We Hunted The Mammoth
Incels, if they think about politics at all, tend to lean right — pretty far right in some cases. But there’s a distinct, if relatively tiny, bunch of incels who claim to be leftists and even Marxists. Let’s just say their version of Marxism bears little resemblance to the original flavor.
So you’ve heard about the whole GameStop thing, right? The denizens of a stock trading subreddit have collectively levitated the stock price of troubled game retailer GameStop up roughly a kajillion percent since last fall, screwing over several hedge funds that were betting on the company’s stock going down the toilet. (You can get all the gory details of what’s going on here.)
After ten years of writing about the manospehre, you’d think there wouldn’t be much these guys could say that would shock or surprise me any more. But incels keep lowering the bar, somehow managing to be worse than I expect on a regular basis.
I learn new things on Incels.co every day. Today I learned that only Chad babies are breastfed.
Today, what may be the cringiest attempt to slide into some unfortunate woman’s DMs that I’ve ever seen.
Today’s dose of recombinant paranoia comes from the Incels.co forums, where one inventive fellow has managed to combine anti-masker paranoia with fears of “incel genocide” into one unholy mess.
As this garbage year comes to a close, I thought I’d dig out some of my favorite posts from the past year. I think they’re all worth revisiting. Enjoy!
The streaming site Twitch, in an attempt to reduce harassment on its platform, announced earlier this week that it would be banning the abusive use of the terms “incel,” “virgin,” and “simp,” three favorite epithets amongst the asshole set. So far at least one streamer has been temporarily banned for using “simp” as an insult.
Self-identified incel Alek Minassian is currently on trial in Canada for the van attacks that killed ten in Toronto in 2018. His defense? That his autism made him do it, leaving him not criminally responsible for the killings.
Incels don’t just talk shit about women online. Some of them act out their misogyny in real life. A few, like Elliot Rodger and Alek Minassian, resort to murderous violence; others take out their hatred of women in more subtle but still deeply unsettling ways.
