Taking the Black Pill: The Resurgence of Incel Culture

If you’ve been active on social media the past few years, you probably know incel jargon. You’ve maybe even used some of it yourself. Overall, they sound like relatively new and innocent buzzwords–the terms “mogging” or “mewing,” the lament of “it’s so over” and the pursuit of “lookmaxxing”, categorizing somebody as a “fakecel,” “femcel” or “truecel,” or calling an attractive and therefore “high-status” person a “Chad” or a “Stacy.” What you probably didn’t know is that these terms originated from a nihilistic, misogynistic echo chamber over 25 years ago.

Incels aren’t a new phenomenon. A portmanteau of involuntary celibate, all incels must start by taking the pill. But which is which? Co-opted from the 1999 blockbuster The Matrix, the incel “pill” ideology came into internet vernacular around the same time. Self-identifying incels use pill theory to describe their level of subscription and commitment to inceldom, or the belief that men do not have systemic power and are sentenced to inevitable failure (typically romantic) at the hands of women. Here’s a quick rundown on what they mean. 

Being “bluepilled” is before stumbling onto any kind of incel content. It’s defined as blissful ignorance concerning the status quo “reality” of women and dating. By contrast, being “redpilled” is post-“realization” of that reality, where one has accepted their incel status and opened their eyes to the “reality” of how hard it is for “unattractive” men and begins to harbor resentment and anger at the opposite sex. Those who are redpilled think of themselves as more intelligent and aware of the workings of society than the bluepilled. The redpill content is more mainstream. Think Andrew Tate and the larger-scope “manosphere,” a subsect of the internet where men’s rights groups convene to tell us what they really think. And the most extreme, taking the black pill—the most extreme and perhaps infamous of the three—is accepting you will never find love or a sexual partner due to immutable factors like genetics, paired with the belief that this will never change unless society undergoes a massive upheaval.

Online forums like these are largely heterosexual and cis male-dominated, and their frustrations have had a dark history of escalating into hate and, ultimately, violence perpetuated against women. A common thread among incels is the belief that women owe them something, usually attention or sexual favors, and if they don’t deliver on that, they deserve retribution. Take Elliot Rodger, an insecure, socially awkward and isolated young man. Rodger committed the Isla Vista killings in 2014, which culminated in fourteen injuries and the deaths of six others and himself. He resented the men in his life for having more success with women than him, and hated women for not being accessible to him. He had written in his diary expressing frustration and anger with his status as a twenty-two-year-old virgin, and posted a video just before his death, stating women must be “punished” for rejecting him. Postmortem, incel forums lauded him as a god. 

Funnily enough, those we know as “incels” didn’t create the term. First created in 1997 by a college woman who went by Alana, it started as an online chatroom for those who felt shy and unlucky in love to express their feelings without judgment. Post-college, Alana’s confidence grew, and she passed the site to someone else around the year 2000. Quickly after that, the term gained traction, and these forums were overrun with men who didn’t just feel sad–they wanted revenge. After the Isla Vista killings, she expressed regret at the dark turn from the community she’d founded on support and acceptance, writing “Like a scientist who invented something that ended up being a weapon of war, I can’t uninvent this word, nor restrict it to the nicer people who need it”. 

Often, these young men are socially awkward, anxious, and isolated. They truly believe that their genes have failed them. They think that they’d have the life they want–with the girlfriend, the height, and the sharp jawline if only they had been luckier. You never know–maybe you would have everything you could wish for if you’d been born with six more inches of height, the features of a top model, and easier charisma. But that’s a “what-if,” and it does not do any person well to dwell on what ifs, whether they are positive or negative, and in Rodger’s case, led to resentment against your parents for creating you, women for rejecting you, and your friends for having better luck with them than you. Often, that spiral of self-hatred and insecurity turns volatile, and these men turn their self-directed rage outward towards women and the world. This is when it gets dangerous: when incels finally feel that they have nothing left to lose. 

Incel culture has been a rising tide since its creation, and now, no longer exclusive to niche underground spaces, it has become prevalent in mainstream ones. As the ideology spreads, it does become thinner: Those using these terms are not always dogwhistling for something darker, for example. But still, it spreads, and you don’t have to be on the niche chatrooms of 4Chan or Reddit anymore. Tumble the wrong way on TikTok, and you’ll see plenty of “looksmaxxing” content, typically young people posting a head-on selfie in order to ask strangers with pitiful honesty, “Rate me,” and subsequently, “What can I do to look better?” Responses will typically range from the brutal “nah, it’s just over for you” to the uplifting “start using a gua sha and maybe try some wispy lashes!” But putting your confidence in the hands of strangers in any way, shape, or form just will not provide you with lasting psychological improvements and the freedom to live how you want. Unfortunately, there’s no shortcut to that, even if you woke up tomorrow morning with the appearance of your dreams.

The truth is, working on yourself internally, such as building and maintaining your self-worth regardless of looks, is a far harder and longer task than the physical pain of hitting your jaw with a mallet with the hopes you’ll ascend. And it’s the only sustainable way. Because even if pseudoscience-based methods like these happen to make you more attractive, if you retain the incel mindset, you’ll always fall short. Because no matter what’s on the outside, you’re the same person on the inside. And that’s the hardest pill to swallow of all.