Reason why subreddits like r/inceltears are obssessed with incels?
The obsession that communities like r/IncelTears (and similar subreddits) have with "incels" isn't really about ordinary lonely or dateless people. It's driven by a mix of ideological, psychological, and social-media-dynamics reasons. Here's the main breakdown of why these places stay so fixated:
Whether that's healthy or just another flavor of online toxicity is debated endlessly on Reddit itself — with plenty of people calling IT a low-effort hate sub in its own right. But that's the core engine keeping it running year after year.
The obsession that communities like r/IncelTears (and similar subreddits) have with "incels" isn't really about ordinary lonely or dateless people. It's driven by a mix of ideological, psychological, and social-media-dynamics reasons. Here's the main breakdown of why these places stay so fixated:
- Documenting & countering toxic/hateful ideologyr/IncelTears's own stated purpose (from its sidebar/rules over the years) is to document and discuss hateful, misogynistic, racist, violent, and often absurd content posted by self-identified incels or people using incel rhetoric.After r/Incels was banned in 2017 for (among other things) glorifying/encouraging violence, a portion of that community scattered to other platforms or tried to re-emerge on Reddit under different names. IT positions itself as a watchdog / containment subreddit — basically "look at this dangerous shit so people know what it looks like and why it's bad".
- Schadenfreude + moral superiority dunkingA very large part of the engagement is simply laughing at / dunking on extremely unhinged, self-pitying, or rage-filled posts. Many users openly enjoy the cringe, entitlement, conspiracy-level thinking (blackpill, 80/20 rule, "feminism ruined everything", "subhuman" self-hate mixed with women-hate, etc.).It's the online equivalent of slowing down to look at a car crash — combined with the reassuring feeling that "at least I'm not that guy". This creates very high engagement (screenshots get quick upvotes + witty one-liners in comments).
- Out-group hate as in-group glueMocking a commonly loathed out-group is one of the fastest ways to build community solidarity. r/IncelTears (like r/Justneckbeardthings, r/niceguys, etc. before it) functions as a shared enemy space. Regular posters bond over shared disgust, get to signal progressive/feminist values, and receive constant validation through upvotes. The more outrageous the incel screenshot, the stronger the bonding effect.
- Some users are personally invested (trauma / proximity)A noticeable portion of active IT users report:
- Having dealt with incel-like rhetoric from ex-partners, friends, family members, or online harassers.
- Being women who receive creepy/entitled messages and see incel forums as the extreme version of attitudes they've personally encountered.
- Being men who were briefly in adjacent spaces (MGTOW, redpill, foreveralone) and want to fight back against the ideology that almost trapped them.For them it's less "lol cringe" and more "this shit is actually dangerous and I want it exposed".
- The irony / self-fulfilling cycleThe more IT mocks and ridicules, the more some incels double down on "see, society/femoids hate us, it's cope", which produces even more unhinged content → which IT then screenshots → which fuels more mockery. It's a mutually reinforcing hate-dopamine loop that keeps both ecosystems alive.
Whether that's healthy or just another flavor of online toxicity is debated endlessly on Reddit itself — with plenty of people calling IT a low-effort hate sub in its own right. But that's the core engine keeping it running year after year.
