All posts tagged: incel

‘Incel’ teenager who collected bomb-making videos and threatened school shooting is jailed | UK News

‘Incel’ teenager who collected bomb-making videos and threatened school shooting is jailed | UK News

A former Army cadet obsessed with far-right ideology and the Islamic State has been jailed after he terrorised two schoolgirls, collected bomb-making videos and threatened a Valentine’s Day shooting. Dihan Rahman was aged 17 when he made a Nazi salute and held a rope noose in selfies, as well as posting personal details of two girls and a teacher online during a stalking campaign. The schoolboy was said to have an extreme hatred of women and Jewish people and often viewed neo-Nazi content. He also made threats to attack his school’s prom via Snapchat and TikTok, as well as to carry out a school massacre. Rahman’s electronic devices and notes revealed a “mixed” ideology touching on the extreme right-wing, Islamic State, Incel and misogyny, prosecutor Serena Gates KC said. She told the Old Bailey: “The common ground is the hatred of Jews and there is also material on how women are treated within those ideologies.” The defendant, now aged 19, had also been a “trusted” administrator of an extreme right-wing network on Telegram, having pretended …

Understanding incel culture – and if schools should be responsible for addressing it

Understanding incel culture – and if schools should be responsible for addressing it

Get the Well Enough newsletter with Harry Bullmore for tips on living a healthier, happier and longer life Get the Well Enough email with Harry Bullmore Get the Well Enough email with Harry Bullmore Incels – involuntary celibates – believe they have been unconditionally excluded from the dating market and are doomed to remain virgins. This has negative implications for their mood and self-esteem, as well as the women and girls they grow to resent. For this reason, schools in England are now required to address incel communities, among other sources of online misogyny, in relationships, sex and health education. This is a challenging task when many teachers are already overstretched, and schools are increasingly expected to deal with problems that begin beyond the school gates. Addressing gender based discrimination and violence requires experts who are well prepared and able to support discussion around these sensitive topics in a manner that does not further stigmatise young people. Many young people worry about falling behind their peers socially and sexually. Sociological research shows this pressure is …

Understanding incel culture – and how schools can address it

Understanding incel culture – and how schools can address it

Incels – involuntary celibates – believe they have been unconditionally excluded from the dating market and are doomed to remain virgins. This has negative implications for their mood and self-esteem, as well as the women and girls they grow to resent. For this reason, schools in England are now required to address incel communities, among other sources of online misogyny, in relationships, sex and health education. This is a challenging task when many teachers are already overstretched, and schools are increasingly expected to deal with problems that begin beyond the school gates. Addressing gender based discrimination and violence requires experts who are well prepared and able to support discussion around these sensitive topics in a manner that does not further stigmatise young people. Many young people worry about falling behind their peers socially and sexually. Sociological research shows this pressure is observable from high school onward, with pupils mocking each other if they do not appear sufficiently experienced or interested. Survey data finds inexperienced adults are seen as less desirable, even by those who share …

Study links internalized pornographic standards to body image issues among incel men

Study links internalized pornographic standards to body image issues among incel men

A recent study published in the Journal of Sex and Marital Therapy suggests that men who identify as involuntary celibates consume more pornography and experience greater bodily dissatisfaction than other men. The research provides evidence that frequent adult media use, combined with the belief that women expect men to look like pornographic actors, tends to worsen how these men view their own bodies. Involuntary celibates, commonly known as incels, are men who deeply desire romantic and sexual relationships but feel entirely unable to attain them. This group tends to form a specific online identity centered around rigid and fatalistic beliefs. They generally believe that society is organized into a strict hierarchy based entirely on physical appearance. From their perspective, incels are trapped at the very bottom of this social hierarchy due to permanent and unchangeable physical flaws. Because of these beliefs, they frequently experience intense loneliness, depression, and a severe lack of social support. Many harbor negative attitudes toward women, believing that women are shallow and only interested in highly attractive men. Scientists Brandon Sparks …

A reverse timeline of tragedy reveals the warning signs of incel violence

A reverse timeline of tragedy reveals the warning signs of incel violence

A recent study published in the journal Deviant Behavior maps the warning signs and systemic failures that precede deadly attacks by men who identify as involuntary celibates. By working backward from four distinct tragedies, researchers identified a chain of severe social isolation, untreated mental health struggles, and missed opportunities for intervention. These insights offer a roadmap for recognizing the warning signs of misogynistic extremism and stopping future acts of mass violence. The internet hosts a vast array of communities, some of which are united by shared grievances. One such group is the “incel” subculture, a primarily online network of men who express deep frustration over their inability to form sexual or romantic relationships with women. This community exists within a broader digital space known as the manosphere, where extreme misogyny and male supremacy are common themes. Many incel forums operate as echo chambers that promote a highly distorted view of gender dynamics. Within these digital spaces, women are routinely dehumanized and blamed for the social rejection these men experience. Most individuals who participate in these …

Everyone Speaks Incel Now | WIRED

Everyone Speaks Incel Now | WIRED

At the beginning of the year, The Cut kicked off a brief discourse cycle by declaring a new lifestyle trend: “friction-maxxing.” The idea, in a nutshell, is that people have overconvenienced themselves with apps, AI, and other means of near-instant gratification—and would be better off with increased friction in their daily lives, which is to say those mundane challenges that ask some minor effort of them. Whatever your feelings on that philosophy, the use of “maxxing” as a suffix assumed to be familiar or at least intelligible to most readers of a mainstream news outlet is evidence of another trend: the assimilation of incel terminology across the broader internet. The online ecosystem of incels, or “involuntarily celibate” men, is saturated with this sort of clinical jargon; its aggrieved participants insulate, isolate, and identify themselves through in-group codespeak that is meant to baffle and repel outsiders. So how did non-incels (“normies,” as incels would label them) end up adopting and recontextualizing these loaded words? Slang, no matter its origins, has a viral nature. It tends to …

The right hit peak incel in 2025

The right hit peak incel in 2025

Earlier this month, the popular MAGA influencer Sólionath was having a real one on X. The U.S.-based poster had built up a healthy audience of 65,000 followers after Elon Musk purchased the site formerly known as Twitter by sharing the usual deplorable garbage: defending white supremacists murderers, trying to get people fired for not mourning Charlie Kirk after his assassination on Sept. 10 and concocting lies about the Epstein files. But now he was expressing his very strong opinions about the approximately 99% of Americans who have sex at some point in their lives. “I could make a dating app profile and lose my virginity by dinnertime,” claimed this devoted champion of President Donald Trump. “But very few people alive have ever actually had *sex*,” he continued. “They’ve slapped their damp, clammy body against another damp, clammy body, like the wriggling of a suffocating fish.” Sólionath then attempted to wax poetic about how he would be different if “I ever tried to make love.” Because unlike people who have done the deed, he would “reveal …