By David Futrelle
Incels.me — one of the most active online hangouts for self-identified “involuntary celibates” — is such a cesspool of misogyny and rage that I could probably write ten posts a day based on the hair-raising stuff I find there and never run out of material. Thing is, I don’t have the stomach for that and I doubt many of you do either.
But when I ran across this thread today — in which one regular commenter argues in all seriousness that emulating Elliot Rodger and murdering as many “normies” as you can is a “humanitarian act” — I felt obligated to post something about it.
According to VileGeneticTrash — who prefaced his comments with a “[Serious]” tag in case anyone thought he was joking — ‘”The act of going ER is grounded deeply in humanitarian motivation.”
He explained:
The amount of future incel lives it will save will likely approach millions towards the end of this century. Already we are seeing the benefits of ER events with normalfags beginning to acknowledge our existence and plight.
Sadly, he’s right — if by “acknowledg[ing] our existence and plight” you mean “uncritically accepting the incels’ bullshit diagnosis of their own problems as stemming from lack of sex” as the correct one.
While most decent human beings have responded to Elliot Rodger’s murders and the Toronto van attacks with repulsion and horror, others have responded to these acts of incel terrorism by urging the world to give in to their demands — suggesting that it is somehow the duty of the government and society in general to work out a way to nudge? encourage? force? women to have sex with men who are so fucked up they think that mass murder is an appropriate response to the refusal of young, attractive women to line up to date them. (That’s what Jordan Peterson’s “enforced monogamy” is all about.)
Anyone who opposes the ER movement is severely mentally ill, and likely some sort of sadist comparable to the worst murderers and oppressors to have ever stepped foot on this planet.
Incels have celebrated Elliot Rodger from the moment they discovered that he was an incel like them, and have continued cheering mass murderers (incel or not) ever since. But this seems … new. Declaring that those who think the mass murder of “normies” is wrong are “mentally ill … sadists” comparable with, well, the sorts of murderers the incels disapprove of, well, that seems like a bit of a conceptual leap in Incel Thought.
These people need to be locked in maximum security solitary confinement for the reminder of their lives – they are that malignant and malevolent.
This is not only horrifying but a bit puzzling. How exactly dies VileGeneticTrash think society would be able to function with basically everyone besides him and his most murder-friendly incel colleagues locked in prison?
As I write this, only one commenter on Incels.me has stepped up to challenge VileGeneticTrash’s enthusiastic appeal for more murders. The rest have cheered him on.
“Going ER is very selfless and heroic,” wrote a prolific Incels.me commenter called Towncel,
it’s the long awaited life fuel for many others who are isolated and shit on by society as well as an end to the reign of the chads and femoids that you have killed.
The only criticism any of the murder celebrants have? That Elliot Rodger’s murder technique wasn’t as effective as it could have been.
“Going er is not the only way,” wrote someone called anondump.
You can snipe, you can set traps, you can poison… There are so many things that you can do without sacrificing yourself should you choose to go that route.
“Serial killing is like ER but higher iq,” added Kinto3.
Punishes normalfags without the backlash on other incels. Also it lets you choose your targets. Bullies and women will SUFFER and no fellow incels are at risk of getting trapped in the crossfire or used as expendable human shields or distractions by normies.
Thankfully, judging from some of the other comments in the thread, it seems likely that the only sniping any of these particular incels have done has been in video games. It would be easy to dismiss this as typical internet bullshitting except for the fact that, you know, incels have already killed sixteen innocent people — or a full two dozen people if you include those killed in the Umpqua Community College shootings alongside the victims of Elliot Rodger and Toronto van killer Alek Minassian. There may be more we don’t know about; there almost certainly will be many more in the future.
At this point, it’s hard for me to see how anyone even remotely familiar with what incels really are can, with a straight face, suggest that the “incel problem” can be solved by somehow convincing or cajoling or threatening women into having sex with them.
Not only does this alleged solution to aggrieved male entitlement reinforce the very entitlement it’s supposed to be undoing; not only does it rob women of control over their own bodies and put those who would (or would be forced to) have sex with these men at risk of being abused or even murdered by them; it also just won’t work.
Lots of people are lonely; lots of people go without sex for months or even years; lots of people lose their virginity late, and some never manage to lose it. The overwhelming majority of them don’t spend their lives fantasizing about murdereing everyone who’s ever had sex.
Sex won’t fix these guys, and honestly, at this point I’m not sure what if anything could — at least not without them recognizing that they’re the problem, not the women who reject them, and that they need to seek out real help, not blind revenge.
*Pinches bridge of nose tiredly*
I’m not a violent person, but if you suggested that these people need to be repeatedly dickpunched, I’d hear you out.
I think these guys have honestly convinced themselves that all their troubles would melt like “lemon drops above the chimney tops” if only they had endless sex with young, hot women who don’t mind being called whores and cum-buckets. It’s the mystery of the century why women aren’t throwing themselves at men who think mass murder is an heroic act!
You know, it is true that mainstream publications are allowing incel apologia and that’s terrible, but the flip side to this is that incel is becoming a standard insult on the internet. More people are also noticing incel and seeing it for what is. A steaming pile of horseshit.
A victim complex and male entitlement and a culture of violence equals having these people existing.
“Mass murder is a humanitarian act! People who oppose mass murder are comparable to the worst murderers on the planet!”
…I don’t… Is… Is he complimenting the people who oppose mass murder, in a roundabout way?
Murder is good, and opposing murder is equivalent to murder, so opposing murder is good?
I bet he was rage crying when he did it, just like ER if you read his manifesto. At no point do they put themselves in place of other people. What if I was a woman and the State wanted to Handmaid’s Tale me? Or the fact that as a woman you are instinctively and also logically objectified by those who want to have sex with woman—who then creep on you to let you know how much they want to do things to you; not with—to.
Life is soaked with unrequited longing but they can’t get past it but instead find a group of like-minded who shout at each other about the unfairness of biology and sociology and think autocracy is the solve.
Women are 55 per cent of college graduates. You will have to work with women you want and for women you want. ER literally quit a uni course solely because he found out the hot girl he crushed on had a boyfriend.
If you cannot interact with 50 per cent of the world because some of them don’t want to rub nasties with you then the problem is you.
Therapy, man, therapy. Find a stranger, cry out your hurt then stagger out into the real world.
Celebrating a self-loathing man who ran people down in a van would be a normal wake up that this is not good thinking.
Alas they are boiled warty frogs who a princess will never kiss. I know their pain, it was mine at their age. But there was no internet for me to find purpose that my hate was “… pure, righteous and good…”
I could have been them. But I escaped through AD&D—thanks Gary Gygax!
Its not even that incels are actually having much less sex than the rest of the population. Many of them are young enough that many to most of their peers are still virgins. A lot of the older ones have had sex but are claiming it doesn’t count for some reason – the woman was a normal human “table scrap” and not a virginal underwear model, or they think their two sexual encounters are negligible because most men apparently have thousands of partners and women falling over on the street with their legs spread for them. And the ones who are virgins usually haven’t actually got to the rejection stage because they’ve never asked anyone out so enforcing monogomy on women wouldn’t help them get sex unless they are literally allocated a slave.
@Mogwitch
I too am baffled by how they’re so young and yet so insistent that they should have had multiple sex partners by now. Aren’t there stats showing that on average, modern teens are having less sex than previous generations? So it’s not the 80/20 ratio they claim it is, its just that most of their peers are keeping it in their pants! They’re not being discriminated against at all.
It also shows how much those young incels absorbed toxic masculinity without question, even amplified it in their own heads with a heavy dose of entitlement. “I must be banging hot babes to have any value! WHY ISN’T THE WORLD LIKE MY FANTASIES WAAAH.” Hollywood has done a number on these guys.
I’m not sure if it’s Hollywood or the porn industry (and as Avenue Q noted, “just grab your dick and double-click for porn, porn, PORN!”), though it does seem like the one is the shadow of the other (I’m thinking of David Foster Wallace’s “Big Red Son” essay).
@sunnysombrera @Mogwitch
Yes, I’ve been wondering how much sex incels imagine peole are having compared to how much they’re actually having. I get the impression that incels believe something like 90% of young women have sex at least 5 times per week with multiple partners. With Chads, of course who I think are supposed to be maybe 5% of the men. So the men are getting 18 tiems as much sex as the women involved, whch comes to 90 times a week which is doesn’t leave a whole lot of time for stuff like earning a living. And that’s before you get into questions of stamina.
What’s up with Mike Cernovich’s movie? He raised $163,007 on Kickstarter, and was supposed to deliver in December 2017. It is ironic for a purveyor of conspiracy theories like Pizzagate, Orlando-shooter partner, and Hillary-Parkinson’s to make a movie about Fake News. I guess you can’t blame him if suckers lose money when the project is called “Hoaxed”.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1494748038/hoaxed
Including women. Including young, attractive women. But then, since these guys think women don’t actually like sex, they may not realize that some of us have to deal with the issue of being “incel” ourselves.
Add to that the fact that a woman who isn’t having a sexual relationship has to be cautious around men who are strangers because of the risk that she could end up with a violently misogynistic man who only wants to use her body for his sexual pleasure, and who will not treat her well, even a young, attractive woman who is not sexually active may find it difficult to move into the dating market. I have known very few women who were truly “riding the cock carousel” as they are so fond of terming it. A lot of women are frustrated and unhappy with their sexual life. I’ve never heard it said that the government should redistribute men to solve their problems – of course, they don’t usually go on shooting sprees, either (nor do most of the men who are unable to get dates; it’s just this toxic subculture that thinks it’s cool).
How awful. I hope the FBI are keeping an eye on them.
That isn’t an “online hangout”, that’s an online hate group.
You know what? I fit the base definition of “incel”; I was never attractive to women, could never get dates, only had one girlfriend years ago and that ended in disaster, flushed three grand down the crapper on dating services without ever getting beyond a first date… Just like Nice Guy St Elliot, except without the rich parents. You know what I did?
I GOT MYSELF A LIFE THAT DOESN’T DEPEND ON PERFECT 10’S THROWING THEMSELVES ON ME! Yeah, never being able to marry and settle down is still a bummer, but I’ve got a support network and the respect of peers in my various special-interest connections.
Old School D&D for me — three little books plus Greyhawk in a brown box, circa 1976. The Burgess Shale Period of gaming, where there were no “official campaign backgrounds” so every DM had to homebrew his own; you got a variety and strangeness such as never was before or since.
I grew up a psychologically-isolated Cold War Kid Genius, and D&D was my first time with a group where I fit in. Fandoms (SF lit, Anime, Comics, Gamer, Furry, Brony, etc) provide a refuge for such misfits (many of whom are Incels). Better an incel links up with a gaming group or some shared-interest fandom than these online incel hate groups.
Who left an online legacy of one long Manifesto and hundreds to thousands of Selfies, Selfies, Selfies, Selfies, Selfies, and more Selfies.
THAT says it all.
@Nequam
I forgot about porn. Of course that has played a role. :-/
@iknklast
No, but if a Harvard professor had said that, misogynists would be guffawing and preening for a decade or so.
Har de har har, women can’t survive without us!
@Headless Unicorn Guy
Yeah, it’s almost as though incels want excuses to never try to do anything and to blame women for their failures.
Well, at least he chose an accurate nym, although it has less to do with wrist size and eye tilt than it does with WHAT THE FUCKITY FUCKING FUCK ARE YOU THINKING, DUDE???
Yeah, I’m sure that the homophobic slurs of normality are quaking in their boots with sympathy for you murderous spoiled fucking whiners, dude. And I’m sure they don’t find your proposals at all repugnant or unrealistic, either!
(Anybody know how to get your eyes unstuck from somewhere in the back of your skull, BTW?)
If opposing mass murder in the name of some perpetually angry assholes getting undeserved sex from women who don’t want them is crazy, I don’t want to be “sane”.
As for your “oppression”, you brought it on yourselves by thinking, talking and acting the way you do. Nobody is going to pity-fuck you, ever. So…SUFFER!
This part I actually agree with…as long as it applies to so-called incels. Why do they project so???
What exactly is the crime that we’d be charged with? Aggravated “minding our own business”? Felony “having reciprocal relationships with other human beings”? Third degree “not wanting to be murdered”?
These dudes have gone from repellant to downright bizarre in their justifications for hurting innocent people. I hope the FBI is taking notice.
Wouldn’t slaughtering all the sex-havers mean fewer incels by the year 2100? Incels have to come from somewhere. They’re certainly not being born to incel parents.
@Sunnysombrera : I am alway ambivalent about all shade of “it’s the fault of Hollywood / porn / video games / role playing game / television / [insert whatever is new]”. If only because most users (of either of thoses things, really) aren’t murderous assholes. It’s not that they are 100% neutral and without an influence, but more that shifting the blame off them, and too squarely on a single thing, don’t seem helpful to me.
@Bina : nothing genetical in their assholeness. They decided to be that, it wasn’t forced upon them at birth, unlike say being black.
@Buttercup : I have the feeling a solid proportion of thoses assholes have had sexual relations (either because they actually in relationship but lie, because they pay sex workers, or because they are rapists). I do wish to be sure that they would not reproduce, but I doubt it.
@Ohlmann
I’m not blaming Hollywood/porn alone, I’m saying that these guys have been extra absorbant of all the bullshit without bothering to think twice, and then built on it. But
does give that impression! You are correct in that we shouldn’t put the blame on media, and it is the fault the assholes for being assholes. The worst offenders of practicing toxic masculinity don’t grow up in a vacuum, but it’s their fault for choosing to hitch with toxic ideas and then act on them.
Same old, same old. Incels expect the whole world to pity them despite the fact that they don’t even see half the population as humans. It’s like how neo nazis literally celebrated police shootings of black people but call everyone who mocks their conspiracy of “white genocide” heartless.
A few weeks ago I tried to explain to an incel sympathizer that (some) women having easy access to sex does not make for a good sex life. I’ll never know what it’s like to be a guy, but I don’t think being able to go to a bar and have their pick of women who didn’t give a fuck about them or their pleasure would make these guys happy.