Peterson had tried to tell the world that the incels didn’t hate women – only for the incels to cry foul.

“The response I got,” he says, was: “‘You’re misrepresenting us: we really do hate women. We’re not joking.’”

In the midst of this, another unexpected thing happened. Peterson started hearing from, as he calls them, “normal people” – feminists, especially – who wanted to talk, not argue.

“With all this media storm, I’ve talked to a lot of people, a lot of journalists, and I’ve gotten a lot of nice, normal people – you know, not incels – reaching out to me,” he says. “Emails, Twitter, YouTube messages, comments and everything. And it’s kind of proven to me that I don’t always have to be the reject loser who sits inside all day.”