Incels embrace Austin bomber Mark Conditt as one of their own. Was he?

By David Futrelle

The motives behind the deadly string of bombings that 23-year-old Mark Anthony Conditt unleashed upon Austin before blowing himself up remain a mystery. A press conference yesterday, in which police revealed that Conditt had made a 25-minute recording confessing his crimes, left observers of the case with far more questions than answers.

Austin police chief ­Brian Manley said very little about the actual content of Conditt’s “confession,” telling reporters only that it seemed like “the outcry of a very challenged young man talking about challenges in his personal life that led him to this point” rather than the manifesto of a terrorist.

But it’s nearly impossible to disentangle the personal and the political, and so many were left wondering just what it was that was so “challenging” to this “very challenged young man.”

Were his “challenges” sexual or romantic? Over the past decade we’ve seen a succession of men (mostly young, some middle-aged) angered and frustrated by their inability to attract the women they feel they’re entitled to take their revenge on the world, and women in particular, through violence — most famously Isla Vista killer Elliot Rodger, who left behind a 100-page misogynist manifesto, and LA Fitness shooter George Sodini, a failed Pickup Artist.

And then there’s the steady parade of  murders we see on local news carried out by men recently rejected by girlfriends and wives; these murders, which often end in suicide, are so common they rarely even make the national news.

So it’s hardly surprising that some are asking whether Conditt was an “incel,” that is, a man furious at the women of the world for refusing to sleep with him.

Among those asking the question? A lot of self-described incels. And they’re asking because some of them, at least, want to claim him as one of their own,

Incels — members of what has become one of the most terrifyingly poisonous misogynistic subcultures in the western world — have long had a fondness for mass killers.

They’ve famously canonized Elliot Rodger as “Saint Elliot,” a sort of patron saint for their wretched community. And after the Parkland school shootings on Valentine’s Day many in the incel world celebrated shooter Nikolas Cruz as a new incel “savior.”

Incels are nearly as enthusiastic about shooters who aren’t, or at least aren’t obviously, motivated by fury borne of sexual entitlement, gloating over the “normies” Stephen Paddock mowed down in Las Vegas and all the “Stacies” killed in the Manchester Arena bombing last May.

In the Braincels subreddit — the slightly less obnoxious replacement for the absolutely horrific, now-banned Incels subreddit — one poster breathlessly reported “THIS JUST IN: Austin, TX package bomber confirmed ugly, home-schooled INCEL autist, possibly manlet.” 

“The hero we need,” replied another Braincel regular, before adding a disclaimer: “The stories and information posted here are artistic works of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact.” ”

“The girls deserved it,” added a third commenter, the somewhat alarmingly named IncelTactician. (In fact, most of those harmed in Conditt’s bombing spree were male. His bombs killed a teenage boy and a man in his late thirties, and injured two more men. Three women (not “girls”) were injured as well, including the mother of the teen boy murdered by Conditt and a woman in her 70s.)

On Incels.me, several regular commenters seemed convinced Conditt was one of them, at least in spirit. “Elliot Rodger 2.0,” declared a commenter known as Big Ghey. “Unabomber incel” suggested another.

“I suspect so as well, can’t wait for the manifesto to leak,” added RichCel.

What a dumb faggot though, he had a good thing going and then ruined it by going to the FedEx store with his dumbass disguise and a powered cellphone. Guess he wanted to get caught.

This is what happens tho when you criminalize normal male behavior and turn white men into fucking pariahs. It is a perversion of natural order and I am not at all surprised it happened in Austin. If Texas had any balls, they would move the state capital elsewhere and wall off that cuck cesspool. 

On Lookism.Net — successor to the notorious incel-infested hate site PUAHate — several commenters celebrated Conditt’s alleged inceldom. “High IQ cel,” wrote someone called  jawanonics, “obviously read Unabomber manifesto and is saving society.”

Another lamented that he personally would never live up to Conditt’s fine example. “[H]es my age and achieving great things in life,” sighed Surgery+Roids=Ascension, “while I have nothing to show.”

But many of the internet’s incels remained unconvinced that Conditt was an Elliot Rodger-style incel saint. Not because the people he killed were men rather than women. Not because he left behind no angry 100-page manifesto a la “Saint Elliot.”

No, the problem was that he was just too good-looking.

“That guy is pretty good looking actually,” wrote an incel REdditor called Shamijay.

Eyes a little close set is all. 7/10, could easily pass as a Chad slayer based on face alone. Don’t know about his other stats. Fail thread.

Other incel Redditors agreed. “He is a mid tier normie,” one wrote. “That face mogs all truecels.” (Translation: He’s an average-looking guy with a more masculine face than any true incel.)

“this guy isn’t ugly,” wrote another skeptic on Lookism.ne, “he has ideal colouring and canthal tilt, also a good face shape, but sub human eyebrows.”

“he does not look like an incel” another agreed, “plus he did gymnastic, parkour et… snowboarding, incels don’t do that shit!”

To the typical incel, apparently, killers are heroes, while snowboarders deserve to die.

So was Mark Conditt an incel? I’ve seen no evidence so far to convince me he was, and his choice of victims, at least, shows no sign of the poisonous misogyny that inspired the rage of men like Elliot Rodger and George Sodini. But we won’t know for sure until we know exactly what was in that 25-minute confession he left behind.