It's interesting that a huge part of the 'horror' of incels is that they might have links to mainstream social media sites. There is a great new book by Max Fischer called "The Chaos Machine" that very clearly articulates that these supposed 'safe' mainstream social media sites are in fact themselves significantly more damaging to an exponentially larger group of people then the incels/manosphere will ever court themselves on their smaller forums. It's bizarre to me that they seem to think sites like youtube/reddit are so pure...it's as if they have never been on them.
I think the "incel threat" is overblown, partly because "incels" (read: disaffected young men) have always been a source of violence and social problems - this is not new and I'm not convinced it's increasing.
Yes they can be radicalised, but I think they're not so much radicalised *qua inceldom*, but into whatever else is going, depending on their cultural milieu. Who do you think gets radicalised by ISIS or [insert violent radical group here]? It's disaffected young men. Guys with good jobs and girlfriends aren't joining terror cells.
I think the "incel" concept on it's own is a red herring. If these researchers think men didn't tell rape jokes or have creepy ideas about women before the internet, well they are pretty naive.
I always take notice when incels are being mentioned in the media, because I am (was?) an incel. That is, 20 years or so ago, I used to post on the Involuntary Celibacy Mailing List. I don't know if that is where the term incel originated; I was under the impression that it was, and it was used there, but I read something that suggested that it might have come from somewhere else even earlier back in the 90s. I also don't know if there were other active incel communities at the time. Anyway, what's interesting to me is that in my recollection, the Incel Mailing List wasn't anywhere near the toxic environment that the media describe when they talk about "incels". Yes, there were romantically frustrated young men, but there were also frequent posters discussing their recovery from their mental health issues, and giving good life advice. And it wasn't even an entirely male milieu: yes, most posters were men, but I recall at least two frequent women posters, one of which used to be a "marcel" (in the incel lingo of the time, a "married celibate", that is, someone whose sex life completely dried up after marriage), but who'd left her husband and then embarked on a Dom/sub relationship with a younger man. And the list administrator was an asexual gay man (asexual but not aromantic). I have fond memories of the time I spent in the incel community, and it strikes me as a shame if the community today is as toxic as it is said to be.
Who is the Center for Countering Digital Hate and where is the money coming from to research and create this report? The head of research (so presumably the party responsible for this) is someone named Callum Hood - It doesn't list any background or credentials. Most of the other staff have something related to "online disinformation" in their bios which is a red flag. The orgs by-line indicates its funded by private donations from individuals and "philanthropic trusts."
It should not be lost on anyone that "incels" are typically depicted as white men. So are sex offenders. But white men are underrepresented among murderers, assaulters, rapists, and child molesters relative to other demographics. Incels might be more likely to shoot up a crowd with an assault rifle, but this is tiny drop in the bucket compared to the daily horrific violence that is being perpetrated by popular young men who don't seem to have any problem getting laid, judging by their ability to have children with multiple women outside of marriage before the age of 30.
No one will be surprised that an advocacy group will come up with such stuff. And ... they would be little more surprised that the elite media would breathlessly repeat it. It's been going on a long time. Even so, all this is less egregious than what institutions such the University of Washington are doing, in giving "scientific" support to that wretched trans treatment research.
I am grateful for this article pushing back on the idea that incels are this massive terroristic threat. I am a bit of an incel myself and I reject the notion that just because one is an outcast in the dating market or a low status man in general that you are going to end up a hateful violent person.
I was a virgin until I was 25, had one dysfunctional relationship and now at 34 I haven’t kissed a woman in 4 years. But I have no animosity towards women or anyone really. I know there are many other men (and some women too possibly) in similar or worse situations that don’t have hate in their hearts towards anyone.
We are in this group involuntarily and it bothers me that our whole demographic is disdained and feared based off the actions of a tiny minority of our members.
this report gives justification for large websites to deplatform users for a variety of opinions and views, including views critical of gender ideology or zionism. gender ideology and zionism both have trouble with facts. their policies harm people and depend upon unquestioning support. this report is an effort to keep views critical of gender ideology off large platforms.
Most extremist murders in the US are committed by radicalized white supremacists, like neo-Nazis and KKK. The total number is usually in double digits, with people connected to the "Manosphere" committing more like 0-5 murders per year. The number attributed to incel ideology might be around 100 murders in the past 10 years, but my guess is they're committed by people like pedophiles who also accept some other radical right-wing political ideology (like openly admiring Hitler + a lifelong pattern of sexual harassment or assault). I don't know what the number is if you remove everyone from the dataset who is also a radicalized white supremacist.
The reputable research seems to show that participating in an incel forum or something like GamerGate is associated with misogynistic attitudes but there isn't strong evidence that it's a radicalization pipeline to the far right. I'm not sure whether there could be a pipeline to becoming anti-vaccine or believing the 2020 election was stolen (which are dangerous beliefs at odds with reality but not the "radicalized" beliefs researchers were looking at).
Most of the flawed or questionable Web scraping and machine learning studies were done by students in 2018 and 2019 to try to support the "extreme radicalization" (GamerGate turns people into Nazis) hypothesis and weren't peer reviewed by data scientists, linguists, or extremism scholars. The CCDH report seems similar.
You can make good arguments for the CCDH report's recommendations without relying on the shoddy data analysis.
This reminds me of this report called "Exploring Extreme Language in Gaming Communities" which counted "border" as a racist word: https://gnet-research.org/2022/01/20/exploring-extreme-language-in-gaming-communities/
The WaPost piece that regurgitated the report’s conclusions was written by Taylor Lorenz. Who could have guessed?
It's interesting that a huge part of the 'horror' of incels is that they might have links to mainstream social media sites. There is a great new book by Max Fischer called "The Chaos Machine" that very clearly articulates that these supposed 'safe' mainstream social media sites are in fact themselves significantly more damaging to an exponentially larger group of people then the incels/manosphere will ever court themselves on their smaller forums. It's bizarre to me that they seem to think sites like youtube/reddit are so pure...it's as if they have never been on them.
I think the "incel threat" is overblown, partly because "incels" (read: disaffected young men) have always been a source of violence and social problems - this is not new and I'm not convinced it's increasing.
Yes they can be radicalised, but I think they're not so much radicalised *qua inceldom*, but into whatever else is going, depending on their cultural milieu. Who do you think gets radicalised by ISIS or [insert violent radical group here]? It's disaffected young men. Guys with good jobs and girlfriends aren't joining terror cells.
I think the "incel" concept on it's own is a red herring. If these researchers think men didn't tell rape jokes or have creepy ideas about women before the internet, well they are pretty naive.
I always take notice when incels are being mentioned in the media, because I am (was?) an incel. That is, 20 years or so ago, I used to post on the Involuntary Celibacy Mailing List. I don't know if that is where the term incel originated; I was under the impression that it was, and it was used there, but I read something that suggested that it might have come from somewhere else even earlier back in the 90s. I also don't know if there were other active incel communities at the time. Anyway, what's interesting to me is that in my recollection, the Incel Mailing List wasn't anywhere near the toxic environment that the media describe when they talk about "incels". Yes, there were romantically frustrated young men, but there were also frequent posters discussing their recovery from their mental health issues, and giving good life advice. And it wasn't even an entirely male milieu: yes, most posters were men, but I recall at least two frequent women posters, one of which used to be a "marcel" (in the incel lingo of the time, a "married celibate", that is, someone whose sex life completely dried up after marriage), but who'd left her husband and then embarked on a Dom/sub relationship with a younger man. And the list administrator was an asexual gay man (asexual but not aromantic). I have fond memories of the time I spent in the incel community, and it strikes me as a shame if the community today is as toxic as it is said to be.
Who is the Center for Countering Digital Hate and where is the money coming from to research and create this report? The head of research (so presumably the party responsible for this) is someone named Callum Hood - It doesn't list any background or credentials. Most of the other staff have something related to "online disinformation" in their bios which is a red flag. The orgs by-line indicates its funded by private donations from individuals and "philanthropic trusts."
It should not be lost on anyone that "incels" are typically depicted as white men. So are sex offenders. But white men are underrepresented among murderers, assaulters, rapists, and child molesters relative to other demographics. Incels might be more likely to shoot up a crowd with an assault rifle, but this is tiny drop in the bucket compared to the daily horrific violence that is being perpetrated by popular young men who don't seem to have any problem getting laid, judging by their ability to have children with multiple women outside of marriage before the age of 30.
No one will be surprised that an advocacy group will come up with such stuff. And ... they would be little more surprised that the elite media would breathlessly repeat it. It's been going on a long time. Even so, all this is less egregious than what institutions such the University of Washington are doing, in giving "scientific" support to that wretched trans treatment research.
I am grateful for this article pushing back on the idea that incels are this massive terroristic threat. I am a bit of an incel myself and I reject the notion that just because one is an outcast in the dating market or a low status man in general that you are going to end up a hateful violent person.
I was a virgin until I was 25, had one dysfunctional relationship and now at 34 I haven’t kissed a woman in 4 years. But I have no animosity towards women or anyone really. I know there are many other men (and some women too possibly) in similar or worse situations that don’t have hate in their hearts towards anyone.
We are in this group involuntarily and it bothers me that our whole demographic is disdained and feared based off the actions of a tiny minority of our members.
Thanks Jesse.
Mentioning rape in 1.6% of posts seems like a lot to me.
Of course, as you note, there's no way to know what proportion were promoting it versus mentioning its existence for whatever reason.
this report gives justification for large websites to deplatform users for a variety of opinions and views, including views critical of gender ideology or zionism. gender ideology and zionism both have trouble with facts. their policies harm people and depend upon unquestioning support. this report is an effort to keep views critical of gender ideology off large platforms.
Most extremist murders in the US are committed by radicalized white supremacists, like neo-Nazis and KKK. The total number is usually in double digits, with people connected to the "Manosphere" committing more like 0-5 murders per year. The number attributed to incel ideology might be around 100 murders in the past 10 years, but my guess is they're committed by people like pedophiles who also accept some other radical right-wing political ideology (like openly admiring Hitler + a lifelong pattern of sexual harassment or assault). I don't know what the number is if you remove everyone from the dataset who is also a radicalized white supremacist.
The reputable research seems to show that participating in an incel forum or something like GamerGate is associated with misogynistic attitudes but there isn't strong evidence that it's a radicalization pipeline to the far right. I'm not sure whether there could be a pipeline to becoming anti-vaccine or believing the 2020 election was stolen (which are dangerous beliefs at odds with reality but not the "radicalized" beliefs researchers were looking at).
Most of the flawed or questionable Web scraping and machine learning studies were done by students in 2018 and 2019 to try to support the "extreme radicalization" (GamerGate turns people into Nazis) hypothesis and weren't peer reviewed by data scientists, linguists, or extremism scholars. The CCDH report seems similar.
You can make good arguments for the CCDH report's recommendations without relying on the shoddy data analysis.
Modern 'journalism' and 'research' increasingly seem to be an endless sequence of people getting 'one guy'd' on purpose.