NOTE: See note at the end of the post for an important clarification.
By David Futrelle
Yesterday morning, a middle-aged man in a Long Island Bagel Boss shop launched into an abusive, if sometimes barely coherent, tirade after he became convinced that a young woman working there was smirking at his short stature. His meltdown was caught on video, and quickly went viral.
“Why is it ok for women to say ‘oh you’re five feet?’ on dating sites ‘you should be dead’ THAT’S OK?!” you can hear him yell furiously in the video, gesticulating wildly. When another patron asks him who
at the bagel shop said that to him, he responds that
women in general have said it on dating sites. You think I’m making that shit up? Everywhere I go it’s the same fucking smirk, with the biting lip.
After he gets in the face of several male bagel shop patrons and challenging them to fight, one of them throws him to the ground and holds him down. A second video, apparently taken shortly afterwards, captures the man, now back on his feet, continuing his tirade against the shop’s female staffers until he is finally led from the shop.
Viewers of the video quickly labeled the man an incel. And so did incels themselves, with the regulars on the Incels.co forums
dubbing him St. Bagelcel — and hailing him as a new incel icon.
He’s “the hero us manlets need and deserve,” gushed someone called ManletHalfCurry.
Others went further. He “was speaking truth that is never spoken about the suffering of manlets,” wrote someone called ScornedStoic. “He’s our prophet.”
“He is my god now.,” declared desperatecel178.
The Incels regulars were somewhat less positive about the man who jumped their new hero. ScornedStoic let loose with this fantasy of extreme violence:
I want the guy who tackled him to have his nails pulled out and forcibly castrated with zero anesthetic, then his teeth ripped out.
Fuck him, burn him alive.
Others wished that their new hero had pulled out a gun and shot his assailant. “Guy should have put a bullet in that tallfag,” wrote Shigechi.
Others held out hope that “the next time” their new hero would carry out a massacre in the style of Elliot Rodger, who famously became an incel martyr after murdering six in Isla Vista California in 2014 in what he deemed his “day of retribution” against the women of the world.
“I hope he take it a step furthER next time,” wrote Insomniac, the capitalized “ER” a reference to Rodger. “It’s not worth living that short,” added Evildoer. “i hope he goes ER and revenges all these who mocked him.”
CLARIFICATION: This post originally discussed the video of a YouTuber who claimed he was the man in the store. Since then the real “Bagel Boss guy” has come forward and it appears to be a different guy, one with a long history of similar public confrontations, many of which he himself filmed and put online on his own YouTube channel.
UPDATE: I reworded the first paragraph to make clear that it was his perception that he was being mocked for his height; other witnesses say the woman working there merely smiled at him.
H/T — Thanks to everyone who sent me the Bagel Boss videos.
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Am I missing something? In your first paragraph you say “a young woman working there apparently teased him about his short stature” but the only thing in the video is that he says that she smirked at him.
If anyone in the shop teased him, it’s not apparent from the video. At least not to me.
Anyway, I hope that this is the end of this but my dude doesn’t seem like the person to walk away from an extremely public comeuppance without a response.
So they are anointing non-spree killers now?
Is it weird that my first thought was that the standards of incels are slipping?
That sounds like some epic jumping to conclusion by that dude.
It must be “She asked me if I want X, it’s an attack on my person!” not for example “She asked me if I want X, because she was instructed to advertise X”. *facepalm*
Do you have the link to the second video where he gets up and continues to rant?
Classic grievance collecting behaviour: https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/spycatcher/201509/wound-collectors
Hey, buddy, admit it. No woman anywhere has ever said you should be dead. It’s incels — you know, your new best friends, the ones who have just canonized you — who say you should be dead.
Not gonna happen. Maybe you should get a new hobby, one that doesn’t include spewing hatred. Because your current hobby makes you look pathetic. Also, you could end up in prison.
Oh, thanks for reminding me to buy Captain Marvel. It’s not my favorite in the MCU, but I did enjoy it quite a bit. I have housework to do today, and that will provide a nice distraction.
Hm… the guy behind the “CecilSays” videos doesn’t sound like Bagel Guy to me.
However, on my Facebook feed someone linked to another channel that is clearly Bagel Guy, which is mostly videos of him walking around being a gigantic asshole to various people. I’m reluctant to engage in armchair psychoanalysis… but suffice to say that he clearly has some persistent, deep-seeded anger issues at the very least.
I realize any “cute” descriptor or term of endearment can be a microagression if used without the recipient’s permission – but does anyone else think “manlet” is much too charming a word for the way incels use it? I just keep picturing someone like Daniel Radcliffe.
@Aaron
That does bring up the question of why the first guy claimed to be the Bagel Boss idiot. Was he just that starved for attention?
Moon_custafor,
I think it’s cute too! I tend to prefer shorter guys, so manlet doesn’t seem bad at all to me. Well, I like short guys that don’t constantly rage and behave aggressively to compensate for their stature anyway.
A lot of short guys do seem to have a weird bitterness and paranoia to them don’t they. I mean like my fiancé thinks he’s shrinking.
“Height prejudice” is the one form of bias that actually impacts a significant number of straight cis white men. (Well, okay, “wealth prejudice” is a thing too, but most people don’t consider themselves permanently locked into their current financial status the way they are into their physical height.)
On the one hand, society is telling straight cis white men that they are the standard unit of humanity, the default and dominant type of person, the natural form taken by leaders, heroes, protagonists and smart people of all kinds.
On the other hand, society is telling short men that they are unmistakably and comically deficient in their physique and that it calls their very manhood into question. I’m not surprised if the cognitive dissonance messes with their heads somewhat.
As someone who was usually the youngest and shortest in their class in school growing up, I can understand short people being self-conscious about it. (I was pretty self-conscious about it until freshman year of high school, when I had a growth spurt. I’m still shorter than average, but not by much and I don’t care anymore. At the very least I never threw fits about my height.) However, this bagel tantrumer needs to grow up already and accept his height. Pun intended.
@ Kimstu:
Yeah, our society does that a lot, in relation to a lot of different traits
@ Aaron:
If ya don’t wanna be an “armchair psychoanalisr, then don’t. Assholery isn’t a diagnosis, it’s a personal choice
@Kimstu
Yes, everything you said.
This guy clearly overreacted, but it sure is interesting to watch some of the more knee jerk members, who have jumped down people’s throat over the smallest unintended misstatement as ‘ablest’, dismiss issues short people have as “eh, meh”.
So maybe focus on the fact he overreacted, but not imply he doesn’t have a legit issue?
Golden rule, etc
It’s worth noting that if you go on Bagel Guy’s Youtube channel (seriously – go on his Youtube channel), you’ll see him berating a bunch of other random people in similar incidents, some of whom never mention his height at all. So he’s obviously a huge asshole independent of that.
That being said, his behavior is not just assholish, but also bizarre and abnormal. (For example, there’s one video where he seems to be laughing uproariously at a bar, alone, while other patrons glance at him.) Assuming this isn’t some kind of attention-seeking act, I do hope for his sake that there is someone in his life who may be able to pull him aside and get him some help, whatever form that help might need to take.
As a short person my greatest problem is not being able to reach top shelves and that men seem to like to manhandle me/ pick me up. Something I doubt short guys have a problem with.
I don’t see anyone saying that in here?
That doesn’t sound like the words of an actual stoic, capital S or not.
I can see why he’s scorned, though.
@Aaron – he’s just an asshole. With a side of toxic masculinity.
He can be behaving in boundary pushing ways and still just be an asshole.
Re: the OP – UGH.
Sucks to be hit with the ‘short men are less manly’, because it isn’t true (obvs). But the over the top aggression to seem more manly… Egads.
Something about this whole tawdry affair strikes me as a publicity stunt, like he’s some sort of wannabe ‘Jerky Boys’ style shock comedian.
His YT channel doubled its subscribers.
@WWTH:
I also prefer smaller men. It seems like they’re more secure in themselves, overall.
@Lainy:
I’m also small. I’ve been patted on the head more than once by men, at work no less, one time. It doesn’t happen anymore now that I’m middle-aged though, so take heart.?
If the guy has an entire channel dedicated to him picking fights with random people and making a scene out of everything, maybe this dude is just “making a scene” literaly. It might be his shtick on Youtube. He wouldn’t the first idiot who does stupid shit like that to get views. I think the guy is just another “douchetuber”.