This excerpt from Adam Aleksic’s Algospeak: How Social Media Is Transforming the Future of Language has been abridged for online publication. The book is out on July 15th.
The modern-day incel is entirely an invention of the twenty-first century. Before the internet, lonely men simply didn’t have a way to gather and share ideas. That all began to change in 1997, when a Canadian student started a website called Alana’s Involuntary Celibacy Project to connect with others over her shared lack of sex. As the name implies, the site wasn’t a place for just straight men; rather, it was used by people of any gender or sexual orientation.
In subsequent years, that initial “incel” community then dispersed to several other websites. These were more male dominated and less moderated, meaning that increasingly misogynistic discussion was able to take root. The largest of these forums, 4chan, doubled as a gathering place for right-wing extremists, whose ideas began to fuse with those of the incels.
In their world-view, the sexual hierarchy was dominated by an elite group of Chads (highly attractive men), who could rely on their good looks as a form of “sexual market value” to seduce women at the expense of betas (average men who exchange loyalty to Chads for their romantic leftovers). At the very bottom rung were the incels, who believed they were unable to have sex because of their appearance.
Acceptance of the lookism philosophy — known as getting blackpilled — meant adopting very specific slang and ideas. For example, a Chad was understood to always “mog” (dominate) and “cuck” (emasculate) a beta, but the beta could attempt to improve their status through “looksmaxxing” (enhancing their physical appearance). This might take the form of working out (gymmaxxing) or even seeking physical modifications through “Surgerymaxxing.”
With this cynical, deterministic cognitive frame dominating 4chan’s discussion boards, the modern “blackpill” began in earnest.
Image: Penguin Random House
Notably, 4chan didn’t have any user accounts. Every poster was anonymous, meaning that the only way to differentiate yourself as an experienced user was to demonstrate a performative proficiency in shared slang. This unique pressure to show a sense of in- group belonging ended up giving us numerous foundational internet words, such as “troll,” “dank,” “shitpost,” and “rickroll.” Using these words was an important way to show that you weren’t a “normie” on the website. Because they had wide applicability, they eventually spread beyond the site.
In the same way, most of the highly specific incel vocabulary was built up by 4chan extremists to match their burgeoning ideology. Words like “mogging,” “cucked,” and “maxxing” became metalinguistic indicators that the anonymous poster was truly a blackpilled member of the community and not some random outsider. You needed to demonstrate a certain level of prerequisite knowledge to truly fit in.
Beyond the technological catalyst of 4chan’s user interface, incels have long faced a self- imposed social need to adopt new slang to prove their status. Those within the community fight a constant battle to prove their “purity” as incels and avoid being labeled as “fakecels” or “volcels” (voluntary celibates). Even within the deepest echelons of the incel filter bubble, many believe that most of their peers still have potential to “ascend” to beta status through looksmaxxing, moving location, or accumulating wealth. Only the bottom 1 percent of the population are truecels — incels with unchangeably unattractive features and no hope of ascension. In the online space, these truecels are able to dominate the discussion due to their purer status.
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