Across a sprawling internet community, an ideology of violent misogyny is spreading – with tragic, ‘real-world’ results
The term “involuntary celibate”, or incel for short, used to describe somebody who isn’t having sex but would like to be, was first coined by a young woman named Alana in the mid-1990s. The small, supportive, mixed-sex community she created online is a world apart from the extremist, hate-fuelled ideology it has transformed into in the many years since she left those online spaces behind. “It feels like being the scientist who figured out nuclear fission and then discovers it’s being used as a weapon for war,” she later told the Guardian.
Today’s incels are not a clearly defined, organised group, but rather a sprawling, disparate community of men across a network of blogs, forums, websites, private members groups, chatrooms and social media channels. Several of the forums have memberships in the tens of thousands, with around a 25% increase in membership in the two years I have been researching them. And these figures don’t take into account the number of people visiting and being influenced by these sites without necessarily signing up.
