On part three of the Global News podcast What happened to…? Erica Vella revisits the story of the Toronto van attack and takes a closer look at the “involuntary celibate” community. She speaks with experts about how this group started and if it continues to be a threat.
In a nearly three-hour-long interview between Det. Rob Thomas and Alek Minassian, Minassian begins to express his frustrations with women and his inability to attract a partner.
“I would say that sometimes I am a bit upset that they choose to date obnoxious men instead of gentlemen,” Minassian said in the interview.
He begins to speak about 4Chan — an online anonymous image board — where he engaged in conversations with others about his anger with women and being a part of the involuntary celibate (“incel”) community, an underground online community that lives primarily on the dark web.
Experts have been studying the proliferation of the incel community for several years.
Mike Halpin, an associate professor at Dalhousie University, said the term was coined in 1997, when a Canadian woman who only went by her first name, Alanna, began a support group online for people struggling to form relationships.
READ MORE: Experts divided on threat of violence as incel attacks grow in Canada
“She was the first one to coin that term,” he said. “The community that she was starting and people were participating in doesn’t really resemble what we think of incels today.”.
READ MORE: What happened to… Toronto van attack, part one
“It was more about the kind of frustrations and complications with wanting a romantic partner, not being able to have one. Over time, the community became more and more populated by men and also more and more by people who were upset and angry about being alone,” he said. The incel community then started popping up on places like 4chan and Reddit, he explained.
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READ MORE: Threat of ‘incel’ terrorism continues to grow, attract younger followers: experts
Halpin has been studying the incel community for several years and he said when he first began, he was shocked at what he began to read.
“The first reaction you have is shock about how very explicitly they’re deriding women and how much they hate women and men and how angry they are,” he said.
READ MORE: What happened to… Toronto van attack, part two
“The second thing is curiousity, because you see the complexity of the subculture,” he continued. “There is a lot going on and they do look at the world much differently than you and I look at the world. They look at their world firmly through this lens of ‘lookism’ and it distorts or informs everything that they see.”
READ MORE: Incels are targeting ‘next generation of extremists’ online. Could algorithm reform help?
On this episode of What happened to… Erica Vella speaks with Mike Haplin about the complex subculture of the incel community; she also finds out if the community has grown and learns more about other incel-inspired attacks. She also speaks with experts about incidents of gender-based violence that continue to increase across North America.
Contact:
Email: erica.vella@globalnews.ca
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