In pockets of the internet there is a subset of
men who call themselves incels
and we've been meeting with them.
Obviously, I had violent thoughts.
You do me dirty.
I will do you dirty.
They're mostly young men, usually virgins
who blame women and attractive guys
for why they aren't in a relationship
or having sex.
There is most likely
not a single female on the planet
that would be willing to date me.
In a growing online movement,
many buy into a hateful, misogynistic
and sometimes violent rhetoric.
I don't want to be in those spaces anymore.
I don't want to see
the things that they're saying.
So, what happens when this online hate
spills out into the real world?
How did this young man
who seemed to have everything
become a mass murderer?
Before we start this story
we want to let you know that it contains
violent and distressing content,
including references
to sexual violence and racist slurs.
First up, we're meeting an incel who
used to have violent fantasies about women.
But now no longer does.
Hi there.
Nice to meet you.
I used to be a full blown incel.
Hate women, f***ing you know.
Obviously, I had violent thoughts.
I always held back.
You know, in real life.
Thoughts of like women that I did want to
you know, rape as a teenager.
There was quite a few women that I
did want to break their nose so they would be
ugly and couldn't get a hot boyfriend.
‘Ryan’ which is not his real name, was 15
when incels started emerging online.
Like it was everywhere and I got pretty
involved in it.
All my friends got pretty involved in it.
The website he visited
is now the biggest incel forum on the internet.
Where hatred towards women is encouraged.
While I regret having those thoughts,
I don't blame myself.
Obviously it's bad I’ve recognised it’s bad.
I don't have those thoughts anymore.
But all in all,
I felt the way I felt for a reason.
And I feel like,
you know, every other incel
feels like that as well.
Ryan says he's always felt like an outcast.
In his teenage years he was bullied for his
height and he says
all of those bullies were women.
I was taught women are queens, you know,
respect women, all that stuff.
I wasn't allowed to ever discuss
how bad women could be.
I have had a sexual partner before, but
I've really struggled
with expressing myself to anybody at all.
Now 21, Ryan still identifies as an incel
but is trying to move away
from a community that he calls toxic.
The majority opinion is kind of disgusting.
I see the most foul s*** of my life every day.
The paedophilia, it's quite rampant.
They can't get a girlfriend,
so they're resorting to
whatever women they can find.
Ryan says he's seen other incels laugh
at videos of people being dismembered
and sometimes even more.
There's a lot of them that just enjoy
seeing people suffer
like ‘ha ha stupid b****
she got raped, she deserved it lol.’
It's really disgusting.
They just sort of brush it to the side like,
‘Oh, these are just satirical posts.’
It's like, no, they do feel that way.
Incels are mostly young men
who believe women will only ever date
the most attractive guys.
It's a community fixated on its inability
to find a partner or have sex.
But when Ryan got a girlfriend,
he was shunned.
‘You're a f***ing traitor, get out’
‘You're not incel.’
Slowly over time realised that
if I keep having this horrible,
toxic mindset,
I'm never going to go anywhere in life
Even though he's trying to leave the
incel world, he still has some strong feelings
towards women.
It's more just jealousy that women
sort of get dealt a little bit of an easier
hand in life than men.
Like it's always expected for men,
you know, approach the girl, buy her stuff,
s*** like that.
These days I feel pretty neutral about women.
I don't hate them as violently as I used to.
And while Ryan hasn't
acted on those violent thoughts, others have.
Josh is a researcher who's
been looking at the link between incels
and violent terror attacks.
We know that they're on the increase
internationally in North America,
60 terror attacks that can be linked to
incel actors.
One of those terror attacks
was the infamous killing
spree of Elliot Rodger.
Seven people are dead and another 13 injured
in what Californian police
have called a premeditated mass murder.
Before his attack,
he published a lengthy manifesto
blaming women and attractive men
for why he hadn't found a girlfriend.
More recently,
a British incel posted
videos raging against his mother
and his inability to attract women.
After posting those videos, he killed five
people including his mother.
The vast majority of incels
are reasonably peaceful.
In relation to attacks
carried out by incels in Australia.
There are no known attacks.
But he believes incels may be linked
to other crimes.
Law enforcement aren't always attuned
to what may constitute an incel terror attack.
In many cases,
they've been treated as murders
rather than terror attacks by authorities.
On a number of occasions
Australia's national intelligence agency
ASIO, has called out incels
as a potential threat to national security.
They are just violent extremist
misogynists who believe women
are the root of all of their problems
and they've killed people overseas.
And we have people with those
beliefs here in this country.
I and a lot of the other
younger girls and boys in these communities
were effectively groomed
by the older people around us.
Although the majority of incels are men,
Lani was one of the few women
allowed into the community.
She connected in online chat rooms.
In most of these community servers
you would find probably two to five women
and everyone knows who they are.
I guess I've always felt
pretty outcasted in school.
I'd say that was one of the main reasons
I stuck around because you get that attention
and I didn't really get that outside of
the internet.
Lani was 14 when she joined the
incel community.
But by 16, she wanted nothing to do with it.
There were a lot of older men
weaselling their way into your close circle
and getting you to open up,
even get us to lie about our ages.
And their only goal with me
was to acquire some kind of relationship
or sexual encounter.
They go for younger women
because they're typically more vulnerable.
And what kind of things would they tell you?
Like typical grooming things.
Phrases like
‘you're so mature for your age’ or
‘you're not like the other girls.’
With some of the incels she had online
and real life connections,
but she says many of them used her.
I experienced sextortion.
My first experiences were them taking photos
or videos of me without my knowledge
in very compromising positions
and then threatening me with those things
to post it online and to the dark web
possibly and have it circulate
for the rest of your life.
And she says what happened to her isn't
even the worst of what she saw
inside the community.
In most of the communities,
the majority of the guys had some story
where they had been accused
of something, the most severe being rape.
Lani told me that other incels overseas
had been arrested for violence
and being with underage girls.
After the second or third one.
I was like, ‘okay, there is definitely
a pattern here.’
I don't want to be in those spaces anymore.
I just don't want to be there.
I don't want to see
the things that they're saying
and I don't want to know about, you know,
what's happening in there.
There are hundreds,
potentially tens of thousands of men
in Australia who feel so marginalised from
wider society that they need to gather
in these communities
to find some sort of connection with others.
Josh says it's difficult to engage with incels,
who are often hidden away in
private online communities.
There is a vacuum of information
for young men who spend a good chunk
of their lives online,
who are being hit with misogynistic material
not only daily but hourly, by the minute.
So, now that you're trying to put some
distance between yourself and the
community, where does that leave you?
Well, it's only up from here I think.
It’s nothing but toxicity for the most part.
So I think I'm just going to move on from
it completely.
Eventually, I think it'll take a few years.
Why do you think it'll take a few years?
It's just all the mental conditioning
that I've experienced as a teenager.
I've got to sort of reverse most of
that thinking.
So, for someone who hasn't reached
the same headspace as you,
how do you think we can engage
with those incels still in the community?
Take them seriously.
Treat them like humans because that's what
they've really sort of deep down,
always wanted.
If you like this video
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If you missed part one,
head to the Feed’s YouTube channel
and you can find it there.