Friday’s Christchurch shooting stunned the world — but there was a small group of men to whom the horrific crime was no surprise.

These men had seen alleged shooter Brenton Tarrant’s 73-page manifesto on message board 8chan hours before the massacre took place. Tarrant was also reportedly an active user of other message boards, including Voat and Kiwi Farms, the US-run site that has publicly refused to co-operate with New Zealand police in the aftermath of the shooting.

All three message boards are popular with incels (involuntary celibates), an online subculture of men who claim they are unable to find sexual or romantic partners.

They blame women for their own romantic failings, claiming females are shallow, vapid and only attracted to good-looking, fit alpha males with money. They see this as a profound injustice against men like them who suffer from “genetic disadvantages” that are no fault of their own.

media_camera People lay flowers at the Botanic Gardens in Christchurch. Picture: Fiona Goodall/Getty

I decided to join a popular incel group to see if I could discover why the community is creating such angry, violent men (at least four mass murders resulting in 45 deaths have been committed in the US since 2014 by men who identify as incels). But what I found was both unexpected and profoundly sad.

The first surprise came when I saw a post asking members of the group to help write a manifesto for incels.

I was thinking it was going to be along the lines of “women are bitches, they deserve to be mistreated”.

Instead what I read was: “I just want to be loved. Got rejected again recently. Feeling tinnitus in my ears like I can’t escape my fate and the world is rigged against me.”

These are sad and lonely guys who are mostly virgins and have suffered from some mental or physical abuse. They are socially awkward, “genetically flawed” (their term not mine) and don’t know how to get out of the hole they’re in. They don’t have the emotional maturity to have a complex adult relationship.

Like attracts like, and if you’re a confident, well-put-together human being, generally so are your friends. But if you’re socially awkward, insecure and emotionally unstable, your friends are pretty much guaranteed to be the same as you.

These guys seemed trapped in an incel echo chamber.

“I’m ugly, I don’t know how to drive a f***ing car, I still live with my parents, and I’m just a f***ing loser in every way you can imagine. Living is pure pain. I work at a baseball stadium and I see so many couples and even my co-workers have their significant others (plus they all have cars and aren’t socially inept like myself) and it just gets me so down. Sometimes I feel like just throwing myself into oncoming traffic,” one incel wrote.

media_camera Alleged Christchurch shooter Brenton Tarrant frequented sites popular with ‘incels’. Picture: Video via AP

Yes, incels lack confidence and self-esteem, but the bigger problem is their attitude of entitlement.

We have created an instant gratification world. With UberEats, Tinder and Instagram we can now eat, have sex and get social acceptance instantly.

According to social media, everyone else is out having fun and hooking up — no wonder they feel like they are missing out on some sort of basic human right.

As a society, we are to blame. Everyone is now entitled to a prize or a trophy regardless of if they win or not. If something bad happens, it’s somebody else’s fault. We no longer tell people to shake it off or harden up or get over it. Instead, we play the blame game and try to find out who is at fault. No wonder these boys feel entitled to sex and love.

Robin Hanson, a research associate at the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University., says: “If we are concerned about the just distribution of property and money, why do we assume that the desire for some sort of sexual redistribution is inherently ridiculous?”

One of my original motivations in joining an incel group was to try and find out why they hated women so much — how can you hate someone you so desperately want to have sex with?

What I discovered was they actually hated themselves and are just looking for someone to blame.

“I’ve never had any success in any facet of life because of my foetal drug/alcohol exposure,” one member shared. “My face is ugly and asymmetric. My IQ is relatively intact but my social and emotional processing/understanding is f***ed. When some people look at my face it literally takes the smile off theirs and they try their best not to look shocked. Some people straight up just laugh and make fun of me, especially women.”

Another wrote: “Should I just give up completely and accept that I’ll be alone forever, or should I keep trying and failing forever? Because at this point, I’ve lost all motivation and would rather just die. In fact, I wish I was aborted. Life is pain.”

These men and boys feel alone and isolated, like the whole world is against them. And in an attempt to gain the world’s attention, they have now become the world’s most unlikely terrorists.

In 2014, Elliot Rodger, 22, killed six people and wounded 14 in a mass shooting in Santa Barbara before turning his gun on himself. Before the shooting, he left behind a series of videos and a “manifesto” in which he proclaimed his hatred for women and expressed deep bitterness over his status as a virgin.

media_camera An undated photo of Elliot Rodger who killed six people before shooting himself.

In 2018, a 25-year-old man killed 10 people and injured 14 others when he drove his van down a pavement in Toronto. The man praised Rodger in a Facebook video right before his own attack, writing: “The incel rebellion has already begun! All hail the supreme gentleman Elliot Rodger.”

Other mass killers associated with the incel community include Quebec City mosque shooter Alexandre Bisonnette and Santa Fe school shooter Dimitrios Pagourtzis.

I joined the group thinking I would hate the incels but was surprised to find my overwhelming feeling was pity. All we have done is show them hate, so it’s all they know. Maybe we should show them love. I don’t think they’ve ever seen it before.

The final word should go to this enlightened incel: “I can definitely appreciate the importance of being loved. If you don’t belong and don’t get loved in all aspects of life that’s a horrible way to have to go through things. For someone to hate a group of people who are looking for belonging is hardly the way to reduce sadness or cruelty in the world.”

Phil Brandel is a radio personality and freelance writer

Originally published as Surprising find about hate-filled ‘incels’