that couldn’t step out of himself and consider a woman’s feelings as valid as their own. This is a problem a lot of men have, since in America and most of the world outside of Europe it is a revolutionary concept to see women as individuals.

  Falling Down is another example of what I think Mark Ames and Mary are both touching on. Defens was not a bad guy. He was mildly racist, but aren’t we all. He also had honor and standards, and a respect for democracy and decency. He cared about all children and was an industrious hard worker who was also rejected by a woman. In that movie right when he was going off the deep end, the only other man that he could relate to was a black man who was “NOT ECONOMICALLY VIABLE”
  As “heroic” of a guy as he was(and don’t we all wish sometimes we could do what he did in that movie), in the end he felt that he was entitled to a certain life, which included unconditional love from his wife and daughter despite his violent urges. He was in the end as selfish and evil as his bosses that downsized him.

  Mary only ads another eyeopening dimension to Marks analysis and expands upon it.

  Since progressives are mostly humanities educated cowards, as well as liberal arts lazy corporate/media welfare wimps, they will ignore this and side skirt it, and the radical right with all of the corporate sponsors will have a huge, well armed, well trained, industrious neofacist American white pride peoples army to shoot you execution style in the street for looking at porn. Women will revert back to property, and bikinis will be banned. Way to go guys.

  As more veterans return we will definitely see more of this.

  Also unrelated, how is any red blooded American dude against abortion. That still fucking baffles me. I don’t want my girlfriend to shit out a kid. That means less money to buy other girls drinks to have sex with me.

  LULZ

• 85. erik  |  August 7th, 2009 at 2:02 am

  The most laughable, hopeless male nerd on earth can get a girlfriend, and in certain cases even a hot one. Women have notoriously awful taste in men. So I dont buy this “I cant get laid” stuff.

  Sodini was stuck in a mother complex, family fixations that left him under the spell of unconscious compulsion. It would be great to read more about his family dynamics…

• 86. Starvid  |  August 7th, 2009 at 2:23 am

  This is so fucking tragic. I can read how many Brecher articles about absolutely horrific things, and it doesn’t touch me in the least.

  But this guy, who is a mass murderer, who’ve commited horrible actions against completely innocent people, I sympathise with. So much he almost makes me cry. For the first time since 1984 (not really, but still) I feel this weird feeling in my chest… pity, and compassion.

  :: ::

  But why the fuck didn’t he just go to Thailand and bang some horny smiling hookers instead of opening up?! He could have regained all the lost chances of the last 20 years in two months!

• 87. Starvid  |  August 7th, 2009 at 2:35 am

  Dear ghost,

  I don’t usually (ie never before, but this subject touched me so deeply) respond to these kind of calls for help or whatever you’d call it – to tell the truth it makes me feel like some hippie pansy idiot. But anyway.

  All guys feel just like you until they actually lose their virginity. Due to some failing of yours which you don’t mention, like extreme shyness or just fucking bad luck, you’re still a virgin. I felt exactly like you did until I lost my virginity (about 10 years before they, but anyway, I felt like I was the last person in the fucking world). Eventually I did meet a girl, and after that it’s been a lot freaking easier.

  So dear ghost. Go to Thailand. See a hooker (or many). They’re almost not even hookers, more like girlfriends you just need to lavish with presents. Trust me, you won’t regret it. When you get home again, it’ll all roll along for you.

  PS. Don’t shoot anyone.

• 88. Starvid  |  August 7th, 2009 at 2:40 am

  Roquentin,

  Houellebec: fucking bullseye. It’s almost too good (yeah I know it’s really horrible) to be true.

• 89. Starvid  |  August 7th, 2009 at 2:57 am

  Ghost,

  Uh, I obviously meant “when I was about 10 years younger than you are”, not that I lost my virginity about 10 years before the average guy. That’d just be kinda sick.

• 90. Born Truman  |  August 7th, 2009 at 3:17 am

  We need to find his child he writes about and make him our President.

• 91. Double gusto  |  August 7th, 2009 at 3:25 am

  Ghost, the point of sex is not only penetration it’s rolling around the female body for several hours straight.

  You can not achieve that with a prostitute.

• 92. Flags of Our Fathers  |  August 7th, 2009 at 3:40 am

  I’m now sitting at an internet cafe and a Sarah Jessica Parker/Julia Roberts younger hybrid comes in with 4 year old little beautiful asian daughter. Mommy.. Mommy… Time to think, virgin Americans, time to think..

• 93. Ivan  |  August 7th, 2009 at 5:08 am

  I’m afraid. This sounds exactly like me.

• 94. Mary  |  August 7th, 2009 at 5:44 am

  Thank you @ LIExpressway in 84 for your comments. I meant to respond to Timmy last night but fell asleep. I did not mean to suggest that white men are inherently more violent than others. I was referring (partly jokingly) to a joke Chris Rock made about white guys having these spectacular flame-outs. Other men go just as cwazee, they just act out in different, equally awful ways. Sorry for not making myself clear. I do think he was acting out of a wounded sense of middle/upper class white guy entitlement. I do have compassion for the love-shy men, but was thoroughly creeped out by the right-wing “Christian” tract Sodini was reading. One of its premises is that women are literally the property of their husbands.

  Like LIExpressway said, I was just adding an aspect, a crucial one, I think, that Mark was missing.

  Sodini was sold the idea that he, as a successful white guy, was entitled to 20 year old pussy. He couldn’t deal with the fact that he was unable to get it. Also, judging from his blog, he was just as selfish and materialistic as the people above him who were threatening his job.

  If I had a quarter mil like he did, I’d buy some cheap land and bug out so fast your head would spin.

• 95. Joe Blow  |  August 7th, 2009 at 6:22 am

  #79 you’re a dick.

  “this embarrasses the liberal media so they don’t talk about it”

  what liberal media? that’s a joke. any of these disappointed females can get airtime at Faux News if they wanted.

  and you were doing well until you say they would blame femmisim for the problem. if the femminists were rejecting men then that would make it easier for her.

  so check that …

• 96. Meatball  |  August 7th, 2009 at 7:46 am

  What 78 said. Reaganomics, age, etc. – points taken. How many women did this guy reject b/c they didn’t live up to his “standards” – no MBA, little overweight, etc. Notice at 48 he’s still obsessed with young women in their early 20’s – that’s the demo he wanted and didn’t get. He didn’t get that he was nerd and not a playa and should have chosen that quiet girl in accounting or someplace. He was jerk.

• 97. Johnny  |  August 7th, 2009 at 8:24 am

  On the bright side, he did a spree-killing with a relatively low body count in comparison to a serial killer like Bundy or Gein.

• 98. Chris Thomas  |  August 7th, 2009 at 10:32 am

  SPOT ON! A brilliant appraisal of the situation. Here in the UK the press is also pushing the mindless “sexually-obsessed-loser-psycho” line but surprising numbers of readers are not buying it. There is apparently widespread sympathy for this guy especially since large numbers are actually reading his blog word-for-word and seeing a chasm between the right-wing press’s ‘interpretation’ and the guy’s own acute awareness of things. I hope this will open up quite a debate. There will be many more ‘Sodinis’ to come

• 99. woman  |  August 7th, 2009 at 11:13 am

  This was a hate crime. Misogyny, plain and simple. Sodini assumed a sadly common viewpoint- that women exist for men- and went ballistic when women denied that.
  I can find NO SYMPATHY for a man who kills women because he can’t find a date.

• 100. Rob  |  August 7th, 2009 at 11:22 am

  For those stating that he was only interested in women in their twenties, I would point out the quote from Sodini’s diary given above regarding a woman in her forties who was “Attractive *to me*”. He says that he would even stop or postpone his attack if a woman like that would show some interested in him.

  Sure he had some unrealistic expectations engendered by the media, but to state that he was only interested in twenty-somethings is stretching it.

• 101. Columbine 101  |  August 7th, 2009 at 11:52 am

  Like Columbine, Sodini’s rampage was neither random nor inexplicable. Killers overwhelmingly emerge from the bottom and the top of the diamond shaped social heirarchy described in Lesson One of Columbine 101. Both extremes are conditioned to care about no one.

• 102. Andrew  |  August 7th, 2009 at 1:03 pm

  46 – what kind of therapist?

• 103. Marg  |  August 7th, 2009 at 1:13 pm

  so common in america? Yes, we have lax gun laws, so massacres like this happen now and then. And yes people die. But the vast majority of people (even those who own guns) do not go out and “go postal”, blasting innocent people while unleashing their rage at whatever: society, a girlfriend who dumped them, a job they hate. To say that hate and rage like this is “common” in America is simply not true. The media whips us into a frenzy over crime in this country. Kids can no longer play like I did in the ’60’s and the ’70s, because of the fear of pedophiles. there were just as many when I was growing up but it wasn’t reported and the vast majority of kids then, as today, will be just fine. I am a responsible gun owner a hunter. I live in a state (vermont) with a conceal carry law. Yes, we can openly carry weapons in our car and on our person if we are licensed. We do not have massacres in this state. And Vermont is not the only state to have such laws. What happened in Pittsburgh is tragic, but the man was mentally ill, and the signs were perhaps ignored.

• 104. aleke  |  August 7th, 2009 at 3:13 pm

  First, guns have always been easily available in America.

  Second, `going postal` is a new phenomenon that started only under Reagan, spreading from his newly-corporatized postal offices into the newly-deunionized factories and now into all facets of life. Think about that. There have been no cases before that of such rage massacres in America. None until you look way back in the records to slave plantations. That’s right, rage massacres were last seen in the slave plantation days. Although I suspect they were also around during the utterly hellish and merciless factories of the industrial revolution, too. The fact is though, while we had unions, there were no rage massacres.

  Read Mark Ames’ book Going Postal, and then argue. Not of any elitist accord, but because he outlines a devastating, well researched case. This article is just an example, not the argument.

  The main reason why you ought to reconsider the position usually trumpeted on this weighty political subject is the fact that FBI cannot categorize a spree killer. Not like they can with a serial killer. According to the FBI itself, a spree killer could be anyone.

• 105. robert chambers  |  August 7th, 2009 at 4:13 pm

  Too bad he shot himself, he would now have all sorts of women writing, begging to have his babies. Ted Bundy did. Even McVeigh. I’m sure Manson gets his share of fan mail. Conjugal visits. They can make it happen.

• 106. hyperbolus  |  August 7th, 2009 at 6:29 pm

  The guy is obviously a retarded loser/failure. Does it really even need to be said? So he was (over)full of (self-)hate and had a death wish. Fine. He should have shot up the law firm where he worked. Or picked an even better target (like, say, Warren Buffet), of which there are many. Failing that, he should have killed only himself. Otherwise, he is indeed just a creepy fuck(ed) up serial killer type.

• 107. [myg0t]OMP  |  August 7th, 2009 at 7:08 pm

  LOL I HAVE SEX AND IM MEXICAN

• 108. Inmate #B33920  |  August 8th, 2009 at 8:22 am

  I used to have lots of sex, sometimes 5-6 times a day. About the only things I have these days are a roof, three hots and a cot, plus that ‘X’ on my dome. Oh, yeah … they just moved Spector up here to Corcoran, so I look forward to a comeback … en vivo.

  This time it will be in color.

  Life is good.

• 109. MJ  |  August 8th, 2009 at 8:53 am

  I find it bizarre to read all of these posts about how “he should have just gone to Thailand and gotten laid.” Reading Sodini’s blog entries gives me the impression that he was incapable of connecting with other people and didn’t regard women as human. I don’t think a visit to a prostitute was going to make him all better–does paying a woman for sex help in the humanization process?

  In 69, Mary highlights sections of his blog that show he utterly objectified women, regarded their companionship as something owed to him, and avoided encounters that might sidetrack him from his goal of revenge. Even the way he writes about trying to chat up an attractive 40-yr-old: “I made brief conversation to her . . .” What type of person has a conversation “to” someone rather than “with”? His writings are full of alienating wording like this.

  The article makes interesting points about contributing factors, but from reading Sodini’s entries from a woman’s point of view, I think the guy just considered womenkind as being “other” — a frightening mystery that had to be eradicated if it couldn’t be bent to his will.

• 110. Rick Cain  |  August 8th, 2009 at 9:00 pm

  Timothy McVeigh (Murrah Bombing 1995) also had major problems with women and dating.

  Its obvious though that he was simply mentally ill.

• 111. Flozzi  |  August 9th, 2009 at 12:08 am

  @ames

  Excellent article, thanks. I don’t think anybody in our 3-sec-attention-span society even took the time to read what that dude was saying.

  @ghost

  I am no Casanova, but I think I can offer some advice. Try to figure out which demo-/psycho-graphic finds *you* attractive and then try to hang with such girls as much as possible for a while. This is a bit of a reverse thought process for many (you may find that the attraction is not always perfectly mutual), but it’s fine for the first few girls to get you some mileage. Try to read their body language, see if the girl you’re talking to is laughing at your jokes, turns to you while seating, etc etc. First, you just need raw data to see if there’s a pattern. You may find out, for example, that artsy girls like you or a particular nationality (of course, that requires living in a reasonably cosmopolitan place) – a lot of European-born girls are considerably looser. Could be the body type – may be you’re skinny and chubby chicks will want to have sex with you out of envy and interest.

  When you get something going, don’t tell the girl she’s your first – she’ll think this is weird and bail. If you can’t lie, be evasive. Say something like “it’s been a while”.

  For better results, lower your standards. And always wear nice shoes. Best of luck, man!

• 112. JD  |  August 9th, 2009 at 8:31 am

  Anyway, yes it can be tough and lonely in the USA, if you never really learn how to capture women. Most guys dont. How many more guys are out there in this exact same situation? It would be scary to do the math. Its not their fault and it sucks. But Why couldnt he have dropped everything, taken his savings, and gone to Thailand to teach english and bang for the rest of his able bodied life? Or the Phillipines? They speak english there. Its not difficult to find a wife in those countries. Then its free! Anyway, sad story.

• 113. JD  |  August 9th, 2009 at 12:19 pm

  Haha..You got my “editors note.” Glad I could be of assistance. I’m available for interviews all next week..Ok, seriously..

  You should do a followup commentary on the fact that last Saturday, in Pittsburgh, a lone Gunmen awaited and killed 3 police officers that that he called to his home. His motives were probably different, and the place of the crime was different, but it seemed like a ‘Gone Postal’ style massacre all the same. And 3 cops! c’mon thats as significant as the other story…and in the same town and close to the same date..that seems newsworthy to me…check it out.

• 114. Pat Barker  |  August 9th, 2009 at 5:05 pm

  This man is a serial killer. He will do it again soon, if not already. He is really sick.

• 115. scott w  |  August 9th, 2009 at 7:07 pm

  I read the story and as many of the comments as I could stomach but no time for the real diary. Sure, you can sympathize with this loser. It is sad that there are losers in the world. Many of us have been a loser at one time or other. If you are a loser you need to find out why and then do whatever it takes to change that.

  Some of you think he could not go to Russia or Thailand or find a prostitute because he was not that kind of guy. He was however the kind of guy to kill a bunch of people. He could have turned all that energy into changing hisself but Nooooo, he was too busy being a loser and probably a nutcase also.

  There was a popular idiot loser on the net named woo who was the same way. He was a total loser who could never be anything else no matter what help he was given. He just could never be anything but who he was, a loser. He believed that he did everything perfectly, he was perfect in fact, to his mind so why could he possibly be a loser. He is still a loser after many years now but he found Russia and every other sex paradice and he went on to fully believe that he was a total hunk, basically because prostitutes told him he was a hunk.

  So what I am saying is do not look at this guy as normal. He was probably normal once but he was long gone a few years back. He probably got good advice or could have found it but chose not to take it. Anything could have saved him and he could have done many things short of killing a bunch of women but that is the route he chose to take.

• 116. Asperger rendition flight  |  August 10th, 2009 at 3:23 am

  I agree with other posters that Thailand is probably the most obvious and effective solution here.

  Ok, just half seriously now, how are places like Thailand and the Philippines, where hundreds of thousands of Western men now go each year (to, er, see temples. And elephants…), how are they not defacto aspects of the mental health system??

  Handing out vouchers and subsidies to people like this shooter could help. 200 yrs from now they’ll being doing this.

  Haar, imagine how un-PC the government checklist to qualify would be… yet, ‘strangely’ effective…

  All these I.T. dudes and asperger barcode collectors who *never* saw (unsimulated) daylight will be walking around with healthy, natural tans….

• 117. Topaz  |  August 10th, 2009 at 3:44 am

  @ Ghost:

  Google the term “involuntary celibacy.” You’re not the only one out there, man. Maybe one day there will be available help for this situation that involves more than resorting to hookers, or more than solitary blind quests.

• 118. maria  |  August 10th, 2009 at 4:09 am

  Ghost, don’t go to hookers, by no means! Better buy a ticket to Russia. There are many virgins of your age and a bit younger in Russia, and believe me a lot of them are not ugly. Go to libraries or museums, choose the prettiest girls and fall in love. If you smile and say you are from america this would be enough for them to get interested. Just hint them you are virgin who wants to have a family and you will be treated like a present of heavens, girls will run after you! Those who are over 25 faster than the rest of course, because in their childhood America was a magic unavailable country, like a place from fairy-tales, where pinces live. Some may critisize America now, but shades of this fairy-tale attitude are still present in their subconsciousness.

• 119. Bil  |  August 10th, 2009 at 10:58 am

  All I know is that no one shoots the house up because they can’t get a date. I can’t put my finger on why the MSM continues to push a story about a man full of hate for women when it was obvious to me that it more to this tragedy. But as I read in a earlier post this week one describe it as ( Falling Down Syndrome). Sodini writings points to it. Lets all hope that it doesn’t continue to happen to others under the pressures of today.

• 120. Fabian  |  August 10th, 2009 at 12:56 pm

  It troubles me how many people here are so eager to keep Sodini at arm’s length by calling him “mentally ill”. And that’s what it is – a desire to make him into something alien, unhuman, so we can go to bed at night thinking we’re all so much different than him. While I understand the motivation, there are some problems with that argument. First off, calling the guy mentally ill absolves him of any responsibility for what he did. In a court, they call it “not guilty by reason of mental defect”, and while I’m not a doctor, I don’t think the evidence points in the direction of mental illness. No, the more disturbing idea is that he had all his wits about him, and through a long process of deliberation he decided this was the only way for him to make a difference in the world. That possibility scares the hell out of people, because then literally anyone could follow the same line of reasoning and pursue the same actions if they chose. I think a commenter above pointed out that the FBI can’t predict the actions of “spree killers”. That’s proof that spree killers aren’t mentally ill – they’ve freely decided to do what they do. Does Sodini point to a deeper problem in our society? I think so. There’s just too much on this topic to go into here, but suffice it to say, there are a lot of changes that have happened in the last 40 years, from women’s rights to media to economic changes that have lent themselves to the creation of the Sodinis of the world. Yes ladies, not to excuse the man’s actions, but your attitudes and behaviors do have a role to play in this sort of thing, and it’s high time you started realizing that. Men and women need each other. Going for long periods of time without social connection is not healthy. Some people just don’t know how to break out of their “funk” in this regard. On the female side of things, I was reading about the dramatic increase in the suicide rate of middle aged women who’ve never been married. Modern society is exacting its toll on everyone today. My hope is that one good thing can come out of this crime – we can have more discussions about this.

• 121. Francois  |  August 10th, 2009 at 3:22 pm

  It’s true that 99% of the W4M adds on CL casual encounters are fake. But that 1% is priceless. I hooked up with a sexy thick DD cupped married 27 YO black woman who posted an add for “NSA sex.” We we had a wild encounter in the back seat of my truck in the parking lot of a shopping center that involved oral, vaginal and anal sex. She stopped to call her husband and tell him she was going to be coming home from “shopping” later than expected. The catch is the small number of women looking to do stuff like this only want to do it with very good looking, well built, well hung guys.

• 122. Meatball  |  August 11th, 2009 at 11:52 am

  Damn you still talking about this loser? Yeah, blah exitential blah Everyone…Look. Dude had 250K and didn’t spend any of it on a hooker?? LOSER

• 123. Skeeve  |  August 12th, 2009 at 10:09 pm

  I’d say Sodini missed his big opportunity for love when he turned the gun on himself. As a serial murderer on trial, he no doubt would have had dozens of women lined up to marry him. Reminds me of the old Bill Hicks routine about Ted Bundy and his many female admirers (“Just what are you ladies looking for, anyway?”). I’m always amused by the reaction to these stories about the loner male whose rubber band finally snaps. “He kind of kept to himself. Y’know, not a lot of friends…” And the inevitable, “You really have to watch out for those quiet loner types…”

  Meanwhile, the extroverted alpha males that women habitually choose as their mates are happily wrecking the planet and leading us down the path towards world war. Not that women can help it, of course, having been programmed by billions of years of evolution to seek aggressive assholes like George Bush to spawn with. And so it goes, and will probably keep on going until we reach the long-overdue and justly deserved extinction of our species. Just once, though, I’d like to hear, after high-status dickhead like Bush starts a war that kills a million people, “He was very outgoing, you know, had a lot friends. Everyone liked him…” I’d say it’s those gregarious extroverts you have to watch out for…

• 124. Skeeve  |  August 13th, 2009 at 4:13 am

  I can’t resist another comment about Sodini’s lousy timing. It seems to me that if he’d just kept his powder dry for a few more years, and his head above water economically, he could have made it to the promised land. So many of the posts here refer to a middle-aged man’s increased chances with the opposite sex in third-world countries (fyi, a friend of mine recommends Costa Rica). That is, with young women who live far enough beneath the poverty line that they cannot afford to be as finicky as the average American gal.

  Well, it seems to me that we’re almost there! Just a few more months of one million a month job losses and the inevitable crossover into double-digit inflation, and Sodini et al. will have a veritable smorgasbord of desperate American pussy looking for the next Big Mac. Just as when the poor Russian girls had to peddle their asses to survive the Soviet collapse, it’ll be Jennifer and Buffy’s turn (in the Peak Oil community, this is referred to as “humping for turnips.” Think Scarlett O’Hara). I remember reading that during the Great Depression, there we’re 30,000 or so wandering nymphs who offered themselves up sexually to survive, and that was way before the overt sexualization of our culture that’s been going on since the 1960s. Sodini, you poor sod, if only you’d waited…

• 125. someone  |  August 15th, 2009 at 9:06 am

  Well, don’t you have prostitutes in Pittsburgh? Much more cost effective solution, I’d be damned if I ever miss times when I had a gf, all the time, money and nerve cells is wastes… I haven’t had unpaid sex for 4 years and I’m just 25. Not expecting to go postal either 🙂

• 126. machete  |  September 3rd, 2009 at 2:17 pm

  First, he was obviously crazy. Prostitution is available everywhere. But this guy wants “love”. This is a more recent phenomenon/entity. He wants a white woman? Great; go to ukraine or macedonia. all you want. this guy has loads of money; 250k? that is more than most. He wanted that long lasting bedmate? well he should have proposed to the one 30 years ago. but he didnt. it is brutal out there. always was. there is only so much wealth to go around. they could easily make it a law so that only white women can go with white men. but our liberals in government wont allow it.

• 127. machete  |  September 3rd, 2009 at 2:31 pm

  The belief that some gorgous woman will make your life fulfilled and meanigful is one of the myths for many. I had nothing. Nothing except for a 25 year-old former Mrs. Wisconsin. And she was a very successful swimsuit model. we are talking beyond a 10. sex? 3/day everyday. Bring girls in? if i wanted; I didnt. It was the nightmare of my life. i wouldnt go back to that for a million $’s. Meaning to life comes from the intangible. Money? i have made millions; doesnt give happiness either. This man had the notion that these things would bring happiness and meaning. He should have cranked out a few kids; he would have found meaning.

• 128. awatcher  |  September 18th, 2009 at 2:32 pm

  Read this and it is dead on. I began a blog in this guys local home town paper. Doing well, and I have tried to show both sides of the story Had not read your blog until today. He was pro Gore, not racist, jealous a black guy was getting laid when he was not, but even up to 2 weeks before he did this he tried to ask a girl he knew where he tanned out. He had been teased at school, mostly by girls. His possible son did not deny he was not his son….. So, he may inherit all of Sodinis money in the end. A person who grew up down the doors from Sodini siad his mom and brother did ineed mistreat him. ALl the time.
  Sodini gave the max allowed to the Obama campaign. A good post was made today in the Pitt News and he was a human had a family. But he was alone. People who knew him, I had to dig, all men, report was nice, polite and friendly and always cracking jokes. He did this to hide his loneliness. He was not a longer, but lonely. He kept trying to make the right contact. Thanks for the great analysis.

  I think at the end of hte day, all these guys want to accepted and loved and understood FIRST and maybe if we do they will stop killing. As I write a mass axe attack was stopped in Germany. Another would be mass attack stopped by friends in the UK.

• 129. scholar  |  September 28th, 2009 at 4:03 am

  I think that there are many cases such as his, but they usually end in simple suicide so they are not taken up by the media.

  On one hand I kind of simpatize. OTOH he was a psycho with a constant desire to do the killing spree ASAP.

  He was willing to accept help but how can anyone offer help if you do not ask for it?

  May 4, 2009:

  “I was always open to suggestions to what I am doing wrong, no brother or father (mine are useless) or close friend to nudge me and give it bluntly yet tactfully wtf I am doing wrong. A personal coach or someone who knows what he is doing would be perfect.”

• 130. Jayo  |  October 9th, 2009 at 1:34 am

  From Ireland – I have a lot of sympathy for this bloke and his many troubles. Clean, well dressed, respectable – he just couldn’t connect with other people and it was this inability and the fact that so many other dudes could connect – that ultimately distorted his world view – he got to a point where his rage boiled over and hit back. Not defending him but we could all be in his position.

• 131. Tom Hanks  |  December 4th, 2009 at 6:23 am

  “He understood that his sexual failure and anomie were part of a larger injustice and rigidity built into the current American narrative, a miserable narrative for most white males over the age of 25.”

  Stop watching television, porn, gaysports and eating junkfood.

  If you want to achieve something then stop masturbating. Healthy animal does not masturbate. Wanker is a wanker.

• 132. DeeboCools  |  April 14th, 2012 at 11:18 am

  @131 Stop masturbating? What are you, nuts?

• 133. F  |  April 16th, 2012 at 7:16 am

  Did he never consider what is wrong with himself?

  If you can’t succeed doing what you’ve done for 18+ years, would you not think it is perhaps your own fault rather than that of those around you?

  All this shows is a severe lack of self reflection and improvement while trying to say that the problem he has is everybodies fault but his own.

• 134. bitchybitch  |  May 6th, 2012 at 9:10 am

  I pity this jackass. I’m going to pretend that this represents something Ames has to say about women. Maybe it’s because I’m hurt?

• 135. bitchybitch  |  May 6th, 2012 at 9:21 am

  Ladies, new rules!
  You need to read the article rather than misread it and pretend you’re reading it. Cool?

• 136. bitchybitch  |  May 6th, 2012 at 10:02 am

  all you guys saying he was justified in mass murder because he couldn’t get laid are fucking psychotic freaks and i hope no woman is ever unfortunate enough to fuck you, the fact that you can even entertain such a notion is screaming evidence that your problems are MUCH bigger than anything any pussy could solve. You’re all trying to say you’re justified in being psychotic if you can’t get laid–WRONG, WRONG, WRONG!
  GET IT THROUGH YOUR THICK FUCKING SKULLS: YOU CAN’T GET LAID BECAUSE YOU’RE PSYCHOTIC, NOT THE OTHER WAY AROUND.

• 137. bitchybitch  |  May 6th, 2012 at 10:07 am

  Case in point: Comment number one, saying he’d do the same while bragging about how much pussy he’s gotten in his youth, then bragging about his gun collection as if, oh, that’s just an offhand coincidence, not that he would ever use them on a woman for not fucking him, ha haha of course not, but, he has LOTS of guns, and he just wanted to make sure we all know that…
  Dude, get help. Take all your strip-club money you were going to use playing passive aggressive games with strippers you want to murder, and get a shrink instead. Please.

• 138. bitchybitch  |  May 6th, 2012 at 10:54 am

  #7: ticktickticktickticktick…

• 139. bitchybitch  |  May 6th, 2012 at 10:59 am

  #8, #12: psycho, psycho.

  #12: don’t tell that psycho in #7 to go hassle a hooker. Contrary to popular belief, hookers sell SEX, not validation of all your neurotic bullshit, not nurturing of your inner child, NONE OF THAT BULLSHIT YOU THINK ALL WOMEN OWE YOU FOR BEING BORN, YOU STUPID ASSHOLE.

• 140. bitchybitch  |  May 6th, 2012 at 11:11 am

  #19: what a tedious, insufferable asshole. I bet lots of people want to fuck you, but I bet they only make that mistake once.
  It’s just the height. People have a leftover instinct from looking up to their parents for approval as infants. They have to look up to talk to you, they subconsciously start seeking your approval without realizing why, which translates in our shallow culture as sexual pursuit, because in our shallow culture, EVERYTHING translates as sexual pursuit. So get the fuck over yourself.

• 141. joe  |  August 21st, 2012 at 3:11 am

  It has been 3 years since the incident, yet wether he was a monster or a loner crying out for help,is up to opinion,especially since all sides of political spectrum have twisted this dark event for thier own selfish political views.

• 142. elkmaverick  |  September 22nd, 2012 at 5:45 pm

  I am sure Soudini wanted a real wife and children to spend the rest of his life with the company of a family.
  I don’t understand why you guys suggest that a lonely man should settle for hookers. That’s not what Soudini had in mind. I know that with his 250K he cold have easily found a hooker, but that’s not the same as having a loving wife. Hookers couldn’t have solved his problems with loneliness. Money will find you a screw but it will not buy you love.
  Soudini went nuts out of loneliness and did what he did. Only God really knows all of the details. Human law can’t possibly know everything other than what he did.
  Tulio

• 143. dave  |  October 13th, 2012 at 8:35 am

  After seeing some of the comments offered by women, I can see why George Sodini was
  angry. Maybe most men assume that women are going to have different views on life, and we
  try to play the game by playing along. If you do not succeed, I guess you can get really angry.
  But angry enough to kill people you do not even know? That HAS to come from something else.

• 144. PackOfLlamas  |  October 25th, 2012 at 1:19 am

  What I’m about to say isn’t for kicks, sympathy, a date, etc. All I have to say is the truth.

  I’m 30 and not a virgin.

  I’m a tall portly hairy beast

  I’m into geeky stuff like video games, Star Wars, table top roleplaying, yeah

  I’m also into College Football, Basketball, 4×4 driving, camping, swimming, hiking, yeah

  I haven’t had sex in 3 1/2 years in person (I cyber a lot with a friend of mine who I doubt I’ll ever meet)

  Anyway, getting past that, the reason why I don’t date is because I’m sick of the bullshit. No, I’m not afraid of women, nor am I a misogynist nor am I a freak, etc. I’m just fed up with being Mr. Psychologist. I’m fed up with looking around for women who pretend to be into what I am into out of pity or dealing with so much freaking emotional baggage. I learned the hard way being pussy whipped sucks, but learning the hard way, I am wiser as a result.

  I’ve only had sex with my ex and that’s it. That’s probably all I’m going to get and I know why and I just don’t care anymore. The problem is, I am very passionate about what I do and it scares people. I am very logical and that doesn’t bode well for emotional beings (which are usually women in general, not trying to stereotype). I love being indoors and outdoors, but I really don’t like a lot of things like the bar scene or clubs and etc. A decent restaurant or a nice mountain or beach or hell even out at the mall, I can live with that.

  Girls who party too much won’t like my introverted side. Girls career driven won’t like my hypersexual needs. Girls into geeky stuff are so annoying, it makes me wonder how they survive. Girls on Craigslist…nuff said. I can’t find a medium. I’m stubborn and sarcastic and I am sexually starved, but I keep it in my pants and I can listen and I feel, but what has been asked of me in my relationships, my dating, even my stint at trying friends with benefits has just taught me that it’s not worth it. Thank goodness I got over wanting to have kids and get married. I gave up and it has actually made my life easier. But, being a hypersexual and being a geek at my age, how much longer is your hand and your stash of “weird” (not sick or dangerous) fetish going to satisfy you? There really is no loyal freaky girl. Something is bound to go wrong. Right, nothing is perfect, I get it. I understand fights will happen…but without compromise or communication, it’s over. I’m not basing this solely off my seven year relationship, this has been years and years of observation. The relationship opened my eyes to myself and to others. I just can’t change what I like for anyone and nor should you, no matter what. The reality of it is, though that no one but you cares. That stings a lot. On the plus side, at least me being single isn’t harming anyone, not even myself so far, so I guess there’s that.

• 145. k  |  October 26th, 2012 at 10:15 pm

  I don’t know. I think guys have standards that are wayyy too high, thanks to porn, and it’s unfair to expect ridiculously beautiful women to want to go out with you, when you’re just a dorky looking guy. Life isn’t a friggin movie, go find somebody who doesn’t look like a model, unless you look like one too. I have to say, by the way, that I’ve been to America, and the number of good looking guys vastly outnumber the good looking women, so you might have to aim slightly lower than what you think you should be able to get.

  From a girl’s perspective though, it’s actually pretty rare that a guy will forthrightly ask you out on a date and make their intentions clear from the beginning. Usually they just hang around and complain when you get asked out by somebody else. My boyfriend is one of those guys who doesn’t do that, so even though he’s a giant nerd, he’s never been rejected by any girl he’s ever asked out. The trick is to go for it, and make it clear to the woman that you want a girlfriend. You’d be surprised at how many girls want the same thing. Of course you might get rejected a few times, but you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.

• 146. Furda Illi Andinn  |  November 5th, 2012 at 5:11 am

  I started to read it but it is just more of the same subjective, party biased crap that you find everywhere else on the internet.
  Do you know what made George Sodini tick or not? Obviously not. This..crap, really isn’t even about him. Its just another rant. Total waste of time.

• 147. Dan  |  December 18th, 2012 at 5:08 pm

  I think post 127 was so right on. The reality is that what brings fulfillment in life isn’t what this guy was thinking. They are little things like friends, family, involvement in the community & most of all Loving God & others.
  One thing he didn’t consider was, what if he had the woman of his dream & them she couldn’t stand him and leaves. What next? One has to always look beyond himself & look for a place to give himself & show love to others.
  I definitely can sympathize with him when it comes to the issue of love. I too was in love with one beautiful girl that was from my country & could speak my language, but she had her heart on someone-else. So now, I’m not gonna go crazy & shoot others. I will just forget about her and find someone else. There will always be someone for a person And yes she might be a little over weight & less attractive.

• 148. Dan  |  December 18th, 2012 at 5:21 pm

  My final point is, nothing gives anyone a right to take another person’s life simply because you have decided that you don’t wanna live anymore.
  I am actually mad. these idiot go out & end the lives of others who have their hope dreams & aspirations. They bring sadness & pain into families and they cause untold heart-break. He should have thought, what if he really found the person that he was fully in love with & then some psycho comes & shoots her up.
  This idiot should have gotten himself a mail-order bride from Russia, made her sign a prenuptial-agreement, made all the love he wanted & call it the day. The reality was that this guy was crazy, selfish & antisocial (which came from him isolating himself).
  This has thought me that I should reach out to people that I see around me that might be lonely, because God didn’t create us to be islands.

• 149. Kimiko  |  January 24th, 2013 at 10:59 am

  Men continue to rape, abuse, kill and destroy us. Buy and sell us like property, enrage if we don’t feel the same? Yet still have the audacity to wonder why we hate them?

  I am really sorry men don’t get to have sex with whoever they want to, but while you ‘men’ are crying over getting laid we across the world are being brutalised.

  Men are animals, I WILL never EVER trust one, I will trust a rattlesnake over a male.

• 150. Elvis  |  March 13th, 2013 at 8:19 pm

  I think this is a very sad story.

  What some people might be missing is that there is not a clear answer regarding whether this person suffered a mental illness or just acted out of loneliness.

  The fact of the matter is that we are more disconnected than ever and this situation highlights that.

• 151. Ron Murray  |  March 25th, 2013 at 10:00 am

  I came off my 3rd in 1997. What I don’t understand is this “need to escape loneliness”.

  Maybe it’s because I’m knocking 60 but this does not seem to be an issue with me. (I have finally learned my lesson)

  I am professional and have been all my life since college. I NOW “order in” when in need and escort out when complete, IN A TIMELY FASHION!! I have a z420 for my leisure time.

  I just don’t see the loneliness. But then again I can’t conceive of living on masturbation for 20 years.

  I would be a sex tourist in a quick minute with that track record.

• 152. Bob  |  April 18th, 2013 at 4:41 pm

  The guy was a loser and took it out on others. The author sucks! Why defend this douche for his cowardly decision to end others’ lives because of his own issues. I mean I know the author doesn’t defend them, and I realize I’m misreading this piece because I prefer to stay ignorant, but still — why defend my right to comment on this site?

• 153. Karl  |  April 23rd, 2013 at 2:49 am

  The part of Sodini’s blog were he rants about young teen girls doing it more than he has in his lifetime was telegraphing that he was on the brink and ready to lash out.His laments about the lost years of his late teens and twenties,and how girls and women were brutal also seems to show that he was LIKELY rejected in those years and thus retreated in to a shell where the loneliness and anger built up until it exploded in to brutal violence after it was combined with his bleak economic prospects.Either way it was a tragedy that will likely repeat itself as long as economic problems as well as the unbalanced romance scene remain the norm.Peace

• 154. Van  |  May 12th, 2013 at 1:18 am

  I’m not worthy

• 155. Flerbt  |  October 7th, 2013 at 6:20 pm

  Incidents like these are only the symptoms of a culture where men are not taught how to get their needs met. Not only that, but they’re viciously mocked and marginalized for something they were never trained to do in the first place. I personally am a fat retard who never got laid and look forward to more massacres like this, because people — especially myself — deserve it.

• 156. Flerbt  |  October 12th, 2013 at 6:38 pm

  Should I go kill myself? Yes.

• 157. Dave  |  January 5th, 2014 at 12:05 am

  Sodini was not unusual in his expectations or in his frustration at not achieving them. However, note that according to Sodini, everyone ELSE is to blame for his problems, beginning with his parents and siblings, all of whom were deficient in some way or another. He takes no personal responsibility for his situation. His poor luck with women can be easily understood when you read his blog. Nobody wants to spend time with a malcontent who externalizes blame for his shortcomings on others. Tragically, he would continue to place blame on others right up to the very end.

• 158. DW  |  January 27th, 2014 at 6:33 pm

  Over 4 years on such an interesting and very sad tale.

  American women can be very materialistic, cruel, have huge expectations, can be very shallow…and taunt and tease men by the way they dress if they are physically very attractive.

  As a single man (which I’m not but of course was) – when you are single, you see the sex tease flaunted at you everywhere. If a woman has nice legs – she’ll wear whatever she can to maximize them and so forth. Women are masters of this – the ‘fake’ look. Facebook is so common for this -look at how many ladies or girls pose or model on facebook. Then they always choose the picture where they look the hottest even if that picture does not exactly look like them on a normal day. Linekdin is another site.
  Nice breasts? wear a low cut top! They read about all these maximize your look tips in the many magazines. All this can drive single guys crazy.

  Summertimes in big cities for a single guy can be torture and you feel a loser if you are single and you imagine everyone else is having a great time – except you. You feel left out. Not to mention the endless sexy images bombarded at us by the media.
  There is no escape and we need sex like food to survive.

  It’s a cruel sickening game and if you lose – some can’t take it.
  Yes porn has increased men’s expectations beyond reality but women are also expecting Brad Pitt’s everywhere.

  Don’t be surprised by incidents like this. Be surprised it does not happen more.

  And why mention Thailand? Germany and its FKK clubs are safer and legal and more fun!

  Still it is a very very sad case and he should never had gotten himself into that position. Bottom line – he was lazy. He didn’t try hard enough to change. He could have dome so many things like volunteer at a Children’s Luekaemia ward or loads of other ‘feel good’ activities. Get away from the media and the fake sex flaunted at you – and the dating game. Go on hikes, travel, join groups- become politically active – there is always a way – you just gotta get up off your ass.

  Interesting people are attractive.

• 159. SixxOneOne  |  April 9th, 2014 at 10:51 am

  Some have an ability with women, some don’t. If you’re in the latter class, you can get it, but only if you become richer than your wildest dreams. Worst case, you can fly to Nevada where prostitution’s legal and hire hot looking escorts. they may not be attracted to you but you’ll still get laid. Better than shooting a bunch of innocent people. Actually if you have the big bucks you can enlist in training programs like Love Systems and Real Social Dynamics has to offer. If you have the money you can solve your social problems.

• 160. Leonardo  |  April 23rd, 2014 at 2:49 am

  I heard about this incident back when it first happened in early August of ’09, I’ve read Sodini’s journals and seen his YouTube videos. They where a cry for help, imagine what all those years of going at it alone and apparent rejection did to him. Oh, and our “proud and “honest” media sure dropped the ball when they reported on this tragedy, they totally misreported or even lied/omitted to further their respective agendas, they always do. It’s obscene. The whole thing was a sad, sordid affair.

• 161. Chucko  |  May 27th, 2014 at 12:04 am

  This sad man really foreshadowed Elliot Rodger.

• 162. cuntstuffer  |  May 30th, 2014 at 5:12 pm

  it’s happend again…something tells me rodger wont be the last.

• 163. Misirac SRB  |  March 9th, 2015 at 11:56 am

  Sexual revolution….is the cause…..

  If he was born 100 years ago he would already had wife and children….

  the worst girl will have sex …
  and the worst man will not have sex….

• 164. nate  |  September 6th, 2015 at 12:49 pm

  He was too much in love with his standard of living. Shoulda quit job n made pizzas for a living n lived above a bar. Im not gauranteeing him getting laid. But….. Failure and being poor perhaps could have ” purged” his anger.

• 165. nate  |  September 6th, 2015 at 12:59 pm

  I was a 31 yr old virgin. I fixed that. I throwup at guys trying to explain away women or sexual issues using perceived logic. Mostly because it reminds me of my thinking. Women are one step ahead….they are instinctual. Guys are civilization/ logical…. give up first. The tv. The job. The life….the walmarts….give up the stuffs first. Reach clarity first. Then regroup

• 166. Bill  |  February 13th, 2016 at 9:31 pm

  Mr. Sodini should have given up on women years before he cracked. If I were him I would have adopted a pet, made my home super comfortable and enjoyed life. He continued to fight a battle he could not win and it drove him nuts. Women treat you differently based on whether they are attracted to you. If they are consistently “cold and distant” (to use a line from the movie “Taxi Driver”) you are wasting your time and money. The only way to keep your sanity is to walk away. Why would you want to be with someone who does not want to be with you?

• 167. NeXuS  |  April 4th, 2016 at 7:48 pm

  Mary & Starvid are the types of people that trigger these mass murder sprees – this I can guarantee. Mary for her superficially insane way of looking at attraction and subjectively making a rating scale for what is attractive and in “his league”, which is no different than what George Sodini did with the whole “rating” looks which is something completely subjective (and programmed as well). This is the kind of shallow shit that makes people who also simultaneously are depressed and/or lonely to only feel worse to the point of even losing control like Sodini did. To get with someone over ‘leagues’ and ‘attraction’ has nothing to do with love and companionship and that’s exactly what Sodini wanted; nor do hookers or women marrying for money give Sodini and many other men what they really want – love and companionship. This is an obvious cause of lack of love in the world and some of these comments ^ prove my point with how shallow and crude people can be especially when it comes to the topic of loneliness and relationships.

• 168. Josh  |  May 20th, 2016 at 7:00 am

  This is not a matter of class warfare in any way shape or form. People bend over backwards to explain and justify actions of men like this without pointing to the actual issue: misogyny. He was an entitled man who believed he was owed sex and companionship by women. When he didn’t get those things he decided to shoot them. Notice he didn’t shoot anyone at his work place or anyone representative of the upper class you say he despised? This guy hated women, plain and simple. No-one likes to be lonely, but there is a difference between making a change in yourself and going and getting what you want and just sitting around believing it will come to you because the world (and women) owe it to you.

• 169. DrCroland  |  September 21st, 2016 at 4:25 pm

  Somehow, I have some lingering doubts about whether this guy actually ever got laid even once in his entire life. He snapped. I have always thought that, had someone dragged him into a massage parlor or similar type of place, both he and those women would still be alive today.

• 170. entertainment  |  October 4th, 2016 at 12:10 pm

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• 171. Shaun  |  May 31st, 2017 at 6:19 pm

  I can sort of understand why this guy went nuts. When I was in my 20’s I was sort of like him. I was married to an Asian girl at 31, it was ok for a few years but we divorced. I lived in China after that, by just being myself I attracted several GF’s 20’s to 40’s.

  My problem is that Australian women ( I am Aussie ) are just not attracted to me. I realize it now. I’m not ugly and I was super fit and even a fashion model in my early 20’s and still could not attract a woman. I was working as a carpenter also. My life was a “success” by Western standards, but I was full of self loathing and I was depressed.

  I can understand Sodoni’s anger but he murdered those women. They did not deserve to die. He could have changed his lifestyle and moved somewhere else, like to SE-Asia and found happiness.

  I have a different view on life now. I realize that I was really not a failure in my 20’s. I contributed to society. Just because a man can not attract a woman from his own country does not make him a failure.

  There is always a way out of most problems. Talk to someone about it. Killing a lot of innocent people solves nothing. It’s terrible what Sodoni did.

• 172. Jeanne  |  April 27th, 2018 at 1:48 pm

  Sodini’s problem was that he couldn’t offer what he wanted. It wasn’t just sex. As all the other comments state, if he wanted sex, paid sex is available. He wanted someone to love him. He wanted someone to see him, hear him, accept him and love him. Which he was incapable of reciprocating.

  Being incapable of loving another human being, the choice to kill human beings isn’t surprising.

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