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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Excellent points, @Surplus.
It’s better to use anti harassment laws than criminalize the possession of death photos. But part of the idea is also to force websites to take swift action to remove such material ASAP and ban individuals involved. And there have to be some very real legal consequences to the individuals who engage in this behaviour.
@Gaebolga
Who’s tom Selleck?
I am old, I am old
I keep the bottoms of my trousers rolled…
@Lainy
He’s an actor who has a rather lush mustache. He was big in the ‘80s, especially for his role as the original Magnum P.I.; he’s currently the lead on Blue Bloods.
He used to be considered a heartthrob.
But only if you were into mustaches.
Gaebolga
Oh the blue bloods grandpa. yeah I know him.
So do we! All of us, all Mammotheers. That’s why you’re not welcome around here. We’re pretty sure — and yeah, I do speak for all Mammotheers — that you’re a 2 on the Hot Babe Scale.
What — you didn’t know that there is a Hot Babe Scale for men.
@WTF Thanks for the words but I’m already old, your advice is perhaps good for the teenager normal looking “incels” who are really just insecure.
@Rhuu I said calm down to the people who called me garbage/waste of skin gratuitously, not to you. I use NoScript, I don’t see an option to quote posts.
I don’t like being grouped with extremists and these .co users are the extremists that’s why I decided to “”defend”” myself but I don’t think anything I say will change your stereotype.
@Gaebolga By “looks” I meant like “you have to be average or above average looking”, not “you have to be a model”. Normal looking people can find partners, yes. The characteristics you are talking about are personal preferences, I believe there are physical traits that when combined make you unanimously hideous (to humans in general, not just to women).
Also no HTTPS?
@Incel157
Fuck off and go away. You are not welcome here. Jesus what is with you incels not understanding the words no and go away.
Of course. That’s what I was saying. You’re hideous: go away.
@Incel157:
Then don’t call yourself an incel!
So stop calling yourself an incel. Because while you might have been able to get away with “not me, guv, it’s those other blokes” rhetoric in the days before incels started murdering wholly innocent people in real life because of their personal inadequacies, adopting the label now represents an unambiguous show of solidarity with them. And of course it will be interpreted as such, as demonstrated by the visceral revulsion to your very first post.
Ask yourself how your posts would have gone down if your name had been @nazi157. Right now, there’s pretty much no difference – if your very name explicitly aligns yourself with a viciously toxic and occasionally even deadly hate movement, it’s not at all unreasonable for people to assume that you subscribe to its ideology. And your follow-up posts haven’t been much of a corrective.
Hey, look at that, I managed to quote your post. It’s called “Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V and knowing how to use the <blockquote> and <a> tags in HTML”.
(j/k, it’s a userscript I wrote. You can write one too! I believe in you.)
So, you think that there is a specific combination of physical traits that automatically make you anathema to the sum total of humanity.
What is this combination, and what evidence do you have that this single combination is especially repugnant?
From what I have seen, this theory doesn’t wash: The incel community is full of subgroupings focused on either disjoint combinations of traits (such as “ethnicel”, which is everything from Black to East Asian) or alternatively, people who obsess over individual traits (such as “canthal tilt”, height and wrist diameter) which they feel sufficiently estrange them from the baseline of normality.
Clearly, they cannot all be uniformly unattractive. So, are looks really the fundamental factor?
You guys: ignore Incel157
Obvious troll is obvious.
@Pyxxxie
That’s not what we do here. For one thing, we’re writing for whoever reads our comments, not just for any random troll who happens to post here. For another, some of us enjoy toying with trolls at least some of the time.
@Incel157
Don’t bother, nec Hercules contra plures
@pyxxxie – wtf, is this your first troll rodeo here? We know he’s a troll. We aren’t pushing back against him to change his mind, but
A) to make it clear that we think he’s wrong, so there is at least one space online where his incel bullshittery is called put for the mysogynistic horror show it is.
B) for any lurkers who think he might have a point, the undecided people.
C) for any lurkers who don’t feel safe commenting, because the internet is what it is and they might not have the apoons to push back.
D) because ‘don’t feed the trolls’ LITERALLY DRIVES AWAY VULNERABLE PEOPLE, BECAUSE TROLLS DON’T JUST GET BORED AND LEAVE AND STOP BEING TROLLS. VULNERABLE PEOPLE SEE THEIR SPACE BEING USURPED AND CAN’T PUSH BACK BECAUSE THEY. ARE. VULNERABLE!
If this rule WORKED, why do we STILL
HAVE
TROLLS?????????????
E) STOP SETTING RULES. YOU ARE NEW. You seem to think that everyone will listen to your opinions, and follow them. In this thread, you have told Lainy not to mock you, and us how to deal with trolls.
This isn’t a good look, my friend. This is behaviour that results in some side-eye from me.
Oh? And what would those traits be?
…but for the sake of argument, let’s assume you are absolutely correct that looks are both the most important trait and there are some baseline characteristics that, in some combination, make one considered “hideous” by literally everybody. Even blind people.
So, assuming that’s true, either your belief also implies that literally everyone values looks so much that no other traits can mitigate the universally acknowledge hideousness of some people, or it must acknowledge that other traits are also valued (thought not as much as looks) and that such other traits can — either singly or in combination — overcome that universally acknowledged hideousness and allow such poor unfortunate souls (hi, Ursula!) to find partners.
Judging from your words and tone, I’m going to assume you believe the former. Which means you think that every human who has ever lived (’cause it’s “unanimous,” natch!) is inherently shallow and incapable of valuing any other human trait — again, either singly or in combination — more than looks. Even blind people.
Damn, you’re stupid.
@incel157 – oh look, you do have someone on your side! Yzek! He also likes to defend homophobic and transphobic priests who think men can’t control themselves around the sight of luscious bare shoulders!
And also is an incel who pretty obviously hates women. (Start of a thread.)
This is kind of like tromp defending Pelosi. If this is the allies your actions get you, you might want to wonder
If you can’t blockquote, you can tag people by going ‘@’ and their username, and a short summary of what they wrote that you are replying to. Or type out the html.
Again, telling people to ‘calm down’ has layers, my dude, and i find it iiiiiiinteresting you didn’t tell us if you had thought about that word choice at all. I doubt you have ever thought about it, you just know the effects it has, and maybe not even consciously.
As to people’s reactions to someone with ‘incel’ as the totality of their identity in their user name, well, if someone came in here called ‘gamergator157’, i would think that they hate women and minorities and probably harass them, not that they care about ‘ethics in games journalism’.
If someone came in here with ‘flatearther157’, i would be wondering if they were antisemetic, sexist, homophobic etc. Not because flat earth is those things, but because if you believe babbies first conspiracy theory, you probably believe more.
Qanon157. PUA157. MRA157. Libertarian157.
Basically i am saying that you had a chance to present yourself as a decent person to the commentariat, and for some unknown reason… You chose to be ‘hideous’. YOU chose ‘incel157’. Your reception here is all on YOU, how YOU behave and what YOU choose to throw your support behind.
Hmmmm… Could this have any sort of ‘analogy’ potential to other parts of your life? Hmm… HMMM…
https://giphy.com/gifs/l41JUepQ8rqpnI5ZS
FART. Juuuuust ran out of edit time! This is the gif at the end.
@Rhuu
Why do you hate him because of his looks?
WHY??!???!!!???!!!?
(/s, of course)
@all – i am getting really tired of explaining that we don’t subscribe to ‘don’t feed the trolls’ here. Does anyone else think it might be a useful addition to the rules?
(Sorry for all the posts, today!)
Eta: lolllll Gaebolga, hahahaha. Why do i? (Also /s, i dislike him for his support of mass murderers and general incel bullshittery. Just to be clear to incel157!)
@Incel157
You and I have radically different ideas of what can be considered polite. I’m not sure what you’re giving yourself so much credit for. Does polite to you just mean you didn’t come in here and call all of us “roasties”? If so, congratulations! I have baked you a celebratory cake.
No matter how appalling the subject of the post is, you can always count on Yzek to implicitly defend it.
Anyway, if you think looks are all that matters, you’re never going to attract people who care about other things. People who are passionate about art, physics, politics, their faith, cooking, running, or whatever else tend to want someone they can share those passions with. If all you do is obsess over how everyone looks and how they stack up in some attractiveness hierarchy, no one with any substance or interests will ever find you interesting and want to spend time with you. I’ve never met a single couple that doesn’t have some common interests. I’ve never dated anyone that doesn’t share my political views I don’t think.
@Rhuu – apparently an illiterati
… if you say so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I’ll agree with the sentiment, though David did address this somewhat in the policy already by saying:
But evidently it could be stated more explicitly.
@Pyxxxie
I don’t entirely attribute the rise of the Alt Right to South Park alone, but regardless of whether or not you’re cynical about it, it did sow the seeds for many of the attitudes that characterise it. For one, South Park doesn’t itself limit itself to be a satire, it espouses and propagates many reactionary views. Incidentally, the show is very popular with 4chan and other similar minded communities, of relatively young adults that grew up watching it during the nineties.
South Park has made the case for a number of the following notions:
– Affirmative Action is racist against POC.
– Liberals who promote tolerance are literal Nazis, who want to shove the idea of tolerance down your throat.
– Global Warming is a hoax (a recently recanted view, which comes too little too late)
– Criticizing people for holding bigoted religious views is bigotry.
– Asking people NOT to be overly racist, misogynist, homophobic, etc is “Political Correctness”
Their use of Alt Right jargon is also noticeable, such as the common mockery of using “Stunning and Brave” to demean any act of resistance or opposition to status quo.
Again, was it solely responsible for the rise of the Alt Right? No, there were several factors involved, but you cannot deny the significant influence it’s had on the foundational culture of the movement.