Truth4lie’s friends hated Chad, but they were also convinced their lives would improve significantly if they could somehow become Chad. They tried “gymceling” and “steroidmaxxing” (incel-speak for bodybuilding and taking steroids). They tried jelqing (penis-stretching exercises) and mewing (chewing hard foods to bulk up the masseter muscles, said by British orthodontist Mike Mew to augment the jawline). They tried pulling on their faces to reshape them. They got into skin care.

Some wanted more elemental improvements. More than pudgy flesh or pocked skin, it was their bones that made incels unfuckable, they believed. Their quarrel was with the very collagen that had ossified in their mother’s womb, the calcium phosphate with the potential to outlast civilizations, maybe even souls — or to be weeded out of the gene pool. “The difference between a Chad and an incel is literally a few millimeters of bone,” reads one meme.

To transform skull and skeleton could be done only with great expense and pain. It would take surgery. Some incels spent years researching procedures. More and more, they congregated around a single name: Barry Eppley, a cosmetic and reconstructive surgeon in Indiana.