Movie theaters ban masks, costumes at ‘Joker’ screenings

[Ed L]

It seems to me that every time the media or anyone does a story about Incels, they help this twisted, deranged thought system spread among certain people who might be disturbed or vulnerable to it, but who otherwise would not have heard about it. Then they might wind up spending time looking it up and getting involved with it online. To paraphrase Matthew McConaughey's character from the first season of True Detective, it is like a language virus that self replicates and dulls critical thinking.

It also might plant the seeds of acting out at the Joker movie to other disturbed people who might not have otherwise thought of it.

I had never heard of this term before some guy in Canada ran over some people with a van.

I understand that it is news and is going to be covered, as well as the responsibility of law enforcement to make warnings, but I think the whole growth of Incels is a classic case of social contagion.

I m sure that there are some teenagers out there who have never been successful romantically who stumble upon the term and then start reading up on it. They wind up adopting the beliefs, and identifying as incels, and thus it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. This is what makes it so insidious.

[0ddl0t]

I think I'll wait for the tightwad Tuesday matinee.

[DC_P]

I must have missed the memo. What, exactly, are The Authorities worried about?

Didn't you see Scream 2?

[Maple Syrup Actual]

Ok noted, thanks. Guess this falls under both the Stupid Places and Stupid People rules.

Edit: I read the link. I’m still missing what this particular movie has to do with the horrible event in Colorado.

Edit 2: Ok I read the OP link. I get it now. Clown turns mass murderer. Ok, yeah that’s probably awkward, at best, these days.

I'm sure this must be regionally dependent but I have to just throw this out there: are we really at the point where going to see a movie qualifies as high-risk behaviour that we need to avoid for defensive purposes?

Personally I think this is overstating the risk factor. Again in some areas I'm sure that's not true; I bet there's a movie theatre in Atlanta or something which, if you took me there, I'd be saying "this seems pretty dicey".

But aren't we ascribing quite a bit more danger to the incel...(movement? phenomenon?) than is really warranted? I mean you don't want to fall into the Tesla fallacy problem, where something that's getting a ton of media coverage is then assumed to be a larger component of the total than it actually is. Almost by definition, most incels are ineffectual losers. The number of them that go off is probably pretty tiny, even though I would guess that if you looked at mass shooter types the number of them who couldn't get laid to save their lives is pretty high. But we're still talking about a lightning-strike incidence, aren't we?



I'm about to go off on a bit of tangent here but I think the news items about this movie and the danger it represents are actually the result of something a little different.

I think the real motivation behind the concerns about this movie is that the story is probably going to be, on some level, relatable. People are going to watch it and sympathize with the Joker and that's scary because somebody realized that his character is uncomfortably close to the people we are currently treating as a societal free-fire zone. And he's lashing out and a few of them are lashing out and nobody wants to admit that if we looked closely at the lives of these losers we would probably actually find that while some are purely spoiled, overentitled, nasty people (this is the vibe I get from Elliot Rodgers) some are tragic figures who have miserable lives and legitimate gripes about the way the world treats them.

I think this is the equivalent, for a lot of people, of making a movie about an impoverished, illiterate, rural Pakistani goatherd who loses a bunch of his flock to disease, and ultimately ends up joining the Taliban for a season of fighting because he needs the money or whatever. Nobody wants to admit that the bad guys are often not perfectly bad. If you made that movie around 2002, the hate directed at you for doing so would be intense because we were geared up to take revenge on our enemies and we didn't want uncomfortable reminders about who we were about to go smoke. If you were really anti-war back then, you'd have thought the movie was stunning and brave. That happens to be a lot of Hollywood, of course, so that movie could well have gotten made. But at the peak of post-9/11 jingoism, I don't know if even Hollywood would have produced it.

But now, the kind of people who are really ideolically obsessed with the concept of male violence and patriarchy - which of course includes a lot of the same, very culturally influential people - have suddenly realized that this film accidentally turned out to be about one of their pet villains: incels.

So this may just be me but I think a lot of the sudden hand-wringing about the movie and how dangerous it could be to screen it, is actually about the need not to disrupt the flow of negative information about a demographic which is currently in the crosshairs of the dominant social group.

[blues]

I think this is the equivalent, for a lot of people, of making a movie about an impoverished, illiterate, rural Pakistani goatherd who loses a bunch of his flock to disease, and ultimately ends up joining the Taliban for a season of fighting because he needs the money or whatever. Nobody wants to admit that the bad guys are often not perfectly bad.

So very true.

The same could be said for the poor miserable wretches that were often used to smuggle, (body carry, swallow etc), narcotics from South America to our shores. When you sat down and interviewed these folks post-arrest you'd have to be completely heartless to not feel (at least some) sympathy for the circumstances that caused them to take the desperate steps they did to support themselves and their families.

[HCM]

It seems to me that every time the media or anyone does a story about Incels, they help this twisted, deranged thought system spread among certain people who might be disturbed or vulnerable to it, but who otherwise would not have heard about it. Then they might wind up spending time looking it up and getting involved with it online. To paraphrase Matthew McConaughey's character from the first season of True Detective, it is like a language virus that self replicates and dulls critical thinking.

It also might plant the seeds of acting out at the Joker movie to other disturbed people who might not have otherwise thought of it.

I had never heard of this term before some guy in Canada ran over some people with a van.

I understand that it is news and is going to be covered, as well as the responsibility of law enforcement to make warnings, but I think the whole growth of Incels is a classic case of social contagion.

I m sure that there are some teenagers out there who have never been successful romantically who stumble upon the term and then start reading up on it. They wind up adopting the beliefs, and identifying as incels, and thus it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. This is what makes it so insidious.

Just because you never heard the term before Alex Minassian doesn’t mean the INCEL community did not exist or thrive before then.

The first INCEL related mass murder I’m aware of was the École Polytechnique massacre in Quebec which occurred back in -1989.

[Malamute]

If one has access to the FOUO bulletins from Friendly Buddies Incorporated, I'd strongly recommend you search that word. I can only imagine the poor analyst who had to write up the technical and professional sounding definition....

I googled clowncels, and one result had that bulletin. I had ni idea there was an incel forum. https://incels.co/threads/fbi-refer-...wncels.147260/

Post 11 was somewhat interesting.

And 28.

[blues]

I googled clowncels, and one result had that bulletin. I had ni idea there was an incel forum. https://incels.co/threads/fbi-refer-...wncels.147260/

Post 11 was somewhat interesting.

Forewarned is forearmed.

[jetfire]

I'm sure this must be regionally dependent but I have to just throw this out there: are we really at the point where going to see a movie qualifies as high-risk behaviour that we need to avoid for defensive purposes?

No, I don't think we are. I don't think going to the theatre is any more dangerous than being in any other crowded public environment. In this case, CID had a specific threat against a specific theatre that (correctly) didn't release the name of. Then the media grabbed a hold of it.

[HCM]

I googled clowncels, and one result had that bulletin. I had ni idea there was an incel forum. https://incels.co/threads/fbi-refer-...wncels.147260/

Post 11 was somewhat interesting.

And 28.

There are many INCEL forums, YouTube channels, podcasts etc. they had a Reddit but it was shut down.