Incel

An incel ( , an abbreviation of "involuntary celibate") is a member of an online subculture of people who define themselves as unable to get a romantic or sexual partner despite desiring one. Discussions in incel forums are often characterized by resentment and hatred, misogyny, misanthropy, self-pity and self-loathing, racism, a sense of entitlement to sex, and the endorsement of violence against women and sexually active people. The American Southern Poverty Law Center(SPLC) described the subculture as "part of the online male supremacist ecosystem" that is included in their list of hate groups. Incels are mostly male and heterosexual, and are often white. Estimates of the overall size of the subculture vary greatly, ranging from thousands to hundreds of thousands of individuals.

Since 2014, multiple mass killings have been perpetrated by self-identified incels, as well as other instances of violence or attempted violence. After the 2018 Toronto van attack, incel communities have been repeatedly criticized by researchers and the media for being misogynistic, encouraging violence, spreading extremist views, and radicalizing their members.

History

The first website to use the term "incel" was founded during the 1990s, although media is conflicted on whether this occurred during 1993 or 1997. The website was founded by a Canadian university student known only by her first name, Alana. She created the website to discuss her sexual inactivity with others. Titled "Alana's Involuntary Celibacy Project", the website was used by people of all genders to share their thoughts and experiences. During 1997, she started a mailing list on the topic that used the abbreviation INVCEL, later shortened to "incel", for "anybody of any gender who was lonely, had never had sex or who hadn't had a relationship in a long time". During her college years and after, Alana realized she was bisexual and became more comfortable with her identity. She stopped participating in her online project around 2000 and gave the site to a stranger. In 2018, Alana said of her project: "It definitely wasn't a bunch of guys blaming women for their problems. That's a pretty sad version of this phenomenon that's happening today. Things have changed in the last 20 years". When she read about the 2014 Isla Vista killings, and that parts of the incel subculture glorified the perpetrator, she wrote: "Like a scientist who invented something that ended up being a weapon of war, I can't uninvent this word, nor restrict it to the nicer people who need it". She expressed regret at the change in usage from her original intent of creating an "inclusive community" for people of all genders who were sexually deprived due to social awkwardness, marginalization, or mental illness.

The message board love-shy.com was founded in 2003 as a place for people who felt perpetually rejected or were extremely shy with potential partners to discuss their situations. It was less strictly moderated than its counterpart, IncelSupport, which was also founded in the 2000s. While IncelSupport welcomed men and women and banned misogynistic posts, love-shy.com's userbase was overwhelmingly male. Over the next decade, the membership of love-shy.com and online fringe right-wing communities like 4chan increasingly overlapped. In the 2000s, incel communities became more extremist as they adopted behaviors common on forums like 4chan and Reddit, where extremist posts were encouraged as a way to achieve visibility. According to Bruce Hoffman and colleagues writing in '' Studies in Conflict & Terrorism'', as "edgy" and extremist statements became more prevalent in incel communities, so too did extremist trolling and " shitposting".

The r/incels subreddit, a forum on the website Reddit, later became a particularly active incel community. It was known as a place where men blamed women for their inceldom, sometimes advocated for rape or other forms of violence, and were misogynistic and often racist. On October 25, 2017, Reddit announced a new policy that prohibited "content that encourages, glorifies, incites, or calls for violence or physical harm against an individual or a group of people", and on November 7, 2017, banned the /r/incels subreddit under the policy's purview. At the time of the ban, the community had around 40,000 members. The incel community continued to inhabit Reddit in other subreddits, such as on the subreddit /r/braincels. Although the tone of the subreddit was similar to /r/incels, moderators of the /r/braincels forum said that they did not endorse, support, or glorify violence or violent people, a distinction they made from the subject matter of its predecessor that resulted in its being banned from Reddit. The /r/braincels subreddit was banned later, however, on September 30, 2019, after Reddit again broadened its banning policy. Incel communities began to migrate away from shared platforms and instead use their own closed forums dedicated specifically to the subject. The largest of such forums was founded in 2017 and had 12,000 members as of March 2021.

Incels came to wider public notice throughout the 2010s with the banning of /r/incels and when a series of mass murders were committed by men who either identified as incels or shared similar ideologies. Increased interest in incel communities has been attributed to feelings of "aggrieved entitlement" among some men who feel they are being denied rights they deserve and blame women for their lack of sex.

During 2020, the gaming platform giant ''Twitch'' updated their policy on hateful conduct and harassment. The new Twitch policy included banning the use of the word 'incel' as an insult, highlighting how the term is often used to negatively refer to an individual's sexual activity.

M. Kelly writing for the Political Research Associates think tank in 2021 said that over the prior two years, some incels had attempted to "reframe and normalize their beliefs" by writing blog posts, and articles on subject-specific wikis and forums rejecting the more open expressions of misogyny by other incels, highlighting the heterogeneity of incel communities, and reframing incels not as an online subculture but as those experiencing a life circumstance that applies even to individuals who are not members of the subculture. Kelly also wrote that these attempts to redefine themselves contradicted the communities' self-identifications and moderation strategies, where members regularly challenge other users' "legitimacy" as incels, but have accepted as members individuals with sexual experience who nonetheless shared similar political ideologies.

Extremism

Incel communities became more extremist and focused on violence from the late 2010s. This has been attributed to factors including influences from overlapping online hate groups and the rise of the alt-right and white supremacist groups. The misogynistic and violent rhetoric of some incels has led to numerous bans from websites and webhosts. Incel communities continue to exist on more lenient platforms including 4chan, 8chan