Cole Carini suffered serious injuries in the explosion. Photo / Supplied
Cole Carini suffered serious injuries in the explosion. Photo / Supplied
A US man who identified as an "incel" has suffered severe injuries after an improvised explosive went off at his home before he could carry out a plan to target "hot cheerleaders".
Cole Carini, 23, from Virginia, was charged after an FBI investigation.
He presented to a medical centre near his home in Richlands with one hand missing, several fingers amputated and shrapnel wounds to his face.
Carini tried to spin a yarn about the cause of injuries, initially telling authorities it was a lawnmower incident.
"When asked if he remembered what happened to put him in hospital," authorities wrote in a sworn statement, "Carini told the Agents that he was mowing his yard and the mower flipped over in such a way that it [dragged] his hands into the blades and because the blades were spinning so fast it acted like a bomb."
The truth was exposed when the FBI searched his home and found a trail of blood leading to his bedroom, where the walls and ceiling were splattered with human flesh.
A note was found on the property that discussed a suicide bombing on a local shopping mall where "hot cheerleaders" would be targeted.
"I will not be afraid of the consequences," read the letter. "No matter what I will be heroic. I will make a statement like Elliot Rodgers [sic] did."
Elliot Rodger was a 22-year-old community college student, who killed six people and wounded more than a dozen others in shooting and stabbing attacks near the University of California, Santa Barbara before killing himself in 2014.
Incel is an abbreviation for "involuntary celibate" and the identity dates to the 1990s, coined by a Canadian woman aiming to launch a supportive exchange about sexual solitude.
But over time, "incel" has become a buzzword for certain men infuriated at being rejected by women and prone to float ideas for violent payback, according to sociologists and others who follow incel circles.
Incel forums and sites are "one of the most violent areas of the internet", Heidi Beirich from the Southern Poverty Law Centre told AP in 2018.
"It may seem to some people that this is kind of a group of pathetic, victimised white males who just are lonely. It's not. It's ugly."
Forums are laced with suggestions that at least some of the discussions are merely satire or a way of blowing off steam.
But Reddit shut down one popular incel forum last year, after announcing a ban on content that calls for violence or physical harm.
Elliot Rodger became a twisted hero to the incel community online. Photo / Supplied
Elliot Rodger's 2014 attack became a focal point for incels, who often describe him "the Supreme Gentleman" after a phrase he used in a video posted online before the attack.
He had railed in a manifesto and online videos about women who shunned him and called for an incel "overthrow" of what he saw as feminist domination.
Rodger wasn't the first killer with a misogynistic mindset. A man who killed three women and wounded nine others in a Pennsylvania dance-aerobics class in 2009 left a vitriolic diary about his lack of a love life. In 1989, a 25-year-old man who blamed feminists for ruining his life killed 14 women at a Montreal engineering college in Canada's deadliest mass shooting.
