The newest phenomenon with regard to rage, violence, and frustration is the “incel” who has burst onto social media platforms with clandestine hate comments. According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary definition, an incel is a person (usually a man) who regards himself or herself as involuntarily celibate, and typically expresses extreme resentment and hostility towards those who are sexually active.
Incels harbour deep resentment towards women and other men who are sexually active, according to experts. “They blame women for their own lack of sexual and social status. In fact, most incels believe that women should be shamed and, in some extreme cases, even be physically punished with sexual assault, rape or disfigurement,” says a report on Firstpost. And, in extreme cases, even be killed.
Social media seems to have given incels (and those who troll incels) a platform to hurl abuses and accusations, albeit via code language and emojis that are loaded with violent innuendos.
The story of a Netflix series by Stephen Graham and Jack Thorne released in March 2025, titled Adolescence , features what goes on in the lives of incels, with the story set in the UK. It features a 13-year-old Jamie Miller who is arrested for allegedly murdering a female classmate, who rejected him and mocked him on social media for being an incel. A comprehensive write-up by Ketaki Desai in the Sunday Times on March 23, 2025 talks about the emergence of incels, their anger, resentment, frustration, their behaviour and motives. The Netflix series Adolescence , she says, holds a mirror to this phenomenon. Desai quotes Professor Srimati Basu – chair of the Gender and Women’s Studies Department at the University of Kentucky College of Arts – who says it has a lot to do with the dreams we’re socialised to have: “You’re raised by an adoring mother to think you’re the bee’s knees and then you encounter real-life women who are not that interested in your looks. Sometimes, it is sort of tragic. But other times, that turns toxic. Everyone imagines themselves to have a heteronormative future where they are the heroes that they see in movies.” She adds: “It’s coming from the inability to break into the successful hero mode.”
How did this term, “incels” – involuntary celibates – come about? It apparently came from a Reddit thread “in which tens of thousands of users, mostly young men, commiserate about their lack of sexual activity – many of them placing the blame on women,” says Josh O’Kane, reporter with Canada’s Globe and Mail . According to Firstpost , “In November 2018, Reddit said it banned a 41,000-strong incel group for violating its rules regarding violent content.”
A New York Times report by Julie Bosman, Kate Taylor, and Tim Arango dated August 10, 2019 highlighted thus: “In recent years, a number of these men (mass shooters) have identified as so-called ‘incels’, short for involuntary celibates, an online subculture of men who express rage at women for denying them sex, who frequently fantasise about violence, and celebrate mass shooters in their online discussion groups.” In 2014, Elliot Rodger killed six people in Isla Vista, California, a day after posting a video wherein he describes himself as being tortured by sexual deprivation, and promises to punish women for rejecting him. The NYT report says that several mass killers have cited Rodger as an inspiration. According to the report, Alek Minassian, “who drove a van onto a sidewalk in Toronto in 2018, killing ten people, had posted a message on Facebook minutes before the attack praising Rodger. ‘The Incel rebellion has already begun!’ he wrote, ‘All hail Supreme Gentleman Elliot Rodger.’”
The NYT report was written in the aftermath of a violent shooting in a school in Dayton, Ohio, by a man who shot nine people dead. He had been known to seethe at female classmates and had even threatened them with violence. As per the authors, the researchers point out, “The motivations of men who commit mass shootings are often muddled, complex, or unknown. But one common thread that connects many of them – other than access to powerful firearms – is a history of hating women, assaulting wives, girlfriends, and female family members or sharing misogynistic views online.”
It is commonly concluded that mass shooters are mostly men known to have a history of inflicting domestic violence and abuse on women, all warning signals of impending large-scale violent acts if left unchecked or unreported. An individual who feels cornered, rejected, and insecure, who is therefore lonely, finds that once he discovers a community of like-minded people online, there are opportunities to vent that anger and also win approval.
Terrorists, promoters of extremist ideologies, and fundamentalists are known to use online platforms to spread hate messages and goading members to violence by getting them angry, infuriated, humiliated, frustrated, feeling rejected, and marginalised, so that it all explodes in real-world d…
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