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.
I’m 40 pounds overweight, and it’s still a struggle not to shit on other fat people.
@WWTH
Precisely. In the days pre-internet, this was the way guys got to see nude women, but the continued coupling of sexuality to violence always bothered me from the first time I saw Friday the 13th and it’s only gotten worse from there as slasher movie characters have become less and less likeable over time to the point that modern slashers seem to have this need to make all their characters total assholes so that we don’t feel bad watching them die. Just something I’ve observed in the course of my bad movie watching.
The genius of Slumber Party Massacre was taking all those tropes and making complete hay out of them (the killer’s drill bit being cut off was none too subtle).
It’s just so telling that this guy applies the stereotype so casually. When we hear “sorority sister”, we’ve been conditioned to picture Betty Childs from Revenge of the Nerds, and that resentment has been stoked so far that they’re not even granted individual personalities.
Gussie Jives – It’s amazing the things I’ve internalized over the years without thinking about them! The stuck-up sorority girl trope being one of them even though I had two examples that were 180 degrees the opposite when I was in college myself. They were a pair of twins, dance majors, pro-football cheerleaders, talented artists, intelligent, and very sweet to everyone in our class.
I don’t even know if they *were* in a sorority (how would they have the time?) but I was quite surprised that they were so laid-back and genuinely nice. I know this because when I found out that they were NFL cheerleaders, I regaled them with all sort of questions because I was a rabid NFL fan at the time. Alas, cheerleaders and players in the NFL are not allowed to fraternize. 🙁
edited to correct a blockquote error
Hi, yzek. It’s been a while since you’ve dropped in.
Cheerleaders suffer catastrophic injury rates at three times the rate of professional football players. It’s one of, if not the, most dangerous athletic activities going.
(Thats mainly through those competitions where they make five people high pyramids and the like)
yzek:
He specifically noted that the women in his school were kind to him. Do try to pay attention. And by the way theirs a difference between “Idealizing” someone and “not hating someone because they won’t have sex with me.”
“He specifically noted that the women in his school were kind to him.”
I noticed. I interpret it as “they didn’t hurt me with during short, casual meetings as much as my asshole friends I used to hang out with”; let OP speak his mind about it.
Y.
A dear friend who is an ex-high school and competition cheerleader has a wonderful t-shirt:
“You say cheerleading is not an athletic endeavor…? Do my routine, then get back to me on that.”
The rigidity of toxic masculinity seems to feed off the anger and rage of peers who need to be acknowledged for their viewpoints. Reading the incel comments only illustrates people are desperate for any kind of attention in the 15 second instant gratification age.
These Reddit comments only tend to make me even more skeptical of people IRL. My approachability lessened with the invention of the internet . I liked it better when I could pretend some people aren’t vile.
@Grumpy, Enjoyed your vignette about high school immensely.
My heart aches for the families in Manchester and I hope none of them ever have to see Elliot Rodgers worship or horrid descriptions of girls like their daughters.
I’m terribly horrible at expressing myself but very appreciative of this community.
When I was in high school, I’d say the same thing about marching band.
@ weird eddie
I’m involved in a little fitness enterprise with some ex-SF types. We were introduced to cheerleading when someone sent us info about one of these competitive troups, who were using the Navy SEAL training regime.
(I gather those competitions are taken pretty seriously over there)
@ angry
I beg to differ.
True. Especially when they’re remakes of classic slashers. I do like a lot of the deconstructions of slashers over the past few decades. Like Wes Craven’s New Nightmare, the Scream Franchise, Tucker and Dale vs. Evil, and Cabin in the Woods. I’m not sure if All the Boys Love Mandy Lane counts as a deconstruction but it did put a different spin on the final girl trope that I enjoyed.
I’m not sure how it is where you are, but in the US cheerleading is not considered an official sport in high schools or in the NCAA so it’s not subject to really any safety regulations. I think it comes down to misogyny. There are male cheerleaders, but it’s obviously seen as a girl thing and not to be taken seriously. And the way NFL cheerleaders are treated is a disgrace. They’re barely paid and yet it’s a ton of work.
Funny how anti-feminists are always accusing feminists of being jealous of attractive women. I’ve noticed feminists are overwhelmingly more supportive of cheerleaders, models, and strippers in labor disputes than the general public is.
Thanks @Alan!
@yzek
You vastly overrate your own psychic powers.
Hmm. I hung out with girls a lot in school, and they were never terrible to me.
No one’s stopping OP from speaking his mind.
Also, this is a public forum. Anyone can speak her or his mind. You did.
Poe’s Law… The slasher movies tend to be extremely excessive, making satire difficult. The “Scary Movie” series did a pretty good job, tho.
@Angry
Seconding Alan. No way!
An amusing side effect is that thoses slashers are utterly impossible to understand for at least some europeans, because of how codified they are.
There isn’t a prom date. The role of bully, jock, and other aren’t formalized like they seem to be in America. Sorority, cheerleading and college sport team litteraly don’t exist, and sport is a 2-hour chore every week. That have made slasher film extremely confusing for young me.
(it’s not helped by the fact that college, in France, is like 12-16, so for a long time I wondered if american were mentally challenged or if they were forbidden from using child actors)
@EJ
If you want to use him in your game, I’d be honored to see my old Deadlands character August von Tatzelwurm get a new lease in life. Basically, he’s a weird steampunk-style scientist and inventor originally from the mountains between Austria and Bavaria who has drifted to the Weird West in search of ghost rock and adventure (you can of course drop all the “weird” stuff if it doesn’t work in your game). He’s an older aristocratic gentleman who has some trouble with ze Enklish but he more than makes up for the language barrier by being gregarious and interested in nearly anything scientific. He’s most proud invention, and the thing that inspired his journey across the Atlantic, is the “Donauerwalzer”, a coal-powered lightning gun which is powered by a rucksack-mounted generator. I have a lot of fun memories of playing the character so if you want to have some more details about his backstory, don’t hesitate to ask. 🙂
@Ohlmann
Snort.
My Sunday school lessons were long on stories, short on context.
The “children of Israel” seemed to be so impulsive that I would catch myself thinking they were actually children.
Take, for example, the story of Moses. He’s gone for only 40 days. He’s talking to God! Cool your jets, people. But no — they build a golden calf(!) and then they worship it. WTF.
Yeah, now I have a greater understanding of the perilousness of those times and the fact that bulls were widely worshiped in the Middle East.
@Ohlmann
As a Canadian, I can relate to that confusion in spades. My high school never had cheerleaders, football was just a sport some of the sporty people did, and my university’s focus pretty much boiled down to research. That said, as I was wandering the St. George Campus of the University of Toronto, I did see a frat house or two on St. George or Harbord Streets, but they were the same run-down old Edwardian houses as the buildings next to them, hardly the Alpha Beta house.
As a result, I never quite figured out the American obsession with fraternity and sorority life. Perhaps because I was in a professional faculty I didn’t see that side, but it struck me that the “old boys” clubs that exist in places like Harvard and Yale just didn’t have an equivalent up here, at least not at U of T.
(Ironically, the original Black Christmas was filmed at an all-girls dorm–Annesley Hall–just up the road from where I was in residence at Rowell Jackman Hall my first year. It’s a residence operated by Victoria University, not a sorority house.)
OT . . . but Trump did it again
The Pentagon Can’t Believe Trump Told Another President About Nuclear Subs Near North Korea
“We never talk about subs!” three defense officials told BuzzFeed News after a transcript of a call between President Trump and Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte was published.
https://www.buzzfeed.com/nancyyoussef/the-pentagon-is-facepalming-hard-over-trumps-disclosure-of?utm_term=.wonoV9w88#.tgg4PryAA
My kids are forbidden from two sports: cheerleading and football. This isn’t because of my feminist leanings or because of my father’s ruined knees, but because the kids’ dad has worked with too many people with severe, life changing head injuries and he won’t allow the kids to take those risks.
Cheering is a very dangerous sport.
I think it’s pretty well established that tbe source of most leaks from the WH is Trump, himself.