Elliot Rodger: Mass murderer, incel inspiration
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.
But when I ran across this thread today — in which one regular commenter argues in all seriousness that emulating Elliot Rodger and murdering as many “normies” as you can is a “humanitarian act” — I felt obligated to post something about it.
According to VileGeneticTrash — who prefaced his comments with a “[Serious]” tag in case anyone thought he was joking — ‘”The act of going ER is grounded deeply in humanitarian motivation.”
He explained:
The amount of future incel lives it will save will likely approach millions towards the end of this century. Already we are seeing the benefits of ER events with normalfags beginning to acknowledge our existence and plight.
Sadly, he’s right — if by “acknowledg[ing] our existence and plight” you mean “uncritically accepting the incels’ bullshit diagnosis of their own problems as stemming from lack of sex” as the correct one.
While most decent human beings have responded to Elliot Rodger’s murders and the Toronto van attacks with repulsion and horror, others have responded to these acts of incel terrorism by urging the world to give in to their demands — suggesting that it is somehow the duty of the government and society in general to work out a way to nudge? encourage? force? women to have sex with men who are so fucked up they think that mass murder is an appropriate response to the refusal of young, attractive women to line up to date them. (That’s what Jordan Peterson’s “enforced monogamy” is all about.)
Anyone who opposes the ER movement is severely mentally ill, and likely some sort of sadist comparable to the worst murderers and oppressors to have ever stepped foot on this planet.
Incels have celebrated Elliot Rodger from the moment they discovered that he was an incel like them, and have continued cheering mass murderers (incel or not) ever since. But this seems … new. Declaring that those who think the mass murder of “normies” is wrong are “mentally ill … sadists” comparable with, well, the sorts of murderers the incels disapprove of, well, that seems like a bit of a conceptual leap in Incel Thought.
These people need to be locked in maximum security solitary confinement for the reminder of their lives – they are that malignant and malevolent.
This is not only horrifying but a bit puzzling. How exactly dies VileGeneticTrash think society would be able to function with basically everyone besides him and his most murder-friendly incel colleagues locked in prison?
As I write this, only one commenter on Incels.me has stepped up to challenge VileGeneticTrash’s enthusiastic appeal for more murders. The rest have cheered him on.
“Going ER is very selfless and heroic,” wrote a prolific Incels.me commenter called Towncel,
it’s the long awaited life fuel for many others who are isolated and shit on by society as well as an end to the reign of the chads and femoids that you have killed.
The only criticism any of the murder celebrants have? That Elliot Rodger’s murder technique wasn’t as effective as it could have been.
“Going er is not the only way,” wrote someone called anondump.
You can snipe, you can set traps, you can poison… There are so many things that you can do without sacrificing yourself should you choose to go that route.
“Serial killing is like ER but higher iq,” added Kinto3.
Punishes normalfags without the backlash on other incels. Also it lets you choose your targets. Bullies and women will SUFFER and no fellow incels are at risk of getting trapped in the crossfire or used as expendable human shields or distractions by normies.
Thankfully, judging from some of the other comments in the thread, it seems likely that the only sniping any of these particular incels have done has been in video games. It would be easy to dismiss this as typical internet bullshitting except for the fact that, you know, incels have already killed sixteen innocent people — or a full two dozen people if you include those killed in the Umpqua Community College shootings alongside the victims of Elliot Rodger and Toronto van killer Alek Minassian. There may be more we don’t know about; there almost certainly will be many more in the future.
At this point, it’s hard for me to see how anyone even remotely familiar with what incels really are can, with a straight face, suggest that the “incel problem” can be solved by somehow convincing or cajoling or threatening women into having sex with them.
Not only does this alleged solution to aggrieved male entitlement reinforce the very entitlement it’s supposed to be undoing; not only does it rob women of control over their own bodies and put those who would (or would be forced to) have sex with these men at risk of being abused or even murdered by them; it also just won’t work.
Lots of people are lonely; lots of people go without sex for months or even years; lots of people lose their virginity late, and some never manage to lose it. The overwhelming majority of them don’t spend their lives fantasizing about murdereing everyone who’s ever had sex.
Sex won’t fix these guys, and honestly, at this point I’m not sure what if anything could — at least not without them recognizing that they’re the problem, not the women who reject them, and that they need to seek out real help, not blind revenge.