Incels Are Using Their Wiki to Clean Their Abhorrent Reputation and Recruit ‘Normies’

A new study offers a look into how the incel community views itself and digs into a popular website where they try to normalize their misogynistic beliefs and recruit new members.

A group of researchers with the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a think tank that studies extremism, analyzed the incel wiki, an online encyclopedia about the “involuntary celibate” subculture that was curated, written, edited, and administered by incels. The wiki provides a fascinating glimpse inside one of the most despised fringe groups active online. 

In their paper dubbed “Spitting Out the Blackpill” the researchers found that the website is an attempt for incels to seize back control of their image—which some in the community feel is wrongly tainted—and, for a few incels, an effort to “blackpill the normies” into joining them. For those happily ignorant, the incel community is a rather large online community of men brought together around their real or perceived lack of sexual success. It is often characterized by hateful and spiteful misogynistic rhetoric. 

Self-identified incels have been responsible for some violent actions, most notable, a Toronto van attack which killed 11 people. 

Tim Squirrell, one of the researchers on the paper, told VICE News the incel wiki is a popular one, generating 500,000 visits per month in late 2022. It consists of 1,361 articles and over 70,000 edits, with 85 registered admins.  Here incels, people interested in the subculture, or just interested voyeurs can view the history of the group, learn about their important tenets, or just find out what a “gigachad” is. For those wondering, a gigachad is the term used for essentially the most attractive men in existence. 

"Ultimately the people in these spaces have really, really deep problems in their lives and are really, really unhappy,” said Squirrell. “I think it's important to understand the world as they see it because it allows you to see how they got to where they are right now.”

Overall the wiki is a strange place, where an attempted tone of academic study is used but also a place that frequently utilizes misogynistic language and online terms popular in the community such as “manlet” or using “cel” to end words in ways to describe members. For example, a “chincel” would be an incel who believes they can’t get laid because of a weak jawline.

Squirrell and his co-researchers Meg Roser and Charlotte Chalker studied eight pages in the wiki in particular. They found a group desperate to cleanse their image, something many incels feel is important to the group’s longevity. The incel community has long been associated with violent misogynistic attacks and this has led their community to be chased off popular websites like Reddit and bottlenecked into just a few forums.

At the heart of the paper is the group's analysis of the pages for “The Blackpill,” one of the most popular pages on the wiki. The term "blackpill," in an incel context, refers to accepting the nihilistic belief that some men will simply never find happiness because of physical or personality attributes outside of their control. This belief system is what is tied to the violent attacks and rage many see inherently connected to the movement. So by dawning an air of authority the authors attempt to describe the community and explain away some of the worst parts.

However, the wiki, for some of its authors, is also a way to recruit interested voyeurs.

"There has been a conflict from the very beginning between people who see this as a source of objective knowledge about the world and people who see this as, to quote one of them, 'their one chance to black pill the normies,’” said Squirrell. “So the idea isn't just that you're providing material which explains how incels see to the world, but that you want to provide material that explains why that is correct and why that is scientifically accurate.” 

The researchers found that the authors of the wiki would “citation load”, meaning they would link back to a high amount of questionable sources to back up dubious claims in an attempt to bring readers to their side.  

The term incel, much like the term “alt-right,” has become diluted to the point where it refers to much more than just the community who identify with it. Squirrel says the incel community is much larger and far more nuanced than the public and media view it. Boiled down, however, it’s a community that can lead some young men looking for help with their mental health down a dangerous rabbit hole, both for themselves, and society as a whole.

“I tend to describe it as the world's worst support group because it's all people who are validating your worst insecurities. Telling you not only that you're right, actually everything is bad, but it's worse than you ever thought and you are doomed from the very start and you might as well just kill yourself," said Squirrell. “Then sometimes they'll link to a forum that provides you with detailed instructions on how you can do just that.”