The term "incel" was coined in 1997 by a Canadian woman named Alana (screen name) as part of a personal project. She created an online community called the "Involuntary Celibate Project". The aim of the community was to bring together and connect people of all genders who were struggling with loneliness, social awkwardness, and romantic or sexual inexperience.
Her aim was through connecting people with similar experiences to create a place where community members could offer support, seek mutual understanding and provide guidance to each other. In the early 2000s, online forums and websites like LoveShy and PUAhate emerged, catering to men who felt unsuccessful in romantic or sexual relationships.
PUAhate was originally a critique of the "pickup artist" (PUA) community and culture however it gradually became a breeding ground for anger toward perceived societal standards of masculinity and attractiveness. The same happened to the "Involuntary Celibate Project".
Shortly after creating the forum/discussion group ("Involuntary Celibate Project") Alana left it, expressing regret about how the term "incel" (involuntary celibate – someone who wants to have sexual/intimate relationships but feels ignored by society’s values to the point where they can’t) has been co-opted by toxic and misogynistic communities. In interviews, she has emphasized that her original project was about fostering understanding and empathy, not perpetuating anger or blame for being an incel.
Incel discussions, which often take place on forums like Reddit, 4Chan and dedicated incel web platforms, often center on perceived injustices such as "hypergamy" (the belief that women seek higher-status men, in order to raise their own status) or "lookism" (the idea that physical attractiveness exclusively determines social success).
They use terms like “Chad” to refer to attractive, “sexually successful” men, and “Stacy” to refer to women who date or are partners to “Chads”. The movement is inherently misogynistic seeing women as being extremely shallow, whose only goal in life is to elevate their status; something they can only do by attracting a Chad as a partner. Chads are seen as being selfish, alpha male seeking characters, who are one-dimensional in nature.
Incels believe, as men, that they are entitled to romantic and sexual relationships with women. That this is a basic “right” that should be afforded to them. They believe that women are overly-selective in how they choose partners and because of this, average-looking and below-average-looking men are unfairly overlooked i.e. women shouldn’t really be allowed to choose/pick their sexual partners as they don’t do so fairly; they are only interested in looks and wealth (status), in order to elevate their own position. Many openly advocate violence against women as means of punishing them for this.
The movement gained mainstream attention after several high-profile acts of violence that were committed by self-identified incels. In 2014, Elliot Rodger, went on a killing spree that left six dead and injured fourteen more in Isla Vista, California, before killing himself. His main targets were members of a sorority at the university where he was studying.
He left behind a video manifesto – shot in his car just before he went on his shooting rampage – where he self-identified as an incel, blaming women and society for his perceived sexual rejection(s). He has since become a hero/icon/martyr within the incel community.
Four years later in 2018, Alex Minassian, another self-identified incel, engaged in a vehicular homicide in Toronto that killed ten, claiming that it was part of the “Incel Rebellion”.
On August 12th, 2021, Jake Davison, a 22-year-old from Plymouth (UK), committed a mass-shotting in the Keyham area of the city, that saw him kill five people before killing/shooting himself. Davison had a history of posting on YouTube and other platforms expressing frustrations that aligned with incel ideology.
He often blamed women and societal structures for his perceived failures and referred to himself as a "fat, ugly virgin" and used terms/language that were commonly associated with the "blackpill" ideology (a nihilistic and fatalistic subset of incel thought). The term "blackpill" is a reference to the "red pill/blue pill" metaphor popularized by the movie The Matrix (where the red pill represents an awakening to the harsh realities of society) and adopted by parts of the "manosphere."
Incel forums and other related spaces use the blackpill to describe a more pessimistic “awakening” to the fact that societal, biological, and genetic factors permanently doom certain individuals—especially men—to failure in romantic and sexual relationships.
Whilst, in the Matrix, the “red pill” is about self-improvement blackpill ideology states that self-improvement isn’t possible as society has already established its rules and these prevent the socially and physically disadvantaged from improving themselves i.e., only a Chad can get a Stacy.
Those like Rodger, Minassian and Davison, see themselves as victims of an unfair societal and biological system, which discriminates against those that are physically unattractive and have difficulty operating in social situations (this is at the heart of “blackpill” ideology).
In its extreme form this can lead to self-harm, suicide and violence against others, especially women. Whilst the incel is a subculture and outside the mainstream, their ideas about women, help to give justification to misogynistic views held by certain sections of society. By presenting women in a negative light and championing male sexual entitlement, whilst on the fringe of society incels can have an influence in promoting rape culture.