
·S1 E1
Begin at the Ending
Episode Transcript
From the dark corners of the web, an emerging mindset I.
Speaker 2Am a loser if also we know wouldn't pay me either.
Speaker 3A hidden world of resentment, cynicism, anger against women at a deadly tipping point.
Speaker 4In Cells will be added to the Terrorism Guide Pelissea.
Speaker 5A driver intentionally drove into a crowd, killing ten people.
Speaker 6Tomorrow is the day of retribution, the day in which I will have my revenge.
Speaker 7Is very angry, expressing a lot of hatred towards women and towards men who get all the women.
Speaker 8I just told my husband I know she's dead.
Speaker 1This is in Cells, a production of Kat's Studios and iHeartRadio, Season one, Episode one.
Begin at the ending.
I'm Courtney Armstrong, a producer at KATI Studios, with Stephanie Leideker, Gabriel Castillo, Connor Powell, and Carolyn Miller.
We've had the topic of in cells, which stands for involuntary celibates, on our radar for many years.
There was an international media explosion after Elliott Rogers's mass shooting on May twenty third, twenty fourteen, in Ilavista, California.
Speaker 9Twenty two year old Elliott Rogers stabbed his three roommates to death before embarking on a violent rampage which left three more people dead and fourteen injured.
Roger eventually crashed his car and committed suicide.
Speaker 1In the ensuing decade, the largely online in cell community has become wider spread and more insidious.
A global pandemic and increased isolation fueled this vitriaulic fire, and we've been seeing an uptick in violence, including in the most recent case.
Katie's Studios has covered the Idaho student massacre, where in cell ideology potentially played a.
Speaker 10Part, sources saying that Coburger made chauvinistic and condescending remarks towards women at Washington State.
Apparently, Coburger said that men would take women's jobs because they weren't as smart at one point.
Speaker 11We've gotten to this point with Brian Coburger because we're still looking for a motive, and because these were attractive young women, one with their boyfriend.
So I think it's not a foreign leap for a lot of people to question if Brian Coburger is an inseel.
Speaker 1Here's Stephanie and crime analyst Body Moven.
Speaker 4In cell stands for involuntarily celibate and the involuntarily is you know important here.
They basically blame women for being celibate, that they're still virgins, that they haven't been given the right amount of attention from women for whatever reason they're social standing, maybe the way they look, the way they talk, the way they walk, any any number of reasons women are blamed for them being celibate.
You know, some are just very lonely and you know, have a community online and where they can commiserate with other in cells and you know, maybe feel better about themselves that they're not alone in this world.
Speaker 2We've been following in cells for many, many years, but it really exploded on the scene when Netflix had their documentary series Adolescence at its core that was about in cell ideology.
We heard a tinge of it.
When Brian Coberger was first arrested for the Idaho student murders, he too shared in similar ideology.
He was never officially called an in cell but it really opened up the conversation.
But suddenly it's here and we're seeing it in real time.
It's a very sad situation, right.
You don't want your kid to be sad to be you know this mentally entrenched in this subculture that basically says, you know that they're they're not good enough, So you do want to recognize it.
Not only so they don't come, you know, violent against women, but you don't want, you don't your kid to end up this way.
So it's important that we get into the stuff so that even mothers can start recognizing these things.
Even as we're making this podcast now, Charlie Kirk was just assassinated.
He's a conservative analyst and his murderer allegedly was radicalized online.
Speaker 12But why behind this?
Again, we're all drawing lots of conclusions and how someone like this could be radicalized, And I think that those those are important questions for us to ask and important questions for us to answer.
Speaker 2That is why we're covering it now, because it's happening here.
It's the kid in the basement at the house next door who comes from a really nice family, went to college, has been alone for way too long, and is suddenly sucked down the wrong path.
Boddy, this is something very close to your heart, all of ours.
Frankly, it's such a complicated subculture now.
These modern in cell groups often gather on like forums, like reddits, four chan and like they're having these discussions on the open Internet.
Yeah, so a lot of the conversations in these forums are filled with like rage and anger, especially towards women that they see attractive, socially successful.
Speaker 4You know that even men.
The men are referred to as chads and the women are referred to as staceys.
And these are the men and women that are successful in life.
They're dating, they're having sexual intercourse with people they consider themselves like the nice guy.
When you think of an inseel, think of somebody that thinks of themselves as nice and like but almost entitled to women.
Speaker 1The chads are the men who are whatever percentage the in cels perceive of men who get all of the women.
And it's kind of this interesting dynamic.
It's both hate and an envy.
Speaker 2Right, that's the scary part that the jealous her age.
Yeah, the perfect intersection.
Speaker 4Not all in cells are violent.
Some are just lonely people and it is sad for them.
You know, they feel ostracized from, you know, the rest of the world.
They're lonely, they're celibate, they have no companionship, and the only friends they have are those online that they've formed in these communities.
The problem is that those communities are fostering that feeling and it's pumping them up and make them even more, you know, the rahticas, making them more violent.
Speaker 2It's a pretty violent ideology though to some of it his sense and guess what, on that little like forum, potentially there are some scary people who are kind of feeding off that as well, and air quotes grooming these young men to radicalize as well.
It's undeniably a pretty radical group.
Speaker 4But it's important to know that not every inseel is going to turn out to be violent.
Speaker 8All right.
Speaker 4There are some interesting studies coming out about who in cels are, and the average age is the mid twenties, around twenty six years old.
They usually live with their parents or their grandparents.
Twenty five percent do live alone.
Only four percent of them are are employed full time.
Speaker 2Seventy five percent living with mom and dad or grandparents.
And by the way, post COVID, everybody was like locked in their basements.
If you were already experiencing some level of loneliness or you were feeling disenfranchised, Now add you know a year and a half, two years of isolation to the equation, there's an uptick and I think it's obvious.
Speaker 4Why Yeah, when when COVID happened, it was like kind of like the pressure cooker.
It really kind of like expanded this movement.
Fifty eight percent of them are white, forty two percent of people of color.
Seventy three percent report moderate to severe depression, and they blame it on women for women not wanting them, you know, they're not socially attractive, or they're awkward in some way, or you know, or there's excuse after excuse after excuse, and so they feel that women are responsible for their depression and their loneliness, and that turns that can turn into rage, which can turn violence.
One more thing too, Forty eight percent scored at the highest level on loneliness scales at arica alert dot org, which is interesting.
Speaker 2I think the Brian Coburger case, I think it's a real look at loneliness and it's really case scenario.
You know, you know that he was an odd guy with very little social interaction in friends.
Not that that just it, obviously, but if we're trying to unpack how to prevent these types of isolated killers on the loose or in the making, it's important stuff that we talk.
Speaker 1About in the course of our reporting and even anecdotally in our lives, we found a shocking amount of people who've never even heard the word in cell.
That's why we took on this project.
We want parents, friends and families to understand what could be happening and what danger signs to look out for.
The intent is not fear mongering.
We're going to look into crimes committed in the name of in cells, share perspectives from different experts about in cell ideology, the seriousness of algorithms in social media, and just who is at risk for being radicalized.
To understand all perspectives, we've infiltrated the in cell community to gather personal experiences with self identifying in cells.
It's a complex issue and all aspects need to be understood to get to the root of the problem before we even begin looking for solutions.
I spoke with investigative journalist Connor Powell about his experiences and online insell forums.
Speaker 7To get a better sense of the in sell community.
I started to all go onto different forums on different social media sites, and I sort of discovered that there were a couple different continuous themes.
One is the one that I think most people associate with the inseell community, which is sort of very angry, expressing a lot of hatred towards women, towards people in power, towards men who they describe as chads who have money and just get all the women.
And then there's another group that I think is a little bit less angry and more depressed, people who are genuinely looking for connection and answers to the feelings that they're having, to the issues that they are facing.
There obviously is some in between, and there are people people who express anger and frustration that you see and also looking for help.
But there really does seem to be this divide in the in cell community between these two groups, and you really see a playout on some of these forums where there is just vitriolic anger at women, at society, at people with what these groups and these people believe sort of all of the advantages of in the world that they they hate them, they want them gone, They joke about death, they joke about rape.
Speaker 6Obviously, I had violent thoughts.
I always held back, you know, in real life thoughts of like women that I did want to you know, Ripe, as a teenager, there was quite a few women that I did want to break their eyes, so they would be ugly and couldn't get a hot boyfriend.
Speaker 7And then there's other Like I said, there's these other in cels who they don't want that conversation.
They want a conversation about why is their life lacking the meaning they think it should have, And a lot of that revolves around inauthentic or a lack of relationships.
They're looking for a way to have some connection, but they're also stuck behind the keyboard, behind computers.
It feels like that's where they lack that sort of connection and they're looking for connection.
Speaker 1I asked Connor if it seemed like the men simply felt more comfortable with the anonymity of being behind a computer screen, or if they didn't like how they were being received in public.
Speaker 7I think it's the way that they feel that they aren't received the way that they think they should be.
There is this perception that I keep seeing in this continual theme, which is that everyone else sort of gets the looks in the room in terms of like the positive looks, whereas I only get the negative looks, or if they even bother to look at me.
There's this perceived notion that there is a group of people sort of what they call the chads, the men who are they get all the advantages, they have all the advantages.
They're muscular, they're full head of hair, and the in cell community has like you can see that there's just a lack of self confidence with a lot of these people, and the confidence I think is missing for a lot of different reasons.
Speaker 1I mentioned learning about some self identifying in cells describing being out in the world as feeling like being inside of a video game versus feeling more alive when they're alone in their homes.
Speaker 7There is this sort of feeling that their real life for them is behind the keyboard on a social media forum, whether it's discord or the in cell community forms, or even read it to some extent.
And then you also do see these themes where there are people who think the real world is sort of the fake world for them because they just they don't feel comfortable in it, they don't know how to interact with people.
You see this regularly on in cell forms, which is that the real world is the inauthentic relationships and the online form world are the more true the authentic relationships, and that these online community forms are where in cells can sort of be themselves without any of the social pressure that they would face out in the real world.
Speaker 1I asked if there seemed to be a clash between the men going onto forums looking for a glimmer of hope for their situations versus others spewing vitriolic hate speech.
Speaker 7You sort of see these comments pieced together, which is like the world is efed up, society's fed up, everything is screwed up.
And then just screw the women rape them.
And then there's these other men.
A lot of them are just teenage boys or young adolescent men, and they're struggling, they're asking for help.
They often don't have direction.
There are some of these in cells who want relationships, and then these other ones who are just like, screw it, it's never going to happen for me.
I don't care.
It's everyone else's fault.
I can't change it.
But ultimately they are all so people who jump in there and on these forms that are just like, it's never going to change for you.
You are what you are.
Don't try to change the world should change for us.
Speaker 1I asked Connor if anything specific stood out or surprised him during his time on the in cell forums.
Speaker 7I think what shocks me is the it's not the level of just sort of awful discussions racist behavior, sexist behavior, you know, just that you can sort of see anywhere on social media.
It's the balancing back and forth between the, Ah, we're just joking, you know, this is just we're just saying this for effect, and then there's other people who are like, no, no, we're really saying this.
And you can see where a young, impressionable male can really get caught up in what is this real?
Should I be embracing this as real?
Or is this just people having fun?
And you can see this playing out in real time where there is this continual debate between you know, we're just being stupid, and the other flip side of that is, oh no, no, we're deadly serious.
And these guys who can a violence, there are heroes.
Speaker 1Let's stop here for a break.
We'll be back in a moment.
On May twenty fourteen, self described in cel Elliott Roger went on a killing spree at the University of Santa Barbara in Ila Vista, California.
He injured fourteen innocent people and killed six more.
Chang Hong, George Chen Weihan Wang, Catherine Cooper, Veronica Weiss, and Chris Michaels Martinez.
The ripple effects of this violin is far reaching and for some lifelong.
For this first episode, we decided to begin at the ending and to look into the inevitable fallout after online radicalization leads to senseless violence.
Here's producer Carolyn Miller speaking with Colleen Weiss, the mother of nineteen year old Veronica Weiss.
This is the first time she's speaking out publicly.
Speaker 8I'm Colleen Weiss, and my daughter is Veronica Weiss.
She was killed by Ella Roger in Ila Vesta, May twenty third, twenty fourteen.
Veronica loved to be involved in everything.
She liked to try new things.
Her freshman year, she played four sports and figured out she really wanted to play water polo, so she then proceeded to play water polo every year throughout high school.
She always made anything that we did fun.
I also have two sons that were very close in age to her.
They were just two and three years younger than her, and we would have people tell us that who has the best arm in the Wise family, and they'd say Veronica.
So she was tough too.
Speaker 6She was.
Speaker 8You know, she was a competitor and very fierce about protecting her friends and being a great friend.
Speaker 3And her favorite color was purple.
Speaker 8Oh one hundred percent.
She made that known to us when she was two or three, and she carried that forward.
Everyone knew that that was her favorite color.
She was just independent from a very early age.
I remember when she was five years old, we were living in California, and she absolutely wanted to go visit her grandmother and her aunts in Seattle.
So we put her on a plane by herself and she got up there and I just I remember talking to her on the phone and I asked her, do you miss me?
And she said, oh, well no, because I know I'm going to see you again.
And she was always just in the moment and that was just her And it's just always kind of warmed my heart because I know that she was just enjoying everything that she was doing.
Really loved life, life, friends and family, and very inclusive of any type of person.
There was no boundary or limits to you know, who she would be friend or be kind to.
Speaker 3You've never interviewed about her before, have you?
Speaker 8I have not?
Speaker 3No, Why did you decide to do it?
Speaker 8Now after ten plus long years, I'm finally in kind of that acceptance and able to just really appreciate her life.
So I'm in a much better place.
Speaker 3How about her brothers and her dad?
Are they doing?
Okay?
Speaker 8I think we're we're kind of all coming to that.
It has been i'd say a long I want to really use tortures as the word, but that's that's how it felt at many points.
Speaker 3Okay, So let's go back to that day in May twenty fourteen.
Yes, how did that day play out for you?
How did you find out what happened?
And Veronica was involved in this?
Speaker 8Well, it was Memorial Day weekend and we had a lot of plans that weekend.
What actually happened is the weekend before that, my husband had some ski passes for Mammoth and I had told her about it, and she just jumped at it and said, yes, I'll go with you guys, just with me and my husband, her dad, but going to Memorial Day, and this is what will kind of you know, you don't you can't regret or question this, But most likely she might have come home Memorial Day weekend if she had if we hadn't gone to Mammoth two weekends before.
So it was Friday, Friday night.
We're having a great time holiday weekend, and we had actually gone to bed somewhat early, about ten o'clock and about eleven thirty, I got a call on my cell phone and it was one of Veronica's sorority sisters and she just said, I'm not sure if you know what's going on up here.
There's been some shootings and they just wanted to know have you heard from Veronica?
And I just said no, and I got a little bit more information.
Of course, we turned on the TV started calling some hospitals after I tried to call her multiple times.
And I mean, right at that point, I knew something was wrong.
I just I knew right away that if she could contact us, she would have, and I knew she was right around the campus that night doing the sorority functions.
So at that point, my sons had come home, and I just remember one of my sons saying to me, who would want to kill Veronica?
Like this is don't be like this, just can't.
She's going to be fine.
And so we my husband and I got into the car and drove up to UCSB or we drove to the hospital around UCSB and there we found some of the sorority sisters who were there with one of the girls who had been shot, who was with Veronica, but there was no Veronica there, and at that point we were able to track her.
I found and we could see that her phone was sitting at one of the locations that they had indicated on the news that there had, you know, been a shooting.
So we drove over to where as close as we could to where the phone was and found a police officer over there said what my daughter's name was?
And I could just tell he just looked at the name and just said, okay, well, you know there's we need.
You can sit in your car and we'll come get you, you know when we can.
So it's just I I just told my husband, I know she's she's dead.
Speaker 1Let's stop here for another break.
Speaker 8We'll be back in a moment.
Speaker 1We're continuing the conversation between producer Carolyn Miller and Colleen Weiss.
Colleen Weiss is the mother of nineteen year old Veronica Weiss.
Speaker 8I remember we sat in the car close to the location almost all night.
We knew what was going to happen.
And they didn't tell us much other than Veronica was killed.
There weren't really any details.
It is so hard to remember.
The only thing that stuck in my mind was one of the police officers said to me, this is the hardest part of my job, and I just thought, okay, thank you, I'm sorry for you.
You know.
I don't know why that just stuck with me.
And I wouldn't say I was emotionless, but I just I couldn't do anything.
I just kind of sat there.
Speaker 3Did you get the chance to see her after that?
Speaker 8Well, they told us right away, something like this is not like you see on TV.
We have a way of identifying bodies without you, don't you know, you don't have to come in.
And I did not want to see her.
I didn't.
I didn't want any memory like that.
And it maybe seems odd, but I am so glad that I never have to go back and have that picture mind, because I only have beautiful memories and I know it was a terrible thing that happened to her.
Speaker 3How was your husband and your sons that night?
How did they react?
Speaker 8I mean, my husband just immediately broke down.
We went kind of straight home after this happened.
We wanted to get home to the boys and we just I remember we just all got into our bed and we were just kind of holding each other or just laying there.
It just was terrible.
Speaker 3The next couple of days after Veronica was killed, how do you all together get each other through it?
Speaker 8Not very well?
Not very well at all.
I do remember I was in shock for i'd say at least a couple of days.
And then we started having all these this family coming in and people contacting us, and it was it was chaos.
Speaker 3Knowing that the perpetrator that we still don't know anything about, did you know at that point that he had taken his own life, that he had shot himself.
Speaker 5After yes, okay, yes, okay, so we we knew pretty quick.
And I that is one thing that I also, you find everything to be grateful for.
Speaker 8I'm grateful that it wasn't unknown or that we had to go through a trial.
Speaker 3Were you angry at all?
Speaker 8I never had those feelings.
I never, I never did.
I know, everyone has circumstances, and I just I thought this kid, I'm going to call him a kid, but he wasn't a kid.
Well, he was very young.
He was in so much pain, and I look and say, my daughter was so happy, so focused on what she was doing and what she wanted to do.
That it just no, I did not I didn't feel angry.
I never had that.
Speaker 3So would that all media coverage?
How did that affect your grieving process?
Speaker 8During that whole period, I felt like I was still in some kind of shock and I just was going through the motions.
They put together a memorial at Weslake High School immediately, I think it was the Monday after it happened, so we needed to go up to the high school and and it was just packed and it was it was beautiful what they did.
And then I know when we were leaving, I saw all the water polo girls all got in the pool afterwards, which was pretty cool.
Speaker 3I read an article about that and how everybody showed.
Speaker 8Up wearing purple yes yes in honor of her.
Speaker 3How proud does that make you of Veronica?
Speaker 8Oh?
Immensely, immensely.
It just it was.
I mean, it gave me a lot of warmth.
And I know she would have loved it too.
Speaker 3So what was the hardest part of navigating that immediate aftermath?
Speaker 8Many days of just not wanting to be around, not wanting to feel that pain, just seeing how it affected the boys and my husband and I just didn't know how we would ever go back to normal.
I didn't know.
I couldn't see a path forward, and it just felt very desperate.
It's very hard.
Speaker 3Let's get into what we know about Elliott Roger?
Yes, how did you learn about him?
Speaker 8Just by reading things on the internet?
And I remember reading a couple pages of the Manifesto at one point and again just kind of turned away from that.
I just I spent many years where I didn't want to hear anything about him.
I really didn't.
So it has only been recently, in the last year that I've learned just how much he's revered or whatever it is.
And again, that's just very sad, very sad.
Speaker 3He was considered what they call an in cell.
Yes, had you ever heard that term before?
No, no idea what that even is?
Speaker 8No?
Not at the time.
Speaker 3How much of that did you get into when you're learning about Elliott Roger?
Speaker 8Very very high level.
I just wanted to focus on her memory, but you couldn't.
Throughout the years, it became where you couldn't watch a movie or a TV show without it became like, oh, well, yeah, this is just part of our culture now.
Speaker 3Yeah, so he committed to the side.
Afterwards, you didn't get to get a guilty verdict, he didn't get a prison sentence.
Did you ever feel robbed of that?
Speaker 8Absolutely not.
I thought that was probably the best ending for him.
I knew enough to know how how long he had suffered from different problems and never been accepted or just different things like that.
And no, I do think about the people that have to face their sons or their daughters killer in court, and that would be the last thing I would want to do when there.
Speaker 3Is a trial.
You know, there's graphic photos that they show from crime scenes, and that was one thing you said you never wanted to see.
Speaker 8I didn't if I could just add as a mother, you know, sometimes you question yourself, like I thought, what mother would not want to see every part of their child or what had happened to them or so I questioned that for a little bit, but then had to go back to, well, no, this is me personally, this is I have to deal with this, and I shouldn't feel bad about not wanting to do that and not doing it.
Speaker 3You know, you said you have nothing but great, beautiful memories of her, and that's what that's what's important, that's what matters.
Speaker 8Yes, yes, so knowing this.
Speaker 3This world that he was in and now he's become like this martyr for this community because there have been other incidents where people have gotten very violent, there's been other murders and would use his name as like a hero and they looked up to him.
How does that make you feel when you know that people are putting him on a pedestal for something so evil even.
Speaker 8I mean again, I feel sadness for those people.
I just feel sadness for them, sadness for their parents.
I mean, I could have a child that ended up being like that.
You know, you don't.
You would hope not, but you never know.
And again, I just it's it's very sad, very sad.
Speaker 3A lot of people would be just mad and angry and cursing in every which way.
But you said you said that you felt sorry for him.
Speaker 8I mean, I think about it seemed twenty four to seven for this person.
I mean, you don't know that, but he was feeling desperate, sad.
Just I don't want anyone to feel like that.
I don't naturally have that emotion.
I do get mad, but at things, but when it comes to people and what they do.
I mean, this life can be very difficult and people look experience very bizarre things, and this world is more and more challenging each day, and the Internet and it's it's very complicated.
Speaker 3Do you keep any trinkets of hers around?
Speaker 8I do?
I do?
Can I grab it?
Speaker 3Yes?
Please?
Speaker 5Do?
Speaker 8Okay?
So, I mean her freshman year, she wasn't good enough to play water polo at UCSB, which didn't bother her at all.
Just a week before she died, she said, Mom, I really I'm going to start swimming again, but I don't have a cap or goggles.
So I said, we'll just order them on our Amazon get you know, get them.
And I remember it was a week before.
When we went to pack up her room, it was so organized and neat, like everything was in its place.
But I found her little sport bag with goggles and her and a cap that she already had, and it just like when she said she was going to do something, it just it was done.
And so these are actually right on my bed.
So it's like little things like that that really warm your heart.
Speaker 1Next time on in cells it is.
Speaker 7Absolutely a recipe to stay home, not go out, only have online community.
Speaker 3He had planned this.
Speaker 2There's clear evidence at least a week prior, including a note in his notes heap on his phone entitled murder suicide.
Speaker 11Most of their anger, most of their hatred is actually reserved for the women.
Speaker 4So this idea of six six six six feet tall six figure incomes six inches plus.
Speaker 7That's the ideal man.
Speaker 1For more information on the case and relevant photos, follow us on Instagram at KT Underscore Studios.
In Cells is produced by Stephanie Leideger, Gabriel Castillo, and me Courtney Armstrong.
Additional producing by Connor Powell and Carolyn Miller, editing by Jeff Tooi music by Vanikore Studios.
In Cells is a production of KAT Studios and iHeart Radio.
For more podcasts like this, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.