We Hunted The Mammoth
By David Futrelle
Incels.me — one of the most active online hangouts for self-identified “involuntary celibates” — is such a cesspool of misogyny and rage that I could probably write ten posts a day based on the hair-raising stuff I find there and never run out of material. Thing is, I don’t have the stomach for that and I doubt many of you do either.
By David Futrelle
In case you thought that all the mainstream media attention they’ve been getting lately might lead some of the internet’s so-called “involuntary celibates” to reflect upon and maybe even reconsider their hateful beliefs, the answer so far seems to be a huge “no.”
By David Futrelle
In the wake of today’s school shooting in Santa Fe — which left ten dead and another ten wounded — the mood on Incels.me is unusually subdued. On the highly active forum for self-described “involuntary celibates,” school shooters and other mass murderers are celebrated as heroes, with Elliot Rodger, who killed six in Alta Vista, California in 2014 as an act of “retribution” against women for rejecting him, regarded as a veritable incel saint.
By David Futrelle
Another horrific school shooting, this time in Santa Fe. Ten students are dead, ten more are injured. The alleged shooter, 17-year-old Dimitrios Pagourtzis, is in custody; another student has also been detained. So far there is no clear motive beyond a desire to kill; he recently posted a photo of a duster emblazoned with an assortment of symbols, including an Iron Cross and a hammer and sickle.
By David Futrelle
In the wake of the Toronto van attacks, the mods on Incels.me have apparently decided to hide some of the more incriminating discussions on the site. Like this little thread, which they deleted — but not before the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine grabbed a copy of it.
By David Futrelle
When rumors began to spread yesterday afternoon that the YouTube shooter was “a woman wearing a head scarf,” many on the right assumed that their gut instinct was right: the attack on YouTube, although it took no lives other than the shooter herself, was an act of Islamist terrorism. When the name of the shooter was released, and it turned out to be Nasim Aghdam, this was all the confirmation the Islamophobic right needed.
By David Futrelle
The motives behind the deadly string of bombings that 23-year-old Mark Anthony Conditt unleashed upon Austin before blowing himself up remain a mystery. A press conference yesterday, in which police revealed that Conditt had made a 25-minute recording confessing his crimes, left observers of the case with far more questions than answers.
By David Futrelle
Andrew Anglin, professional Nazi troll and founder of The Daily Stormer, generally does not have a lot of nice things to say about women, not even white ones. This is a guy who once described women as “disgusting sex perverts” whose “entire existence … revolves around sexual derangement.” This is a guy who hailed Vladimir Putin’s move to decriminalize “slapping hoes [and] bitches,” declaring that “[j]ust as it is axiomatic that Jews belong in the oven, so is it that women deserve to be slapped.”
By David Futrelle
On Gab — the “free speech” social media site that has become something of a haven for the internet’s worst people — some of the regulars have come up with a rather inventive explanation for the Parkland, Florida school shooting yesterday that left 17 dead. It’s all the fault of the Jews.
By David Futrelle
In the wake of every mass shooting, we hear the inevitable cries from NRA types not to “politicize” the tragedy by pointing out the obvious fact that stricter gun laws would make such tragedies less likely in the future. We watch the trolls and shitlords of the alt-right flood the internet with disinformation and conspiracy theories. These reactions are now as predictable as the reappearance of the sun on the horizon every morning.
