Last month Owen Lawrence<\/a> went to Otley Road in Leeds with arms full of weapons and, according to his Facebook (FB) profile, the explicit intention of engaging in a \u201ckilling spree\u201d. Having lived in Leeds for the best part of two decades it was big news amongst my social circles, so I checked out his multiple FB accounts to find out who he was. A lot of his posts fitted a certain stereotype, complaints that he\u2019s struggling to meet women, a photo of him doing a Nazi salute, many many posts about mass shooters, and so on.<\/p>\n However his profiles also had over 1,800 FB friends, almost all of whom appeared to be young, conventionally attractive women. This might seem unusual for a guy who was struggling socially and romantically but it\u2019s the kind of friends lists I\u2019ve seen quite a lot recently, belonging to men who can\u2019t seem to meet anyone in person.<\/p>\n There are a lot of social, economic, and political factors contributing to the rise of misogyny, many of which have been covered by other people, but one thing that seems to be likely to be contributing to incel culture specifically is the sheer number of scammers targeting heterosexual men. These scammers are at least as likely to be men<\/a> as women, and as with scams in other fields<\/a> their patterns indicate they\u2019re likely to be working as part of bigger operations, rather than alone. While the views expressed by a lot of these men might not endear them to many of us, it is concerning that many men are coming to conclusions about what women are like based on interactions with teams of professional fraudsters.<\/p>\n The internet in general has been feeling very Bladerunner, with endless bots and fake profiles<\/a> with AI generated profile pictures or photos stolen from OF models. Some of the fake accounts are more obvious than others, some seem to have a chatbot behind them, with comments ranging from slightly off to completely nonsensical. Many of them seem to have humans or teams of humans behind them, but certainly not the individuals they\u2019re claiming to be. Dating apps<\/a>, dating websites, and dating groups are particularly bad for this.<\/p>\n If you have any experience of online dating or talk to people who have, you\u2019ll know it\u2019s getting pretty rough out there for everyone for various reasons. If you talk to heterosexual men, or see what they\u2019re saying<\/a> about the apps, the Facebook dating groups, the various websites for meeting people, you\u2019ll find a lot of them declare it\u2019s a total waste of time<\/a>.<\/p>\n Some of these men claim that the dating platforms are full of bots and scam profiles. Some of them say the dating platforms are full of gold diggers. It\u2019s took me a while to put two and two together, but I think they\u2019re talking to the same people.<\/strong><\/p>\n My first clue that some men might be getting angry at non-existent women was a few years ago when an old classmate of mine got into Jordan Peterson. It was your typical situation, he would bombard me with videos, ask me what I thought, wouldn\u2019t read my response, and would send me more videos. One of the last videos he sent me was a comedian complaining about the \u201cepidemic of money grabbing whores\u201d. It seemed strange to me that my friend was even complaining about this. He\u2019d not been in a relationship in years, he wasn\u2019t dating, he was just getting drunk online and getting himself wound up. <\/p>\n At the time I suspected that either he\u2019d purposefully hired some women and was upset that they were only interested in getting paid, or he was just sat at home imagining reasons to get resentful, inspired entirely by claims from other men. Having seen the similarities between his statements and those from men who\u2019ve been talking to scammers, it seems just as likely that this happened to him too.<\/p>\n That didn\u2019t really dawn on me until a little later, when FB recommended me an absolute train wreck of a dating group. Post after post from fake profiles who\u2019d stolen their photos from the Instagram pages of OF models, each one with hundreds of comments from men saying \u201cstunning\u201d, \u201cGORGEOUS [loveheart eyes emoji]\u201d, \u201chi\u201d, etc, to which the fake profiles replied with the exact same responses \u201cSend me a friend request so we can chat\u201d and so on. This can\u2019t be improving these men\u2019s conversational skills. Stats stating 10% of profiles on dating sites are fake<\/a> are pretty believable, but clearly some places have turned into havens for them.<\/p>\n I\u2019d often see the \u201cwomen\u2019s\u201d profiles use bad ai generated profile pictures which have the advantage for the scammers, that they\u2019re not wasting as much time on guys who are less naive, (making scams obvious is a tactic<\/a> used by some scammers to focus their efforts on easier targets), plus their profiles won\u2019t get reported by the model who\u2019s photos they stole. The stolen photos are the source of much frustration to the women who they belong to<\/a>. These scammers are not just giving a particular impression of women, they\u2019re fleecing men while posing as the specific women who\u2019s photos they\u2019ve stolen. So at least the AI photos are a welcome development away from that.<\/p>\n The men in this group also wrote posts, not very alluring ones. Just a photo of the underside of their chin with no info about themselves, but with lots of comments seemingly from supermodels saying they wanted to date them and to get in touch. The posts from men that specified \u201cno scammers!!\u201d got even more responses from scammers, because it\u2019s clear that they\u2019d not only been successfully targeted before, but are naive enough to think that simply announcing that they don\u2019t want to be targeted will ensure that they aren\u2019t. <\/p>\n The group would also regularly have men complaining about how women are all after their money, how none of them will meet up without being sent a gift card code (or whatever the preferred scammer payment method was at the time) with some excuse about travel\/babysitting\/etc, and then when they get the money they ghost. They\u2019d often conclude that women think that just because they\u2019re super hot and look like models that they think they\u2019re owed men\u2019s cash.<\/p>\n I realised this group wasn\u2019t the most egregious example of a scammer hangout. The admin was at least a real person doing a bad job. There were occasional posts from genuine women, and people from the group occasionally did meet up. But a superficial search found more groups, each in a worse state, and \u201cdating pages\u201d clearly set up by the scammers themselves. <\/p>\n For example Single <\/a>women <\/a>in UK<\/a> (sic) where pictures of nameless women are posted by the page (no profiles are linked, it\u2019s just a photo). Men comment trying to somehow get the attention of the nameless profileless woman in the photo, and then scam profiles reply. I find it hard to believe anyone would fall for this, but the men continue to comment and the page wouldn\u2019t exist if they weren\u2019t successfully fleeced at least every now and then. Reading through this stuff is exasperating, and feels sad and weird.<\/p>\n Some of the guys are such easy marks that almost all the comments on their personal FB profiles are from fake profiles. As is often the case with victims of scamming<\/a>, a lot of the guys who are consistently successfully targeted seem to have other stuff going on (lack of support, failed relationships, drug abuse problems, etc). The scammers swarm their profiles like flies on shit, and the men continue to engage in the hope that they\u2019re talking to real people. These men\u2019s FB friends lists looked a lot like Owen Lawrence\u2019s.<\/p>\n Understanding the rising popularity of misogyny in general requires looking at the broader economic and political landscape. One of the trends causing a rift<\/a><\/strong> between men and women is the usual fighting over scraps, the classic pitting of one group against another that works to detract from the ruling class robbing us all. The amount of time people need to spend at work to survive has been going up, and in the vast majority of couples both people need to work full time. <\/p>\n Women are working longer hours before they start on the second shift. Still many men feel like being exhausted means that surely they shouldn\u2019t have to do any housework. Though that\u2019s wildly unreasonable on the face of it, sexist ideologies are going to look a lot more attractive when you\u2019re increasingly desperately looking for excuses not to clean up after yourself.<\/p>\n If you add up all the hours of paid and unpaid work, job, childcare, housework, etc, then men are doing less than women<\/a>, and single mothers have more free time than married ones<\/a>. In light of this the constant talk of \u201cgold diggers\u201d broadcast by the manosphere can look utterly delusional. This myth of the gold digging woman persists even in spite of the fact that women\u2019s wages have overtaken men\u2019s<\/a> and its persistence provides a cover for these scammers. <\/p>\n If men continue to believe that this is how women typically behave, they won\u2019t be able to identify scammers as scammers and this will reinforce their perception that women behave like this, creating a misogynistic feedback loop. In spite of the reality of the situation, a lot of men are becoming increasingly resentful, fuelled by Tate, incel forums, etc, convincing them that women are soulless harpies trying to bleed them dry and take them for all they\u2019re worth. Unfortunately this description of women very accurately describes scammers, which can\u2019t be helping the situation.<\/p>\n Most men falling victim to this either don\u2019t realise they\u2019ve given money to scammers, or don\u2019t want to admit that they have<\/a>, but it\u2019s the former that we need to be worried about. It\u2019s hard to know how much fuel they\u2019re adding to an already raging fire of misogynist sentiment online, but if we\u2019re going to spend a full two weeks discussing the possibility that teen girls leaving mean emojis on social media accounts might be driving teen boys into a murderous rage (consider yourself lucky if the weird both-sidesing victim blaming conversations around Adolescence passed you by), then we could at least acknowledge that the social media dating scam industry might be priming grown men to accept the arguments presented to them by misogynistic grifters.<\/p>\n As is generally the case, Owen Lawrence\u2019s social media accounts were taken down within a few hours of the incident. The counter terrorism police are still investigating motives, though since he died in hospital of his self-sustained injuries, finding a motive is no longer a priority for them.<\/p>\n Given the choice between \u201cincel shooter\u201d and \u201cfar right shooter\u201d, the press has mostly<\/a> opted for the first, as if these are two distinct groups, with only an occasional<\/a> focus on his racism and nationalism. In fact the rise of misogynistic views and the rise of fascist ideology<\/a>, particularly amongst men, are mutually reinforcing, and the despairing resentful worldviews promoted amongst incel culture have been a gift for the far right. Fascism capitalises on men\u2019s alienation and frustration, and if the vast majority of your friends are scammers then that\u2019s likely to be a very frustrating and alienating experience.<\/p>\n Terror attacks are only the most headline grabbing form of a far wider societal problem. Even just looking at the numbers of men killing women, for an individual woman the chances of being killed in an \u201cincel terror attack\u201d are low compared to the two women killed a week by men in the UK<\/a><\/strong>. Extreme public violence is the tip of an iceberg, the most visible manifestation of a larger hidden threat. Men are still the leading cause of premature death amongst women worldwide. Misogyny is already killing women<\/a><\/strong>, mostly behind closed doors.<\/p>\n Owen Lawrence posted fairly openly about the fact that he had mental health problems, his struggles with addiction, his hatred of his Narcotics Anonymous meetings, and how incredibly angry he felt. Both scammers and fascists are well known to prey on vulnerable people with mental health problems. Misogynistic views make men more susceptible to scammers as they\u2019re less likely to identify them as such, and the scammers in turn reinforce these misogynistic views. The \u201cangry at life\u201d to \u201cloving Hitler and hating women\u201d pipeline is already well travelled, and the scammers are helping shuffle people along it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fascism and hate for women are being pushed by a growing industry of organised fraudsters ~ Anon ~…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":122092,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8814],"tags":[748,393,13862,4884,1860,43324,32314,182,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-122091","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-leeds","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-england","10":"tag-fascism","11":"tag-great-britain","12":"tag-leeds","13":"tag-misogyny","14":"tag-sexism","15":"tag-social-media","16":"tag-uk","17":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114550635619808074","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122091","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=122091"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122091\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/122092"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=122091"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=122091"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=122091"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/1747903889_141_image0.jpeg\")
Your classic shooter profile. Almost a clich\u00e9.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/1747903890_78_image1.jpeg\")
A small part of Owen Lawrence\u2019s very long friends list, and some posts outlining his motives for his attack in his own words. He specified a hatred of \u201cfemale psychopaths, female sociopaths, female narcissists\u201d.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/image2.jpeg\")
A post in a dating group using an ai photo (check out the hat that turns into hair). The comments were predictably enthusiastic.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/1747903891_480_image3.jpeg\")
An example of a page set up entirely to trick men. Photos posted without profiles, the comment sections entirely dedicated to scamming.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/1747903891_752_image4.jpeg\")
Conversations in a dating group that acknowledged the issue<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/1747903892_640_image5.jpeg\")
Public posts from the personal pages of men who\u2019ve been targeted.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/image6.jpeg\")
More from Owen Lawrence\u2019s profiles. MGTOW stands for Men Going Their Own Way<\/a>, an incel adjacent offshoot if the manosphere that promotes<\/a> no longer interacting with women<\/p>\n