A recent study has unveiled an alarming increase in violent extremist language within the online incel community, highlighting a troubling trend that could have significant implications for both online safety and real-world violence. A team of academics from the University of Exeter and Dublin City University conducted the study, which presents a diachronic cross-platform analysis of the Intel ecosystem and demonstrates how language linked to violent extremism has steadily increased across significant online platforms over the past six years.
The incel community, a loosely connected online subculture of men who define themselves as “involuntarily celibate”, has been linked to several acts of violence, most notably the 2018 Toronto van attack carried out by Alek Minassian. The study, published in Terrorism and Political Violence, sought to understand whether the incel ideology can be classified as a violent extremist ideology, a question that has gained increasing relevance as incel-inspired violence becomes more frequent and deadly.
The research is significant in its approach, analysing a vast corpus of 11.7 million posts from 32 online platforms that form part of the “incelosphere.” This extensive dataset allowed the researchers to track changes in the use of violent language over time, offering a detailed view of how incel ideology has evolved across different online spaces. Notably, the study found that while levels of violent extremist language varied across platforms, there was a clear and steady increase in such language within the most prominent incel forums.
One of the study’s key findings is the role of specific online spaces in fostering violent extremist content. Forums like Incels.is and Incels.net were identified as particularly toxic environments where dehumanising language and explicit calls for violence have become increasingly common. This contrasts with earlier incel spaces on Reddit, which, while initially extreme, saw a reduction in violent rhetoric following the platform’s crackdown on hate speech and the closure of prominent incel subreddits like r/Braincels.
The study also highlights the impact of external events on the incel ecosystem. Offline acts of violence, such as Minassian’s attack, were shown to influence online discussions, with spikes in violent extremist language occurring in the wake of such incidents. The onset of the Covid pandemic and associated lockdowns also appeared to exacerbate extremist discourse, particularly on forums like Incels.is, where activity surged during this period.
These findings raise critical questions about how the incel community should be addressed from both a legal and security perspective. In some countries, including Canada, incel ideology has already been classified as a form of violent extremism, leading to its inclusion in counterterrorism strategies. However, the study’s authors caution against a one-size-fits-all approach, noting the heterogeneity within the incel community. While some online spaces are undeniably extremist, others may represent more moderate viewpoints, and this distinction should be considered in policymaking.
