What was wrong with Elliot Rodger?
Elliot Rodger spoke at length on a YouTube video about his plan to enter a sorority house and execute a mass murder, retribution for peer rejection. Blonds would be special targets, but everyone would die. He killed seven people on Friday, including himself, wounding another twenty-two. Watching the video, it is clear he suffered from depression. He speaks of his loneliness and peer rejection, and at first we wonder if perhaps he had a high functioning autism, what used to be called Asperger's disorder. We wonder, like we did with Adam Lanza, who entered an elementary school and killed 20 children, 6 adults (Sandy Hook, Connecticut), if the social correlates of Aspergers depressed him beyond rational thought, drove him to violence. Children reject other children who don't have social skills, who can't follow social cues, as is the case with Aspergers. But a teacher interviewed speaks of a whiny complainer, an unlikable young man who thought he deserved more (mainly from bl...