Jake Davison, who shot five people dead in a Thursday night shotgun spree before turning the gun on himself, didn’t leave behind a manifesto.
The 22-year-old Plymouth (UK) virgin was more of a YouTube guy, posting assorted rants on the site bemoaning his life and offering his opinions on women (cruel and picky but not, he thought, very smart) and his future prospects (not good, he was sure; he felt old and ugly and washed up at the ripe old age of 22).
He scattered his opinions across Facebook and Reddit as well, launching into tirades against his mother, whom he called “vile” and “abusive.” (All of these accounts have been shut down as of this writing, but you can find traces of what he said in the press coverage of his murder spree; meanwhile some of his videos have been saved and reposted on the Incels.is forum.)
His mother was the first person he shot in his murder spree; in the end he killed two women, two men and, most horrifically, one three-year-old girl.
Most of Davison’s rants — whether about women or his own seemingly worsening life — could almost have been pasted word for word from incel discussion forums. He may have been fervent in his beliefs, but he wasn’t original.
He lamented that he had missed the joys of teenage romance, something that he would never be able to recapture.
“Let’s say I get with a woman my age,” he declared.
She’s had a million relationships. Likely been destroyed and broken and torn apart by a fucking Chad. She’s probably completely incapable of loving anyone like she did when she was 16, 17, 15, when she first got with that fucking Chad.
This weird glorification of teenage love (and teenage girls) is common among incels. (I’ve written about this in a number of posts, and will elaborate on Davison’s obsession in a future post.) It’s not clear how Davison was able to reconcile his fantasies of underage sex with his Qanon-style belief that the government is full of Satan-worshipping pedophiles who need to be put down. Davison was not only an incel but was also something of a Trump-worshipper and gun fanatic who dreamed of moving to the US some day, so it’s not all the shocking to see QAnon-ish conspiracy theories mixed up in his brain with thoughts of Chad and Stacey.
But if we set aside his Trumpian enthusiasm — fairly atypical for incels who are generally not very political –most of what he set forth in his posts and videos was standard issue incel. The biggest difference I can see between Davison and your typical incel is that he actually carried out his fantasy of a Elliot Rodger style “day of retribution.”
Despite his weight worries (he was a bit plump) and his belief that he was ugly and getting uglier, Davison was a fairly typical-looking young man, a sort of Seth Rogan-esque stoner dude who might have had a chance with women had he only trimmed his beard a little more often. It would have helped a lot more if he hadn’t been quite so angry and misogynistic and self-loathing; like most incels, Davison blamed his looks for his lack of success with women, though the real problem was all the poisonous bullshit stuffed in his head.
The most energetic coverage of the shooting spree comes in the British tabloids — among them The Sun, which described incels as “a sinister death cult of miserable, sex-starved loners linked to a string of terror-style attacks.”
A little over-the-top, but … true.
Davison is picking up fans on Incels.is, with some comparing him positively with Elliot Rodger, the original mass-killing Incel “saint.”
“What a hero,” wrote MisterMeme. “I hope he is in heaven rn.”
“We were past overdue for a new ER, [Elliot Rodger]” added Metabuxx.
“Yes I can say it this time,” Lookscel cried out.
ONE OF US! ONE OF US!
A new ER
“It was a long drought but finally it’s ER season again,” added CrackingYs happily.
Over on The Black Pill Club, another incel hangout, one especially edgy commenter wrote that he had “read that a 5 year old whore is among the dead which is very pleasing to hear.” (Actually, she was three years old, which is even worse.)
That’s about all I can take on this right now. I will be back, probably tomorrow, with more thoughts on incel obsessions with “teenage love.”
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Hi David,
second para, you have “he felt of and”, is that supposed to be old?
Otherwise… yikes. And both the police as well as the mainstream media picking up the story have been unwilling to call this what it is, ideologically-driven terrorism.
When I first read the headline on this last night, I naturally thought it was the Plymouth in Massachusetts, since there were guns. So good for David on saying “UK” here.
When the Sun has the most accurate description, you know something else has gone very wrong.
GSS ex-noob: You said:
Well, hell. Next we’ll have the flipping Mail doing a detailed and accurate article on the phenomenon.
I think the second word in the headline is redundant from what we know about the worthless piece of shit.
My life didn’t really start until my mid-20s, and didn’t really hit its stride until my mid-30s. 22 is waaay too young to be giving up on life. Given that the average age of losing one’s virginity has been slowly creeping upward, being a virigin at 22 is downright normal these days. For both men and women.
I don’t know if it works the same way for Gen-Z, but for my Gen-X high school experience, the surest way to be branded a “slut” in was having the “wrong” boy show too much interest in you (someone too high or too low of a perceived social status relative to yours, or because the queen bee already called dibs). Ironically the label was pretty much a guarantee of continued virginity until at least college, provided you didn’t get raped as a result of it (which was rare). Meanwhile the actual (rather uncommon, probably single digit percentage) promiscuous teenagers were doing it with each other in secret, because adults could ruin their life if word got out, thus rarely got slapped with that label. If someone was openly bragging about how many girls/boys they banged, they were lying.
Teenage Chad gets maybe one or two dates; displays his manly prowess with anything from severe exaggerations to outright BS; the socially inept and socially uninvolved have no way of sorting truth from lies; and too many “teen comedies” affirm that, yeah, that’s what’s totally going on. (It is not.) College was a bit different, but even college didn’t turn into wild party and/or porn fantasies unless you have rich parents who are willing to fork over big bucks to make your bad grades go away. Most people are there to get an education, and usually also to get used to living as their own person… and if they care about party and/or hookup culture at all, it’s just a minor side thing.
This is just… horrifying, but it makes me consider the whole thing with wanting a naive teenager “innocent and pure”.
Using their logic, what is the greater accomplishment in bed: Impressing a 15 year old who has never even kissed a guy before or wowing a 30 year old who has ten dudes in her history?
I suppose going to the effort of at least trying to learn how to be good in bed is too much work, never mind the requirement of having a modicum of self confidence that you could pull it off. Better to just say them grapes is sour.
Well, assuming your goal isn’t an easily manipulated victim or something, but what are the chances of that…
Plymouth is a second home to me. Most of my maternal family live there. My mum lived there for 20 years. I lived there for two years. I am beyond shocked an upset by this happening. I wish I believed in hell because I’d like to imagine this piece of shit burning there for all eternity. And why was he allowed his fucking gun back by the cops after it was taken off him before when he was suspected of assault? The last UK mass shooting was also carried out using legally held shotguns. We need them banning like handguns were after Dunblane. NOW.
Insert joke about incel martyrs going to heaven and getting to hang out with 72 supernatural incels.
More of the same from Santa Barbara, California: QAnon follower Matthew Coleman murdered his children, ages 2 years and 10 months, with a speargun on the apparent belief that they had snake people DNA:
https://www.independent.com/2021/08/10/santa-barbara-man-suspected-of-killing-his-two-children/
https://www.independent.com/2021/08/11/matthew-coleman-was-influenced-by-qanon-and-illuminati-conspiracy-theories-to-kill-his-children-affidavit-says/
Fuck the incels.
Fuck that asshole that decided the worst possible way to react to his problem.
Fuck the guys who blackened his heart.
It’s also a remember that without action Europe will have just as many mass shooting than the US. And that action is much more trying to rein in the far right and some medias who make money off radicalization.
@Snowberry
I just want to second this. I didn’t transition until I was 22 or 23, and I wasn’t really alive at all before then. Now I’m almost thirty and things are shockingly okay and I wouldn’t have been experiencing any kind of happiness had I just given up like I wanted to when I was…15, and 17, and 19, and 21.
Different people grow at different rates, and we bloom at different times.
I’m a long-time UK WHTM reader and I was shocked when I heard that the Plymouth shootings had incel motivation. It was the last explanation I expected to hear. And I have the same sense of alarm now that I did when I first read that sovcit ideology had reached our shores.
To be far sovcit type beliefs have been around in the UK for a long time. They’re called “Freemen of the Land”. My mum was a prosecution lawyer for Plymouth City Council and there is a big contingent there that were always giving her headaches over non payment of taxes etc.
Spot-on analysis as usual, except for one quibblepoint:
Proposing a friendly amendment to something like “might have been considered more conventionally attractive had he only trimmed his beard” etc.
The original phrasing is kind of reinforcing the pernicious idea that men can only “have a chance with women” by conforming to conventional standards of male attractiveness. Which, of course, is rightfully contradicted by the very next sentences in the article:
It’s not clear how Davison was able to reconcile his fantasies of underage sex with his Qanon-style belief that the government is full of Satan-worshipping pedophiles who need to be put down.
QAnoners aren’t thinking of teenaged girls when they talk about Satanic pedophiles. Only small children count to them. That’s why so many creepy Republicans known to be predatory to teens get a pass from QAnon.
Yeah dude, I’m sure your facial geometry and wrist size are the reason why nobody wants to fuck you.
The authorities of course tripped over themselves to declare as fast as possible that this was not terrorism.
I assumed at that point it was either an incel targeting women, or a white racist targetting minorities. Because that’s who aren’t terrorist who commit mass murder.
I was listening to The Today Programme on my walk this morning and they had a high ranking police officer say that the reason they weren’t classifying it as terrorism because it has quite a strict lawful definition here. However, he also said that with the uptick in incidents fuelled by hatred of women (he didn’t specifically say incel, but he obviously meant it) and being radicalised online the government would likely be looking to expand the definition of terrorism to take this sort of thing into account, starting with the school’s Prevent programme.
ETA: He might have been speaking out of turn, given what other stuff has been said. The papers all called it a terrorist incident. Alan would know more about this stuff than me, just going from what I heard in a interview at 0715!
Small quibble, but instead of saying incels aren’t usually political, it might be better say they aren’t usually partisan, or aren’t usually into electoral politics. Misogyny, especially in an organized fashion such as incel ideology is very much political. I know you know that, but the people are saying this murder spree wasn’t terrorism because it wasn’t political, so I think we should be careful not to accidentally help the apologist talking points.
@ numerobis & varalys
The authorities here are always a bit slow to declare an attack as terrorism. There are two main reasons for that; legal and political.
As mentioned, we have a particularly definition of terrorism here. I do think the Plymouth atrocity fits it. But when something is regarded as a terrorist offence there are certain legal consequences; both substantively and procedurally. Those require a derogation under the ECHR. And getting it wrong can have adverse legal consequences.
Also the govt have always preferred to define perpetrators as ‘common criminals’ rather than terrorists. Terrorism can have a certain glamour and legitimacy. One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter and all that. The PIRA hunger strikes are all related to that. The govt might prefer to categorise offences as hate crimes; rather than suggest there’s any sort of cause or legitimate ideology behind this. Also a charge or conviction for a terrorism offence can end up with offenders being regarded as ‘prisoners of conscience’. That has implications under international law and in regards to things like extradition and asylum.
Having said that, it does seem likely the govt will class incel activity as terrorist related, if only for practical investigation reasons.
“According to Jonathan Hall QC, the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, the government is likely to consider treating so-called “incels” as terrorists.”
That would allow them to apply something called the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000; so the intelligence services could get involved.
Slow to declare terrorism, perhaps, but very fast to declare affirmatively that it *isn’t* terrorism.
This is the guy who advises the government on incels. In use anyone wants to read some of his papers. They cover a lot of the same ground David posts about here.
https://socialsciences.exeter.ac.uk/politics/staff/brace/
@Snowberry; IgnoreSandra: I was the same way. I didn’t begin to hit my stride until I was considerably older than my early 20s.
What a shame this man didn’t have an on-the-up mentor to guide him, as he entered young adulthood.
Unsurprisingly, TERFs are on the murderer’s side. https://twitter.com/obscuricom/status/1426483470281416706?s=19
Autocorrect has had it’s own killing spree here….
TLDR… they’re emotionally stunted at the ages of high/secondary school.