According to reports, just a few minutes before driving his van into a Toronto sidewalk, Alex Minassian wrote a Facebook post praising the Isla Vista mass shooter and paying tribute to the “Incel Rebellion.”
This has turned attention to the “incel” or “involuntary celibates” community, an online group of misogynists who condemn women for not having sex with them, and at their most acute, call for violence and rape of women. They call for the demise of “Chads,” men who are successful with women, and “Stacys,” the women who reject men, as well as what they see as a despotic feminist society that causes their ills.
We get an explainer of this online community – where it came from and its ties to the Toronto van driver.
Guests:
Katie Notopoulos, senior editor for BuzzFeed News, where she writes about tech and internet culture; co-host of the Internet Explorer podcast; she tweets
Grace Lisa Scott, culture editor at Inverse, a digital publication that covers tech, science and digital culture; she tweets