An Exploration of the Involuntary Celibate (Incel) Subculture Online

Abstract

Incels, a portmanteau of the term involuntary celibates, operate in online communities to discuss difficulties in attaining sexual relationships. Past reports have found that multiple elements of the incel culture are misogynistic and favorable towards violence. Further, several violent incidents have been linked to this community, which suggests that incel communities may resemble other ideologically motivated extremist groups. The current study employed an inductive qualitative analysis of over 8,000 posts made in two online incel communities to identify the norms, values, and beliefs of these groups from a subcultural perspective. Analyses found that the incel community was structured around five interrelated normative orders: the sexual market, women as naturally evil, legitimizing masculinity, male oppression, and violence. The implications of this analysis for our understanding of extremism and the role of the internet in radicalization to violence are considered in depth.

Incel Activity on Social Media Linked to Local Mating Ecology

“…These links between local demographic and economic factors and online incel activity are consistent with some themes and ideas popular on incel and manosphere forums, such as blaming the relative scarcity of women, intense competition from high-status men, and gender equity for male involuntary celibacy (see Ging, 2019;O'Malley et al, 2020;Van Valkenburgh, 2021). Observations from economics, evolutionary psychology, and the cultural-psychology subfield of sexual economics (e.g., Baumeister & Vohs, 2004) are often deployed on such forums (O'Malley et al, 2020;Van Valkenburgh, 2021). Our results lead to the conclusion that incels are at least partly accurate about the external conditions that contribute to their lack of success establishing heterosexual relationships.…”

Swallowing the Black Pill: Involuntary Celibates’ (Incels) Anti Feminism within Digital Society

“…Its final form is the Blackpill [sic] and no one can deny the truth of what we must do.' Several studies suggest that such ubiquitous support for violence, whether it be in the form of the fantastical uprisings mentioned here, lonewolf terror attacks or the more benign forms of digital violence, may provide a sense of catharsis for incel members' troubled imaginations (Baele, Brace and Coan 2019;Hoffman, Ware and Shapiro 2020;O'Malley, Holt and Holt 2020). I argue that such support fosters a sense of collective solidarity among incel members.…”

The male breadwinner nuclear family is not the ‘traditional’ human family, and promotion of this myth may have adverse health consequences

“…Online fora have facilitated the spread of misogynistic movements, including Mens' Rights Activist groups and Incels (involuntary celibates), which are collectively referred to as the 'manosphere'. These movements use and misuse evolutionary psychology as their theoretical justification, and draw on supposedly biological arguments that women are 'designed' to bear and raise children while men are 'designed' to do pretty much everything else in society [99,100]. These movements have led to fatal terrorist attacks [101,102].…”