Oneitiscel
Failed Jestermaxxx LDAR Extraordinaire
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- Joined
- Nov 13, 2018
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How incel language infected the mainstream internet — and brought its toxicity with it
“Walkpilled cardiomaxxer” isn’t so funny anymore.
www.theverge.com
The modern-day incel is entirely an invention of the twenty-first century
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.
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.
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.
Meanwhile, truecel rhetoric pushes recruits to accept more extremist beliefs, since those ideas are associated with higher social status within the community.
I would argue that, if anything, the incel example is very important to understand, for it has probably contributed more to the development of “modern slang” than any other online community. It’s precisely because of their radicalized and insular echo chamber that they’ve created so much language and have many more avenues to influence the mainstream. It is because of their extreme views that their ideas are so easily spread through memes.
Seeking a more insular and supportive community in the mid- 2010s, the incel subculture largely turned to Reddit, where subreddits like r/Incels were able to accrue tens of thousands of blackpilled followers. From there, they slowly began pushing their philosophy in other subreddits. Forums like these were fruitful recruiting grounds, but the incels found their greatest success on “rate me” subreddits, where people would post pictures of themselves and ask for feedback. Here, incels were able to promote a more accessible version of their philosophy by disguising looksmaxxing language as helpful suggestions. Posters were evaluated on pseudoscientific lookism beauty standards like “interocular distance,” “canthal tilt,” and “hunter eyes.” They were encouraged to improve their facial structure through “mewing” and jaw surgery so that they could “mog” others.
In the same way that my Discord server jokingly used incel language, jokes about mogging and canthal tilts began to show up in 2021 across Instagram and Twitter, in memes that eventually became viral through TikTok and Instagram Reels.
Ironically, the first people to bring looksmaxxing to TikTok appear to have been women, who unknowingly began repurposing incel concepts from the early “rate me” subreddits.
Once algorithms got involved, the incel terms were amplified by the online Matthew effect: a phenomenon where content that is slightly better at grabbing your attention performs exponentially better on social media.Starting in 2021, for example, the term “sigma” began going viral as an ironic reference to the incel hierarchy of alphas and betas. In this particular joke, a sigma was nominally equal to a Chad, but opted to live outside the normal social structure of their own volition. The phrase started out as a genuinely idolized position within the incelosphere, but was then blown up through memes like the “Rizzler song,” which contained the lyric “I just wanna be your sigma.”
Thankfully, the big platforms had cracked down on more obvious threats by the time incel slang became mainstream. If you look up “incel” on TikTok, for example, it redirects you to a page warning you that your search term is associated with hateful content. Nevertheless, it’s fascinating how far incel humor has reached. One of the most common meme templates on the internet is a crudely drawn comparison of a “Chad walk versus virgin stride.
In the original version, the characters are labeled like diagrams in a biology textbook, with annotations pointing out why the Chad’s behavior mogs the virgin.
Another widely shared format contrasts the opinion of a crying loser character with that of a confident Chad. Both templates perpetuate incel ideas about social hierarchies, but to the uninitiated they’re simply funny conduits for categorizing ideas.
The lookism concepts from r/RateMe, including jawline angle, eye distance, and facial symmetry, are eugenics- based talking points that were already regarded as pseudoscientific by the nineteenth century. Now, with beauty influencers making content about those metrics, it feels as if we’ve reverted to social Darwinist ideas about skull measurement.
Phrenological theories barely scratch the surface of how incel memes open the door to eugenics. Since much of the early incel community was heavily influenced by the alt- right community on 4chan, they’ve adopted a lot of extreme ideas about interracial relationships. According to lookism philosophy, Asian men are considered the least sexually desirable, and many “truecels” self-identify as “ricecels” or “currycels” as reasons for their incel dom. These men point to WMAF (white male/Asian female) relationships as a principal cause of their virginity— objectifying the women in these situations and depriving them of their agency to make their own dating decisions.
In the early 2020s, for instance, the catchphrase “it’s over” began making the rounds as a dejected reaction to an adverse situation. Partially a joke, partially a genuine expression of hopelessness, it was buoyed in popularity by incels, who had been using the phrase since it began making the rounds on 4chan.
This kind of language is especially common among incels, who were using phrases like “LDAR” (“lay down and rot”) before “bedrotting” ever became a thing. The modern doomslang phenomenon appears to have evolved simultaneously with incel-speak, in some cases even being influenced by the latter.
Today, I regularly hear my friends calling each other “doomers,” as well as using other depressive incel words like “cope,” “ropemaxx” (an algospeak replacement for “commit suicide”), and “wagecuck” (someone who works a mindless nine- to- five job).
While it’s difficult to determine for certain the actual impact of incel vocabulary on our culture, the incels themselves certainly believe they’ve effectively spread their ideas. On incel sites, longtime truecels use the terms “Newgen” and “Tiktokcel” to describe those who only recently joined their forums from short-form video platforms. The Incels Wiki lists the looks-maxxing trend on TikTok as a primary driver of this recent incel influx, meaning that the meme pipeline has had at least some efficacy in making the blackpill more accessible.
The most disturbing concepts— like calling women “foids” or Asian people “currycels”— remained in- group, because these are far too offensive to become mainstream.
Incels themselves often introduce serious topics as jokes, which can normalize their idea until it is revealed in its entirety. You start out laughing at how funny a “walkpilled cardiomaxxer” meme is, and then all of a sudden your For You page is dominated by incel memes, bringing you closer to the ideology.
