In the summer of 2021, a 22-year-old man named Jake Davison walked out into the streets of Plymouth and shot four people with a pump-action shotgun. He had already killed his own mother with the same gun, moments before. His victims included a three-year-old girl and her 43-year-old father. He shot at people through their open windows and gunned down a man walking in the local park.
Davison was an incel – but he was trying not to be. Days before he committed mass murder, he had been posting on the Reddit forum r/IncelExit, a community that tries to lift men out of the manosphere and back into a normal headspace. The manosphere, in case you’re not familiar with the term, is a collection of websites, blogs, and online forums promoting masculinity, misogyny, and opposition to feminism. While r/IncelExit may technically still be within the manosphere, it acts like a helpline from the void.
