Over the past several days, there has been some degree of consternation over on r/IncelTears. A Reddit post titled "incels have a thread for watching women suffer irl" features four Bunker threads.
View: https://www.reddit.com/r/IncelTears/comments/1rzuc7y/incels_have_a_thread_for_watching_women_suffer_irl/
Incels.is has a standing policy to remove material that is unlawful under U.S. law. The Incels.is moderation team has reviewed all four threads (the "Bunker Threads") and determined that they contain no material that is unlawful under U.S. law. Therefore, Incels.is will not remove any of their contents.
This is unlikely to satisfy the many Redditors who find themselves very triggered by our content. Some comments are reproduced verbatim:
For educational purposes, I will thoroughly explain why these Redditors are misinformed, and why the distribution and receipt of videos of mass shootings, as well as videos depicting the injury, abuse or murder of women, are protected by the First Amendment.
The starting point
As a general matter, "the First Amendment means that government has no power to restrict expression because of its message, its ideas, its subject matter, or its content." Ashcroft v. American Civil Liberties Union, 535 U. S. 564, 573 (2002).
Needless to say, free speech is not absolute. The First Amendment has “permitted restrictions upon the content of speech in a few limited areas,” and has never “include[d] a freedom to disregard these traditional limitations.” Id., at 382–383. There exist “well-defined and narrowly limited classes of speech, the prevention and punishment of which have never been thought to raise any Constitutional problem.” Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire, 315 U. S. 568, 571–572 (1942). These categorical exceptions to the First Amendment include, among other things, obscenity, incitement, fraud, defamation, and child pornography—but they do not include depictions of violence per se.
Furthermore, whether a certain category of speech receives the protection of the First Amendment does not depend on whether it "survives an ad hoc balancing of relative social costs and benefits." United States v. Stevens, 559 U.S. 460, 470 (2010). In other words, the government may not add new exceptions (such as "depictions of violence [against women]") to the list of existing exceptions to the First Amendment, merely by "conclud[ing] certain speech is too harmful to be tolerated." Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association, 564 U.S. 786, 791 (2011).
Therefore, in order for the government to constitutionally proscribe videos of mass shootings, as well as videos depicting the injury, abuse or murder of women, the government must establish that such videos fall within an already-established categorical exception to the First Amendment. In our case, this would be an insurmountable burden for the government. I will explain why, with reference to the two closest categories of speech: obscenity and incitement.
The Bunker Threads do not contain "Obscenity"
For material to be considered "obscene" under the First Amendment, the material must depict or describe "sexual conduct" in a "patently offensive" way in accordance with "contemporary adult community standards". Miller v. California, 413 U.S. 15, 24 (1973). The material must also lack "serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value." Id.
The vast majority of the material in the Bunker Threads do not depict sexual conduct at all. To the extent that any sexual conduct is depicted, there is 1) a video of a woman whose buttocks are whipped, 2) a photo of depicting the aftermath of a similar act, and 3) a video of a woman performing fellatio on a man before being briefly throttled by him. Legally, these acts are not "patently offensive"; depictions of similar acts are readily available on virtually every pornographic site. They are well within the range of acts that are now accepted by the contemporary adult community.
The remaining bulk of the material depicts not sex but violence. Some of it is mild, in the case of men and women knocked out during bar fights or robberies. Some of it is severe: women are struck by vehicles, attacked by large animals, and shot by Mexican cartel gunmen. And then there is the footage from the Christchurch mosque shootings. Thus the key question is: Can the First Amendment's definition of "obscenity" be widened to encompass gore or violence more generally?
The courts, for the past several decades, have repeatedly answered: "No." In Winters v. New York, 333 U.S. 507 (1948), New York lawmakers passed a statute "forbid[ding] the massing of stories of bloodshed and lust in such a way as to incite to crime against the person.” A New York state court upheld the statute as a law against obscenity. The U.S. Supreme Court reversed: It held that violence and obscenity are distinct categories, and the law was unconstitutional. Id. at 518-520.
More recently, in Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association, 564 U.S. 786 (2011), the U.S. Supreme Court (at 792) similarly noted that the Government could not regulate speech depicting violence by broadening the legal definition of "obscenity":
In that case, the Court invalidated a California law that forbid the sale of violent video games to minors. This was even though the Court was aware certain small publishers developed extremely nasty games. As Justice Alito (concurring) writes (at 818-820):
Justice Scalia, writing for the majority (at 798), responds as follows:
I encourage any one of you with a genuine interest in American constitutional law to read the Brown decision in full. It will leave you with no doubt that "speech about violence is not obscene." Id. at 793. Brown also responds to the Redditor's claim that "it is illegal to allow access to any gore content to under 18s on the internet in most countries," because evidently, "most countries" is not inclusive of the United States.
Furthermore, the First Amendment protection afforded to many of the videos in the Bunker Threads is even stronger than that of the gory video games in Brown. While video games depict fictional events, the videos depict real-life assaults, robberies, organized crime, and mass murder. These videos highlight policy failures and furthers public interest in the study of crime and policing, and is therefore speech on a public issue. Such speech "occupies the highest rung of the hierarchy of First Amendment values, and is entitled to special protection.” Connick v. Myers, 461 U.S. 138, 145 (1983).
The Bunker Threads do not contain "Incitement"
"Incitement" refers to the unprotected category of speech that is "directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action". Brandenburg v. Ohio, 395 U.S. 444, 448. That is, for the Government to punish speech on the basis that it is "incitement," the Government must establish three elements:
Regardless of the intentions of the user, because of the "imminence" requirement in the Brandenburg test, the U.S. Supreme Court has held that the First Amendment protects the general advocacy of violence at some unspecified future time. See Hess v. Indiana, 414 U.S. 105 (1973). Furthermore, it is unlikely that a person would immediately rush to plan to assault, rob, or shoot a woman, or shoot up a mosque, right after watching a video of a similar crime unfolding.
The Redditor states his belief that the Bunker Threads are "very much illegal i think because the sharing of such videos are intended to spread hate regarding a specific group of people (may demonstrate intent to commit harm)", which of course misses the mark. The First Amendment very clearly protects "spreading hate". In Matal v. Tam, 582 U.S. 218, 246 (2017), the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously declared that "Speech that demeans on the basis of race, ethnicity, gender, religion, age, disability, or any other similar ground is hateful; but the proudest boast of our free speech jurisprudence is that we protect the freedom to express the thought that we hate." And as discussed, the idea that a speaker or listener "may demonstrate intent to commit harm" is sufficient to label a particular instance of speech as "incitement," simply falls short of the Brandenburg test.
Perhaps Redditors have confused the legal definition of "incitement" with its colloquial one, and in this sense they believe that depictions of violence might inspire a crime. But it is not unlawful to inspire another to commit a crime; it is only unlawful to incite. Nor does the law permit one to be punished based on a mere prediction that their speech will inspire one to commit a crime in the unspecified future.
Conclusion
Finally, I want to briefly address the Redditor's claim that Incels.is is violating the law because "hypothetically speaking a 12 year old can access these videos with no barriers". This implies that Incels.is has an existing duty under U.S. law to implement some sort of ID verification, at least for the Bunker Threads. Certainly, in the Child Online Protection Act (COPA) 1998, Congress attempted to criminalize "mak[ing] any communication for commercial purposes that is available to any minor and that includes any material that is harmful to minors". See 47 U.S.C. § 231. But the U.S. Supreme Court upheld an injunction against COPA in Ashcroft v. American Civil Liberties Union, 542 U.S. 656 (2004), and COPA never took effect. Even if it did, we do not exist "for commercial purposes," so COPA would not apply to us.
Many may find the moral values of the participants in the Bunker Threads to be hateful and repulsive. Certainly, many of the videos are a little gratuitous. But under the First Amendment, “esthetic and moral judgments...are for the individual to make, not for the Government to decree, even with the mandate or approval of a majority.” United States v. Playboy Entertainment Group, 529 U.S. 803, 818 (2000). Some of you may also believe that the U.S. Supreme Court has gotten it wrong. Unfortunately for you, we have to prioritize the Court's opinions over your own.
Because U.S. law is clear that there can be no exception to the First Amendment for "depictions of violence (against women or otherwise)", and the Bunker Threads do not fall within the legal definition of the exceptions that do currently exist, Incels.is has no obligation to "take down" the Bunker Threads.
For those of you interested in online free speech, you may also be interested in reading about the time the New Zealand Government told us to take down a video of the Buffalo mass shooting (they failed), and the Trump administration's in-progress attempt to deport a British activist who previously tried to shut us down.
View: https://www.reddit.com/r/IncelTears/comments/1rzuc7y/incels_have_a_thread_for_watching_women_suffer_irl/
Incels.is has a standing policy to remove material that is unlawful under U.S. law. The Incels.is moderation team has reviewed all four threads (the "Bunker Threads") and determined that they contain no material that is unlawful under U.S. law. Therefore, Incels.is will not remove any of their contents.
This is unlikely to satisfy the many Redditors who find themselves very triggered by our content. Some comments are reproduced verbatim:
For educational purposes, I will thoroughly explain why these Redditors are misinformed, and why the distribution and receipt of videos of mass shootings, as well as videos depicting the injury, abuse or murder of women, are protected by the First Amendment.
The starting point
As a general matter, "the First Amendment means that government has no power to restrict expression because of its message, its ideas, its subject matter, or its content." Ashcroft v. American Civil Liberties Union, 535 U. S. 564, 573 (2002).
Needless to say, free speech is not absolute. The First Amendment has “permitted restrictions upon the content of speech in a few limited areas,” and has never “include[d] a freedom to disregard these traditional limitations.” Id., at 382–383. There exist “well-defined and narrowly limited classes of speech, the prevention and punishment of which have never been thought to raise any Constitutional problem.” Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire, 315 U. S. 568, 571–572 (1942). These categorical exceptions to the First Amendment include, among other things, obscenity, incitement, fraud, defamation, and child pornography—but they do not include depictions of violence per se.
Furthermore, whether a certain category of speech receives the protection of the First Amendment does not depend on whether it "survives an ad hoc balancing of relative social costs and benefits." United States v. Stevens, 559 U.S. 460, 470 (2010). In other words, the government may not add new exceptions (such as "depictions of violence [against women]") to the list of existing exceptions to the First Amendment, merely by "conclud[ing] certain speech is too harmful to be tolerated." Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association, 564 U.S. 786, 791 (2011).
Therefore, in order for the government to constitutionally proscribe videos of mass shootings, as well as videos depicting the injury, abuse or murder of women, the government must establish that such videos fall within an already-established categorical exception to the First Amendment. In our case, this would be an insurmountable burden for the government. I will explain why, with reference to the two closest categories of speech: obscenity and incitement.
The Bunker Threads do not contain "Obscenity"
For material to be considered "obscene" under the First Amendment, the material must depict or describe "sexual conduct" in a "patently offensive" way in accordance with "contemporary adult community standards". Miller v. California, 413 U.S. 15, 24 (1973). The material must also lack "serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value." Id.
The vast majority of the material in the Bunker Threads do not depict sexual conduct at all. To the extent that any sexual conduct is depicted, there is 1) a video of a woman whose buttocks are whipped, 2) a photo of depicting the aftermath of a similar act, and 3) a video of a woman performing fellatio on a man before being briefly throttled by him. Legally, these acts are not "patently offensive"; depictions of similar acts are readily available on virtually every pornographic site. They are well within the range of acts that are now accepted by the contemporary adult community.
The remaining bulk of the material depicts not sex but violence. Some of it is mild, in the case of men and women knocked out during bar fights or robberies. Some of it is severe: women are struck by vehicles, attacked by large animals, and shot by Mexican cartel gunmen. And then there is the footage from the Christchurch mosque shootings. Thus the key question is: Can the First Amendment's definition of "obscenity" be widened to encompass gore or violence more generally?
The courts, for the past several decades, have repeatedly answered: "No." In Winters v. New York, 333 U.S. 507 (1948), New York lawmakers passed a statute "forbid[ding] the massing of stories of bloodshed and lust in such a way as to incite to crime against the person.” A New York state court upheld the statute as a law against obscenity. The U.S. Supreme Court reversed: It held that violence and obscenity are distinct categories, and the law was unconstitutional. Id. at 518-520.
More recently, in Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association, 564 U.S. 786 (2011), the U.S. Supreme Court (at 792) similarly noted that the Government could not regulate speech depicting violence by broadening the legal definition of "obscenity":
In that case, the Court invalidated a California law that forbid the sale of violent video games to minors. This was even though the Court was aware certain small publishers developed extremely nasty games. As Justice Alito (concurring) writes (at 818-820):
Justice Scalia, writing for the majority (at 798), responds as follows:
I encourage any one of you with a genuine interest in American constitutional law to read the Brown decision in full. It will leave you with no doubt that "speech about violence is not obscene." Id. at 793. Brown also responds to the Redditor's claim that "it is illegal to allow access to any gore content to under 18s on the internet in most countries," because evidently, "most countries" is not inclusive of the United States.
Furthermore, the First Amendment protection afforded to many of the videos in the Bunker Threads is even stronger than that of the gory video games in Brown. While video games depict fictional events, the videos depict real-life assaults, robberies, organized crime, and mass murder. These videos highlight policy failures and furthers public interest in the study of crime and policing, and is therefore speech on a public issue. Such speech "occupies the highest rung of the hierarchy of First Amendment values, and is entitled to special protection.” Connick v. Myers, 461 U.S. 138, 145 (1983).
The Bunker Threads do not contain "Incitement"
"Incitement" refers to the unprotected category of speech that is "directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action". Brandenburg v. Ohio, 395 U.S. 444, 448. That is, for the Government to punish speech on the basis that it is "incitement," the Government must establish three elements:
- The speech was intended to;
- and likely to;
- incite imminent lawless action.
Regardless of the intentions of the user, because of the "imminence" requirement in the Brandenburg test, the U.S. Supreme Court has held that the First Amendment protects the general advocacy of violence at some unspecified future time. See Hess v. Indiana, 414 U.S. 105 (1973). Furthermore, it is unlikely that a person would immediately rush to plan to assault, rob, or shoot a woman, or shoot up a mosque, right after watching a video of a similar crime unfolding.
The Redditor states his belief that the Bunker Threads are "very much illegal i think because the sharing of such videos are intended to spread hate regarding a specific group of people (may demonstrate intent to commit harm)", which of course misses the mark. The First Amendment very clearly protects "spreading hate". In Matal v. Tam, 582 U.S. 218, 246 (2017), the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously declared that "Speech that demeans on the basis of race, ethnicity, gender, religion, age, disability, or any other similar ground is hateful; but the proudest boast of our free speech jurisprudence is that we protect the freedom to express the thought that we hate." And as discussed, the idea that a speaker or listener "may demonstrate intent to commit harm" is sufficient to label a particular instance of speech as "incitement," simply falls short of the Brandenburg test.
Perhaps Redditors have confused the legal definition of "incitement" with its colloquial one, and in this sense they believe that depictions of violence might inspire a crime. But it is not unlawful to inspire another to commit a crime; it is only unlawful to incite. Nor does the law permit one to be punished based on a mere prediction that their speech will inspire one to commit a crime in the unspecified future.
Conclusion
Finally, I want to briefly address the Redditor's claim that Incels.is is violating the law because "hypothetically speaking a 12 year old can access these videos with no barriers". This implies that Incels.is has an existing duty under U.S. law to implement some sort of ID verification, at least for the Bunker Threads. Certainly, in the Child Online Protection Act (COPA) 1998, Congress attempted to criminalize "mak[ing] any communication for commercial purposes that is available to any minor and that includes any material that is harmful to minors". See 47 U.S.C. § 231. But the U.S. Supreme Court upheld an injunction against COPA in Ashcroft v. American Civil Liberties Union, 542 U.S. 656 (2004), and COPA never took effect. Even if it did, we do not exist "for commercial purposes," so COPA would not apply to us.
Many may find the moral values of the participants in the Bunker Threads to be hateful and repulsive. Certainly, many of the videos are a little gratuitous. But under the First Amendment, “esthetic and moral judgments...are for the individual to make, not for the Government to decree, even with the mandate or approval of a majority.” United States v. Playboy Entertainment Group, 529 U.S. 803, 818 (2000). Some of you may also believe that the U.S. Supreme Court has gotten it wrong. Unfortunately for you, we have to prioritize the Court's opinions over your own.
Because U.S. law is clear that there can be no exception to the First Amendment for "depictions of violence (against women or otherwise)", and the Bunker Threads do not fall within the legal definition of the exceptions that do currently exist, Incels.is has no obligation to "take down" the Bunker Threads.
For those of you interested in online free speech, you may also be interested in reading about the time the New Zealand Government told us to take down a video of the Buffalo mass shooting (they failed), and the Trump administration's in-progress attempt to deport a British activist who previously tried to shut us down.
I will tag users who responded to relevant threads, such that they receive the full context of the posts highlighted by Reddit.
@Last2025cel @Utnapishtim @DarkSneezer @cathuluelitist @DoomThreeShotgunner @RealSchizo @Bats @Paladin @Chirag gupta @AIR BNB BASTARD @VanGobbel @t3mcel @rcnfive @Deep.Nest @Iwillmurderyou @Mutilator @CocaColaCel @fokusin @ImperialArk @Dean_Benoit_93 @The Judge @soft @no love found @Needle @Poopless One @currycell900 @FuckYou @Caichan @InvoluntaryChigga @Solid State @BasedGoyslopReviews @undertaker77 @Sir Silentium @Wolnir @Paladin @Ibrahim997 @nazianime @edwardnashton @EcstasyCel
@Defetivecuckachu because he likes these posts.
@Last2025cel @Utnapishtim @DarkSneezer @cathuluelitist @DoomThreeShotgunner @RealSchizo @Bats @Paladin @Chirag gupta @AIR BNB BASTARD @VanGobbel @t3mcel @rcnfive @Deep.Nest @Iwillmurderyou @Mutilator @CocaColaCel @fokusin @ImperialArk @Dean_Benoit_93 @The Judge @soft @no love found @Needle @Poopless One @currycell900 @FuckYou @Caichan @InvoluntaryChigga @Solid State @BasedGoyslopReviews @undertaker77 @Sir Silentium @Wolnir @Paladin @Ibrahim997 @nazianime @edwardnashton @EcstasyCel
@Defetivecuckachu because he likes these posts.
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