By David Futrelle
Valentine’s Day is a shitty day for a lot of people who aren’t in happy relationships, and it’s an especially shitty day for incels who have put their bitterness over their own romantic and sexual failures at the core of their identity.
But some of the regulars on the Incels.is forums have found a perverse reason to celebrate the day this year — because today is not only Valentine’s Day; it’s also the first anniversary of the murder of 17 students and staffers at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. Incels celebrated the attack when it happened, and some of them are celebrating it just as enthusiastically today.
“Valentines day feels a little more special this year,” Incels.is commenter Angryatsociety declares in a post labeled “LifeFuel” today, announcing that he’s going to “block out my own meaninglessness and sadness” about the holiday and his life “with something that made me feel happy.” That is, the Parkland murders.
“I’m happy for Valentine’s day because this time around I finally have something to celebrate,” he explains.
[W]hen other high schools were painted red with flower decorations those hallways at the [Marjory Stoneman Douglas] freshman building were painted red with tiny puddles of blood and .223 shell casings. I FUCKING LOVE CARNAGE!!!!!!!!!
He recalls his reaction to the news a year ago:
That morning when I was sad about being alone was overturned with a sense of joy when I heard someone say theres been a shooting then checked the news on my phone and went to the snapchat map and saw that masterpiece vid of those kids screaming inside the classroom with gunshots ringing out (i hadn’t had that much of a field day since las vegas).
He especially enjoyed the cell-phone videos of Parkland students reacting in terror to the sound of gunfire in their school.
That moment when the burst of gunshots happened with some kid saying “omg holy shit omg” I chuckled right after the girl screamed her whoreish ass off.
He declares himself grateful that he lives in a world in which mass shootings have become almost routine.
I hate people and society so much and you know what? Everyone of these mass killings wheather done with a car, a knife, a bomb, starting a fire, poisoning, or an ar 15 super duber scary rifle……………….makes me glad I’m alive to watch the world that’s why I check the news every 30 min. Everytime I check the news, i get this hopeful feeling that somewhere in the world a mass causality attack happened
Luckily for him they do happen with alarming frequency.
i look at china first with their vehicle and knife attacks, because they draw the inspiration that no matter how many road barriers you put up, no matter how many guns you ban, no matter how many people are put under authoritarian surveillance…………………. there will still be a backback bomb detonating outside an elementary school.
Fucking monster.
Time to address the real problem society.
Nikolas cruz wasn’t the first and he is the furthest from being the last.
My only regret about that day is that he didint meet his goal of killing 20 people.
I’m in the mood for writing a long ass fan letter to him rn.
Oh, but he’s not encouraging mass murder; he’s just happy when it happens
I’m not inciting any crime or threat of violence, I’m just saying why I have something to really like about Valentine’s day now.
Live on hero, everyday I hope to see more just like you……………….. and i see the world ending another day hahahahahhahahahahahahahah.
In a followup comment, he said he thought
the bloodshed across the world will forever continue, I hope it gets so bad to the point where a sizeable amount of people are too scared to go out into puplic and theres armed guards with automatic rifles at every store, venue, event, etc.
I love the kind fear the public has.
While there were a few dissenters, most of those who responded to Angryatsociety’s post on Icels.is shared his sentiments.
“Fills me up with joy,” wrote AsiaCel, a prolific contributor to Incels.is who has posted more than 3000 comments to the site.
I don’t support mass shooting, but my support/against won’t change anything it’s going to happen regardless. Might as well sit back and watch the show.
Others suggested that the bloodshed was necessary to bring attention to their inability to find dates. According to commenter Hate_My_Life,
All this pain and suffering is something that society and people deserve until they open their fucking eyes and ask: Is there a problem with us?
It will probably take millions of deaths before they even question that, but I’ll be waiting (Again, I’m not encouraging violence/shooting up schools).
I hate women indeed, but the world follows closely behind.
Someone called FinnCel agreed:
No one talks about loneliness until a couple of students get shot.
Even then, it’s briefly mentioned and the discussion changes to gun control, instead of loneliness prevention.
I don’t support shootings but it is a necessary evil. Those brief moments when our loneliness is mentioned, when put together enough times, just might open the society’s eyes and we will finally be noticed
That’s the logic of terrorism.
Once again, I’m struck by how similar this particular incel argument is to Jordan Peterson’s infamous argument for “enforced monogamy.” Like the incels, Peterson suggested that this kind of male violence is the inevitable result of women rejecting certain kinds of men; indeed, he made his comments in response to a question about the Toronto van killer, a self-described incel. “He was angry at God because women were rejecting him,” Peterson declared in an interview with the New York Times. “The cure for that is enforced monogamy.”
It’s an argument that’s absurd on so many levels it’s hard to even know where to begin. Somehow cajoling (or outright forcing) women into dating the sort of guy who contemplates mass murder when he can’t get a date won’t solve the problem of male violence; it will simply shift the target of the anger. Men who are this angry about being told no outside of a relationship will almost certainly get angry about being told no in a relationship — and will have the perfect opportunity to take out this anger on their partners and children.
These men might not go and shoot up a school, but some of them would almost certainly end up murdering their partners and other family members. Indeed, these sorts of murder-suicides happen so regularly they almost never get national attention, and “enforced monogamy” would almost certainly make them much more common.
This sort of male violence is born from the same sort of aggrieved entitlement that drives the incels. You can’t solve it by forcing (or even by more subtly cajoling) women into giving these entitled men what they say they want, because they will simply find new reasons to feel aggrieved. That’s especially true of incels, whose entire identity is built around their sense of grievance. (Take a look at yesterday’s post to see an ex-incel talking about how aggrieved he remains even after finding several girlfriends.) The real problem isn’t that these men feel aggrieved; it’s that they feel entitled.
Depressing thoughts for Valentine’s Day, but then again this blog specializes in the worst people in the world. I’ll put up a Valentine’s Day open thread for those who’d rather discuss somewhat more pleasant things,
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Red R Lion – I probably would have agreed with you before I had children, and then I had 2 boys… I brought them up on my own, and no father to speak of as I used donor sperm.
In the first few years my influence was massive. Then they went to school and my influence became less and less effective. My older son (22) recently told me that he has suffered depression because of the toxic masculinity he has been subjected to, denying him the ability to express his feelings of sadness etc constructively. NOT ONCE did I tell him to ‘man up’ or any other BS. My other son has not suffered this as he is less susceptible to conforming and peer pressure.
I can guarantee I challenge my sons’ shitty behaviour, but I am not the be all and end all of what made them and shaped them. I would be deeply ashamed if my boys did what is so common for young men to do to women, but I KNOW I did not create it.
@Red R. Lion
First off you need to stop being defensive and take a step back. You’re probably feeling personally attacked and arguing from emotion, as a knee jerk response for being called out, and that is preventing you from listening and taking in the message.
I would recommend actually stepping back from the computer and taking a few hours to mull things over in your head.
When you do come back, try re-reading everything that was said in this thread, including your own responses.
That being said:
You do realize that last sentence entirely invalidates the rest of what you said? It doesn’t matter what the mother does to “inoculate” their children if the father is pushing toxic masculinity onto their children, or doing absolutely nothing to help them unlearn it.
The very message you’re trying to convey stems from toxic masculinity, because your first instinct was to directly single out the mother for this type of behavior.
Now does that mean you’re a shit person? No, it means you still have societal biases that you must overcome, because unfortunately for us, toxic masculinity is the default in our society and not the exception. Toxic masculinity has to be unlearned and, like cancer, you can’t get rid of it in one go.
So yes, take a walk, mull things over, come back and read what everybody else has been saying to you.
@ellesar,
I’m with you on this. I have both a son and a daughter; I found that as they moved into a peer group and were less at home with me, the more this toxic-masculinity culture had an effect on them, in different ways.
Blaming mothers is a very easy go-to option. I’m not saying all mothers are perfect, or that we have no effect on our children, but I do think that blaming moms for the faults of our sons is a way for society, collectively, to ignore the effects of patriarchy and toxic masculinity.
And @ R Lion — punching mothers in the face? Seriously?! What a terrible thing to say!
Mothers get the blame for everything. There was a spate when I was in London where they cracked down on school absenteeism. Fair enough maybe; but it was always the mothers got taken to court. I’d ask “Well why aren’t you also going after Dad?”
“Well he’s not around any more, so she’s the one responsible.”
Er, exactly.
How the hell are mums supposed to keep their sons in a bubble where they can’t pick up toxic masculinity from anywhere else? That’s the only way that Lion’s ideal can work. Also this whole “bad men are the mothers’ fault” is just another example of how high the bar is for a mum to be seen as a competent parent. Dad’s don’t even have to be involved and still escape blame for a child’s bad behaviour, as per Alan’s anecdote.
Thrn why did you specifically target mothers?
@Robert
“You are holding mothers responsible for their sons growing up misogynistic.”
To be clear, I don’t hold parents (in this case mothers) responsible for their children’s beliefs about misogyny. Parents have their influence, but a child’s belief system is very much their own.
I’m saying parents (in this case mothers) have responsibility for incels extreme sense of entitlement. Because unlike beliefs, whether or not your kid grows up very entitled is quite a bit the result of the parenting a child did or didn’t receive.
@kupo
A. Because my first 20 lines were bitching about rotten society, incels, and Jordan Peterson, so I made my last line aimed at women mostly because.
B. Also as I said, my personal life simply has more examples of women engaging in dumb misogynistic parenting, because I spend more time engaging with mothers than fathers anyway. Luck of the draw really.
I’ve dealt with fathers in conflict, but those were all times that my child was showing their ass. You’ll have to ask them if I was engaging in dumb spoiling parenting, and if so then please, PLEASE punch me in the face*.
I don’t like to have my parenting up for criticism, but parenting is about raising competent adults, not about giving me the warm fuzzies. It’s about my results, not my intentions.
C. It’s only unfair criticism of moms that is sexist, and I just don’t see judging an individual woman’s parenting based on her adult child having a severe level of entitlement as being a truly unfair thing to do.
But maybe it is. I’m open to being wrong.
D. “We love our sons and raise our daughters”.
Kupo, you asked who “we” is. When I said “we”, I meant society in general. But this does very specifically include moms as well.
It’s also a Michelle Obama quote taken from a speech she gave a while ago. Obama was calling out general sense “we” for how we raise our sons, seemingly meaning society in general, but then also calling out moms specificically in passing. You’ll have to read the speech yourself to decide what she meant.
@Diego
“You do realize that last sentence entirely invalidates the rest of what you said? It doesn’t matter what the mother does to “inoculate” their children if the father is pushing toxic masculinity onto their children, or doing absolutely nothing to help them unlearn it.”
Whatever dad does or doesn’t do, children are not math equations that can be subtracted from. If you explicitly or implicitly teach your child xyc, short of literal brain trauma, they will always have xyc floating around. For better or worse. Teach you child not to be entitled, and it’ll stick around in there, influencing them.
@Alan
As you know, kids have a right to a 100% level of care from mom. No matter how shitty the other parent is, no matter whether it’s fair to mom or not. The right answer is to hold both parents 100% responsible for school attendance, not to assume less from mom.
100%/100%
(Or best yet, let’s get rid of the whole legal framework for “school absenteeism”, because the whole idea is fucking shit right out of the gate).
*I kept it the same for the sake of fairness. When I first said this, I honestly didn’t consider it worse than the other things sometimes said here (like “take a long walk off of a short pier”), but I’ve changed my mind.
Surely you have evidence of this assertion, and are not merely saying this because you feel that it is true, correct? I’d love to see your sources.
And again, why mothers specifically? Perhaps in the incredibly small sample size of your own experience, it is mothers who are the cause of entitled behavior of children you have encountered. (While the fathers aren’t to blame despite also being expected to provide 100% parenting because… You didn’t interact with them, if I understand correctly?) Okay, sure. Why would you assume this extends to the personal experiences of strangers on the internet? What indication do you have that the incels have had a home life analogous to the situations you specifically have encountered?
Also, I’m fairly sure that there has not been any kind of regular “long walk off a short pier” comments on this site because advocating violence and wishing harm is actually against the comments policy! Legos are about the biggest threat that get made, at least by those abiding by the comments policy.
It’s unfair to criticize just the mom. Do you seriously not see how sexist that is? How do you know this incel was even raised by a mother? Why even make that assumption?
And seconding what Catalpa said. Have you really seen language like “long walk off a short pier” here? Violent language is against the rules here, so I would ve surprised.
@Catalpa
We’re saying that because you made a statement solely about the mother, then continued to double down that this was correct when it was pointed out to you. In no way have you apologized or said you misspoke; you’ve simply said that of course the father is to blame and so is the whole world. And you continue to talk about how mothers are the frontline which completely ignores other parents and guardians.
If you take issue with the comments policy, take it up with David. But for the record, when people wish for someone to step on legos, they’re wishing annoyance, not harm. You’ll see other creative curses on here, such as wishing someone to step in cat vomit or never find the match to their sock or all kinds of harmless but annoying things.
The point is, calls for violence are against the comments policy. Don’t argue with us that you should be allowed because someone else got away with it before or because you disagree. If you truly feel the policy is unfair, take it up with David. And when someone asks you to mind the comments policy just do it and move on rather than getting defensive. Everyone slips up sometimes and no one is going to care that you slipped up once and were asked to stop. They will care uf you continue to do it and argue about how right you are and how wrong everyone else is.
@ red
But in that case, why didn’t you say dad should get punched in the face too? If they’re both equally guilty of the same offence, then why do you deem only one of them deserving of punishment?
You see the issue?
Sure, you keep saying that the dad has 100% of the blame.
But the way you made your argument, you certainly haven’t indicated that the dad deserves 100% of the punishment. It’s only the mothers who you want to punch in the face. What you are claiming to believe and what beliefs you appear to be acting on do not line up.
Here, let me make an analogy. If I were to say something like “black men who commit sexual assault should be punished to the fullest extent of the law”, then people would rightfully call me out on clearly being prejudiced.
And replying to those call-outs with something like: “Well, of course white men and everyone else who commit sexual assault should also be held accountable! But I don’t see the problem with talking about specifically the assaults committed by black men! They are responsible for their actions too!” Well, it doesn’t exactly dispel the perception of prejudice, does it? Especially not if I brought up the topic of black men completely out of left field like I had some kind of ax to grind.
Hmm? *goes back to check* Oh, I did miss this one. Maybe because it was short, or maybe it was stuck in the moderation filter on my first read-through? It is pretty gross, though.
Ugh. No, Sol. Cut that shit out. Not cool.
However, just because someone else says a shitty thing, it doesn’t mean you’re let off the hook for saying a different shitty thing, Red.