CONTENT WARNING: This one is just brutal. If you’re feeling even the slightest bit queasy about the headline, please don’t read any further.
By David Futrelle
Sunday morning, a young man named Brandon Clark allegedly murdered 17-year-old Instagram “e-girl” Bianca Devins, apparently a friend of his, brutally slashing her throat and then slashing his own in an attempt to kill himself. Sometime between the murder and the attempted suicide, he took a photo of her bloody body and uploaded it to 4chan.
The photo quickly spread across social media, including the Incels.co forum, where it was evidently found by a commenter calling himself canino1997, who reacted to the horrific tragedy by masturbating to the picture of Devins’ lifeless body and sending a picture of the resulting “cum tribute” to the girl’s mother (or perhaps her stepmother) as a sort of ‘”lesson” for her.
He attached a screenshot of what he said were the messages he’d sent to the mother along with his “tribute.”
Naturally, other incels applauded canino1997’s initiative. “[Y]our doing god’s work,” wrote one commenter. “Based as fuck,” added a second. “Based kikebook Stalkercel,” agreed a third, which is the Incel way of saying he thought that canino1997 is was an excellent Facebook stalker.
On Facebook, Bianca’s stepmother didn’t say anything about
canino1997’s particular act of malicious harassment, but she did post at length about the anguish of seeing the photos of her stepdaughter’s corpse — an anguish amplified by the knowledge that countless strangers were passing the pictures around in an attempt to shock others and, in some cases, to garner new Instagram followers.
It is absolutely disgusting that people are sharing, screenshoting the pictures of Bianca’s (tragic) death!! Wtf is wrong with you people!!?? … I will FORVER have those images in my mind when I think of her. When I close my eyes, those images haunt me. …
Imagine sitting there, in disbelief and praying to God that this is all some mistake and that your baby will walk through the door any minute. Now imagine seeing those pictures and having everything in you break. Imagine not even being able to yell out and scream or cry because your soul has now just been broken.
After writing this blog for eight years, and watching the political developments in the US over the last three, I can’t say I still have a lot of faith left in humanity. But discovering the incel and his “cum tribute” hit me like a punch in the gut; in some ways it feels as gratuitously cruel as the murder itself.
There’s a lot more to say — none of it good — about this case and the assorted reactions to it online. But I will save that for later posts.
NOTE: Canino1997’s original post was taken down by the Incels.co mods, though evidence of it remains in the responses to it from other commenters. I borrowed the screenshots from a post in IncelTears, a subreddit devoted to monitoring and mocking incels.
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How do you get so debased, so detached from any notion of common human decency and empathy that you’d even contemplate this jerkwad’s actions? How much longer before this guy is actually fucking a corpse?
NOTE: Just want to reiterate, given the nature of the post today, that any sort of advocacy of violence is not allowed in the comments here and will be deleted; you may also be banned or put on moderation.
I struggle to leave a comment that doesn’t condone violence against incels in some form.
Just fuck incels. How dare they exist and do this shit? I hope to see the last incel pass into eternity in my lifetime.
For the late Bianca Devins and her family, I offer condolences:
https://youtu.be/VN5bxKsAMRc
For her killer, may he get all the punishment the law allows.
For those passing around photos of the dead girl’s body for shits and giggles, a massive dose of empathy for what they’ve done, and an eternity of shame over actions they can never make up for.
Incels are now the literal worst. That is all.
Nope
@Doomcup
I know the feeling, specially given this latest development. They really need to be tried and jailed as a terrorist group.
Outlawing Hate Speech would be a deadly blow to Far Right extremists, who draw and organize their support based on these sort of messages.
On the other hand…
Or don’t, because I feel like that would make them happy.
I bet. I’m going to pretend that canino1997 is under 20 years old, and knows not what he does. It could be just bravado BS.
But seeing is believing. There’s no other way to believe this, and it must be recorded, remembered or it will be forgotten. Swept under the rug.
I dated an abuser for about 7 years (back in the 1980’s). I kept “forgetting” the worst, pretending, disbelieving. Something inside me wanted to leave a lot earlier, but guilt, shame, a tied-up head, kept me there. Eventually protective instincts shut down (probably earlier than I remember). Anyhoo, this is the exactly the kind of thing which should never be swept away, the little evils beyond belief. Evil wants to break the mirrors which show its truth. This site keeps the mirrors up.
I’m going to log off the internet, play with my cats & my wonderful husband of 20+ years, and maybe read some Harry Potter or Dresden Files therapeutically. Good Nite.
Having to remind myself once again that eugenics generally goes bad places.
You know what I wish would happen to this guy? I want him to develop a sense of empathy and introspection, because for someone like him, the worst punishment possible would be truly realizing who he is and what he’s done.
When we take this country back, we must realize that Jefferson was wrong, and Popper was right, and so we must strangle hate speech–and maybe just abolish social media, too.
Long time lurker. Not sure if I’ve ever posted before…
I too felt a visceral reaction to this. I’m a former soldier and currently work in corrections/ juvenile justice, and had begun to worry that I was becoming immune to the horror of just how debased people can be. For better or worse, this incident and the reactions across social media have proven that I’m not.
Fuck…this was effectively a child, a very troubled child, and keyboard warriors worldwide are celebrating and using her death as clickbait. Just…no.
The hardest part is that I have a daughter the same age, and pictures I have seen of Bianca’s selfies are eerily similar to hers.
I agree with personalpest about the perpetrator developing empathy, but fear he’ll be lauded as a new incel saint.
I need to go home, hug my kids and pat my dog.
Having to live with themselves, as miserable and sorry as they are, is the worst punishment I can imagine. I do wish there were a way to isolate them from each other, though.
I don’t want to do anything that would prompt David to swing the banhammer at me, so instead I’m going to hope that Bianca’s stepmother hears from all the people who are decrying the incels’ actions. I hope she is comforted by all the people who support her in her time of grief. I hope her memories of Bianca are stronger than the vile images the incels have been spreading.
Personal Pest – I agree but I sincerely doubt it will happen. As a child, I was deeply religious and prayed people would understand what they were doing.
@Victorious – I echo that wish in the most heartfelt manner.
I cannot even imagine how Bianca’s family must be feeling. 🙁
As much as I’d like to see her killer tried and executed, and the incels glorifying her death to suffer, I’m reminded of what decades of criminology has shown: It is not the severity of the punishment that deters crime but rather, it is the certainty of the punishment.
sometimes I just can’t stand that this is the world my fiancé and I are going to raise children in.
I’d say that this is the most disgusting thing I’ve read about all day. But, Trump.
As someone who cannot morally wish cruelty or violence upon these people, and as a commenter who is prohibited from wishing harm on these people, I will instead say to the parents of the dead girl: I am so sorry. I am so sorry for how harrowing this is. I am so sorry you lost your little girl. I am so sorry the internet age has allowed these undeserving people to interject themselves into your grief. I am just so deeply sorry for everything.
Oh David…I’m really having trouble exercising restraint on this one, but I took a break, counted to ten, took a sip of wine and here it goes:
My heart hurts for her mom – this reminds me of what the WBC did to Matthew Shepard’s family. It’s like incels are 1 step away from picketing murder victims’ funerals with signs like “God Hates Women” and “Stacey is burning in Hell”. They really are like a crazy cult whose members are in desperate need of deprogramming.
I can only take a tiny speck solace in the fact that they are so utterly terrified of 50% of the population that they have reduced themselves to the absolute nadir of human existence. How much do you have to hate yourself before you think this behavior makes you powerful? How little respect do you have to have for yourself that begging strangers on the Internet for negative attention is your favorite past time?
I hope for some karma for them – some day they will slip and accidentally message or post some of this bile to the wrong person in their Real Life, like their employer or family members or classmates or church group. Maybe then, some one will be able to convince them to seek help with ceasing this destructive, self-loathing, yet narcissistic behavior.
I just can’t even begin to understand wanting to look at something like that at all, never mind thinking it’s enjoyable.
What amazes me is WTF makes these guys think they can get away this? Social media has some good aspects: it makes bad behaviour easier to track and to identify the perpetrators.
I do think that law enforcement needs a cyber division to go undercover on alt social media and track these guys and find out where in cyberspace they like to hide and hang out.
@Lainy,
Your folks raised you in this nasty, mean , vicious world. And evidently you survived. So if you and your fiancé have kids, you can teach how to do the same.
I barely react to the depravity of manosphere goons these days, after having been a reader since shortly after the creation of this blog.
The casual cruelty in this post shocked me.
It reminds me of a case in 2006 of an 18 year old woman’s brutal car wreck death, after which 4chan edgelords endlessly tortured her family with leaked photos of her mangled body. (Some of you might remember that; I’m deliberately leaving names and keywords unwritten since the photos might still turn up in a Google search.)
David and WHTM mods, please take care of yourselves. ?
Photos like this of deceased individuals should be as legal as child porn photos(go figure). anyone caught posting them should be given a mandatory prison term of at least 1 year. It’s wishful thinking that they develop empathy. Instead we need to lock em up.