By David Futrelle
In the wake of every mass shooting, we hear the inevitable cries from NRA types not to “politicize” the tragedy by pointing out the obvious fact that stricter gun laws would make such tragedies less likely in the future. We watch the trolls and shitlords of the alt-right flood the internet with disinformation and conspiracy theories. These reactions are now as predictable as the reappearance of the sun on the horizon every morning.
The internet’s incels — the bitter fringe-dwellers who consider their “involuntary celibacy” to be a crime against their humanity — have their own predictable responses to such tragedies: they mock the victims as “normies” deserving death — and try as best as they can to adopt the latest mass killer as one of their own.
In the case of last night’s horrific mass shooting in Las Vegas — a massacre that at last count left 59 dead and more than 500 injured — Reddit’s incels did not disappoint on this front. In a number of different threads devoted to the murders, regulars on the Incels subreddit celebrated the death of “normies” and “chads” and even tried to claim that mass killer Stephen Paddock — a man with a girlfriend, and thus decidedly not an incel — was “a depressed and delusional former Chad turned to oldcel.”
For many in the subreddit, the news of the mass shooting was something of an inspiration. In a thread offering faux condolences for the dozens of “normies [who] just got fragged in Las Vegas,” several commenters had similar ideas:
Those calling for basic human decency got an earful from their fellow incels.
![lonelyrommel1998 32 points 3 hours ago RIP . Please my brothers, be civil during this time of tragedy. I know you guys hate anyone that isnt you, but they are human beings nonetheless permalinkembedsavegive gold [–]novalueinvictimhoodhttps://goo.gl/2yvNyj 2 points 44 minutes ago they are human beings So? Being a modern human being is the greatest crime you can commit. permalinkembedsaveparentgive gold [–]wandercampEmbracing the sublime terror of incel existance -3 points an hour ago Fuck off normie I fapped to that video permalinkembedsaveparentgive gold [–]fuck-women-everyday23 KV Approachcel Hopecel Knowledgecel -2 points an hour ago Las Vegas is normie heaven. People go there for drinks, socializing, one night stands, and gambling. Incels will never experience that.](https://i0.wp.com/www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/inm3.png?resize=580%2C636&ssl=1)
In another thread, Reddit’s incels lashed out at the “normies” expressing sympathy for the victims on social media — and at the alleged “degeneracy” of Las Vegas.
![BlackPill4831yo bald manlet escortcel 卐 'Self improvement is masturbation' 10 points 3 hours ago I hate all this 'competitive grief' on social media. They don't give a fuck about the homeless, jobless and sexless. permalinkembedsavegive gold [–]Bojack101 6 points 3 hours ago The degenerate las vegas city deserved it](https://i0.wp.com/www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/inm6.png?resize=517%2C459&ssl=1)
![BlackPillRevolutionWeAreRevolting | Copernicus | ?NormiesCanAllBurn?| Hate 5 points 3 hours ago All virtue-signalling and posting it all over instawhore or fakebook to show how much they "care" just to fit in the rest of the conformitard sheep who do the same thing permalinkembedsavegive gold [–]touchbutt2Women can't be lonely. women can't be depressed. can't be incel 4 points 4 hours ago Exactly. they can call us evil all they want but at least we are honest. The entire degenrate city of las vegas and everyone in it could die and it wouldn't affect my day in any way](https://i0.wp.com/www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/inm4.png?resize=517%2C724&ssl=1)
The subreddit’s regulars found it much easier to identify with the shooter.
Still, it’s unlikely that Paddock, a 64-year-old retiree who apparently lived with a girlfriend, will be embraced by incels as another Elliot Rodger, the incel mass murderer celebrated as a “saint” and “supreme gentleman” by this despicable crowd. But that didn’t stop some from trying to posthumously recruit Paddock to inceldom, none more ingeniously than this fellow.
It’s a bit of a reach, given that pretty much the only things we seem to know for sure about Paddock is that he was neither a former Chad nor an incel. I guess the Incels subreddit regulars are a little hard up for, er, “heroes” these days.
@Ooglyboggles – based on the text on the “police line” in the background, the picture in the article you linked to is not mirror reversed: these idiots really are giving the fascist salute with their *left* hand.
@shadowplay – exactly. Depressive people tend to feel worthless, not entitled. But I googled “depression and etitlement” and found many articles suggesting that the entitlement came first. Feeling entitled leads to disappointment which leads to depression, but not vise-versa: depression on its own would not lead to a sense of entitlement.
So, apparently, our original hunch was correct, and they WERE A-holes first, becoming depressed A-holes later. Logic is not humanity’s strong point, and, apparently it is quite possible to think you are a worthless piece of excrement, but that all the rest of humanity is even worse.
Miserable shits.
Meanwhile, apparently Scott Adams is spreading the story that some flaky body language analysis of the shooter’s brother shows that he’s actually a crisis actor. Count on the Dilbert guy to make any bad situation worse.
@Skeptic
Oddly plausible. Though given that it’s people we’re talking about, logic is a way of going wrong with confidence. 🙂
P.S. from the link to previous posts on this web page, I noted incels often complain that women are sluts for NOT sleeping with them. But of course women who DO have sex with them, or with anyone else for that matter, are also sluts. To paraphrase Brian “The Messiah” Cohen, “what choice does that leave me, then?”. No wonder they think all women are sluts…
I know this is not on par with rejoicing over murder victims, but I had to gawk at the bio of “touchbutt2”:
“Women can’t be lonely. Women can’t be depressed.”
I mean, I guess I follow the “logic”–if incels’ loneliness and depression is what supposedly entitles them to sex/pity/unchecked violent outbursts/whatever, then of course they can’t accept that women also feel those things, because that would mean that women are also entitled to something.
But I’m aghast at how willingly and brazenly they have to dehumanize women to deny that we can experience something as basic as *feeling lonely*.
It’s not hard to believe that they aren’t bluffing about wanting to kill people.
@Kootiepatra (love the name!)
But I’m aghast at how willingly and brazenly they have to dehumanize women to deny that we can experience something as basic as *feeling lonely*.
Why? Do you ever worry about your can opener feeling lonely? That’s the sort of level they seem to put women on in the first place, and the real sod about dehumanizing a group of people is it gets really, really easy to do really, really quickly.
@Moggie – checking Adam’s twitter feed, I think you are wrong. Adams did a video about the shooter which I watched, and does not mention the brother, or his body language, at all. SOMEONE ELSE – “Lisa H”, whomever she is – *replied* to Adams with a “body language of the shooter proves blah blah blah” video.
On twitter, Adams’ supports her, but only to the extent of agreeing that, in general, FBI agents can discern body language (true, I suppose). He adds that while the brother “doesn’t appear sad in the usual way we would expect, *that is all we know*” (my emphasis) – that is, he is NOT agreeing with the wilder claim the body language somehow “proves” he is a “crisis actor”, whatever that is.
@Skeptic
“Depressive people tend to feel worthless, not entitled. But I googled “depression and etitlement” and found many articles suggesting that the entitlement came first. Feeling entitled leads to disappointment which leads to depression, but not vise-versa: depression on its own would not lead to a sense of entitlement.”
The internet says a lot of horrible and shitty things about depression. I can’t imagine any neuroscientists or psychiatrists were actually floating the idea that depression causes people to turn into narcissists or assholes, or vice versa.
The idea that chronic depression is even caused by thought loops, instead of the other way around, sounds like woo.
EDIT: That’s trademark Scott Adams. All he ever does is JAQ-off and build his weird, cult-like following.
i thought the reason incels believe women can’t be lonely or depressed is because they believe that loneliness and depression stem only and entirely from lack of sex, and they believe all women anywhere can and will have sex at any time and place and with any man they feel like?
Something to that effect. They probably start from the assumption that generic “nightlife”, in Vegas and elsewhere, is just a framework for attractive people having casual sex, not a way of having fun in itself. These are sex-obsessed people who don’t care about drinking, gambling or socializing, which they only see as a way (or mostly, the only way) of getting laid – and ultimately futile for “incels”.
I think Incel should be declared a terrorist group. But maybe that’s just my anger talking. Anyone thoughts?
@misophistry
They praise mass killers, indoctrinate themselves into people incapable of feeling empathy for outsiders and view any form of aid as ailments. That sounds like a terrorist group.
I used to feel bad for incels. Mostly because I myself find it very difficult to form sexual relationships, and this has been a source of enormous frustration and depression in my life; it’s difficult not to think of it as some kind of failure on my part, and in my worst moments I have thought of it as a judgement on my unfuckability by men. I’m ashamed to admit this, but I do have some of the incel mentality.
However. Since reading this blog regularly, all of that sympathy has melted away.
They choose this, and I can’t get over that. I can’t understand how anyone could celebrate this horrible event. I hate them and their vile little cult. They are evil, miserable little shits.
Some of us don’t get to have sex. That’s the way it is. It’s a sadness, but it doesn’t define you. Who said you get everything you want in life anyway? No-one gets everything they want. Chad and Stacy don’t get everything they want; they might have lots of hot sex but maybe they hate their jobs. Maybe Chad has a bullying manager who makes his life a misery, and Stacy is underpaid. Who knows. But that would involve thinking of them as human, wouldn’t it?
The thing is, I know guys like you. Even if you were having lots of hot sex, you’d still be miserable; you’d want a “better” woman, a “better” car, a job that paid you what you think you’re entitled to, and you’d think you’ve been done out of those things by someone because the idea that it’s your choices that keep you where you are does not compute.
Oh fuck the lot of you. People died. I hope you drown in your own lake of toxic misery.
There is not having sex; there is depression or feeling unworthiness for not having sex; and then there is being an “incel”, thinking the rest of the world should literally die a painful death for not providing them with sex.
@ArcticApe – they are sex obsessed for the same reason a starving man is food-obsessed. Sex, like food or shelter,is something you tend to take for granted if you have it, but think of nothing else if you don’t.
I tend to just take for granted that I’m able-bodied enough to masturbate.
@misophistry
The republicans have put a lot of work into shielding domestic extremists from government investigation, so long as said extremists are sufficiently white, and ideally christian. Unless they start on some kind of protracted campaign to kill old, rich, white men, incels will be troubled-lone-wolves-whose-actions-could-not-have-been-predicted for years to come.
I’d also like to second the votes for this being considered a terrorist organisation. If fundamentalist Muslims made “they deserved it” comments on Reddit about 9/11 it would make headlines all round the world.
Yet these guys are allowed to celebrate and encourage mass murder and call Elliot Rodger a “saint” for – let’s just talk about one of them – stabbing George Chen 94 times. George was an unarmed 19-year-old engineering student who had the bad luck to be visiting one of Elliot’s roommates at the point he decided to start killing people. The evidence looks like he was ambushed as he walked through the door.
If celebrating that isn’t “terrorism” what is?
Of course, the problem is who they are trying to terrorise. Women. And that means no-one gives three shits.
They make their choices. These are choices they make. They choose to call women “femoids” and rejoice when they are murdered. They choose to hate men who aren’t themselves and rejoice when they are murdered. They make these choices over and over.
What you’re saying is that you feel sad for people who choose to be awful, and specifically that you feel sad for men who choose to hate women with such intensity that they sometimes commit violence against women. Maybe you can’t see why women might take exception to that, so just take it as an article of faith that this is really shitty of you. You are sympathizing with the victimizers and the abusers. While it’s typical in our culture to do this, it isn’t normal or acceptable to choose the victimizers over the victims.
I agree with PoM. Incels *chose* to be bitter, human-hating husks.
Maybe they were pushed that way. But most people don’t end up that evil, and at some point we have to remember that free will is a thing. While I wouldn’t be against, say, having less toxic masculinity and put value more equally between roles in the society, so that there is less people that feel worthless, but that’s foremost for the benefit of the one who did not decide to be cartoonish villain first.
@Ohlmann
I agree with PoM. Incels *chose* to be bitter, human-hating husks.
Yep. They chose their course, of their own free will. No sympathy nor tolerance for what they are.
Not going to say I don’t feel some pity for what they once were. I do, in much the same way as I pity the dead, and for the same reason.
@Skeptic
No. You will not die without sex. They’re entitled shits, not starving wretches.
I once went 5 years without sex and somehow managed to think of several other things.