By David Futrelle
In the wake of today’s school shooting in Santa Fe — which left ten dead and another ten wounded — the mood on Incels.me is unusually subdued. On the highly active forum for self-described “involuntary celibates,” school shooters and other mass murderers are celebrated as heroes, with Elliot Rodger, who killed six in Alta Vista, California in 2014 as an act of “retribution” against women for rejecting him, regarded as a veritable incel saint.
But nobody on Incels.me is hailing the Santa Fe shooting suspect, 17-year-old Dimitrios Pagourtzis, as the second coming of ER.
In part that’s because, less than a month after a horrific act of mass murder in Toronto by a self-desctibed incel brought their community more media attention than ever before, users and mods alike are worried that any excessive displays of enthusiasm might lead to their forum being shut down.
And in part that’s because a lot of the regulars on Incels.me aren’t convinced that Pagourtzis is ugly enough to be a true incel.
Oh sure, there are some who are celebrating Pagourtzis’ alleged gun rampage as an act of heroism in the war against “normies.”
“THE INCEL REBELLION HAS ALREADY BEGUN!” cried one commenter, quoting from the Facebook message posted by Alek Minassian shortly before, police say, he deliberately ran down pedestrians in downtown Toronto, killing ten.
“[L]et us pray for the victims and their families,” another commenter in the same thread wrote sarcastically. “Hopefully they will suffer immensely.”
“A nice surprise for my Friday,” wrote a commenter in another thread devoted to the shootings.
“Fucking based,” added another in the same thread. “I hope the normslime suffered as they drew their last breaths.”
“Very good news” agreed a third, “guy might not have looked traditionally incel but he did rack up a nice score.”
In yet another thread, a commenter took pleasure in imaging the teenage girls likely killed in the rampage. “Take that hypergamous sluts,” he declared.
But not everyone was quite ready to canonize Pagourtzis as the newest incel saint. For one thing, he’s not dead, a fact that led some on the board to mock him as a “pussy” too cowardly to end his rampage with a dignified suicide.
But the real sticking point for many on Incels.me was that, in their minds, Pagourtzis is simply too conventionally attractive to merit the incel moniker.
“He looks like a high tier normie,” noted one ambivalent commenter, ” but maybe he is a mentalcel.” (That is, someone whose romantic and sexual woes are allegedly caused by their mental problems rather than their looks.)
“This dude has chad looks,” complained another in the same thread. “Just look at his masculine frame, lose big forearms and big wrists and pretty face. Next to him I look like a piece of shit with my skinny fat, manlet body, ugly face, small forearms and wrists like twigs!”
“If I was that good looking I would have never heard of this site,” sniffed a third.
Still, not everyone on Incels.me is convinced that Pagourtzis is a “high tier normie,” much less one of those hated Chads.
While the alleged shooter isn’t ugly, one commenter noted, he’s also “not a Chad which means he may as well have been ugly. Women make no distinction between a 1/10 and a 5/10. You’re either hot or not.”
Others said they suspected he was a “manlet” — that is, too short to catch the eye of Chad-obsessed Stacies.
Still others detected what they saw as a fatal flaw in his facial structure that would forever disqualify him from female attention. “NEGATIVE CANTHAL TILT,” one commenter thundered. “1 flaw = ITS OVER”
What on earth is “negative canthal tilt,” you may wonder — at least if you’re not an incel or a plastic surgeon. It means that your eyes droop a little at the outer corners. NCT has become something of an obsession with incels trying to find flaws in their own appearance because they refuse to believe the real flaw is in their personality.
Trust me, fellas. The real problem isn’t your looks. It’s literally everything else about you — as your reaction to this tragedy makes very clear.
@Ooglyboggles
So they do.
And they also say that political progressives — excuse me, the correct word, according to the the right wing, is “libtards” — don’t want to work hard but instead want to blame others for their problems.
Ha, ha, ha!
A little more information about the shooter from the Houston Chronicle, including photos taken from his Facebook, which has the photo of the hat with the bi-pin on it:
https://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/Teen-suspect-in-Santa-Fe-shooting-promoted-12926019.php
If Milo says if women were nicer men wouldn’t shoot, then what does that say about women who men are not nice to? He’s not aware of it but he made an argument that women are superior to men because we don’t go around killing people just because men aren’t nice to us. Milo should be forever grateful that despite all the rapes, abuse, sexual harassment, unequal pay and a litany of other “not being nice to’s” we women do civilized things like create movements for awareness and work to change laws rather than go on murder sprees.
@Nequam
I like Kate Beaton’s take on anything, tbh 🙂
Somewhat related to the current topic, I just watched some of a Star Wars fanfic, courtesy of a student who mentioned it in an assignment. I’m out of the loop so I’d never heard of it, but what tickled me is – it’s called Chad Vader: Day Shift Manager. Chad is Darth’s not-so-successful brother. Chad!! Unsuccessful!!
Darth was forced into becoming an evil fascist because he wasn’t the Chad. Obviously.
@wwth
That, right there, is why you are Top Cat around here ???
Reports are starting to come out that this boy had been aggressively pursuing a girl in his school for 4 months. According to the girl’s mother, the girl finally had enough one day and stood up to him during class. His embarrassment is likely what fueled his rage. Still no excuse, but alas…another one. 🙁
I wonder if the incels will reconsider letting him into their creepy little club, or if he’s still denied because he didn’t kill himself or because his wrists are still too big/canthal tilt is not negative enough/(insert other perceived physical “defect” here).
What a club–too many confusing admission requirements. There are many with far less, and far more fulfilling activities.
Piperzoso, yeah, I just read about that.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/ct-texas-school-shooting-20180519-story.html
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. The refusal of our society to consider any kind of extremism that isn’t Islam-based terrorism is a serious threat to the safety of mostly Americans (because guns) but really everyone else too. Refusing to see that entitled misogyny and/or white nationalism leads to extremist violence is literally killing us. More gun control would certainly help reduce mass murders in the US, but like we saw with Toronto, extremists will use other means of murder too. So while we really need gun control, it is not the only thing we need. It’s urgent we address the radicalization of angry young men in general and not just angry young Muslim men. But that’s gotten totally lost in the debate between we need gun control vs. we need to do some vague unspecified thing about mental health and also turn schools into virtual prisons.
wwth:
People also need to stop lumping these radicalised young men into the horrifyingly vague “mentally ill” category (quotation marks because I hate that term). Mental health issues, if present in any individual, are not the root cause, as many people who have mental health issues will still give side-eye to a load of crap.
These movements work more like how a cult functions–sociopathic leaders, high on power and control, feed dangerous rhetoric to people who are seeking answers to their fears and insecurities. The only difference? There is no established religious element in these modern movements. Rather, plain ol’ misogyny is their weapon, and it’s used to exploit the dateless.
Paul Elam, Roosh V, and all the others are the 21st century’s Jim Jones and Marshall Applewhite. Instead of mass suicides, however, they’re committing mass homicides. And I’ll leave now because what I really want to say next will be in violation of the comments policy.
I just wish someone in the blame mass shootings on mental illness crowd would explain what mental illness only affects American men. Or what mental illness manifests in a unique way in American men. It’s very confusing!
WWTH, I have seen a few cloth-heads on Facebook claiming that bullying is the cause. My stock response – ‘many different kinds of young people get bullied in high school – including girls, youth of color, LGBT and overlaps of those – but only white boys are bringing firearms to school. Why is that?’
Shuts ’em up real good.
There are some good articles on NPR’s website that link several recent shootings to the Vietnam war via the KKK, and Neo Nazis. After the Vietnam war a very tiny minority of vets joined KKK, Neo Nazi and other white nationalist type groups. Though amongst veterans their numbers were so minuscule as to go unnoticed, within the already small groups of KKKs and Neo Nazis these vets made up a significant number. They carried with them their military training, manuals and obtained weapons and trained others in the groups. Even today the preferred weapons for training in such groups are those that were used in Vietnam.
Anyway, these various racist groups who previously did not work together, aligned post the Vietnam war. Previously these groups were nationalistic but post Vietnam they turned against the US government.
Another change was that instead of attempts at open and large recruitment they turned their attention toward “empowering individuals” who would later go on to commit “lone wolf” murders and acts of terrorism, like Timothy McVeigh.
So like instead of working as a collective, individuals would just sort of self-educate while having lose but not obviously traceable connections to these groups. Of course the internet makes this even more possible as a KKK or neo Nazi would never even have to meet a single other KKK or new nazi in real life, ever in his life, and still be able to be one and carry out the ultimate plans of the collective group. That means that when they did commit violence, mass murders, acts of terrorism, the media would “lone wolf” it.
So basically much of the recent violence, shootings, mass murders, acts of terrorism that are taking place now are actually the results of a very specific, well thought out plan that was conceived in the 70s, almost 50 years ago.
Every time I hear “lone wolf” I think white supremacist sleeper cell.
No comment on that one.
https://dailystormer.name/a-slut-was-responsible-for-texas-school-shooting-we-need-slut-control-not-gun-control/
@ happy cat
That made me so angry, and generally I’m a pretty easy going sort.
I know they’re being deliberately provocative, which by their own standards of course means they only have themselves to blame if/when someone were to react. But it’s the moral and physical cowardice. They post crap like this whilst either hiding out physically, like Anglin, or behind the cloak of anonymity, like the rest of his ilk.
And we know how they scuttle back under the fridge when someone calls them out. Ugh. Can’t write further without breaching the comments policy.
Just didn’t have what it took to be a SithLord, I guess.
Meanwhile, apropos the not-incel who shot up the school, a true story: 12-year-old me, who was definitely no Becky, let alone a Stacy, got horribly insulted by her 13-year-old crushboy in front of a roomful of other kids, just as she was waiting for the schoolbus to take her home. She did not shoot up the school at any time thereafter. She just got on the bus, her face buzzing, too numb to cry. And was immediately cured of her crush on the spot. She loathed him thereafter, and while she grew up to be quite nice looking, she never forgot the insult. And when she saw him in her doctor’s waiting room another dozen or so years down the line, she just death-stared at him until he turned beet red and shrank down in his chair.
And no, I can’t remember which way the scuzzbucket’s eyes tilted, nor do I care.
The “mentally ill lone wolf” shtick kind of reminds me of how often in cases where a woman would share a story about some dude who would continuously keep pestering/harassing her and ignoring all the social cues and soft noes and break her boundaries. This would without a fail always summon people excusing his behavior with “he’s probably just socially awkward, you shouldn’t (creep)shame him (or men in general) for that :(“
Okay, we’re getting the point where the multiple irony layers are collapsing in on themselves. Do these people really believe in all this wrist size, “canthal tilt” nonsense? Because it struck me as more of a “so ridiculous that this’ll throw the normies off” piece of obfuscation, but now they’re actually tossing this crap around without irony in the direction of a mass murderer to… try to establish “incel” bona fides or somesuch crap?
@Katamount:
It could be both. Much like the Freedom Caucus grew out of the Tea Party which grew out of the Southern Strategy, or like a lot of the Incel movement grew out of the PUA movement: one generation’s made up stuff to draw the attention and votes/money of the rubes becomes the next generation’s sacred texts once the previous ‘rubes’ take over.