By David Futrelle

The Internet’s incels long ago adopted Isla Vista killer Elliot Rodger, the maladjusted twentysomething who murdered six in cold blood as a kind of revenge for his “involuntary celibacy,” as a patron saint of sorts.

Now they are doing the same with Nikolas Cruz, the Florida teen who allegedly murdered 17 students and teachers at a high school in Parkland, Florida today. On Incels.Me — the web forum that Reddit’s incel population migrated to after the admins at Reddit shut their forum there down — one enthusiastic commenter got the discussion started by posting a thread titled “A hERo rises on this day of incel exclusion (Florida Valentines Day School Shooting).” (All links in this post go to archived pages.)

The capitalized “ER” in “hERo” is of course a reference to Elliot Rodger.

In the thread, assorted incels cheered as the details of the shooting came out over the course of the day, declaring their “immense respect” for their new “HERO.” And some wondered — with more than a little justification — if the shooter wasn’t one of their fellow commenters on Incels.Me.

“Respect to him if he kills over 60 normies,” a commenter called Towncel declared. “Hopefully he isn’t just using 2 pistols and actually has an assault rifle,” he added in a followup comment.

Vman, a prolific commenter with over 2500 posts on the site was already set to declare Cruz his new idol.

holy shit its on valentines day! what a fucking hero! we have a new model! PLZ BE UGLY PLZ BE UGLY. WE NEED INCEL AWARNESS

Spicycurry was a little more reserved. “Watch the news blame incels rather than the femoids who mock us and oppress us,” he groused.

lonelyistheworld has a rather different fear. “The media will probably try to cover up the fact that he’s an Incel,” he complained. “The elites know that there’s a huge problem with lonely men in the west.”

Naturally, many of the commenters hoped that most of the victims would be “femoids.”

“Hope his roastie kill count is high,” Reddit_is_for_cucks opined

Roastie contribute nothing to the society anyway, sll they do is shopping and suck chads dick and get free stuff from cucks

Incel_Dikshit concurred, expressing his hope that the shooter had “snagged some degenerate roasties and depsrate beta orbiters with him.”

“Roastie” is a favorite incel slur for (cis) women, whose labia are thought (by incels) to resemble roast beef.

Many of the commenters took great pleasure in the fact that this murder spree took place on Valentine’s Day. “LIFEFUEL,” declared one. “The best Valentines Day in history buddy boyos.”

When several commenters expressed their uneasiness at this open celebration of mass murder, they were denounced as “Jooz.” Indeed, one prolific commenter called knajjd went so far as to justify the murder of young girls because, in his view

female children can, at best, be considered a timebomb. even if you believe that children are totes innocent creatures, etc. etc. that argument makes no sense since they’ll inevitably develop into roasties.

Comments like these continue for page after page; all of those quoted so far come from the first three pages of what is currently a ten page thread.

It didn’t take long for some of the commenters to wonder if the shooter hadn’t frequented Incels.Me. Several mentioned a recent Incels.Me thread in which a lurker posted an elaborately detailed threat to shoot up his former high school and other schools in the area (including an elementary school north of his high school) on February 12 before escaping by blending in with the those fleeing from the scene.

More than a few of the details match up with what happened today. The alleged shooter today targeted his former high school. There is a middle school northwest of the high school, though it is more west than north. Some reports suggest the shooter escaped the school by blending in with fleeing students. The date of the threatened rampage was only two days different from the actual assault. The gun he reportedly used is similar to, though not the same model as, the one mentioned in the post.

You can see the screenshotted post here.

It’s certainly possible that the threat posted to Incels.Me was nothing more than a fantasy, and that the similarities between it and the events that unfolded today mere coincidence.

EDITED TO ADD: But even if Cruz wasn’t the anonymous commenter on Incels.Me, he may well have thought of himself as an iucel. The Daily Beast reports that someone calling himself Nikolas Cruz left a comment on a YouTube video a year ago declaring that ““Elliot rodger will not be forgotten.” (Meanwhile, a self-described paramilitary white supremacist group in Florida is telling The Beast that Cruz had trained with them.)

Was Cruz an incel, a white supremacist — or both, or neither? The clues to his motivation are certainly unsettling. As is the existence of a forum overloaded with so many bitter, furious young men who look upon mass murder as a kind of righteous retribution for the refusal of “roasties” to offer them sex.

NOTE TO REGULAR READERS: I was planning on returning to regular posts here shortly. I’m sorry it had to be with a story on this horrendous incident.

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