The online movement known as “incel” is lighting up social media following the recent Toronto van attack of April 23rd.

Incel, short for involuntary celibacy, is an online hate group that revolves around topics involving blatant sexism and violence toward women.

Members of Incel are often caught submitting their hateful ideology to websites such as Reddit, 4Chan and offshoot site 8Chan among hundreds of other possibly hidden sites and forums.

Although the group is dominated by males, the term “incel” spirals out of an online forum originally created by a woman.

The forum, Alana’s Involuntary Celibacy Project, was made by an ordinary woman named Alana with good intention- to help other lonely or insecure people look for a partner. As Alana became more confident in her social life, she sold the site to a complete stranger.

Unaware of what she had started, the word returned to her much later in life as she read an article that chronicled a man’s hate crime. The man, Elliot Rodgers, described himself as an incel in multiple enraged online posts before killing six women and injuring fourteen others in a California shooting.

Today hundreds of incels praise Rodgers’s actions over shared posts and websites. This includes alleged Toronto attacker Alek Minassian, who on Facebook posted, “The Incel rebellion has already begun! We will overthrow all the Chads and Stacys! All hail the Supreme Gentleman Elliot Rodger!”

“Chads” refer to  attractive males and “Stacys” are sexually active females who are attracted to the Chads.

Minassian plowed a rental van into a crowd on the streets of Toronto, Canada, resulting in the death of ten persons, 2 men and 8 women, and further injury of fifteen other civilians on April 23rd.

Obviously, this caused an uproar throughout the community. “Righteous incels” such as Jack Peterson, self-proclaimed incel spokesperson can be found defending inceldom by saying things like, “Despite all the violence and praise of misogyny, there’s a lot of truth in this movement.”

“Not everybody has the genetics to succeed romantically and make it in the dating scene, and ‘inceldom’ provides those harsh realities.”

On the other side of the spectrum, incel sympathizers continue to submit insensitive posts and comments to sites even as popular as YouTube. Over one year ago, the Parkland shooter posted a comment under a video reading, “Elliot Rodger will never be forgotten”

Although there is no real proof as to whether or not he was really an incel, it is obvious he was influenced by their doings and sympathized with the group.

Oftentimes, incel ideology coincides with that of supremacist groups. Surprisingly, there are hundreds of thousands of websites and pages to this day that contain and promote racist and/or sexist content. Clearly, those who commit such hate crimes are heavily influenced by what they see on the internet.

Lane Davis is a Youtuber and Reddit user who goes by Seattle4Truth. He killed his own father in a fit of rage brought upon by his usual routine of browsing through hateful ideology and conspiracy theories online.

After seeing something he didn’t appreciate, Davis began to yell. Eventually, his parents had enough and wanted him to leave. Instead of following this order, he continued to chase his parents around their house, grabbed a knife, and stabbed his own father to death.

Although 65% of parents say they closely monitor their children’s internet use, it’s obviously not close enough. With all the violent content on the internet, it has become a dangerous place for children, teens and adults alike.

Although not considered to be a terrorist organization, the incel rebellion is proving to become quite dangerous. Perhaps the Department of Justice should look more closely at the true intention of incel and not as what they describe themselves – laughably, a men’s support group.