Bobo — as I knew him, beatboxxx69 on Reddit — stood me up for our online interview. When he sent me another encrypted video link later that night, he followed up with “my bad. Can you join now? I think this chat will be really useful.” I was in my pajamas, but nonetheless spent an hour of my Sunday night speaking with Bobo. He’d been divorced once, he told me, and was 35 years old. He lived in Virginia, and considered himself a therapist of incels.
Incels define themselves as men unable to find romantic or sexual partners, and blame, objectify and denigrate women and girls as a result. Those in this so-called “black pill” society have concluded that their chance of romance is nil, and believe that they have no future of ever establishing sexual relationships with women. The extremists among them believe that the entire world is living a lie of candid love and serendipitous relationships. They believe that women conspire to ostracize them sexually. The internet allows men with these views to find each other through chat rooms. In other circumstances that might be a good thing–knowing you’re not alone is usually seen as positive. But in the case of incels, the online meeting place seeded a toxic culture that is violently anti-female, and is growing
I persevered with Bobo, but his rhetoric was revealing itself as a pattern. The incel or anti-feminist or men’s rights defender attempts to goad me into saying something controversial, I try to steer the conversation back towards his beliefs, and it results in stalemate. And it is exhausting.
This encounter, though, had a twist: Bobo kept texting me afterwards.
I woke up the next morning to a text that read — along with the lyrics to Pink Floyd’s “The Dark Side of the Moon,” which was unrelated to our conversation — “btw your ‘tell’ is when you write notes. It’s easy to see that you’re tracking metrics, which is why I used them to test you, perverting your results. Not entirely to test you, though… what I said has merit.” I was a little confused, but mostly intrigued. It would be more interesting to take the bait than ignore him.
“What metrics do you think I’m tracking? I’m happy to share my notes with you if you’d like,” I said. Bobo was an interesting conversation, and his messages enticed me — as I presume they were meant to do. The line between getting caught in the trap versus playing along for my end goal of an interview, was a thin one. He responded a few hours later:
3:33 pm. “You’re already a walking stereotype. At least give people a chance to think otherwise.”
3:37 pm. “You have fear. It influences everything you work on.”
At this point, I’d had enough. I’m a curious creature, but not a glutton for punishment. I did not respond to Bobo, and continued on with my day.
3:20 pm, two weeks later. “It’s just that you’re a young white woman studying incels. If someone popped on the camera and saw me instead, it’d be different. I’m not saying it’s right, but we all have to acknowledge our optics.”
4:59 pm. “I should add that you’re even pretty. It took me a bit to realize it because it doesn’t affect me personally, but incels are going to think things because you’re pretty.”
5:00 pm. “they’ll presume you’re disconnected from reality”
Nobody ever sees an incel. It’s easy to imagine incels as boys in a basement, hidden in the dark with the glow of a laptop illuminating their faces. Lurking in the shadows, never seeing the light of day, and few and far between. An aggressive group, but a small group. Yet, you know them. And if you don’t know them, there is a girl in your life who knows them. It’s the guy at the bar who won’t leave you alone, who berates you and your appearance after you rebuff his advances. It’s the man from class who’s just weird, and doesn’t speak until all the sudden he’s spouting statistics about false rape accusations. You know him.
Involuntary celibates are part of the so-called manosphere. This is a cultural movement of men’s rights advocates, pick-up artists, and “men going their own way.” Each group has its nuances, but at its core, the manosphere is about masculinity. These men feel emasculated by the contemporary feminist movement, they are angry over being ignored, and they blame the wider society for encouraging misandry, or hatred of men.
The manosphere has now taken center stage through social media. Alt-right influencers like Andrew Tate and Nick Fuentes Jr. are utilizing the vocabulary and ideology of the manosphere within their content, and gaining traction with younger men for it. Going online and searching for answers about girl troubles leads you to Tate, who openly hates women and considers them property.
“I’m a realist. And when you’re a realist, you’re sexist. There’s no way you can be rooted in reality and not be sexist,” Tate said in a now unavailable video. He continues to call women “intrinsically lazy,” with no such thing as “an independent female.”
He’s currently charged in Romania with sex trafficking and abuse. His social media has attracted over 11.6 billion total views. And while Tate has now been banned from most social media platforms, his words spawned imitators — thousands of fan pages and new influencers cropped up, seeming to echo his mind. He markets himself as the king of toxic masculinity. He refers to himself as a misogynist, living a hyper-masculine and ultra-luxurious lifestyle. Tate was 2023’s third most Googled person.
Teenagers are being bombarded with online misogynistic content, and it’s bleeding its way into society. Research shows that girls are more susceptible to sexual harassment and abuse now, and even at risk of injury if they retaliate. This community works to normalize the idea that women’s liberation is the cause of men’s misfortunes. Boys are watching Tate’s videos before raping and killing women. His followers are beating women to death and posting the video on Snapchat. Despite his crimes, Tate was allowed back into the United States after two years in Romania for the trafficking charges, an abrupt change of heart by the Romanian courts at the apparent hand of President Donald Trump. When asked if he had involvement, Tate’s lawyer said, “Do the math. These guys are on the plane.”
This type of extremism is linked back to the manosphere. Within each sect, there are online chat rooms or blogs off the beaten path. These members are often the ones who are considered to be “blackpilled.” The term has its origin in the 1999 sci-fi film, “The Matrix,” where the main character has to choose between taking the red pill — become aware to the painful reality — or the blue pill, remaining in blissful ignorance. To take the blackpill — according to one site, incels.is — is to accept “a comprehensive, science-based perspective on what matters most in male-female sexual/relationship dynamics. It attempts to describe the objective truth about what men and women truly value most, even when it is not polite to discuss publicly.” It is the red pill with deep depression and suicidal ideation added. Everything stems out of the 80/20 theory — that 80% of all women only want to date the top 20% of men. This is very loosely tied to a 19th century ideal: the Pareto principle, named after an Italian economist who noticed that 80% of the land in Italy was owned by 20% of the population.
Manipulating historical ideals and facts is just one way to influence young, vulnerable newcomers. Explosive rants are hidden in long, winded academic debates that quote ancient Greek philosophy or math. Citing these myths creates the illusion that the urge to commit rape and abuse is actually academic.
“This is hard-backed data that draws from many different studies, which only further enforces one of the most fundamental black pill talking points,” one post reads, incorrectly analyzing a 2010 sexuality research article and claiming “sexual harassment instigated by attractive men is potentially enjoyable to women.”
The objective truth views women not as humans, but as beings for creating more children and assisting men. There is no scenario for them in which a woman would be loyal, or a woman has genuine struggle. They have no actual problems — they’ll just marry rich — and could never understand what it is like to be oppressed.
Online websites like Blackpill Club and Incel.is are chat rooms and a form of blogging for incels, a place for them to vent and connect with their peers. They post threads, comment on other discussions, ask for advice and degrade women.
“As an incel, you can never for a fucking second catch a break in life at all…” one post reads. “We exist just to endure eternal cosmic torture, that’s it; we can never get a fucking break ANYWHERE.” Another user responded with “everyone hates us because we’re ugly. That’s life.”
Some posts have threads that describe intricate, violent plans towards women, some describe self-harm impulses, some describe video games. It’s an unspoken rule to not share names, ages, or even general locations. Women aren’t viewed as fully human in chat rooms; rather, they are vessels for bearing children and sexual activity. If you’ve taken the blackpill, these ideas come naturally. You believe the rest of the world is living a lie — but also, that there is no hope. Feeding on and exacerbating that insecurity is what leads to the disgust around women. You believe you truly will be alone forever, and somehow decide you might as well embrace racism and sexism as a result.
“Do whatever the fuck you want,” one post reads. “Morality is a nonsensical set of concepts determined by the elites, designed to restrict your behavior and tell you what you can or cannot do, which is conveniently what is in their best interest.” Another says “being ‘incel’ is a state of being, not an identity. It is not a movement, ideology, or behavior, and there is nothing political about it.”
Fellow incels aren’t immune to the harsh criticism either. Looksmaxxing, a common term for trying to make yourself as attractive as possible, holds its own set of challenges and vocabulary. Oftentimes members will commiserate with each other about their looks, blaming unattractiveness for their inceldom. Each ethnicity has a different derogatory term for itself, replacing the prefix in incel with something related to race, like ‘ricecel’ for Asians. FAQs describes the practice as “drawing attention to the very real challenges that these minorities face. This is part of our group sense of humor.” Racism is casual, and often imprinted into the vocabulary.
Looksmaxxing, or blaming an unconventionally attractive appearance for the lack of relationships, is a large part of the manosphere as well. It places the blame on women rather than on the man, and makes the women seem shallow. Rob, a 29-year-old from England, got into the manosphere after he turned to the Internet to help himself become more attractive. He noticed his receding hairline for the first time when he was 18, and then his recessed chins at 23. When he saw a side profile of himself for the first time and consulted the Internet for answers, incels had the answer.
“This was the first time I could actually see the ugliness in myself,” Rob told me. From there, Rob turned to the Internet for answers. What did women think about them, what did they say online? The people who gave him the most helpful valuable answers, he found, were part of the incel space: something he’d previously considered a crazy online subculture. They got him. They knew what he’d been experiencing his whole life: rejection.
Rob learned the thing he’d be questioning for his entire life — what was wrong with him. He didn’t have a strong chin, or defined jaw, thick hair or anything else that an ‘attractive man’ had. It was no longer an abstract concept, he could see it. He couldn’t get away from it. It was in front of him everywhere: on TV, real life, social media, movies. Rob had been black pilled. Now, Rob considers sexual attraction purely a response to physical traits. Female sexual attraction responds to a narrower range of physical traits than male attractions. The hotter men get sex the easiest with the hottest women without even trying.
“Yes. I hate women,” Rob said. “That’s not to say I’m not attracted to women or that I don’t crave their affection. I simultaneously desire women whilst also hating them for not desiring me.”
Rob isn’t the only one who entered the space through physical concerns. George, who’s been in the looksmaxxing community since 2019, told me he never leaves the house without shoe lifts. He holds his chin a certain way to establish dominance. He thinks it’s how he got a few of his friends, he told me.
Looksmaxxing is a large part of how incel rhetoric is incorporating itself into society. Alpha male podcasts, for example. A large part of the faux explanation behind incel theories is in ancient Greek philosophies. Being an alpha male, not a betabuxx or a sheepish man just doing society’s bidding. New lingo from young boys is all about ‘what the sigma.’ Making yourself a high-value man, or someone deeply desirable and attractive to other women. Conservative is now synonymous with red-pilled. Referring to women as females isn’t just “calling them what they are,” it’s an intentional choice to refer to them as a biological being rather than a human you respect. It’s an extension of male, reduced down to your body.
Many conservatives and many of the men on the chat rooms are enraged by the trend of ‘man versus bear.’ Women are asked, given the choice between being locked in a room with a bear or a man, which would you choose? Women are saying the bear. Men are enraged by the idea of a bloodthirsty animal being chosen over a fellow human being. The explanation from women? If they were to be killed, the bear would be blamed. But the man wouldn’t be.
Incel culture entered popular consciousness in 2014, with a murderous rampage by Californian Elliot Rodger. He’s referred to as Saint Elliott within the online circles, as someone revered and honored — looked up to. Posts refer to “going ER,” or commiting a murder-suicide in the name of inceldom.
Rodger is known to most for killing six people and then himself in a shooting spree after posting a misogynistic manifesto on YouTube. He emailed a 141-page document to his closest friends, detailing his troubles. He was a virgin and hadn’t kissed a girl. Rodger described himself as the “ideal magnificent gentleman,” and couldn’t understand why women didn’t want to have sex with him. Thus, his “Day of Retribution” was born: he targeted the Alpha Phi sorority at the University of California, Santa Barbara, home to the women he considered the hottest. In his words, “the kind of girls I’ve always desired but was never able to have.”
News accounts at the time considered it tragic, a crime against women, but a seeming one-off. What nobody predicted is that four years later, somebody would consider it a call to arms.
In 2018, 25-year-old Alek Minassian, who lived in Toronto, posted a Facebook message praising Rodger, stating that “the Incel Rebellion has already begun! We will overthrow all the Chads and Stacys! All hail the Supreme Gentleman Elliott Rodger!” Minassian is known for driving a van into a crowd of women in the city center of Toronto, killing 10 and injuring 14.
“I was watching YouTube and found a video about Elliot Rodger. I thought the case was interesting, but then I realized I related to him,” said *Chris, 23. “That’s how I became an incel. I pretty much attribute me entering the incel community to bullying and extreme horniness.”
Chris considers himself a reformed incel — after smoking some weed, having a come to Jesus moment and removing himself from the Internet for a little bit — and tries to share his journey online to help other people who might be attempting to leave. But he has to actively stay away from the community every day, and lives in fear of slipping back in.
“It still kinda poisons my mind, that’s how insidious it is,” he said. “It’s a poison that always lingers even if you cough it up. I have a feeling that once I do get a girlfriend, I’ll occasionally have blackpill moments where I worry about her settling for me, but they won’t destroy me.”
Coming to the conclusion that the world is tipped against men in favor of women — taking the blackpill — is only the beginning of incel vocabulary and theories. Women are referred to as foids, a portmanteau of “female androids.” It’s a derogatory term for a woman, and used to disassociate women from actual human beings with emotions. The most attractive people of the human race are called Chads and Stacys: they are the Brad Pitts and Angelina Jolies of the world. Beckys are the other women; less attractive, and therefore, normal. Attainable.
“When you spend hours upon hours on incel forums complaining about women, you are losing time you could spend trying to attract them,” Chris said. “Once I actually logged off the computer, I had success. The forums, the subculture, the ideology, it keeps these poor men locked in their misery.”
There are new terms for everything you could imagine. Glowies are undercover law enforcement officers or informants attempting to infiltrate their communications. This term extends to all alt-right communities, not only incels. They believe glowies try to catch them planning violence, or push them into illegal acts. When I first joined the forums, I was branded a glowie at once.
“Glowies are running out of ideas,” one reply to my first post read. I’d asked if anyone wanted to chat. Another said, “you’d think glowies would learn how to infiltrate these spaces by now.” One offered tips to become “a very likeable individual among your incel peers and a very pervasive misogynist to the utmost degree.”
The vocabulary allows for these communities to fly under the radar. If no one can decipher what they’re speaking about, then no one can really tell what they mean. It’s the difference between getting banned on Reddit for talking about raping a women, and being praised on the ‘black pill club’ for ‘giving a foid what they deserve.’
“They have ways to try and suss out new people in forums to know if they’re cops or not, if they’re journalists or, you know, they’re spies amongst the group,” said Rayme Silverberg, a researcher who worked with the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office to create materials that educate law enforcement on incel warning signs. “They’re very, very intentional.”
It’s an exclusive club. Those who are in it are led deeper down a dark path. Those who leave are considered weak. Outsiders are considered “bluepilled” (otherwise known as normal members of society) and stupid — for believing in society and feminism. In 2022 — three years after Scott Beierle killed two women and then himself at a Tallahassee yoga studio — the Department of Homeland Security and Secret Service released a case study in misogynistic extremism and the growing terrorism threat from incels. They had researched the killing in incel chat rooms. Now, everyone is a potential government spy. Attempted debates are met with vicious and detailed threats of violence, like “I’m going to slice off those vile, laughable monstrosities you call breasts, you ugly, fucking tranny. Do us all a favor and shoot yourself in the face.”
Many post questions about suicidal thoughts, about getting rejected by girls and about family troubles. The responses that come are sometimes helpful, but mostly twist back to reflect the black pill ideology, pulling young men deeper into the manosphere. Throughout my conversations with users, I was met with anger and misogyny, which I anticipated, mostly from people who thought I would expose them.
“So yeah I do think you’re a piece of shit wolf in sheep’s clothing,” one response read. “Masquerading as a sincere journalist but in reality you’re an anti male feminist who wants to find more and more information to blame men and invalidate our experiences because a few bad people who happened to be male did something bad. Now get off my dm’s, fuck you!”
It makes sense that users remain anonymous, because most of them are aware of the social connotation that will come with vocalizing misogyny — outcast and exile, probably — but they also can’t keep their thoughts to themselves. What once would have died in the darkest corner of a man’s brain in his weaker moments is now online, and is getting fanned by the flames of the Internet. I talked to men from every walk of life, nearly every corner of the world. A 19-year-old who goes to university in California, a married man in his 40s from West Virginia. Some — like Max, 33, married from New England — spoke to me at work in between meetings, or after school, like Simon, 18, from Malta.
While abstaining from any identifiable details is an unwritten rule, most forums have explicit rules on what is or isn’t allowed. They are different from the typical code of conduct that’s on Instagram or Facebook. The rules almost demand insulting vocabulary and negative rhetoric. Women, LGBTQ+ individuals and non-incels are not allowed. There’s no LGBTQ+ content allowed at all — unless “you’re criticizing it.” Also not allowed is the discussion of “ personal romantic or sexual experiences, even if they happened long ago.” However, “discussion of paid sex is allowed as an exception, as the community has voted to allow it.” It’s easy to see how the path leads you further into the community rather than out of it. You can’t humble-brag, troll, bait or try to convert people to new religions. Don’t post AI content, animal abuse, or low effort content. The most recent rule on incels.is is about sexualizing minors, specifically pre-pubescent minors, as that is not allowed.
Misogynistic violence is at its worst in the U.K., and the movement against women gains more political ground everyday.
Mike Buchanan founded the British political party “Justice for Men and Boys (and the Women Who Love Them)” which operated in the United Kingdom from 2013-2020 and was proudly anti-female. He said that arranging for a public space where members could hold meetings was an issue that he regularly dealt with, and still deals with in the community today.
“It’s actually one of the 20 areas we have on our posters for the annual international conferences on men’s issues, denial of access to platforms,” Buchanan said. “And it’s not just media platforms, it’s also physical platforms. Anybody who’s tried to find a venue prepared to host an international conference on men’s issues, will realize it’s an uphill battle, very, very big, difficult.”
“I have some sympathies for incels,” Buchanan said. “I think it’s not unreasonable that a young man, unable to find a partner, will look at his father and his grandfather and think to himself, how is it that they found partners, and yet I’m struggling badly… but it’s all an inevitable result of women’s hypergamy. A very large majority of women would prefer a partner of high earnings and other attributes.” Buchanan’s rhetoric echoes the ideals of the 80/20 theory, despite his not being familiar with the idea.
“Men get the shitty end of the stick on everything,” he said. “And the idea that women are oppressed, in fact, I’d say the idea that they were ever oppressed is a crock of shit, that the idea that they are today is beyond a joke.”
The similarities between the conservative space and the incel sphere are increasing. Buchanan’s party focused heavily on keeping women out of government positions and protesting feminism within politics. He told me female empowerment drives male disempowerment and disadvantage, part of why he separated from the Conservative party in the U.K. Buchanan also focuses on false accusations of misogyny and rape, a large point in the men’s rights sect of the manosphere.
“Men have nothing to be ashamed about,” Buchanan said. “Women have plenty to be ashamed about, but by comparison are shameless, and unaccountable.”
In 2020, women’s rights activist Laura Bates wrote “Men Who Hate Women,” one of the first in depth accounts of online misogyny. She faces vicious ridicule and harassment for her work to this day. One in every 12 women in England and Wales are victims of gender-based violence — reaching up to two million women every year. The National Police Chiefs Council is considering it a national emergency. The analysis was first was launched after the murder of Sarah Everard, when a Metropolitan Police officer kidnapped her from the streets and then raped and murdered her. Most recently, the Metropolitan Police is being sued for reinstating a 999, the U.K.’s emergency line, employee who called Everard a slut. He was allowed to come back to work four months after a misconduct panel dismissed him for making inappropriate racist remarks about crime victims, and following a female colleague home. The Met boss who gave him his job back allegedly suggested the panel had been too emotional.
“It is easy to ridicule these groups,” Bates writes. “But the breadth of their support, the foothold they have carved out in the media and political landscape, and the gateway they provide for the mainstream narrative, greased with a sheen of respectability, all suggest that this is not a movement we should be laughing off.”
The NPCC report estimates 3,000 offenses a day against women and girls over the age of 16. The average age of victims of gendered child abuse is 13, with the average age of perpetrators being 15. It is a 300% increase over 10 years.
“Incel ideas, like the belief that women secretly want to be raped, begin to worm their way through the different communities of the manosphere and pop out into real people’s lives,” Bates writes. “The woman who tried to fight off her rapist may never have heard of incels or PUAs, but they impacted her life in the most profound way imaginable.”
The American manosphere may seem less toxic than the U.K. ‘s, but the current administration appears to be giving some of their ideas a green light. The commander-in-chief is a convicted sex abuser. The director of the Office of Management and Budget is an author of Project 2025, a “roadmap” for the Republican party that wants to do away with many women’s rights. The vice president is oddly focused on American fertility. Even the deputy director of the FBI is a podcaster, despite being banned from YouTube for promoting COVID-19 misinformation in 2022.
One post summarizes it best: “I don’t know a lot about politics, but I can smell an opportunity for consequence-free crime when it toots. So I’ve just been wracking my brain thinking about what I can do in the name of Donald ‘grab ‘em by the pussy’ Trump that I could get away with.”
When young men are increasingly presented with online content from figures like Tate or Fuentes, it is not surprising that some internalize their logic. Sixty-four percent of men between the ages of 18 and 29 voted for Trump, compared to the 56% who voted for him in 2020. Trump’s appeared on podcasts like Joe Rogan, Logan Paul, Theo Von and the Nelk Boys.
By appearing on these podcasts, he’s immediately more accessible to younger men. He presents as unapologetically himself, and is celebrated for embracing his controversial past. The questions make it seem like he’s been unfairly targeted by the rest of the world. A martyr, a hero — a misunderstood jokester. Other misunderstood influencers, like far-right livestreamer Nick Fuentes Jr., get invited to dinner at Mar-a-Lago. Fuentes is a white supremacist, neo-Nazi Holocaust denier and self-proclaimed incel. After the election results last November, a portion of his live stream reached mainstream media.
“How does it feel when we control your bodies?” Fuentes jests, laughing. “Hey bitch! We control your bodies. Guess what? Guys win again. Glass ceiling? Dude, it’s a ceiling made of fucking bricks, you will never break it. Your stupid face keeps hitting the brick ceiling. We will keep you down forever. You will NEVER control your own bodies. ”
Fuentes’ hyper-masculine free-thinking state of mind seems ascendant. The President is apparently his friend. Those who were censoring themselves even slightly have been granted permission to speak honestly about what they think of women. Rogan’s live stream shows him jumping up and down, elated. Conor McGregor, the mixed martial arts champion recently convicted of rape in the British courts, was invited to the White House. For young boys, the path of a political party is clear — the influencers they watch support Trump, so they are meant to support Trump. The influencers speak to women a certain way, and they parrot it back.
“These are men who are emotionally immature and are trying really hard to become healthy men, but there’s not a lot of role models for that,” psychotherapist Jamie Francis said in an interview. Online, she says, “You really have two main kinds of men you can emulate. You can emulate someone who’s like, really, really alpha male, like a businessman, super successful, makes everything in his life about work, just tries to make as much money as possible. Or you can emulate kind of the opposite. Men are trying to figure out, well, how do I choose between these two extremes?”
Alt-right and conservative political campaign aims are too similar to incel ideology. Both groups support limiting a woman’s right to birth control and abortion. But incels want this because they believe that without limits, women will use abortion as a form of birth control, and engage in hypergamy. Many men highlight the disparities within divorce and family court, and how they believe courts tend to favor the mother over the dad. Or that women have specific gendered homeless and domestic violence shelters, while men do not. Vice President JD Vance is focused heavily on raising the birthrate in America by offering cash incentives or introducing more classes on menstrual cycles so women know when they’re ovulating.
“It’s the most, most lethal ideology ever adopted by so many people,” Mike Buchanan said on abortion. “The World Health Organization estimates that more there are more than 70 million abortions every year, and we have feminism to credit for the greatest genocide in human history. No parallels.”
A lot of this shift in conservatism is pushback to the 2017 #MeToo movement. Women banded together and spoke out against systemic oppression and abuse, pushing for liberation and independence. This aggravated the incel community andconservative men’s groups — they took the choice for women to have higher standards personally. The push for excluding abusers and sexists from society was extreme. Cancel culture pushed harder and harder, and eventually the exiled group of men became bigger than the exilers. Power shifted. Shortly after 2024 presidential election results were finalized, Fuentes tweeted. It was deleted shortly after, but the word had already spread.
“My body, my choice” is a slogan associated with pro-choice movement, coined in 1970 as a feminist empowerment chant. It evolved past the abortion discussion and today remains representative of a wider feminist ideal — from everything sexual assault to the choice to have a hysterectomy. The new masculine spin means much more than being pro-life, it’s about being pro-control. Instead of navigating a dating environment in which they believe they are not wanted, incels are creating their own world in which consent is overridden completely. Not only are you completely protected from disappointment, but you have a godfathered-in right to sex.
One in every three women across the globe has experienced sexual or physical violence at least once in their lives. Fifty-eight percent of adolescent girls and young women have experienced some type of online harassment — and most report their first experience to be between the ages of 14 and 16. Gender-based violence is a systemic issue that impacts women, and the growing normalization of this rhetoric makes everything worse.
The other issue with the manosphere is that it is not only young boys who are watching them, and it doesn’t just lead to taunting in schools or online. In March of this year, in the U.K., 26-year-old Kyle Clifford watched Andrew Tate videos, and then raped his ex-girlfriend before killing her, her mother and her sister. In October, University of Delaware student Kyle Stevens was sentenced to 7 years in prison after stalking and terrorizing two women over four years while spending most of his time in incel chatrooms. That same month, another 17-year-old in the U.K. beat a woman to death after Andrew Tate and other creators influenced his thinking, according to the judge. Last March, Tres Gesno was caught as he was planning mass femicide — he idolized Eliott Rodger. In November of 2023, a 17-year-old Canadian teenager killed two women with a sword inscribed with a sexist epithet; he was later deemed a terrorist. Even Dominique Pelicot, whose trial for drugging and raping his wife for decades along with hundreds of other men captured the world, used men’s chat rooms to advertise his wife for sexual favors.
“Feminists act like the manosphere and Andrew Tate came because men just decided to become misogynistic again all of a sudden,” Ben, a 19-year-old from California, said in an interview. He posts on Reddit about men’s rights activism. “But tell me, where were the Andrew Tate and the manosphere prior to 2020? Andrew Tate and the Red Pill movement is a symptom and reaction to the disease that is feminists attacking men. It’s simple, if feminists never began to attack men as a whole, Andrew Tate and the Manosphere would’ve NEVER been a thing.”
The evolution from a conservative man calling himself red-pilled (awakened to the horrors of democratic society) and to murdering an ex-girlfriend is not direct, but it is there. The path is long but it is still a path. There is a pattern and a link between words, actions, and beliefs. When the words are turned into memes, they become commonplace — and this empowers the more violent incels to bring more extreme content into the mainstream. Social media’s algorithms promote this type of controversial content because it gets the most engagement. The more you watch, the more extreme content you’re recommended. In the runup to the 2016 election, even when starting from a neutral point, YouTube’s algorithm was six times more likely to recommend anti-Hillary Clinton videos than anti-Trump to users — often times extreme conspiracy theorists who were suggesting that Clinton had ties to Satanic cults or was hiding a severe illness.
It’s like turning the heat under a pot of water to a boil. Alpha turns to red pill, turns to Chad and Stacy, turns to foid. It leaks slowly from the chatrooms back to the Reddit pages that have been carefully crafted with code-words to avoid the terms of service violations, and encrypted in backup sites when it gets taken down. Boys see their favorite streamers using the slang online, so they use it with their friends. All of a sudden, it’s cool to tell women they should be raped.
In 2018, it was revealed that the creator and moderator of an incel website called “Incelocalypse” was none other than a candidate for elective office in Virginia named Nathan Larson. Under the pseudonym Leucosticte, he had been posting in-depth essays with titles like “Even If You Could Get Pussy From A Willing Female, You Should Want To Rape Girls” and “How To Psyche Yourself Up To Feel Entitled To Rape” (by never forgetting that “feminism is the problem, and rape is the solution”). These are not all men who rarely leave their apartments and don’t come up from the internet for air. Larson identified himself online as a ‘rapecel.’ His involvement was discovered after he was arrested for kidnapping and raping a twelve-year-old girl.
Currently, a Republican candidate for California’s governor is referencing the manosphere and inceldom. Kyle Langford has gone so far as to point to immigration as the reason for inceldom. His platform, recently shared on podcast Right Wing Watch, includes deporting all male undocumented immigrants and giving the undocumented women one year to marry a California incel. If not, they too will face deportation.
“This is why the gender war will not and cannot stop until feminists tone down their rhetoric towards men and hold those misandrists in the feminist movement accountable and publicly condemn them,” Ben, the university student from California, told me. “It’s not on our side to stop the gender war; we are the symptom of the root disease that is modern feminism. Once that disease is removed, men will stop watching Andrew Tate and the manosphere, for the most part at least.”
Netflix’s new limited series “Adolescence” highlights how incel culture infiltrates schools. The series depicts the aftermath of a young boy killing a girl in his class, with law enforcement fumbling its way through the complicated web of online communities that hold the answers for the investigation. The scenes of adults struggling to comprehend the coded language of online posts,the meaning behind an emoji, show that the rise of incel is also part of a generation gap. It’s grown that way through alt-right influencers — men who have embraced being on the outskirts of cancel culture, who thrive on controversy. Most of their channels are podcast or stream style, oftentimes producing hours of content while they speak to subscribers and friends. It becomes stream-of-consciousness banter, and makes the listener feel as though they’re a part of the friendship. It results in political influence, specifically with having Trump as a guest.
New York University student Annie Emans, wrote an op-ed that credits these influencers for the shift.
“They are not directly saying vote for Trump or be a right-wing person,” said Emans in an interview, “But [that’s communicated] through the topics that they speak on. It’s this almost quiet indoctrination of men to the alt right pipeline. Men are very emboldened to talk about your value as a woman, and compare you to other women and their value in the world.”
They’ll begin with masculinity, or the American family, or dating culture. Topics that aren’t explicitly political, but hold conservative connotations. Politics hovers below the surface as the conversation dances around the concrete issues. Until it dips, and then it devolves into harmful, hateful and misogynistic commentary about women.
The slope is slippery.
There’s an odd confidence and connection between the men online, and who they presumed I was. Every person who I told in my life about my research said the same thing — you’re like, in enemy territory.
Online, I know their worst thoughts and their greatest desires and weirdest fantasies. They are honest. There are no consequences. They are not scared. It’s not enemy territory because I have all the facts — I know who they are, I know what they’re doing, and I know what they’re thinking. I can not only assume the worst but be pretty confident that I’m right on it. There is nothing for them to hide, there is nothing for me to worry about. The real enemy territory for me is everywhere else.
Because everywhere else, I know nothing. I am interacting with the same people, and I don’t know it. There is no screen in between us, and they know while I do not. They’re dressed nicely and smiling at me from across the bar and there is absolutely no way for me to know. In the split second where we make eye contact and he steps forward and I have to decide whether to pretend I didn’t see him or not, there is no way for me to know. If I say the wrong thing online, I can backpedal. I can control the situation. But if I mess up in the bar, I could end up unconscious on the bathroom floor.
When they are online, they are the worst versions of themselves. In public, it’s the snake slithering through the grass. It’s when I close my laptop that I get scared, because these guys tell me they have wives, and they have children and they have jobs. I don’t know if the guy in line behind me at Trader Joes is actually “memelord420” who told me two days ago that he liked to fantasize about raping women in the grocery store to establish dominance and prove his authority over women. That is enemy territory.
Shortly following Trump’s reelection to office, the 4B movement surfaced in the U.S. The 4B movement is a feminist protest, originally from South Korea — where all four stipulations start with the Korean phonetic syllable “bi.” No dating men, no marrying men, no having sex with men, no having children with men. Alexa Vargas, a New York college student, went viral for posting TikToks about her experience joining 4B, which she started after leaving an abusive relationship.
“It’s technically not even a choice,” Vargas said. “It’s just like, what I have to do and what women have to do in order to protect themselves.”
The traction gained by the 4B movement post election shows the emotional turmoil many young women are facing. Vargas’s overall opinion of the dating market is bleak: she doesn’t foresee a future with a man again.
“I’ve seen a lot of just really angry, pissed off men,” Vargas said. “It kind of just incites more like violence and anger, and it just makes younger men realize, like, oh, I can get away with this. Because all these people in power are getting away with it…. when he’s in office, it just affirms men like you can do all these things and still be in a position of power.”
Many women are using the 4B movement as a preventative measure. They don’t feel safe entering the dating pool or using apps to meet people — because most of the time, it means subjecting yourself to vicious ridicule or unwanted sexual photos. And in real life, women are scared of what may be hiding underneath the polite small talk, because who they follow on Instagram could indicate a lot more than before. Not knowing is much scarier than knowing.
“There’s so many men who just start watching these podcasts wanting to figure out their masculinity,” Annie Emans, college student and journalist, said. “And I think there’s been a desire for that recently and like, this hunger to not be feminine, and be this alpha male, and then it can so quickly spiral into being, like, incredibly right wing.”
The term incel is well-evolved past simple involuntary celibacy. It’s a mindset and a political affiliation. But it stems from women, and the idea of control over them. It is only now that they feel more empowered to speak out about their views that it’s being renamed as red-pilled, or conservative. Incels want a woman who only exists for them and for the purpose of having sex or having children. Conservatives want trad-wives, and blame it on contemporary liberalism.
“Dating apps is probably the number one reason for incels/blackpillers, and feminism doesn’t seem to ever look into it,” Jack, creator of an incel Reddit page, told me. “I also believe that feminism tends to disqualify men almost completely, requiring them to avoid what they consider toxic traits, even the smallest ones.”
The core difference between involuntary celibates and the 4B movement is that women are doing it for fear of their own safety, and men do it because they feel unwanted. The communities are quite similar at their base, but the illusion of choice and female consent is a strong one. Before a new date, a woman will share her location with her friends, send them photos and identifiable details. Create contingency plans, check-in points throughout the night and tuck a pepper spray in their purse. Men do not feel the need to do those things. With the new surge of this violent perspective towards women, many do not feel like they have a choice but to stop dating entirely — for their own safety. It even permeates my mind sometimes. I am scared to look over people’s shoulders on the bus because I’m terrified I might see an interface that I recognize. The blue, purplish glow of The BlackPill Club or Incel.is, or dark mode of r/MensRights. Others that I won’t recognize because they’re too deep on the Internet for even me to have found. I try to look at their faces or their shoes instead, but all I can imagine is the glow of a desktop on their face at night, writing down their deepest and darkest thoughts about the woman in their lives.
“I feel like, as a woman, there’s not much I can do,” Emans said. “It’s so hard to understand. It’s so hard to understand why men hate women. I will never understand it. I’ll never try to get it. Like women are not important enough to people. Women’s rights are not important enough to people that it impacts their voting patterns. That does not make people fathers with daughters, men with wives, men with sisters, men who interact with women every day, the fact that they find the price of eggs or like having Elon Musk, you know, be a billionaire more exciting or important to them than the safety of their daughter or the safety of their mother.”
Every time I speak to someone about my research, they ask me what it is like being in enemy territory. I don’t see it that way. I think that a lot of incels believe that being in a loving and caring relationship with a woman will fix all of their problems. It could fix some, but not all. There is a built up idea of a girlfriend, a wife, a woman in their head. That is unattainable. No woman will be able to fit that mold. No one will be able to satisfy those requirements. It is a pipe dream.
I almost had a sense of empathy for the people I spoke to, because mainly they just wanted someone to vent to. They wanted to share their opinions and have someone tell them they were understood. If they weren’t telling me how much they hated me, I might have understood. They’re lonely. They’ll tell me how much they hate me and what I represent, but most of them thanked me for our conversation at the end. Chris, the reformed incel I spoke to, told me it was taking the haters advice — touching grass, literally — that pulled him out.
“I could feel empathy,” Chris recalled. “All throughout my life. I never actually tried hooking up with girls in real life. I tried pursuing girls online, but that doesn’t count. I realized that one day, I would die, and even if I didn’t get any sex or love, I might as well keep trying.”
Bobo texted me again the next day.
12:57 am. “if what you think I have is anger, you’re totally wrong.”
Bobo, you are clearly thinking about me more than I am thinking about you. I am asleep.
4:15 am. “What I said shouldn’t even make an undergraduate flinch. You’re unprepared for basic education if you can’t do any critical thinking. ridiculous!”
4:17 am. “I can do critical thinking nonstop all day everyday. You can’t and it’s egregious. You should get your money back from your institution.”
Many of my interviews insulted my educational choices: journalism is a dying field, NYU is a dumb liberal school. Bobo’s persistence began to creep me out. I have not responded since my question about what metrics he was referring to.
4:18 am. “Do you not see me dancing around you? Mocking you? You need to step up”
Bobo is dancing with an invisible partner. He has built up an imaginary war, imagined my face red with anger and stomping my feet. He’s winning, he’s taunting me, but a key part of this ideology is based on women’s fear and men’s domination.
But I’m not scared of Bobo. He’s scared of losing me.
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