incel

History and organization

Background

The first website to use the term "incel" was Alana's Involuntary Celibacy Project, a blog founded in 1997 by a female university student living in Toronto known as Alana, in order to document her own struggles with dating. The site became a hub for those with similar experiences, functioning as an informal support group that featured discussion forums, article sharing, and a mailing list. The project served a diverse community of people of different ages, genders, and sexual orientations who had difficulty forming sexual or romantic relationships due to influences beyond their control such as shyness. Alana originally used the abbreviation "invcel" for "involuntarily celibate", later shortening it to "incel". Her website was intended for "anybody of any gender who was lonely, had never had sex or who hadn't had a relationship in a long time". She later said, "I was trying to create a movement that was open to anybody and everybody."

During her college years and afterward, Alana realized she was bisexual and became more comfortable with her identity. As her own dating life improved, Alana stopped maintaining the website, passing the site's contents on to someone else she did not know around the year 2000. Beginning in the mid-2000s, incel discourse came to be dominated by men who saw themselves as lacking in traditional masculinity and who expressed nihilistic and anti-feminist views. After self-described incel Elliot Rodger committed a shooting spree in 2014, killing six people before committing suicide, Alana discovered that the community had splintered into male-only groups whose sexual frustrations were often directed at women. 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".

After learning that the perpetrator of the 2014 Isla Vista killings was being glorified by parts of the incel subculture, Alana 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 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.

Forums

In 2003, the message board love-shy.com was founded 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 such as 4chan increasingly overlapped.

In the 2000s, incel communities became more extremist as they adopted behaviors common on forums such as 4chan and Reddit, where extremist posts were encouraged as a way to achieve visibility. As incel forums became more extremist and misogynist, inceldom came to be seen as a permanent part of one's identity, rather than a temporary circumstance. 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 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. Reddit banned the r/incels subreddit in 2017 following 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", adopted in October 2017. At the time of the ban, the community had around 40,000 members.

In the 2010s, the subculture came to wider public notice with the banning of r/incels, and when a series of mass murders were committed by men who either identified as members of the subculture 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.

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. On September 30, 2019, the r/braincels subreddit was banned after Reddit again broadened its banning policy.

Ideology

Incel beliefs express gender essentialism that assumes men's superiority over women and endorses traditional gender roles that privilege men. Incel rhetoric invokes an idealized patriarchal society in which couples adhered to these traditional roles, married early, and were strictly monogamous. This nostalgic vision of a utopian past, focused especially on an idealized version of the 1950s, is shared by broader conservative and right-wing populist narratives. During this mythologized "golden age", incels imagine that all men had nearly unencumbered access to women as romantic partners, thereby reducing the competition for sex. Incels often disagree about precisely when this golden age occurred, but they concur that it was gradually destroyed by feminism, the sexual revolution, women's liberation, and technological progress, giving women unearned dominance and status within the sexual economy. As a result, incels tend to blame both women and the feminist movement for their inability to find a partner.

Incel discourse is characterized by resentment, hostile sexism, anti-feminism, sexual objectification and dehumanization of women, misogyny, homophobia, misanthropy, self-pity and self-loathing, racism, a sense of entitlement to sex, nihilism, rape culture, and the endorsement of sexual and non-sexual violence against women and the sexually active.

Discussions often revolve around the belief that men are entitled to sex from women. In response, incels often advocate some form of coercion, rape, or a return to enforced monogamy under strict patriarchal rule. The elimination of women's rights is favored in order to ensure women's dependency on men, effecting a return to traditional gender roles. Some incels also advocate for sexual slavery, punishment for female promiscuity, redistribution of women, and violence against feminists.

Incels have been found to attribute their perceived lower social status to such factors as (lack of) neurotypicality and physical stature that contribute to a traditional performance of masculinity. Incels blame modern feminism for their failure to achieve traditional masculine dominance, believing themselves to be victims of women's empowerment despite their innate superiority over women. Their shared victim mentality encourages incels to fatalistically celebrate their failures and discourage each other from seeking romantic success. Hopelessness is a defining factor of incel beliefs, seen in the common refrain "it's over", and repeated calls to "LDAR" (lay down and rot), which have become popular mantras throughout incel communities.

"Red pill" and "black pill"

The metaphor of the "red pill" originates from the movie The Matrix in which the protagonist must choose whether to remain in a world of illusion (taking the blue pill), or to see the world as it really is (taking the red pill). In the wider manosphere, an online association of anti-feminist and male supremacist groups that includes incels along with men's rights activists (MRAs), men going their own way (MGTOW) and pick-up artists (PUAs), the "red pill" refers to the belief that male privilege is a feminist myth and that contemporary society instead favors women while oppressing men. To be "red-pilled" means to awaken to the realization that contemporary society has been engineered by feminists to reduce men's rights, and that men must fight against feminist brainwashing. Endorsing these beliefs means that one has "taken the red pill".

The concept of the "black pill" or "blackpill" developed on incel forums as a more nihilistic version of the "red pill". Expanding upon the red pill belief that men are an oppressed group, black pill ideology uses pseudoscientific claims to argue that heterosexual dating, and society in general, exist primarily to benefit women and physically attractive men or "alpha males". The black pill portrays women as hardwired to find only certain masculine traits attractive. Both worldviews portray women as manipulative, superficial, and hypergamous. Incels use the term hypergamy to argue that women seek high-status men in order to increase the social, economic and genetic potential of their offspring. Most incels subscribe to the "black pill", believing it is impossible for unattractive men to escape this social hierarchy. Incels therefore perceive themselves to be an oppressed minority, despite being mostly white males with some degree of social privilege. Incels commonly identify as either "redpilled" or "blackpilled", whereas non-incels who uphold mainstream views about romance and dating ("normies" and "alphas") are seen as being "bluepilled".

Black pill ideology is defined by biological determinism, in contrast to ideas of personal agency and self-improvement often associated with red pill beliefs. Selected ideas from evolutionary psychology are used to reinforce the idea of "sexual market value" in a mating system controlled by the most desirable women. Those who subscribe to red pill ideology believe they can use their knowledge of women's hypergamy to achieve success in the dating market and increase their own sexual market value, such as by improving their social skills or physical appearance through surgery or other body modifications, known as "looksmaxxing". However, according to black pill ideology, improving one's looks is futile, since dating success is entirely determined by genetics, keeping most men from achieving sexual dominance.

Extremism

As of 2022, research indicates growth in extremist beliefs and online radicalization among incels, as well as the potential for forum users to become seen as martyrs by their peers after committing acts of violence. Research has similarly found that virulent misogyny often found on incel forums serves to justify the use of violence, particularly against women. 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 often found in these communities, including exhortations to violence, has led to them being banned from several social media platforms and web hosting services.

Incel communities continue to exist on more lenient platforms including 4chan, 8chan, and Gab, as well as on web forums created specifically for the topic. More extremist self-identified incels have increasingly migrated to obscure locations including gaming chat services (such as Discord) and the dark web to avoid site shutdowns and the self-censorship that has developed among some incel communities as an effort to avoid drawing scrutiny from law enforcement or website service providers.

There has been debate over whether to consider violent attacks carried out by incels as a form of terrorism. Beginning in 2018 and into the 2020s, the incel ideology has been described by North American governments and researchers as a terrorism threat, and law enforcement have issued warnings about the subculture. In May 2019, an American man was sentenced to up to five years in prison for making terrorist threats, posting on social media, "I'm planning on shooting up a public place ... killing as many girls as I see". In September 2019, the U.S. Army warned soldiers about the possibility of violence at movie theaters showing the Joker film, after "disturbing and very specific chatter" was found in conversations among self-identified incels on the dark web.

A January 2020 report by the Texas Department of Public Safety warned that the incel movement was an "emerging domestic terrorism threat" that "could soon match, or potentially eclipse, the level of lethalness demonstrated by other domestic terrorism types". A 2020 paper published by Bruce Hoffman and colleagues in Studies in Conflict & Terrorism concluded that "the violent manifestations of the ideology pose a new terrorism threat, which should not be dismissed or ignored by domestic law enforcement agencies".

Promotion of violence

Characteristic of incel discourse is the justification of violent acts in order to re-establish male supremacy over Western societies, which they believe to be ruled by women. Some discussions in incel communities endorse violence against sexually active women and more sexually successful men, harassment of women, and suicide. According to the Anti-Defamation League, they form the most violent community within the manosphere. In some incel communities, it is common for posts to glorify violence by self-identified incels such as Elliot Rodger (perpetrator of the 2014 Isla Vista killings) and Alek Minassian (perpetrator of the 2018 Toronto van attack), as well as by those they believe shared their ideology such as Marc Lépine (perpetrator of the 1989 École Polytechnique massacre), Seung-Hui Cho (perpetrator of the 2007 Virginia Tech shooting), and George Sodini (perpetrator of the 2009 Collier Township shooting).

The BBC has described Rodger as "the founding father of the incel ideology". On incel discussion forums, Rodger is often referred to as ther "patron saint", with memes of his face superimposed onto paintings of Christian icons. Some incels consider him to be the progenitor of today's online incel communities.

Some within these communities view violence as the only solution to what they see as societal oppression and abuse against them and speak frequently of incel "uprisings" and "revolts". Others take the more nihilistic view that nothing will change society, even violent acts, and focus their efforts on constructing a scientific justification for this nihilism. Some support the idea of violence as revenge on society, without the hope it will lead to societal change.

Researchers William Costello and David Buss have questioned the degree of violence found in incel communities, suggesting that "extreme inceldom looks more like suicidality than violence toward others". Some violent posts may be motivated by status-seeking behavior by individuals on forums, rather than a desire to promote violence. A 2021 study found that the overwhelming majority of self-identified incels themselves do not think that incel groups promote violence. A 2022 study found that most self-identified incels surveyed (79%) rejected violence.

A subgroup of self-identified incels who frequent websites founded by Nathan Larson, who was a perennial political candidate and active participant in incel communities, work deliberately to convince other self-identified incels that they are justified in raping women if they are rejected sexually. Some self-identified incels describe women's sexual rejection of them as "reverse rape", a phenomenon they consider to be equally harmful as rape.

Racial beliefs

Racism is generally considered to be common on incel forums, though some researchers have questioned its prevalence. In 2019, Jaki et al. estimated that 3 percent of comments on incel forums contained words from a list of racist words identified by the researchers. Some researchers have questioned linguistic analysis of incel forums as the primary methodology for studying the subculture, recommending that future researchers employ qualitative methods such as one-on-one interviews to obtain a more nuanced view and to avoid results being skewed by the prevalence of shitposting on incel forums.

Incels believe that being white makes one more attractive to potential mates, paralleling ideas of race science promoted by the far right. This often encourages racist attacks on Black, indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) members of incel forums. Such "racepill" ideology portrays whiteness as the most desirable racial classification, often invoked using the phrase "Just be White" (JBW). Incels attempting to appear more white in order to attract a partner call this process "whitemaxxing".

Antisemitic beliefs are regularly found on incel forums, with some posters blaming the rise of feminism on a plot masterminded by Jews to weaken the Western world.

In context of related communities

Incel communities are a part of the broader manosphere, a loose collection of misogynist and anti-feminist movements that also includes men's rights activists (MRAs), Men Going Their Own Way (MGTOW), pickup artists (PUAs), and fathers' rights groups. Overlapping with far-right ideologies including white nationalism and the alt-right, the disparate groups within the manosphere represent a backlash against feminism, united through their shared belief that men are the victims of a misandrist culture that has been corrupted by feminine values and biased against men. Incels and other manosphere groups believe men are oppressed victims of feminism and in response participate in networked misogyny. The Southern Poverty Law Center classifies incel ideology as a form of male supremacy and incels as part of the "online male supremacist ecosystem", which they began including in their list of hate groups in 2018. Journalist Nellie Bowles writes that incels have "evolved into a male supremacist movement" that believes women should be treated as "sexual objects with few rights".

While the self-identified incels believe they are inferior to the rest of society, often referring to themselves as "subhuman", they also espouse supremacist views: either that they are superior to women, or superior to non-incels in general. A 2019 study published in Terrorism and Political Violence found that self-identified incels believe themselves to be the only ones who are "capable of pro-social values and intelligent enough ('high IQ') to see the truth about the social world". The study determined that they followed a pattern that is typical of extremist groups, ascribing highly negative values to out-groups and positive values to in-groups, with the unusual caveat that despite seeing themselves as psychologically superior, they also view themselves negatively in terms of physical appearance.

Incel communities sometimes overlap with communities such as Men Going Their Own Way, men's rights activism, people who believe they are experiencing "true forced loneliness" (TFL), and pickup artistry, although at least one incel website has expressed hatred for pickup artistry and accused pickup artists and dating coaches of financially exploiting incels. In 2019, media scholar Debbie Ging wrote that incels' discourse around "victimhood and aggrieved entitlement" began on 4chan and has spread into more mainstream groups such as men's rights activists and Men Going Their Own Way.

Incel communities have also been observed to overlap with far-right groups. In 2019, the Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right noted that the subculture is "part of a growing trend of radical-right movements" that are distressed by neoliberalism, especially women's empowerment and immigration. In 2020, Hoffman and colleagues, in Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, stated that "a particularly worrisome trend is how seamlessly the militant incel community has been integrated into the alt-right tapestry, with common grievances and intermingling membership bringing the two extremisms closer together". In March 2021, Der Spiegel reported on the overlap between the incel community and the Feuerkrieg Division, a group modeled after the Atomwaffen Division, a neo-Nazi paramilitary network.

Jargon

Members of incel communities, collectively known online as the "incelosphere", regularly use jargon and distinct slang to reinforce in-group and out-group distinctions between incels and non-incels. Early incel forums used language borrowed from men's rights activists and pickup artists.

The term "incel", a portmanteau or shorthand for "involuntary celibate" or "involuntarily celibate" refers to self-identifying members of an online subculture, based around the inability to find a romantic or sexual partner despite desiring one, a state they describe as "inceldom" or "incelibacy". It is sometimes used interchangeably or alongside other terms, such as "love-shy" (describing those with social anxiety or excessive shyness preventing romantic success), "FA" (short for "forever alone"), "unfuckability", "omegas", "betas", "betafags", "the undersexed", or "the sexless". Alana, the coiner of the term "incel", initially considered using other terms such as "perpetually single" or "dating shy".

Incels often use dehumanizing and vulgar terms for women, such as "femoids" (a portmanteau of "female humanoids", sometimes shortened further to "foids") and "roasties" (a reference to the labia minora, which incels falsely believe changes shape and begins to resemble sliced roast beef after a woman becomes sexually active). They refer to attractive, sexually active women as "Stacys" and less attractive sexually active women as "Beckys". Attractive sexually active men are referred to as "Chads". Race-based variations of the "Chad" include "Tyrone" for black men and "Chang" for Asian men. Incels also refer to their belief of women disproportionately preferring wealthy or conventionally attractive men as "hypergamy".

People who are average looking but not incels are "normies". "Mogging" refers to the act of eclipsing another person in terms of physical appearance and thereby undermining them. Looksmaxxing is an attempt at enhancing one's appearance by methods including getting a haircut and dressing nicely, taking steroids and working out, undergoing plastic surgery, or engaging in alternative techniques such as mewing in hopes of improving facial aesthetics. "Ascending" means escaping inceldom, which is believed to be impossible. The abbreviation "NEET" refers to people who do not have jobs and are not attending school: "not in education, employment, or training".

Members of incel communities, whose online platform is known as the incelosphere, use many variations of the term "incel" to refer to subgroups within the community, such as "volcels" (voluntary celibate; someone who chooses to forego sexual intercourse), "fakecels" (those who claim to be incel, but in reality have recently had sex or been in a relationship), and "truecels" (true incels; men who have never had any sexual or romantic encounters). There are a number of race-based variations of the term "incel", which refer to people who believe their race is the reason behind their inability to find a partner, including "currycels" (people of South Asian ancestry) and "ricecels" (those of Chinese or Southeast Asian backgrounds), or collectively, "ethnicels".

Demographics

Incels are members of an online subculture of mostly heterosexual men who define themselves by their inability to establish sexual and romantic relationships. They are generally educated, often possessing an academic degree. Estimates of the size of incel communities during 2018–2020 varied. It ranged from the thousands, to tens of thousands, to hundreds of thousands. A statistical analysis of the largest incel forum shows that only a few hundred accounts made up the vast majority of forum posts during all of 2021 and most of 2022.

Incel communities are largely made up of emerging adults who feel they have not met their sexual milestones "on time" according to gendered dating norms, resulting in a gender role conflict. Self-identified incels are often described as young and friendless introverts. Incels often describe experiencing financial difficulty, a lack of educational or employment opportunities (including NEET, an abbreviation for "not in employment, education, or training"), and struggles with mental health and self-care. In one study, approximately half of incels surveyed lived with their parents or grandparents, and 17.8% identified as NEET.

Mainstream news media has often described incels as predominantly white. According to Heidi Beirich of the Southern Poverty Law Center, incels are "young, frustrated white males in their late teens into their early twenties who are having a hard time adjusting to adulthood". More recent studies have described incel communities as ethnically diverse. A 2024 study by Alyssa Maryn and colleagues states, "Recent research suggests that common perceptions that Incels are almost all White are inaccurate". In June 2019, Sylvia Jaki and colleagues published a linguistic analysis of the most popular incel forum, arguing that "contrary to what is often reported", there was no definitive evidence that the group is predominantly white. Hoffman and colleagues, publishing in Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, reported that a March 2020 survey of the same forum determined that 55% of respondents self-identified as Caucasian. Incels who are not white often blame their race for their celibacy, using the acronym "JBW" (Just be white) to sardonically express the perceived advantages white men have in attracting women.

A 2024 survey of self-identified incels by researchers from the University of Texas found that incels tended to be slightly center-left. They were significantly left in questions about homosexuality, corporate profits and welfare benefits. In a 2022 study, the University of Texas researchers ran a poll of self-reported incels, which found that 63.58% of those who responded identified as white, a smaller percentage than non-incels in the study. They found that 45% of incels who responded leaned to the left on the political spectrum. 17.5% were centrists, and 38.9% leaned to the right, showing no differences between the incel and the control group of the study. A 2025 survey found that incels tended to consider "feminists" and the "political left" at-large to be "enemies" of the incel community.

Female incels (femcels)

The first incel website, Alana's Involuntary Celibacy Project, was inclusive of all genders. There have been more contemporary female-specific incel or femcel communities, such as r/TruFemcels and its successor ThePinkPill. As of February 2020, the most popular female incel forum was the r/TruFemcels subreddit, with over 22,000 members. It was banned in January 2021 for violating Reddit's rules against promoting hate. Another subreddit reportedly associated with self-identified female incels is r/Vindicta, which contains beauty advice. There are reported to be tens of thousands of women self-identifying as female incels on the internet.

There is disagreement in online incel communities on whether women can be incels, with some claiming that male incels grossly outnumber female incels, others claiming that it is impossible for women to be incels at all, others claiming that only "severely deformed" women can be incels, and others arguing that only unattractive women belonging to the "bottom percentile in terms of appearance" can be incels. Members of male incel communities often reject the concept of a female incel, believing that all women can obtain sex from men, and believing that self-identified female incels who are truthful about their celibacy are actually voluntarily celibate. Members of male incel communities may also troll female incels.

The Anti-Defamation League reported in 2020 that the majority of incels do not believe that women can be incels. Journalists have written that outside of the female incels' own communities, few believe women can be incels. In 2021, M. Kelly wrote for Political Research Associates that members of incel communities point to the existence of female incels as an argument against criticisms of them as misogynist, but that most incel communities do not accept them and ban them from using their forums.

Like members of male incel communities, female incel community members tend to believe that they are victims to their ugliness and think that only unattractive men will date them. They call more attractive looking women "Stacys", who they believe decrease their chance of having sexual contact with men, similar to discussion of "Chads" in male incel forums. They have adopted the idea of the "pink pill", which has been likened to "red pill" and "black pill" terminology, and which describes a belief that some women are considered undesirable and thus are unable to engage in sexual relationships due to society's focus on certain aspects of female attractiveness.

Gay incels (gaycels)

While the majority of self-proclaimed incels are heterosexual males, some gay men also refer to themselves as incels, or gaycels for short. Incel forums typically ban users who are discovered to be part of the LGBTQ community, meaning that gay incels do not have access to the more mainstream incel forums such as incels.is. Gaycels are typically repudiated and treated with hostility by straight incels in part because they are often seen as celibate due to excessively high standards.

Mental health

"Involuntary celibacy" is not a medical or psychological condition. However, some people who identify as incel have physical disabilities, psychological or neurodevelopmental disorders. Incels cope with interpersonal rejection by engaging in both inward and outward practices, reporting higher levels of self-critical rumination and externalization of blame, while also engaging in fewer healthy coping mechanisms. Incels also report high rates of depressive and anxious symptoms and diagnoses as well as high rates of autism spectrum disorder. Incels also experience low attachment security, loneliness, and a lack of social supports. A 2024 study found that incels had significantly higher rates of anxious attachment and avoidant attachment styles than non-incel men. There is also evidence of sexist attitudes in incel forums, which incels admit may be making them more misogynistic. In a 2022 survey, roughly half of incels reported engaging in some form of psychotherapy, with twice as many reporting that it made them feel worse (15%) than better (6%). The same survey found that self-identified incels reported higher rates of depression, anxiety, and formal mental diagnoses than the general population: 95% reported depression and 93% reported anxiety. 38% had clinical diagnoses.

Some posters to incel forums attribute their inability to find a partner to physical or mental ailments, while some others attribute it to extreme introversion. Many of those identifying as incels engage in self-diagnosis of mental health issues. Members of incel communities often discourage posters who post about mental illness from seeing therapists or otherwise seeking treatment. Some members of incel communities with severe depression are also suicidal. Some members encourage suicidal members to kill themselves, sometimes recommending that they commit acts of mass violence before doing so.

Some report sexual guilt and shame due to involuntary celibacy.

Mass murderers and other violent incidents

Incels have been responsible for a number of high-profile attacks that have resulted in the deaths of over fifty individuals as of 2022. Within incel forums, there is an ambivalent attitude toward such acts of societal violence. Other intended attacks by incels or suspected incels have been thwarted by police before being carried out.

2000s

On August 4, 2009, 48-year-old George Sodini entered a women's aerobics class at a health club in Collier Township, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Pittsburgh. Using at least two handguns, he shot seven women before shooting himself. Three women died and nine other people were injured before Sodini committed suicide. He reportedly felt justified in killing due to perceived lifelong disrespect by women. On his blog, Sodini chronicled his feelings of loneliness and frustration as well as his plans to carry out the shooting. He frequently used objectifying language, such as calling women "hoez", and was a follower of an online "dating guru" who claimed to help older men date younger women. Sodini's crime has been celebrated in the manosphere and on men's rights websites, where "going Sodini" became a catchphrase for a killing spree against women.

2010s

On May 23, 2014, 22-year-old Elliot Rodger carried out a misogynist terrorist attack that killed six people and injured fourteen others, after which Rodger killed himself, near the campus of the University of California, Santa Barbara, in Isla Vista, California. These killings drew significant media attention to the incel community for the first time, particularly the misogyny and glorification of violence that are a mainstay of many incel forums. Rodger self-identified as an incel and left behind a 141-page manifesto and a six-minute YouTube video in which he discussed wanting revenge for being rejected by women. He had been an active member of an online forum popular among incels called PUAHate (short for "pickup artist hate"), where men gathered to express frustration with women as well as with their failure to achieve romantic success using the techniques of pickup artists. Rodger posted frequent tirades against feminism, including urging readers to "start envisioning a world where women fear [you]", and referenced the site several times in his manifesto. Facing public scrutiny, PUAHate shut down the day after the shooting. Users then migrated to a new forum, SlutHate, which was launched on May 26. Rodger became revered as a hero and martyr to incels, who began referring to Rodger as "Saint Elliott" and the "Supreme Gentleman", a term Rodger had used for himself. On incel forums, "E.R." is commonly used as a shorthand for Rodger, and "go[ing] ER" means to go on a killing spree like Rodger's. Rodger has been cited as an inspiration by the perpetrators or suspected perpetrators of several other violent crimes, and is one of several attackers who are regularly praised by members of incel communities.

On October 1, 2015, Chris Harper-Mercer killed nine people and injured eight others before killing himself in a shooting at the Umpqua Community College campus, in Roseburg, Oregon. He left a manifesto at the scene, outlining his interest in other mass murders including the Isla Vista killings, his anger at not having a girlfriend, and his animus towards the world. In his journal writings, he had related to Elliot Rodger and other mass shooters, describing them as "people who stand with the gods". Before the attack, when someone on an online message board had speculated Harper-Mercer was "saving himself for someone special", Harper-Mercer had replied: 'involuntarily so". Several hours before the shooting, someone suspected to be Harper-Mercer posted a threat to a Pacific Northwest college to /r9k/, a 4chan board with many incel posters.

On July 31, 2016, Sheldon Bentley robbed and killed an unconscious man in an alleyway in Edmonton, Alberta. During his trial, Bentley said he killed the man by stomping on his abdomen because he was frustrated with stress from his job as a security guard and with being an incel for four years.

2020s

Coty Scott Taylor abducted 6-year-old Faye Marie Swetlik on February 10, 2020, in Cayce, South Carolina. Three days later, both Taylor and Swetlik were found dead. It was determined that Taylor had suffocated Swetlik and then killed himself by cutting his throat. Friends reported that Taylor was a self-described incel and that he had often said he "lived without hope".

On February 24, 2020, a female spa worker was stabbed to death in an attack that also severely injured her female coworker at an erotic massage parlor in Toronto. On May 19, the Toronto Police Service declared the attack was being treated as a terrorist incident after evidence pointed to the stabbings being motivated by incel ideology, and police laid charges against a 17-year-old male alleged to have committed the stabbings. This was the first time violence thought to be motivated by incel ideologies was prosecuted as an act of terrorism, and is also believed to be the first act of violence not perpetrated by an Islamist extremist to be prosecuted as terrorism in Canada. On September 14, 2022, the perpetrator entered a guilty plea to murder and attempted murder. The attack was ruled a terrorist attack during sentencing proceedings.

Armando Hernandez Jr. opened fire on May 20, 2020, at Westgate Entertainment District, a mixed-use development in Glendale, Arizona, before being arrested by police. A 19-year-old man was critically injured, while a 30-year-old woman and a 16-year-old girl suffered minor injuries. According to the Maricopa County prosecutor, Hernandez identified himself as an incel and claimed he wanted to target couples and shoot at least ten people. The prosecutor said, "Mr. Hernandez is a self-professed incel ... He was taking out his anger at society, the feeling that he has been bullied, the feeling that women didn't want him". The prosecutor also alleged that Hernandez sent a video of the attack to a woman he wished to impress.

Between January and the end of July 2020, five self-identified incels were arrested in separate incidents in North America for killing or planning to kill women. Among them was Cole Carini, a man who was charged with making false statements to law enforcement in June 2020 after claiming serious injuries to his hands had been caused by a lawnmower accident. Police alleged that Carini was actually injured while trying to make a bomb, and that he had written a note threatening violence against women and referencing Elliot Rodger.

Criticism

Of the subculture

Incel communities have been criticized in the media and by researchers as violent, misogynist, and extremist. Keegan Hankes, a senior research analyst working for the Southern Poverty Law Center, has cautioned that exposure to violent content on incel forums "play[s] a very large role" in the radicalization of their members, and describes incel forums as having "more violent rhetoric than I'm used to seeing on even white supremacist sites". Journalist David Futrelle has described incel communities as "violently misogynistic", and is among critics who attribute worsening violent rhetoric on incel forums to the growth of the alt-right and white supremacy, and the overlap between incel communities and online hate groups.

Psychologist and sex researcher James Cantor has described incels as "a group of people who usually lack sufficient social skills and ... find themselves very frustrated". He has said that in incel forums "when they're surrounded by other people with similar frustrations, they kind of lose track of what typical discourse is, and they drive themselves into more and more extreme beliefs". Senior research fellow at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), Amarnath Amarasingam, has criticized some incel communities where calls for violence are commonplace, saying "under the right set of psychological and personal circumstances, these kinds of forums can be dangerous and push people into violence".

In August 2018, another researcher at the ISD, Jacob Davey, compared the radicalization of men in incel forums to teenagers being urged to go to extreme measures on online forums that promote anorexia and other eating disorders, and to online campaigns convincing people to join ISIL. Speaking about their feelings of entitlement to sex, Davey said the attitude "can go as far as the justification of rape".

While generally agreeing with critics' concerns about misogyny and other negative characteristics in the incel subculture, some commentators have been more sympathetic. In April 2018, economist Robin Hanson wrote a blog post likening access to sex with access to income, writing that he found it puzzling that similar concern had not been shown to incels as to low-income individuals. Hanson was criticized by some for discussing sex as if it was a commodity; others wrote more positively about his opinions.

In May 2018, the New York Times columnist Ross Douthat wrote a similarly controversial op-ed, titled "The Redistribution of Sex" in which he suggested sex robots and sex workers would inevitably be called upon to satisfy incels' sexual desires. Columnist Toby Young argues that sex robots could be a "workable solution"; others have criticized the column for objectifying women and for legitimizing the incel ideology.

Of platforms providing services to incel communities

Criticism has also been directed against platforms that host or have hosted incel content, including Reddit (which banned the r/incels community in 2017, and banned most of the remaining incel communities in September 2019, but is still home to some identifying as incels) and Twitter. Cloudflare, which provides services including DDoS protection, caching and obsfucation of the source host of the content, has also been criticized for protecting incel websites against downtime even when webhosts have terminated service.

Of reporting and research

Reporting on incels by media outlets following the incel-related attacks during the 2010s has been criticized for its "breathless" coverage, for normalizing incel communities by describing them only as "sexually frustrated", and for directing readers to incel communities. Some reporting has also been criticized for giving attackers notoriety by reporting on them at length, or for victim blaming by implying that women who had rejected the attackers' romantic or sexual advances held some responsibility for provoking the attacks. Those who have written sympathetically about incels have faced criticism for legitimizing the incel ideology, such as from Samantha Cole in Vice who condemned media outlets who "cove[r] and amplif[y] toxic internet culture as if it's valid ideology".

In a 2021 report published by Political Research Associates, M. Kelly wrote about recent attempts by various self-identified incels to "rebrand" their communities and stated that "incels' attempts to reframe their identity have also been helped along by researchers, journalists, and 'counter-violent extremism' experts, who, in their attempts to investigate and understand incels, have given them larger, more mainstream platforms. These new platforms have allowed self-identified incels to reframe the public narrative about them; minimize the threat their community poses; and have amplified—or even endorsed—their hate-laced grievances, centering their self-perceived victimhood at the hands of women who deny them sex".

Kelly criticized a podcast titled The Incel Project for platforming incel ideologies without challenging or fact-checking their statements. She said the creator, Naama Kates, was "no longer just reporting on incels' misogyny, but justifying and sharing it with the world". Kelly criticized the International Center for Study of Violent Extremism (ICSVE), who published several reports on incels co-authored by Kates and by the founder and lead moderator of a major incel forum, writing that "while previous ICSVE reports have drawn from primary data, including interviews and surveys with members of the community being studied, this seems to be the first time—at ICSVE or in academic research more broadly—that someone actively involved in a community that regularly expresses bigoted or violent ideology has co-authored the resulting study".

A 2024 report commissioned by the UK Commission for Countering Extremism concluded that incel participation is driven primarily by mental-health difficulties and social isolation rather than ideological extremism, and recommended that public responses focus on support services instead of counter-terrorism approaches.

Portrayals in fiction

In his debut novel Whatever (1994), French writer Michel Houellebecq seems to portray early examples of incels. However, the term did not yet exist at the time; neither did the online communities. The unnamed, 30-year-old protagonist looks unattractive, lacks social skills and has depression, which means that despite his excellent job as an IT professional, he is not popular with women. Things are much worse for his colleague, who is downright ugly and a virgin at 28. The main character tries to seduce his friend into killing a young woman who has rejected him, which his friend refuses at the last moment. In this novel, the main protagonist philosophizes about the disastrous consequences of the sexual revolution. Because of sexual liberalism, the market mechanism has come to determine human relationships; as a consequence, beautiful people get everything, ugly people get nothing. A film adaptation was made in 1999, also titled Whatever.

Two episodes of the American crime drama Law & Order: Special Victims Unit are based on incels. In season 16, the episode "Holden's Manifesto" (2014) is based on Elliot Rodger and the 2014 Isla Vista killings. In season 20, the episode "Revenge" (2018) features a group of incels who attack the targets of each other's obsession to exact revenge while creating alibis for one another, the plotline which in itself is inspired by a 1950s novel, Strangers on a Train. An episode of the American medical series Chicago Med also focused on an incel patient who is injured in a drive-by shooting targeting hospital staff.

Fair Warning, a 2020 thriller novel by Michael Connelly, features a company that buys genetic test data on women genetically identified as vulnerable to sex addiction. The company sells their names and addresses to incels, one of whom is a serial killer.

The 2023 science fiction film The Beast also features a character based on Elliot Rodger.

The British miniseries Adolescence, released on Netflix in 2025, directly explores incel culture. Told across four episodes, the series follows Jamie Miller, a 13-year-old boy arrested for the murder of his classmate, Katie. Through police interrogations and psychological evaluations, it is revealed that Jamie had been influenced by online ideologies associated with the manosphere and incel communities. The series examines the impact of social media, toxic masculinity, and adolescent radicalization.