Minutes before turning his van onto a Toronto sidewalk on Monday, killing 10 people and injuring more than a dozen others, Alek Minassian wrote a post on Facebook, according to the Canadian authorities. 
 
 In it, he praised Elliot Rodger, who in 2014 shot and killed six people in Isla Vista, Calif. Mr. Minassian, 25, also wrote of an “incel rebellion,” referring to a term, shorthand for “involuntary celibates,” used online by a community of misogynists to describe themselves. 
 
 “The Incel Rebellion has already begun!” the posting read. “We will overthrow all the Chads and Stacys! All hail Supreme Gentleman Elliot Rodger!” 
 
 Here’s a brief guide to the incel community, including some of the coded language, such as “Chads” and “Stacys,” used by its members. 

 Post appears to connect alleged killer with ‘incel’, or ‘involuntary celibate’, communities that have made sexual frustration the basis for misogyny 
 
 Shortly before a rented van ploughed into a crowd of pedestrians in Toronto, killing 10 and wounding 14 others, a short and cryptic message was posted on the Facebook account of Alek Minassian, the man accused of carrying out the attack. 
 
 The post referred to another mass killer – Elliot Rodger, who shot dead six people and wounded 13 others in Isla Vista, California, in 2014 – and said that the “incel rebellion has already begun. We will overthrow all the Chads and the Stacys”. 
 
 If incels’ violent misogyny had a role in Toronto, we mustn’t downplay it | Emer O’Toole Read more 
 
 Minassian’s Facebook account has since been deleted and police have yet to suggest a motive for the attack, but the post appeared to connect the alleged killer with the so-called “incel” movement, which has made collective sexual frustration the basis for a deeply misogynistic online subculture. 
 
 Incel stands for “involuntary celibate”, and the people who identify with the label are almost exclusively male. On incels.me, the subculture’s leading online forum, an incel is described as someone who “can’t have sex despite wanting to”, and is thus also denied the pleasures of relationships. (In incel lingo, sexually successful men are known as “Chads”, and attractive women are called “Stacys”). 
 
 Self-identified incels have used the internet to find anonymous support and develop an ideology whose central belief is that the modern world is unfairly stacked against awkward or unattractive heterosexual men. 
 
 Incel websites argue that society is set up so that some men have numerous sexual partners, others have none and women get to take their pick in what is often described as a “sexual marketplace”. 
 
 Swallowing the Red Pill: a journey to the heart of modern misogyny Read more 
 
 Such theories are often buttressed with half-understood theories about evolution, psychology and genetics. And at their heart is a belief that denying men sex is unjust. 
 
 As in other reactionary subcultures that reject consensus liberal beliefs, those who take on the incel creed are said to have taken “the red pill” – referring to the scene in the science fiction movie The Matrix where the protagonist chooses to leave his illusions behind. 
 
 Frequently such ideas lead to a generalized bitterness towards women. Indeed, the big incel hubs are often viciously misogynistic and regularly feature calls for rape or other violence. 
 
 Even the free speech bastion Reddit was forced last year to ban the largest incel subreddit for inciting hate (another subreddit, incelTears, continues to chronicle the excesses of incel culture online). 
 
 Some with this mindset take it upon themselves to commit horrendous violence. In videos and a manifesto, the Isla Vista shooter Elliot Rodger justified his own mass homicide in 2014 by presenting it as revenge for his own romantic rejections, and the fact that at 22, he was still a virgin. 
 
 Rodger was subsequently adopted by some incels as a hero, and being made into the quasi-ironic figurehead for a “beta uprising”, when sexually unsuccessful men would engage in armed revolt against all of the Chads and Stacys. 
 
 Behind the layers of irony and disavowal, then, some incels have constructed a kind of violent, insurrectionary rhetoric from romantic failure and the belief that they are owed sex. 
 
 Who are the 'incels' and how do they relate to Toronto van attack? Read more 
 
 It’s possible that this mindset has influenced another lonely man in Toronto to commit mass murder. 
 
 The nature of social media still leaves some room for doubt as to whether the message is genuine, or whether it was really posted by Minassian – and internet trolls have previously misled the media following mass killings with false claims. 
 
 Moderators on incels.me were quick to disavow him. One post said Minassian “has never posted on Incels.me. As far as we are concerned, no one on the forum heard of him before these latest news.” 
 
 But elsewhere on the site, some users appeared to be defending the attacker. One post castigated other forum users for their squeamishness under the title, “most of you guys are all talk”.
– A Facebook message posted minutes before Monday's horrific attack in Toronto appears to link suspect Alek Minassian to the same twisted subculture that inspired California mass killer Elliot Rodger in 2014. In the post, which Facebook has confirmed is genuine, Minassian praises Rodger as the "Supreme Gentleman" and declares: "The Incel Rebellion has already begun!" He was referring to the "involuntarily celibate" movement, which the Guardian describes as a "deeply misogynistic online subculture." Adherents rant against women and consider Rodger a hero for striking out at a world where they believe they are being unjustly deprived of sex because they are "beta males." More: "Chads and Stacys." The New York Times has more on the subculture, which derides sexually active men and women as "normies" or "Chads and Stacys." In his post, Minassian vowed: "We will overthrow all the Chads and Stacys!"