I’m afraid of the answer to that question. I think it might be because many more people than I’d realized unknowingly see the perpetrator as a victim, and so they empathize with them far more than those other categories of perpetrators. So much so that the result is nearly no discussion of the actual victim.
The implications of that, to me, are:
“There was a farmer had a dog…”
Maybe. I guess I should explicitly say I do not see him as a victim.
The murderer in this story is a teenager.
In fact, a lot of the “incel” subculture seems to be very young
which adds to the suspicion that it’s all down to entitlement and self-sabotage—these are guys whom society is still inviting to reinvent themselves as many times as they like, and of whom very little is expected yet in terms of wealth or accomplishment.
I read that, and I agree, and it makes me want to puke.
The actual murderer in question committed a heinous crime and I’ve got zero qualms about him facing the consequences of that action. And if it actually needs saying, of course I’ve got a hell of a lot more sympathy for the victims and their families. From their side it was random and senseless, and no matter what the murderer’s background, it cannot justify the way he chose to act on it.
But every one of these threads, which I’ve also seen for a very long time, turns a handful of people into High School Mean Kids, because the murderer, being legitimately indefensible, becomes fair game for expression of really shitty general attitudes and assumptions about ostracized kids in general that adults should have (but as we all can see have not) outgrown. I am deeply unclear on how indulging that behavior honors the victims any more than objecting to it.
My sympathies are emphatically not with the murderer, at all, let alone more than his victims, but I do have sympathy for the kids who’ve never hurt anybody, but get lumped into the same “no quarter, no sympathy” bucket because some idiot who superficially resembles them in some ways did a murder and everybody wants to rush to mock his pathetic reasons for doing so.
It’s alarming how easily some people slide right into “bullied kids deserve it” at every opportunity. This sort of thread is perfect cover for that attitude. Let the murderer twist, but using the murder as an excuse to pontificate on how innocent bullied children who have the nerve to feel bad about it are “entitled” is just par for the course in a thread like this, and as soon as I understand how that honors the victim or punishes the murderer, I promise I won’t let it won’t bother me anymore.
What’s alarming is how you seem to be reading comments that no one here in this thread has even posted.
No one said anyone else deserves to be bullied or abused.
And in the same regard being bullied abused or mistreated in any way is not a good reason to violently lash out at other people because one is unhappy.
No one feels bad for the murderer, because no matter what mean things we might say, he’s still fucking alive.
The woman he killed is NOT.
How you’re getting that from multiple posters bravely telling their own stories about being bullied (and yet not murdering anyone) is beyond me.
And there would be a lot more stories to learn from, except of course quite a few of us don’t trust this thread enough. Thanks for that.
You do understand that most of the people commenting here about incels were the weirdos and geeks in their high schools, right? Most of us (unless we were lucky enough to go to a Happy Mutant factory HS like I did) were more likely to have been the targets of bullying and were more likely not to have gotten our dream dates.
But … I doubt any of us, even as teenagers, had the outsized sense of entitlement that we see in these incels (and not just the ones who follow through on the movement’s terrorism). You say that those schmoes drawn to the incel movement don’t hurt anyone, but limiting their only potential sin to physical violence discounts all the other damage they do (including the psychological damage they inflict on each-other).
That incels have been identified as a major sub-group in the alt-right should tell you all you need to know about the toxicity of the “solution” they chose to feeling left out in the HS popularity contest when so many others with the same experience didn’t. But no…
We’re not talking about “innocent bullied children”, we’re talking about adolescent males of all ages who feel (as evinced in their own on-line communities, in their manifestos, and in some cases in their violent actions) that they, as wonderful and brilliant NiceGuys™ and Supreme Gentlemen, are entitled to sex from any woman to whom they’re attracted – more so if she’s a sex worker like the victim in this case.* That’s the choice they made, all on their own, and they deserve public shame for it every single time their “movement” hits the news.
I am long done with the notion that having been a socially awkward teenager in high school, even a bullied one, gives a person a free pity pass to behave like an arsehole.
[* I will almost guarantee you that, when she was a teenager, the victim in this case faced life challenges a little more grave than did a nerdy and horny white teenage boy from the burbs.]
No one is saying this kid is a piece of shit because he’s socially awkward or didn’t have friends or couldn’t get laid or whatever.
People are saying this kid is a piece of shit because he violently attacked two women, killing one of them.
Here’s an exercise.
Go count the number of posts in this topic discussing the real victim, or the crime at all, versus the number of posts that are, basically, #notallincels, #justateen, #biggerpicture, and want to completely skip over the heinous act that took place like it isn’t the important thing in the original post.
That, there, is all that needs to be said about the real problem with what these topics devolve into.
The perpetrator is a teen version of an AR-15 modified just enough to make the conversation about the gun, instead of the victims or the crime.
Seriously. Go start/continue the incel topic if you want, but I’m over where this specific topic has headed.
