The incel movement was discovered by the general population in 2014 after a mass murderer posted on Facebook, “The Incel Rebellion has already begun…” Starting as an inspirational social movement, incels has been tied to at least four mass murders and, most recently, as a mass shooting threat for the October 2019 movie premier of The Joker. Like with other hate groups, radicalized young men use incel ideas to boost their tattered egos and justify sexist and even violent behavior. How can we prevent our kids from being victimized or radicalized by this crazy movement?
What is an incel?
The term incelwas first coined in 1993 and is short for “involuntarily celibate,” a non-derogatory term for people who’ve had a hard time finding an intimate relationship.
The incel movement began when a young woman named Alana was working in a university math department. While she was at her desk, a man walked up and said, “I am 27 years old and have never been on a date.”[1] Alana noticed the man needed someone to talk to, so she listened. She discovered that she too could identify as an involuntary celibate. After she found love, she created an online support group for “INVCELS” who were distressed due to intimacy problems.
Early in the group’s development, a primary rule was adopted that members could not blame others for their problems. Instead, each member was required to commit to self-improvement. At that time, haters and blamers were kicked out of the group.[2] Over time, Alana left, the movement grew, and different sub-groups of incels formed.
Social Movement to Hate Group
Researchers believe that the boasts and posts of social media feed into a hopeless cycle of compare and despair for some users.[3] For the more radical of social media users, there are online forums where one can find validation for their despair. Radicalized incels adopt hateful belief systems typical of a broader online manosphere on forums like 4chan, Reddit, and Voat. Incels overlap with extremist men’s rights vlogs that offer pickup artistry tips and espouse the hateful rhetoric of alt-right and white supremacy groups, inciting suicide among fellow incels, the assault of sexually successful women, and violence toward sexually successful men.
Further spurred by the #MeToo Movement, radicalized incel groups spew hate and use their comradery to threaten and intimidate others. Some stereotype people who have successful relationships as “Chads” and “Stacys.” With young people unsupervised online hours every day, hate group forums can influence vulnerable teens. In my book, Screen Time in the Mean Time, I describe how “the Internet platform is the perfect tool for grooming, behavioral manipulation, and coercive thought control.”
The Black Pill
The black pill is an analogy from the movie, the Matrix. In the Matrix, Neo has two options of pills to take, the blue pillto stay in the Matrix, and remain in the comfort of blissful ignorance or the red pillto face life’s harsh realities.[4] Incels use the term black pill to describe the fatalistic perspective that women control the world, and incels are hopeless to get sex because of biological determinism, meaning they were fatalistically born with intimacy-crippling features like low attractiveness, small penis size, or shyness.[5] They believe they lost their chances of intimacy at birth because they lost the genetic lottery.[6]
Group Think & Radicalization
Online forums offer violent incels a community of like-minded individuals to escalate hateful philosophies. In psychology, we call thisgroupthink, reflecting the dynamic of one’s ethical, moral, and rational values eventually dissolving into the group’s character. Individuals joining a group in search of support are vulnerable to a group’s coercive and sometimes irrational group opinions. Groupthink differs from individual opinions in that members ultimately fail to think for themselves, instead of becoming dependent on group principles.
Mass Murder
In May 2014, a member of the incel group shot and killed six people in Isla Vista, California.[7] His name was Elliot Rodger, and he was 22 years old. Fueled by the philosophies of other members of the group, he felt revenge was his only solution. Rodger felt rejected by women. He blamed handsome people who were happy for his lack of intimacy with women. The Incel community saw him as a hero.
In April 2018, Alek Minassian killed ten people driving through a crowded street. He posted on Facebook, “The Incel Rebellion has already begun… All hail the Supreme Gentleman Elliot Rodger!”[8] Alek carried out the attack for the same reasons Rodger did, hatred for those who did not have intimacy problems.
In October 2015, Christopher Harper-Mercer killed nine people at his community college campus in Roseburg Oregon before killing himself.[9] He too identified as an incel.
In February 2018, another man who was part of the incel community, Nikolas Cruz, was charged with killing 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.[10]
Clowncel
In September 2019, the FBI reported to partners in the private sector about a threat from online incel communities regarding unspecific mass shootings threatened to occur at the premiere showings of ‘the Joker’, slated for October 4, 2019. A September 2019 report by the Department of Defense reported on the same threat.
Those making these threats were reported to be a side group of incels who identify as clowncels. They chose this movie because they resonated with the beliefs of the main character, Arthur Fleck. Arthur is a poor, mentally ill stand-up comedian who is a victim of violent thugs and a society that views him as a freak. In the movie, he retaliates against society by becoming a criminal mastermind known as The Joker.
Support positive online and offline peer relationships rather than restrict unhealthy friendships.
Teach your teen how to avoid cyberbullying by teaching empathy, social and netiquette skills, and complex problem-solving.
Just as parents keep an eye on their teens’ school and after-school activities, they must also monitor their virtual activities.
Model healthy balance and self-care.
Implement healthy eating, sleeping, and exercise habits and explain why that is so important for strength and health.
Love and compliment your kids loudly and unapologetically for all they are.
Reinforce that the self is made up of far more facets than a beautiful face.
Remind your teen that what they see on social media and in advertisements isn’t always the real deal.
Thank you to CSUCI intern, Andrew Weissmann, for teaching us about the incel movement, and how it has splintered off to be a hate group with coercive access to kids. For more information about how to protect your kids from the grooming techniques of cults and hate groups, check out the GKIS article “White Supremacists or ISIS? Are Hate Groups and Cults Seducing Your Teen Online?
I’m the mom psychologist who will help you GetKidsInternetSafe.
Onward to More Awesome Parenting,
Tracy S. Bennett, Ph.D.
Mom, Clinical Psychologist, CSUCI Adjunct Faculty
Works Cited
[1] ReplyAll Gimlet
[2] ReplyAll Gimelt
[3] bbc.com Facebook lurking makes you miserable by Sean Coughlan
[4] medium.com by Ethan Jiang
[5] medium.com by Ethan Jiang
[6] bbc.com/news/blogs-trending Toronto van attack: Inside the dark world of ‘incels’ by Jonathan Griffin
[7] The New York Times What is an Incel? A term used by the Toronto Van Attack Suspect, Explained by Niraj Chokshi
[8] The New York Times What is an Incel? By Niraj Chokshi
[9] The New Yorker The Rage of the Incels by Jia Tolentino
[10] Babe.net by Harry Shukman
Once again, America is mourning and devastated from a tragic loss of innocent lives at the hands of a school shooter. Yesterday 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz shot and killed 17 students and injured 14 others at his former high school in Parkland, Florida. He’d been identified as a threat to other students and expelled last year. Buzz Feed reported that both his parents had died, and he was known as a loner who frequently posted about his obsession with guns on social media. He may be the same Nikolas Cruz who wrote on Ben Bennight’s YouTube vlogger site in September, “I’m going to be a professional school shooter.” The FBI conducted an interview with Bennight the day after he reported the comment and again reached out to him yesterday. In response to the tragedy, President Trump tweeted, “So many signs that the Florida Shooter was mentally disturbed, even expelled from school for bad and erratic behavior. Neighbors and classmates knew he was a big problem. Must always report such instances to authorities again and again!” He promised support to America’s children, saying “We are here for you. Whatever we can do to ease your pain.” What is going on and how do we stop it? What do these shooters have in common? What role does gun control, mental illness, online radicalization, first-person shooter video game play, politics, and parenting play as contributors to this violence?
Like all “experts,” I have pockets of advanced knowledge and gaping blind spots. No single authority can tell us how to fix this insidious and complicated issue. Many of us even hesitate to speak out, as we know we will be diluged with trollish insults and inflammatory arguments. But let’s face it. We all have to get braver and speak up. Children’s lives are on the line and our everyday safety has been compromised. I believe there are many factors at play, many of which we can change to positively impact child safety.
Schools
In over twenty years of being a mom and treating kids, families, and teachers, I’ve seen school resources and policies change. We’ve moved from swatting with a paddle, to expensive team treatment plans, to expelling problem students with “zero tolerance.” Class sizes are too big, behavioral issues have dramatically increased, teachers are overworked and underpaid, and administration is understaffed. With one counselor per school (if they’re lucky) and a few school psychologists per district, at-risk kids go unidentified and underserved. By the time these kids hit middle and high school, they are too often suspended, expelled, or sent for independent study in response to problem behavior. This leaves at-risk kids more isolated with fewer supportive resources when they most need it. They cry out lonely, rejected, and angry; left to play first-person shooter games for hours on end with a team of other self-selected assassins.
Where’s the funding for education?
Mental Illness
I’m a clinical psychologist. That means I have a Ph.D. and five years of post-graduate training for diagnostics and treatment. I often get referred the more challenging cases for treatment. Psychologists are the only mental health experts trained for standardized testing and assessment. We are diagnostic experts with powerful assessment tools at our disposal. Even with years of experience and expert abilities, our accuracy for predicting violence is poor. The number one factor for violence prediction is a history of violence. Yet, many school shooters do not have a criminal or violent history. FBI officials agree that taking a threat assessment perspective is best for detecting potential violence, but there is no crystal ball.
Furthermore, even if an at-risk individual is identified, cost-effective intervention is hard to come by. In 22 years of private practice, I’ve seen either no or negligible change in insurance reimbursement for mental health providers. As a result, to economically survive our higher insurance and overhead costs, many of us charge client’s out-of-pocket for treatment. This results in services unaffordable for many families in need, including military families.
Where’s insurance reform and funding for mental illness research, assessment, and intervention?
Inpatient Hospitals and Prison
Federal and state funding for the treatment of mental illness has not been priority since the closure of state hospitals during deinstitutionalization in the 1960s – 1990s. I was a staff psychologist at Camarillo State Hospital in 1996 when my adolescent male unit was the last to leave. I saw mental health treatment move from a state-of-the-art research and team treatment facility to community mental health. Although I believe the intent for more cost-effective treatment was a good one, a majority of our chronically mental ill transferred from the state hospital, to homelessness, to the costly churn of imprisonment. Our most vulnerable citizens have been left to wander cold and hungry relying on the generosity of churches, not unlike the mentally ill in the dark ages. The money did not follow them, nor did the treatment. Instead too many of our mentally ill are in county, state, and federal prisons who offer little treatment. In fact, many of these inmates are put in jail as a mercy booking, meaning they’re housed waiting for the availability for too few psychiatric beds in order to get shelter and food. Not only do they not get treatment, they are also among the most vulnerable for assault by violent inmates. We have more people in jail than any other industrialized country in the world. The enormous churn of Americans going in and out of the prison system is a subject of intense debate for good reason.
Where’s prison reform and funding for the chronically mentally ill?
Violent Video Games and the Internet
Screen use has transformed childhood in all the ways detailed in my book, Screen Time in the Mean Time: A Parent Guide to Get Kids and Teens Internet Safe. One such way is the potential to be radicalized online, as evidenced by the raging manifestos of school shooters Dylann Roof in Charleston and Elliot Rodger in Isla Vista. From this radicalization comes a desire to go “viral” and be famous on the Internet, often in response to being rejected in nonvirtual life. Further, anger and hate are too often fed by unmanaged violent video game play.
Ninety-seven percent of teens play video games and more than 85% of video games have violent content. As with all complex psychological phenomena, different effects happen in different situations with different people. Thus, issues like content, time spent playing, and player vulnerabilities due to family life or mental health must be taken into account when considering effect. This makes for messy factors to control for quality research and controversial opinions about the risks of violent video games. However, meta-analytic reviews of decades of psychological research have found that violent video games can cause aggressive behavior, aggressive thinking styles, and aggressive mood, as well as decreased empathy and prosocial behavior. That doesn’t mean all kids that play first-person shooter games will be violent, but it does raise serious concern about vulnerable kids and overall empathy and prosocial skills.
Where are the laws that protect kids? In response to video game players committing violence, several lawsuits have been filed by private citizens and class actions claiming that video game manufacturers were negligent by selling violent content that is harmful to children. However, few have succeeded due to first amendment rights claims and insufficient evidence related to flawed research methodology or correlational rather than causal research. City ordinances attempting to limit violent game play by unaccompanied minors in public places have also largely failed. Law professors and psychologists continue to argue that the evidence is too flimsy to make solid claims that video games cause mass violence, particularly considering the fact that despite widespread game play, the rate of juvenile violent crime is at a thirty-year low.
Where is legislation for technology risks and psychological research funding?
Limiting Access to Firearms
We can argue all day if it’s safer to have armed school personnel or limit access to firearms overall. But I think there’s one thing we can all agree on in the wake of another mass murder by a semi-automatic weapon. How is it possible that a troubled teen like Nikolas Cruz can legally obtain a semi-automatic AR-15 rifle and enough ammunition to murder so many of his classmates? And why, if President Trump is focusing on mental illness as a primary risk factor in school shootings, did he repeal an Obama-era regulation that would add the names of SSI-registered mentally ill people to a database for gun purchase and background checks?
It’s impossible to overlook that his campaign received $30 million in donations from the National Rifle Association (NRA), leading him to say at their 2017 annual convention, “Only one candidate in the general election came to speak to you, and that candidate is now the president of the United States, standing before you.” “You came through for me, and I am going to come through for you.” If President Trump genuinely believes mental illness plays a role here, then how is it that he’s not working for more sensible gun access laws rather than helping his rich friends get richer? If only the rich lobbyists are being represented by our law makers, than what about American citizens?
Where is campaign contribution reform and sensible firearm access legislation?
Clearly there are no easy answers in regard to violence prevention. There is no single school shooter profile and no single funding option or legislation that is going to stop it. But one thing President Trump and I agree on is that meaningful connection is at the heart of the solution. We need to prioritize and fund issues that impact America’s children. No child in the United States should be afraid to go to school and no parent should panic when they see a district phone call. Character building starts at home, and we need to step up and do even better. It’s time we work collaboratively and make some hard decisions to curb school violence.
