May 23, 2014. Within ten minutes he managed stab his three roommates, to shoot two women outside of the Alpha Phi sorority, and to shoot another man inside a deli before speeding down the streets of Isla Vista, California, running 13 people over without hesitation, shielded by his armor in the form of a semiautomatic handgun, eventually turning it on himself and taking his own life as well. Within ten minutes, because of him, there were seven dead, 13 wounded. Because of him, families lost their loved ones that night, other people’s lives were changed forever. Elliott Rodgers changed the Isla Vista community forever. While this was viewed as a night of tragedy and an event rocked the nation for most people, there was a close knit group in the depths of the online world that celebrated, honored, and were inspired by the actions of Rodgers and his sacrifice to carry out this attack.
The online community is referred to as ‘incels’ – “a fringe group of sexually frustrated men who blame women for their misery and often advocate for violence against them”.
Rodgers was a prominent member of this online community as he expressed similar feelings to which he described in great detail in the manifesto he left behind entitled “My Twisted World”. A 141 page document, Rodgers began writing about his isolation and disgust for women in 2011 and began to actively plan his killing spree in Isla Vista – which he refers to as his ‘Day of Retribution’ – a year in advance as he grew tired of not getting the attention from women he thought he deserved while resenting the men that were successful at this.
When it came time for Rodgers to carry out his plan, he sent his manifesto to roughly 12 people, which is how this 107,000 worded document made its way into the hands of the public and therefore, the community of incels he belonged to. Upon hearing about Rodgers’ actions and reading his manifesto, the incel community was quick to praise him for carrying out the actions so many members felt and had written about online, referring to him as “Saint Elliot” on the incel subReddit where this community used to be confined to among other popular forums including 4chan.
Incel culture, ironically was started by a woman in the 1990s as “Alana’s Involuntary Celibacy Project.” What was supposed to be a website that acted as a safe space for “anybody of any gender who was lonely, had never had sex or who hadn’t had a relationship in a long time,” eventually blew up into cishet male dominated community that propagated hatred against women or “foids” which stands for “female humanoids.”
Terminology is just one of the ways incels dehumanize the two, and only types of women – the Stacys and the Beckys. The Stacys are the conventionally attractive and provocative women who end up with their male counterparts, or the “Chads.” Beckys on the other hand are “average” looking feminists who are “needy” and “seek attention online.” Consumed with anger over the belief that the Beckys and Stacys of the world are the reason why the society is rigged against them, these people have spent much of their life with feelings of rejection and self-hate.
These kindred spirits begin to see patterns in their misfortune – women; this space then becomes an echo chamber for hate. As their thoughts bounce off of each other, their anger intensifies at this shared experience of “discrimination” based on their precieved unattractiveness. The realization of the unjust world resonates deeply, which pushes for activism similar to the devastating actions of Rodgers in 2014 and grows in strength beyond the confines of its conception.
The advent of the “manosphere” – which is a collection of all online platforms that promote misogyny, toxic masculinity, and opposition to feminism – has endangered women to abuse from men who have fallen prey to the mass delusion of women being the cause of their apparent suppression. These men do not see themselves as “sexist”; these are men who are “social justice warriors” or “SJWs” who are on the battlefield to protect themselves from emasculation.
“A particularly worrisome trend is how seamlessly the militant incel community has been integrated into the alt-right tapestry,” notes Caron E. Gentry in a recent journal article. Gentry is a political scientist who studies the rise of extreme cultures online and the threat of terrorism they pose. “With common grievances and intermingling membership bringing the two extremisms closer together.”
The spread of these ideologies bears resemblace to the growth of Nazi Germany. What was once considered an unpopular, outrageous and offensive opinion rose in popularity due to special circumstances such as the Failure of the Weimar Republic combined with Germany’s ties to the Wall Street Crash of 1929. But the “manosphere” has what Nazi Germany did not – the internet.
The speed and vastness of social media allows for the tenets of the “manosphere” to be resound wherever the internet takes them, including alt-right groups such as QAnon, broadening the scope of those who share these violent thoughts about women and have proven they have no fear in taking action against their perceived injusdtices of the world as January 6, 2020 has shown.
More recently, the online crusade of these ideologies have reached TikTok and spread through a man named Andrew Tate. Tate, who was by almost every social media platform before his Twitter account was restored after Elon Musk’s takeover, has dedicated much of his online presence to giving men advice on becoming “alpha males.” His content propounds that the place of women in society as the property of men; pins the blame on women for getting raped, and connotes that society should regress in a way that disallows women from practicing basic rights like stepping outside their homes and driving.
Tate’s misogynistic, outdated and unpopular ideas are praised by this community of men that has grown far beyond the label of incels and their once-confined online presence, these videos of him being viewed 11.6 billion times on TikTok as of August. By having followers of Tate post to the platform using his name and likeness, they are able to flood TikTok with his ideas and adjust the algorithm to promote his content to people it wouldn’t traditionally reach, increasing – not only his following – but the spread of these ideas.
The vulnerability and manipulation social media algorithms such as TikTok’s have allowed views recognized as originating from incel culture to spread to other people and groups, no longer kept in the dark corners of the Internet like they once were on Reddit and 4chan. Because of the way content is being fed to users, they can’t help but be subject to these misogynistic views which is how numbers of those agreeing with them keep growing. Social media platforms and because of how their algorithms decide what content should be pushed, is creating its own online insurrection of violent, misogynistic content.
The algorithm is the gravel that paves the way to the big bucks, which lies in the attention span of the user. The algorithm informs itself with likes and comments to create a personalized profile for each user, using which, it finds a way to create a feed that keeps them engaged. But personalization without contradiction comes at the cost of polarization.
This is a distinction that the algorithm does not know how to draw. It has one job, and that is to engage the user with content without consideration of the nature of said content. Psychology and profit come together to form the perfect algorithm to recruit the likes of Elliot Rodgers.
Rodgers created a dangerous spark within the incel community, leading members to realize that this isn’t something they have to keep to themselves and commiserate with each other online – they can not only take action and make their feelings heard more loudly – there are others who feel similarly. The ideologies of these inherently misogynistic online cultures are no longer isolated incidents on forums such as Reddit or 4chan. They have bled into other groups tightly connected to the alt-right, onto social media platforms much more public and prominent than the ones they once lingered in. As these dangerous opinions become shared more publicly, so does their global impact.
In April of this year, Reset Austrailia, an “independent organisation raising awareness and advocating for better policy to address digital threats to Austrailian democracy,” conducted a study analyzing YouTube’s algorithm and the videos it serves young men and boys. The study found that, regardless of the content these accounts posing as young adult men and underage boys, the platform’s shorter video feature, YouTube Shorts, promoted more aggressive, extreme, anti-feminist and misogynistic content, all of which was coming from the U.S. and right-wing political personalities such as Ben Shapiro and Joe Rogan. The study concluded by expressing concern for what they’ve indentified as ‘incel’ attacks that they’ve noticed to become a prominent issue and form of terrorism.
The incel revolution is thirsting for blood with fantasies of killing women. Their anger propels them to champion rape and compete with each other by comparing “body counts”. The Center for Countering Digital Hate has published a report titled “The Incelosphere”, which claims that incel forum members post about rape every 29 minutes. An increasing number of individuals are expressing interest in mass murders, “Monthly posts mentioning or referencing incel mass murderers have increased 59% between 2021 and 2022,” says the report. These are “driven by coded references to Elliot Rodger.”
These thoughts have crawled out of their screens and found their way into the real world. “The violent threat posed by extremist incels is clear,” the report says. “We know that at least 59 people have been killed by individuals linked to incel ideology in news reports, police statements and legal records.”
The most concerning part, however, is that these desires have been expressed by boys as young as 15, who are also “powerusers”, or one of the most active members of the community. These users spend between three to 10 hours logged into the forum on a daily basis. Evidently, a better part of their time is consumed by the incel dogma; this manifests as blinders on their heads and curbs their ability to see a world outside of their anger.
To underestimate the ways in which incel culture has and continues to spread across media, communities, and continents is to ignore the power and anger that drives these groups to act on the change they feel entitled to. While, Elliott Rodgers may have propeled the wave of misogyny and hate towards appreciation of merciless violence; the “inceloshpere”, has now bled into communities across the alt-right, to a point where their homicidal reverie is becoming a reality. This has been made possible because of the tsunami of misinformation caused by social media platforms like TikTok. As they’ve continued to allow the issue to remain, they’ve allowed these groups the opportunity to continue grow in strength, posing a greater threat every day the algorithm goes unchanged. And until these algorithms are updated to more secure and less easily manipulated by such dangerous groups, they will continue to come out of the woodwork of the dark web and rise in dangerous popularity.
Julia's Blog 