This story contains distressing themes and reference to violence.
I’m on a call with a man who’s taking great glee in telling me how much he despises women.
“I don't have a healthy opinion of women,” he says.
“I describe myself as … a misogynist or womaniser … whatever you journalists use. I know you use them all,” he says with a bitter laugh.
Rob (not his real name) is in his mid-30s, jobless and living in a self-described shed in rural South Australia.
His hobby is tricking women by setting up fake dating profiles using photos of male models.
“I arrange dates, I find some bar on Google Maps in the CBD … and I stand them up for being too fat or looking different from their pictures,” he said.
It’s known as “chadfishing”: a mashup between catfishing and Chad (internet speak for an attractive man). The scheme originates from the incel community as a way to humiliate women - Rob is a frequent user of incel sites.
“I've had women drive 150km plus sometimes for a date … I’ve had women book hotels in advance,” he gloats.
“Meanwhile, I'm laughing at them while they wait 30 or 40 minutes for me to get there.”
Rob claims around 250 Australian women and 100 others overseas have been duped by his scheme. He posts about his encounters on the world’s biggest incel forum.
In one forum post, he boasts about standing up a single mother who had driven over 150km for the non-existent date.
The Feed has seen messages evidently from the woman. Confused, she asks Rob what’s going on, before he tells her to “f-ck off”.
On the most popular incel forum on the internet, Rob makes posts boasting about standing up women. Source: Supplied
He turns the question on me.
“Have you ever been rejected by a very hot guy? Did you feel shitty about it? Like what did I do wrong? Did my makeup look nasty? What did I say wrong that made him treat me like that?”
“You inflict psychological damage and self-doubt on them,” he says.
Rejection is something Rob is all too familiar with. He reveals his bitterness towards women stems from his own lack of success in dating – he’s had few dates since high school and has never been in a relationship.
“I consider it revenge,” he says.
What is an incel?
Incels, short for "involuntary celibates", are mostly young men who define themselves by their inability to get into a sexual or romantic relationship.
Researchers say the incel movement is growing and becoming more radicalised.
While Rob personally doesn’t label himself an incel, he’s made hundreds of posts on the internet’s most popular incel forum. The site has attracted over 20,000 members and more than 11 million posts.
Less than 2 per cent of the traffic on this particular website comes from Australia, according to research by the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH). But countless other forums and private chatrooms exist.
Josh Roose is an associate professor of politics at Deakin University who researches online men’s groups, including incels. He said it’s hard to estimate how many incels there are – but the movement should be taken more seriously.
“There are hundreds … potentially tens of thousands of men in Australia, who feel so marginalised and alienated from wider society that they need to gather in these communities to find some sort of solace and connection with others,” Roose said.
He said incels are united by the core belief that women favour dominant, physically attractive men, that a small percentage of men get all the women – and that they’re missing out.
“[They] frame women as effectively primal creatures who only look for material resources and sexual attractiveness in a partner … there is a level of not only disrespect towards women, but you could argue a level of prejudice and misogyny against women,” Roose said.
“There's a sense of victimhood and a sense of marginalisation, and so that drives the need to reach out to others.”
Rob said he’s felt let down by women in the past. At university, he said he lent his notes to the women in his classes, hoping it would lead to something more, but he was left disappointed.
Rob has now given up on the idea of ever finding a partner and starting a family.
“If you’re not a f-cking male model, you’re basically just disposable goods for women … if you're in a relationship, it's never permanent,” he said.
“It’s me versus everyone else in the world.”
How dangerous is the incel movement?
Incels have been linked to real-life violence. Roose said around 60 terror attacks in North America can be traced to incels, alongside others in the UK and Canada.
The most well-known example is Elliot Rodger, who killed six people and injured at least 14 others before taking his own life during a 2014 rampage in California. Before his attack, he sent a manifesto blaming women and attractive men for his failure to find a partner.
To date, there have been no known incel terror attacks in Australia.
The country’s national security agency, the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO), has previously flagged incels as a potential concern. In May, ASIO director-general Mike Burgess told Senate Estimates the incel ideology “actually can go to a threat of violence”.
These are extreme cases - Roose stressed the vast majority of incels are peaceful. However, he said online misogyny can have serious real-world impacts.
“We have to look at the capacity for these ideologies … to become mainstream, to be embedded in popular political discourse,” Roose said.
“We live in a society in which sexual violence against women, family violence against women, is still extremely commonplace … so there's still that broader potential for violence against women, emanating from these groups.”
One in five Australian women has experienced sexual violence since the age of 15, Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) figures show. Meanwhile, 58 women have been killed by violence so far this year, according to femicide researchers at Counting Dead Women Australia, a research group that records and publishes every reported femicide in Australia.
Source: SBS
He showed The Feed a court document showing he was refused bail for breaching an intervention order.
The document states Rob was refused bail because of “history of prior breaches of bail”, “lack of fixed address” and “lack of social ties”. There were also concerns for the victim, who feared Rob would find out where she lived.
Rob says he was later granted bail following a recommendation from his doctor, although this cannot be verified by The Feed. Rob said he’s been diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder.
“My doctor testified that prison wasn't good for mental health and got my bail granted with modified conditions,” he said.
Incels are often hidden away in private online communities that are deliberately hard to find. Credit: Unsplash / Max Duzij
“Students and staff have found your communications harassing, and as a result they have felt unsafe,” the email reads.
Roose said there’s a need to educate those with incel beliefs, who are often tucked away in hidden online communities.
“More work needs to be done to reach young men in these forums with healthy masculinities, with the idea that respect for women is a bare minimum,” he said.
“We need to move to that broader societal role … [that] government can play, what universities and scholars can do to better understand the problem, but also what everyday people can do, to hold conversations about manhood and masculinity that are healthy and constructive and benefit everyone.”
A month after our initial chat, an urgent message from Rob pops up. He’s panicking.
Earlier that day, he says a nondescript black Land Cruiser had blocked his driveway. He says police yelled at him to lie face-down in the dirt.
They’d allegedly brought a sniffer dog - and a warrant to search for illegal firearms (Rob says he's banned from owning any). Rob suspects they were a mixture of state and federal officers.
“I got searched by feds recently, I'm going to leave Australia ASAP,” Rob messages.
When I asked South Australia Police about the alleged raid, they told me they couldn’t find anything in their records. To be fair, I couldn’t give them Rob’s last name, or his exact location – he’s been reluctant to give me more personal information.
Rob says the police left empty-handed, but he thinks this won’t be the last time he’ll be in be in trouble with the law.
“My future is in prison.”
The Feed investigates the hidden world of Australia’s incels. .
- Additional reporting by Michelle Elias
Readers seeking crisis support can contact Lifeline on 13 11 14, the Suicide Call Back Service on 1300 659 467 and Kids Helpline on 1800 55 1800 (for young people aged up to 25). More information and support with mental health is available at and on 1300 22 4636.
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MensLine Australia offers free professional 24/7 telephone counselling support for men on 1300 78 99 78.
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