While the rest of the Western world grapples with the horror of the Manchester bombing, Reddit’s incels are looking back three years to another terrorist massacre — and lauding the angry young incel who carried it out.
It’s been three years since a disturbed loner named Elliot Rodger murdered six and injured fourteen others in an extended rampage in Isla Vista, California, leaving behind a series of videos and a book-length manifesto detailing his deep hatred of, and equally intense desire for, women. Had he been able to get inside the sorority that was his primary intended target, the carnage would have likely been far worse.
Naturally, many of Reddit’s incels — self-described “involuntary celibates” — have embraced Rodger as an incel hero. In a series of posts in the Incels subreddit today, the regulars are celebrating what they call “Saint Elliot’s Day.”
In one thread with several dozen upvotes titled “Happy Saint Elliot’s day! The third anniversary of the day of retribution!” numerous Reddit incels sing the praises of the man they hail as the “supreme gentleman.”
A Redditor called thebillstone really, really wishes that Rodger had been able to get inside that sorority.
Naturally, some visitors to the subreddit are appalled by the celebration of a murderer:
![DigDugDactylus 27 points 6 hours ago* Do people here seriously support a serial killer? Edit: I thought people exxagerated, so I decided to check. People here need help permalinkembedsavereportgive goldreply [–]justendmefamThe only thing left to do is to dog 1 2 7 points 4 hours ago He's wasn't a serial killer first of all and second of all plenty of females admire serial and other killer](https://i0.wp.com/www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/el5.png?ssl=1)
But in fact not all incels think Rodger was a hero. Some are appalled to see fellow incels lionizing a mass killer — something that, at the very least, makes incels look bad.
![Know_What_Fvck_ThisRacecel: Enemy to All 5 points 8 hours ago Tbh, fuck this faggot, he's the reason we're associated with school shootings. permalinkembedsavereportgive goldreply [–]xxxrivenmainxxx 0 points 2 hours ago school shooters are true heros](https://i0.wp.com/www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/el6.png?ssl=1)
Others look down on Rodger because his body count wasn’t higher, and not enough of his victims were women.
Still others complain that Rodger was simply too good-looking to be a true incel.
The Incels subreddit may be the scariest place on Reddit.
“Ted and Ann” by Rebecca Morris studies the case and concludes that Bundy murdered Ann Marie Burr. It’s a fascinating if grim read.
Victoria,
You have not demonstrated this, though. You merely asserted it. I am asking you again to give me specific examples of the commentariat doing so.
There’s a lot of evil to deal with here, but this comment stood out for me because it’s both exceptionally vile and exceptionally clueless.
http://i2.wp.com/www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/el2.png?resize=600%2C163
Really? How did Rodger’s murderous rampage improve your miserable existence? Let me guess: he made you feel like you got vicarious revenge on every woman who ever turned you down, and you got off on that for a while. But reality always win, your life still sucks, and it will always suck unless you realize that you are the problem and take action to improve yourself.
P.S. And of course this guy calls himself Economics of Sex, which ties in to my rant about Manospherians using transactional language from a while back.
@Still Fiqah:
That’s not only an inappropriate response to anyone refusing to have sex with them, it’s also a completely wrong interpretation of Bundy’s MO. He wasn’t “disciplining” anyone. He actively set out to pick up totally innocent, unsuspecting young women who happened to look like his preferred “type” (pretty, white, with long hair, usually brown but sometimes blond, parted down the middle) in order to kidnap them, knock them unconscious, rape them, strangle them with a ligature, and then come back to where he left them in a remote, wooded area — to sexually abuse and/or masturbate over their corpses. The victims hadn’t done anything to him to be “disciplined” for; they didn’t even know who he was (and he made sure that nearly all of them never did). In fact, he often lured them and used their good nature against them by faking an injury; a removable arm cast was one of the items in his “rape kit”. He would pretend to be injured, solicit them (for “help” with his “injury”, not sex), and then get them alone and knock them unconscious before completing the crime.
That’s what’s most disgusting about all this: They are idolizing a man who went to great lengths to trick dozens of innocent victims into “helping” him, then rendered them helpless in the worst and most final way. And who got his sadistic jollies out of it. Ted Bundy’s victims could not be more blameless if they tried, but these assholes still somehow found a way to blame them by fantasizing that poor unloved Ted just wanted to have sex with them and those ungrateful bitches said no. No, that is NOT how it went down. He even had consensual partners at the same time as he was going around KOing, kidnapping, raping and murdering girls in several states (and possibly British Columbia as well). The man led a double life, on purpose. He looked normal and attractive, volunteered for the Republican party AND a suicide-prevention hotline, and had seemingly normal relationships including consensual sex, but he STILL had this penchant for raping corpses and near-corpses. Anyone who tries to put ANY blame for that onto his victims deserves to be an “incel” for life.
Can I lighten things up here by telling you all it’s officially my birthday? 🙂
Drinking w/ friend again, I probably drink too much. But – Bud Light (Don’t judge me!) is one of the few things I can choke down.
I was sick and might be “disabled”. Not sure. I don’t consider myself as such. I do have lingering issues from chemo drugs. I am ok, I am functional, I “look ok”. You wouldn’t think there is anything wrong with me.
There might be, from the drugs, I don’t know to what extent and I probably don’t want to know. I’ve seen many horror stories from sim people online and I don’t consider myself as bad off as them. I was close at one point but am now for the most part – “better”.
I do try to be open minded towards others, because you never know what issues a person may have.
I actually met my good friend here because she saw me staggering down the street and came to help me. Can relate because of her own past issues.
Also- It’s Bob Dylan’s birthday too!
And more – other friend has this book called “The Birthday Book”, it has a detailed horoscope for every day, and 24 May is THE DAY OF THE REVOLUTIONARY!
HELL YEAH!!!
TODAY Is The Day of The Revolutionary!
How about a toast to all us revolutionaries?
We raise our glasses to all here!
Happy Birthday, Z&T!
Victoria, I think its drawing a very long bow to suggest that “not very approachable” = “poor social skills” = “autistic” in the minds of commenters here.
The people I encounter in life cover a very wide range of approachability, and I don’t conflate that with autism, or consider it a sign of mental illness, and have never heard anyone else do so.
Please by all means continue to call out ableism when it occurs, as others here do, but please continue to consider the feedback you are getting.
You have already accused the group in general of casually slurring with our usual rhetoric, now you are accusing the group in general of being unaware of the concept of splash damage, and ignoring a valid criticism because of discomfort.
I am starting to feel that you are the one using false generalisations to smear a whole group.
That doesn’t mean I consider you a troll, since not only trolls generalise, shift goalposts and double down, but I find the side-eye of others understandable.
Happy birthday Z&T!
@Z&T
happ birth.
@Victoria
I’m high-functioning autistic myself, but I haven’t picked up an intensity of dogwhistles around here…
This may not be a helpful comment, since I have always been somewhat deficient in social skills, but it seems to me that Victoria is assuming that “socially awkward” or its equivalents are code words/dog whistles for “autistic”, and I believe that is not correct. I have always been socially awkward in many situations and I am sure I come across as a creep a good deal of the time, but I am not AFAIK autistic — I’ve never been diagnosed, anyway. There are a lot of young guys who are very insecure and awkward, particularly with girls. I was one of them — my senior class voted me Most Afraid of Girls and Last to Get Married, which proved to be very wrong since I was possibly the first in my class to marry. So I hope “socially awkward” would NOT be taken as a euphemism for “autistic.” Also, a large number of non-autistic people suffer from social anxiety, even to a crippling degree.
The problem with the Incels is just not social awkwardness, it’s that they have formed an echo chamber that encourages them to play “Can You Top This?” with vile comments about women. One of the most serious problems many young men have in growing up is the tendency to form these all-guy groups where they exchange Dudely Wisdom about Females, where the one guy who once got a girl’s bra off becomes the proverbial one-eyed king in the land of the blind — the reigning expert on female sexuality. It would be a laugh and a half if it didn’t all too often lead to guys trying to comprehend women in terms of their accumulated Dudely Wisdon instead of learning to talk to the actual women and come to understand them as people.
Another major problem is that, for adolescent guys (and this adolescent thing persists for life in many males, see The Trumpster and Ivana/Marla/Melania), sex and dating are not about wanting to have a close and affectionate relationship with a female person or even about pure pleasure, but about status in the peer group. This is why insecure guys don’t really want to date less than HB 7’s, because the other guys will not regard them as studly but will mercilessly give them shit for dating a “skank”. This “male-bonding” phenomenon makes a lot of guys scared of dating girls with whom they might actually have something in common or even having girls as friends.
When I was in my teens I assumed that girls would have no interest in me. At my 40th high school reunion, one of my female classmates said to my wife, “there were a lot of girls that would have liked to go out with Gene, but he was so shy you knew he’d never get up the nerve to ask.” I started to think about that, and I finally figured out that I had assumed the girls would not be intered in me because I ranked fairly low on the guys’ pecking order. I realized that the girls had always been nice to me, but I assumed that they would have the same attitude as the guys who constantly ridiculed my masculinity. I cannot emphasize enough how much young male insecurity is the result of this constant mockery by other guys, and how many guys think that girls will think the same way the other guys do. This is an obviously noxious phenomenon, but it’s not easy to see how it can be combatted feministically.
@Z&T
Merry Birthtidemas to you.
@Z&T
Happy B-Day!
@GrumpyOld SocialJusticeMangina
Thank you for clarifying things with your experiences. Personally I’ve had zero desire for romantic relationships all my life so things like this are an utterly alien concept. Your tales help me get the emotional reasoning behind and incel’s thoughts and actions.
so this will probably be dismissed because i’m using an alt because i’m fucking terrified of this community at this point but “you can’t say there’s pervasive ableism without citations of specific people” when specifications like “regular commenters only, no discomfort with pervasive environmental issues unless it’s people who are authorized influencers” and the existence of this thread have proven what will happen if a specific accusation is made (either closing ranks or “that person doesn’t count”; accusations of malice and “lashing out”; “how dare you say there’s ableism, when there are disabled people here”; meanwhile, spirited debate over how abled you have to be before your body is a moral statement!) is… well, fucking terrifying.
between being a rape survivor and the grating low-grade ableism that skates by the code of conduct, yes! that exists! no! i don’t have fucking citations memorized on mobile and if i did i’m sure i’d get accused of cherry-picking or grudgewank despite knowing literally nobody here by name!, there’s a reason i read-only and have considered stopping doing that. but i follow david on twitter so i feel kind of guilty not clicking links and i’ve been conditioned that mere discomfort isn’t a reason to back away from ~difficult topics~. so i’m here. i guess. and i regret it. and i keep getting hurt. and i know better than to say anything. and victoria didn’t.
i’m sure the reaction to this will be disfavored with a dose of “you must be talking about some other community” but holy shit, this was indicative. why would anyone who saw this thread and saw themselves in victoria’s position ever deliver a callout or express discomfort when we could slink away?
About the subject at hand –
I really don’t get why these guys are so angry. If they were as smart as they claim to be – wouldn’t they focus their energy toward more constructive ends?
I also wanted to say this, especially for any lurking trolls – I, and most of the women I know – are engineers. And also architects, designers, and artists.
Do they get this site in hell, where (despite being an atheist) – I hope Marc Lepine is roasting over the hottest of flames?
I would like to point that out to him. And to anyone like him. And would only serve to roast a fool hotter because a logical person would know that there is plenty of work in the applied sciences for ALL. Especially in the civil and environmental areas.
As well as to all these men who claim that “men” “built everything” – I would like to know – what have THEY done?
If you’ve a specific example of ableism, feel free to call it out as such. If you’ve got something that might be ableism, if you look at it through the right-colored glasses, please reconsider.
Alts are welcome, too. Since you’re an alt, I’m assuming you’ve already gotten your Welcome Package.
(mention of glasses was a comedic device, not meant to be against people who wear glasses)
I had the sheer laziness and stupidity of the Nice Guy/incel/WBAFC crowd brought home to me yesterday.
You see; I asked someone out for the first time.
Now, I’m not astonishingly handsome. I’m not rich. I didn’t spend months beforehand and thousands of dollars reading books and attending seminars by a guy in a furry top hat for tips. I didn’t need to be those things, or to do those things. I just went up to someone about my age at the place I do some volunteer work at who’s been a casual acquaintance for a while, and asked if she’d like to go out on the weekend. She said sure. And so we’re going.
It took all of a few sentences and less than a minute. I’ve spent more effort opening jars of jam. After I’d done it, I could hardly believe how easy it had been. I mean that… was all there was to it. That, you fucking idiots on Reddit, is all there is to it. No, it’s not rocket science. No, you don’t need to be friggin’ Brad Pitt in order to do it. No, it’s not like walking a tightrope across the Grand Canyon with a tarantula on your face. I mean; I already knew that these people were overstating the difficulty of acquiring dates even before I’d ever tried to do so myself. But now that I have, geeeeeez, do I want to punt them to the moon…
@ St. Wave,
Not asking for a citation if it’s not, but do you mean in this thread? Because I don’t understand what you mean by that, and would like to re-read to see what you are getting at.
@Abar
Congratulations, you handsome stud, you.
I’d let you date me for sure, but it seems like you’re already taken. Damn it. [snaps fingers]
Ah, well. I’m kind of messy, anyway.
@Z&T
Happy womb emancipation day!
@Abars01
Congrats, hope the date turns out swell!
Happy birthday, Z&T! I hope there’s lots of dancing during your revolution.
@Grumpy:
That’s a very good description of the phenomenon, thank you.
I’ve heard it described as “homosocial but heterosexual”; that is, that boys are taught to desire women but not to socialise with them; and that they learn to see everything in terms of the male pecking order. It’s an obviously harmful social order.
It’s also hard to see how we can fight it non-feministically, in my opinion: this sort of male homosocial bonding exists in large part because it helps to enforce a rigid form of masculinity which is socially useful to those who benefit from patriarchy. If we oppose it, we end up opposing the whole social construct of gender roles; and opposing that is feminist almost by definition.
@abars01
A lot of these guys – and I’m thinking more of the forever alone rather than the incel board – have very self-deprecating viewpoints and consider themselves in the “bottom 3%” in terms of looks and perceived social status. Some talk at length about being bullied, ostracized from their peers, etc., having non-existent social skills as a result. To a degree I have similar experiences. Some people would genuinely find it difficult to do what you just did.
Sorry guys, but I’m with Victoria. It’s ableist to assume things about the social skills of these assholes.
Mind you, I COULD have been convinced that I’m wrong and they were being a bit oversensitive…if y’all hadn’t dogpiled against Victoria in a manner that was DEFINITELY a lot MORE than a bit oversensitive.
FFS, let marginalized people BE a little oversensitive sometimes! Look at what you did here, y’all: you dogpiled, the nastiness snowballed quickly, and then you started sealioning (“prove it! Show us quotes!”) and misreading.
It surprised the hell out of me. I’ve come to expect better here.
@Bryce
Yes; I have normal social skills, and should acknowledge that there are some people out there who genuinely suffer from psychological issues that do make initiating interactions with other people much more difficult. But nevertheless, I’m pretty sure that a lot the Nice Guy/incel/WBAFC crowd are just lazy, and I’m pretty sure that Rodger was such a specimen. I read in various sources that the guy used to stand around on street corners wearing designer clothes, leer at women, and expect said women to just come up to him and offer to be his girlfriend. If he was brave enough to leer at them, he should have been brave enough to talk to them. The guy was a spoiled brat, and received everything in his life without any effort on his part – clearly, he expected this to be the case with dates and sex too.
@Abars
Congrats! Here’s hoping it turns out well, or failing that, you learn lots of things.
I’ve gone on, like, seven dates total in my life. But that’s not because the world is biased against me. That’s because I’m not interested in dating most people, so I don’t ask often. And because I don’t ask often, I very rarely have yeses. There’s some stuff wrapped up in there with my brain, but I don’t care to compensate for the little disconnects I have socially sometimes.
And again, it’s not other people’s faults. Or mine. It just is.
If I were to offer any advice, it would be that a person’s boundaries are paramount. I’ve had seven first dates, because every one of those people tried to push my boundaries, and I wasn’t having it. I have no regrets about dropping every single one of those people.
Call them by the name they ask you to use, if you wanna hold hands with them ask if its okay, if they give you their number don’t call it immediately, and other stuff.