IDEOLOGY OF INVOLUNTARY CELIBATES 2 Introduction The online community of Incels, a portmanteau for “involuntary celibates,” has gained recognition and reputation based on an increase in associated violence. Since 2014, nearly 50 fatalities have occurred under the named act of Incel violence (Hoffman, Ware & Shapiro, 2020). Primarily comprised of young, technologically literate men, congregating in online forums, the Incel community has demonstrated itself to be hostile and to display characteristics of radicalism towards women (Hoffman et al., 2020; Jaki, De Smedt, Gwóźdź, Panchal, Rossa & De Pauw, 2019). As such, Incels’ ideology has received increased scrutiny in the academic community. This thesis expanded the analysis of Incels’ ideology, specifically in the discourse within their community and social identity. The philosophy of communication is not only a conveyor of information but formulates our perceptions and understanding of information. Therefore, communication is the creation of reality (Del Gandio, 2008). Adopting measures assessing ideology from various disciplines and centralizing them around communication offers a more thorough comprehension of Incels’ reality unfolds. To implement such measures towards ideology, a thorough explanation of how ideology is conceptualized is imperative. Although ideology has numerous definitions, from various academic disciplines, the thesis viewed ideology from the subject of language and discourse. In Language as Ideology, Hodge and Kress (1993) defined ideology as, “a systematic body of ideas, organized from a particular point of view” (p. 6). Instead of minimizing ideology as only a system of attitudes and beliefs (Hamilton, 1987), it is viewed as language enacted in time (Schull, 1992). By viewing ideology from a communicative-linguistic approach, the perspective accounts for the diversity of beliefs among members who conceptualize ideology along with showing its applicability in macro-level analysis of social conventions rather than individual psychology. Individuals who discuss or disseminate their ideology are often driven by their own IDEOLOGY OF INVOLUNTARY CELIBATES 3 persona. According to Beatty, McCroskey, and Valencic (2001), “it simply is not realistic to believe that valid explanations of communication can ignore psychological principles. Communication depends on psychological processes” (p. 5). That postulation was the foundation of analyzing ideology in the present study. One psychological process that has been assessed in extremist research is the Dark Triad (Paulhus & Williams, 2002). The researchers explored three distinct dimensions that represent the dark side of human personality: Narcissism, Machiavellianism, and Psychopathy. Additionally, Sadism was added to the Dark Triad because its application of physical and emotional harm. However, it is positively related with the other dark personalities, resulting in the newly formed Dark Tetrad (Buckels, Jones & Paulhus, 2013; Međedović & Petrović, 2015). The Dark Tetrad personality measure has been used to detect communication behaviors in face-to- face (Beatty et al., 2001; Koscielska, Flowe & Egan, 2019), online (Craker & March, 2016; March, Grieve, Marrington & Jonason, 2017) and nonverbal (Ritchie, Blias & Forth, 2019) communication contexts. By utilizing the personality measure in analyzing Incel discourse, a similar relationship of interrelated beliefs emerged among the Incel community. The purpose of this thesis was to not only understand Incels’ perspective of reality through their communication patterns, but also to identify why these members may change their communication strategies based on the medium of platform. Therefore, although the study applies a psychological process, the focus stems from communication and discourse as the expression of behavior being analyzed. Therefore, four distinct aspects of Incels must be assessed in the literature review. First, the history and characteristics of Incels was evaluated to identify gaps in where Incel ideology was analyzed. Second, Social Identity Theory was explored to discover potential causal reasons for the group’s specific behaviors towards society. Third, previous investigations of Incel ideology were reviewed to pinpoint inequalities in how IDEOLOGY OF INVOLUNTARY CELIBATES 4 Incel belief was studied. Fourth, the Dark Tetrad was observed in its relation towards Incels and its potential association with ideology. Literature Review Incels’ Evolution The term “involuntary celibate” was first formulated in the 1990s by a young female Canadian undergraduate student named Alana. “Alana’s involuntary celibacy project”, an online forum to foster community, was purposed to be a way to help individuals deal with sexual dissatisfaction and loneliness by allowing them to comment and discuss shared feelings (Kelly & Aunspach, 2020). Alana stopped moderating the online forum in 2000 and gave the ownership of the site to a follower (Gallagher, 2020). Donnelly, Burgess, Anderson, Davis, and Dillard (2001) defined involuntary celibate as, “one who desires to have sex, but has been unable to find a willing partner…” (p. 159). In addition, their study categorized three types of Incels, segmented according to different relationship status. Virginal Incels are individuals who have never had a sexual experience and also have limited social interaction skills (p. 163). Single Incels are individuals who are not currently partnered but have had sexual experiences in the past. Lastly, partnered Incels are individuals who are involved in a current relationship, but are devoid of sexual activity for one or more reasons (p. 164). In modern interpretations of the Incel community, Incels are conceptualized as an all-male group with detailed criteria for membership by not having a sexual partner for a long time (Jaki et al., 2019). Additionally, partnered Incels would often be dismissed due to not being perceived as true (i.e., typically virgin) Incels (Williams & Arntfield, 2020). The radical expression that comes from Incels is in relation to their membership of celibacy. From such involvement, their movement raises prospect towards sexually-motivated murder. Violence under Incel ideology was first documented in 2009. George Sodini, a 48-year- IDEOLOGY OF INVOLUNTARY CELIBATES 5 old man who was never married, killed three women, and injured nine others, at an LA Fitness, and ultimately shot himself in the head. Although there is no conclusive evidence that George Sodini was familiar with the Incel communities, his blog narrated the same evolution of beliefs found under Incel discourse (Young, 2019). However, the blatant expression of being an Incel committing violence would soon occur. In May of 2014, Elliot Rodger made the world aware of Incels by self-identifying with the ideology in his 107,000-word memoir-manifesto. He expressed feelings of ‘torture’ and ‘injustice’ over the inexperience of physical intimacy with a woman. He wrote: “The more I thought about all these injustices that were dealt to me, the more eager I became for revenge. It’s all I had left. I didn’t want to die, but I knew that I had to kill myself after I exacted my revenge to avoid getting captured and imprisoned.” (p. 126) He conveyed the Incel sentiment by driving to an Alpha Phi sorority house and shooting three women on the lawn (Srinivasan, 2018). His ‘Day of Retribution’ consequently resulted in six dead and fourteen wounded in Isla Vista, California (Scaptura, 2019). Rodger would later be considered the first North American mass killer directly connected to the online community of Incels (Witt, 2020). Leading up to the killings, Rodger expressed his actions of punishing all females as the ‘War on Women’ (Rodger, 2014, p.140). Incel killings were designated as ‘Going Sodini’ until Rodger’s massacre. The following expression of Incel killings became notorious as ‘Going ER’ (Bratich & Banet-Weiser, 2019). Continued instances of glorifying these extremists have emerged. In 2018, Alek Minassian exclaimed on social media, “All Hail the Supreme Gentleman Elliot Rodger!” before killing ten people and injuring fourteen by driving a van onto the sidewalk of a Toronto street (Baele, Brace & Coan , 2019). Hoffman et al. (2020) found instances of Incels commemorating the one-year anniversary attack done by “St. Yogacel,” better known as Scott Beierle. Beierle killed two and injured four after IDEOLOGY OF INVOLUNTARY CELIBATES 6 entering a yoga studio with a pistol and shooting the patrons, before fatally shooting himself (Young, 2019). Therefore, a predictable characteristic of the Incel community is celebrating terrorists like Elliot Rodger and George Sodini (Conley, 2020). With the prevalence of Incel-related violence increasing, law enforcement agencies have had to consider the role of the Incel community in perpetuating harm to women. A recent example occurred in January of 2019, when Christopher Cleary was arrested after threatening women with violence (Donovan-Smith, 2019). The Utah judge overseeing Cleary’s case sentenced him to up to five years in prison on the count of attempted threat of terrorism. According to Culver (2020), Canadian authorities treated another attack by a 17-year-old boy as an act of terrorism after he took inspiration from Incels (as cited in Gallagher, 2020). He broke into a Toronto spa, murdered one woman, and injured another. These examples of violence perpetrated by Incels has now persuaded authorities and researchers to classify Incels as terrorists (Pantucci & Ong, 2020). Understanding what and how Incels communicate online is essential due to the internet providing several advantages to extremists groups. Incels are more accessible to curious individuals on the internet and the internet hinders counterterrorist efforts due to radical posts sparking First Amendment debates (Hoffman et al., 2020). Until 2013, two forms of Incel digital forums emerged on the internet. Whereas one forum emphasized support and positioned itself with the original ethos of the involuntary celibacy project, the other became increasingly hostile towards women (Hoffman et al., 2020). The aggressive strand flourished on love-shy.com and began promoting Inceldom, the state of being associated with Incels (Cottee, 2020). The website became a popular platform to discuss causes of Inceldom, particularly the roles of looks and society in predicting their state of being (Hoffman et al., 2020). The other form manifested itself on the website Incelsupport.com, predicated on being a gender-inclusive and progressive resource for romantic novices (Gallagher, IDEOLOGY OF INVOLUNTARY CELIBATES 7 2020). However, the membership of the site declined after the late 2000’s until its permanent closure in 2013 (Bratich & Banet-Wiser, 2019). With the expansion of new forums, particularly Reddit and 4chan, the Incel identity began to grow in numbers and fanaticism. Research (e.g., Farrell, Fernandez, Novotny & Alani 2019; Gaudette, Scrivens, Davies & Frank, 2020) has demonstrated that Reddit can mobilize like-minded members in promoting extreme discourse, primarily through its voting algorithm and subcultural language. 4chan has been a popular community for cyberbullying and disseminating hate speech, due to internet anonymity and poor regulation of cybercrimes (Nagle, 2017). As a result, the Reddit Incel community grew to around 40,000 users by 2016. Squirrell (2018) revealed it was not until 2017 that the spike of membership fell, when the most popular subreddit (r/Incels) got banned from the platform due to violations of the website’s policy on promoting violence (as cited in Hoffman et al., 2020). Besides online forums, dedicated sites for the Incel community emerged, like Incels.me. The Incel.me site was deleted in 2018, due to spreading violence and hate speech, and Incel.is was created as its replacement (Jaki et al., 2019). The IP address was eventually changed to Incels.co, now one of the most popular forums currently for Incels (Ribeiro et al., 2020; Rummelhoff, 2020). Smaller Incel websites have emerged for specific sects of the Incel subculture including Incels.net, showcasing a plethora of potential platforms to network their discourse. The most popular social media platforms are uncommon for Incels to use. Facebook and Instagram are not common for Incels to utilize (Bieselt, 2018). However, declarations of Incel ideology have still occurred. Alek Minassian announced his proclamation on Facebook before the killings, stating, “The Incel Rebellion has already begun!” (Jaki et al., 2019). Additionally, Christopher Cleary posted on Facebook the night before his arrest, stating, “I’m planning on IDEOLOGY OF INVOLUNTARY CELIBATES 8 shooting up a public place…killing as many girls as I see.” (Donovan-Smith, 2019). One social media platform not thoroughly analyzed in connection with Incels is YouTube. Only recently, Papadamou, Zannettou, Blackburn, De Cristofaro, Stringhini, and Sirivianos (2020) analyzed the Incel community on YouTube to understand how the website steers users towards Incel-related videos. The findings demonstrated a significant number of Incel-related videos (5.4%) within YouTube’s recommendation graph being suggested to users (p. 8). Additionally, Papadamou and colleagues found that there has been an increase of Incel-related activity, primarily in the publication of videos, as well as comments related to Incel ideology (p. 2). However, there is a lack of scholarly understanding of the main themes involved with Incel-related videos on YouTube. As Papadamou et al. (2020) noted: When it comes to this community, it is not only the content of the video that may be relevant. The language that the members of this community use in the discussions under videos for or against their views is also of interest. (p. 4) Papadamou et al.’s analysis gathered YouTube videos through 19 Incel-related subreddits. The authors extracted specific links to YouTube videos from these forums but did not elaborate on the popular channels and content. Theirs is the only current study in the literature that assesses Incels on YouTube. Although Incel figures, including Scott Beierle, have posted videos on YouTube, researchers have not covered the full capabilities of the media platform (Hoffman et al., 2020). Additionally, Baele et al. (2019) stated, “the role of the internet is enabling the formation and radicalization of this community through echo-chamber dynamics is evident” (p. 20). Further assessing the Incel community’s influence on YouTube is vital for understanding Incel ideology. Incels’ Identity Social identity theory is applied in psychological and communication literature to IDEOLOGY OF INVOLUNTARY CELIBATES 9 describe a person’s sense of who they are based on their group membership. Social identity theory expands on organizational identification views of belongingness to a collective. Tajfel (1981) defined social identity as "the part of the individual's self-concept which derives from his knowledge of his membership of a social group (or groups) together with the value and emotional significance attached to that membership" (p. 255). Tajfel (1974) analyzed the perceived membership of social groups and created the classification of in-groups and out-groups, one of the most important characteristics of social identity theory. The differences between these two groups tend to become inflated because of group categorization, primarily when ascribing oppositional characteristics between one another (Mullen, Dovidio, Johnson & Copper, 1992). Social identity theory posits itself with its inherent relationship with ideology. Extremists tend to be unidirectional (in-groups are passive victims) and highly blame-attributing (problems are based on the out-groups), creating a dichotomy based on belief and action (Baele et al., 2019). Social circles and personal relations within a community have tended to reinforce extremist ideology as well (Al Raffie, 2013). By understanding the ideological premise of a group, one can understand the social behavior manifested within that group. The more an individual defines themselves within a particular social identity, the more likely they are to enhance the positivity of the group associated with that identity (Moon, Hossain, Sanders, Garrity & Jo, 2013). Three aspects of social identity are often studied, in conjunction with one another, to understand the motivations for behaviors toward maintaining an identity. These include cognitive, affective, and evaluative components (Moon et al., 2013). An individual in a particular group develops these three different aspects of social identity through interaction. Cognitive social identity relates to, “cognitive connection between the definition of a social group and the IDEOLOGY OF INVOLUNTARY CELIBATES 10 definition a person applies to himself or herself” (Wolter & Cronin, 2016, p. 401). For Incels, ingroups include “truecels”, “mentalcels”, and “ethnicels.” These labels are one way to overlap an Incel’s own self-concept with the identity of the Incel group. Cel is used to categorize undesirability by adding a suffix to any trait found in the philosophy of the Blackpill (Gallagher, 2020). The blackpill is a worldview that encompasses the majority of Incels’ ideological perspectives and serves as the focus of their affective social identity. Affective social identity is, “identification with, involvement in, and emotional attachment to the organization.” (Allen & Meyer, 1990, p. 1). Since the blackpill holds emotional value with Incels, understanding this emotion in reference to their discourse tendencies is worth investigating. Lastly, evaluative social identity focuses on the self-worth of the individual derived from their membership with the group (Moon et al., 2013). Captivatingly, Incels’ have demonstrated to be critical of their self-worth, yet that criticism is shared among one another. With Incels, the out-groups are categorized as Alphas and Betas. Alphas are attractive and popular males (Chads) and females (Stacys), whereas betas are most average looking members of society. Incels are a minority of unaesthetic men who share common interaction of desiring acceptance into society. However, accepting the blackpill dogma allows an Incel to completely dissociate humanity and culture and neglect possible integration into society. Therefore, socialization into an Incel group is centered on a lack of self-worth, emotional involvement with perceiving society or the outgroup as corrupt, and a focus towards finding one’s specific self-concept within the identity of Incels. This socialization of an individual joining Incel ideology is not grounded in one component of social identity. Instead, social identity refers to one’s position within the broader social structure of race, age, gender, or any categorization of identity (Davis, Love & Fares, 2019). Incels’ primary focus on identity is towards sexual desirability and success. As mentioned IDEOLOGY OF INVOLUNTARY CELIBATES 11 before, the attractive males and females discussed on Incel forums are only referenced based on their ability to engage in sexual activity. Race, age, or other categorizations of identity are only added within the context of sex. For example, attractive men (Chads) can also be labeled as “Chaddam (Arab)”, “Chadpreet (Indian), or “Chang (East Asian).” Additionally, Incels can be labeled as “Currycel” for having an Indian ethnicity (Van Brunt & Taylor, 2020). These labels are the Incels’ communicative manifestations of perceived in-groups and out-groups. As studies have shown support that social identities can be developed in an online environment, further evaluation of Incels’ social identity online may offer insight to the radical behavior displayed offline (Moon et al., 2013). Incels’ Philosophy As mentioned before, the concept of ideology has been expressed in an assortment of academic disciplines. A political interpretation views ideology as a set of ideas that serve the foundation in changing a community (Freeden, 2003). In contrast, a religious perspective has argued ideology as belief system diagnosing relations of power among groups (Mirola, 2003). This study focuses on discourse rather than behavior, providing a communicative perspective to studying Incels’ ideology. By valuing the message design of Incels, a new understanding of their ideological perspective may unfold. To do so, describing prior knowledge of Incels’ belief structure and recounting the ways researchers have conceptualized Incels’ ideology identifies alternative perspectives potentially applicable in academic study. Incels have been categorized as the most radical community within the “manosphere,” a reactionary movement that amplifies various forms of masculinities and men’s rights issues (Bratich & Banet-Weiser, 2019; Hoffman et al., 2020; Papadamou et al., 2020). Ribeiro et al., (2020) identified four categories of communities under the manosphere movement: “Pick Up Artists (PUAs), Men’s Rights Activist (MRAs), Men Going Their Own Way (MGTOW), and IDEOLOGY OF INVOLUNTARY CELIBATES 12 Involuntary Celibates (Incels)” (cited in Hoffman et al., 2020). However, additional communities within the manosphere have been identified, including androphiles and paleomasculinists (Bratich & Banet-Weiser, 2018). The manosphere movement has a rapidly evolving ideology while spreading throughout the internet. Each community differs based on their specific belief structure. For example, MGTOW concentrate on men’s rights, often within contexts of relationships with women. Additionally, MGTOW chooses not to partake in sexual activities, following a voluntary perspective to celibacy (Papadamou et al., 2020). However, a common principle among each of these communities is the focus on masculinism. The anti-feminist ideology focuses on the defense of a non-egalitarian social system while promoting characteristics of hypermasculinity and toxic masculinity (Papadamou et al., 2020; Scaptura, 2019). Incels are the community within the manosphere movement that celebrate terrorist activity and communicate views of violent misogyny (Conley, 2020). Incel ideology holds a worldview centered on the Wachowski’s (1999) movie, The Matrix, in which there is a redpill, bluepill, and an evolved-spinoff blackpill. The redpill relates to a shift in men’s thinking from being brainwashed to awareness of feminism’s misandry (Ging, 2019). The redpill component of Incels’ belief structure has been closely connected with the manosphere’s focus on masculinism in order to “generate consensus and belonging among the manosphere’s divergent elements” (p. 8) These “truths” about women and society empower men to manipulate and exploit women for their own potential gain (Hoffman et al., 2020). The bluepill functions as individuals who do not understand or acknowledge the reality of dating in society or Incels’ struggle with partnership. Individuals who take the bluepill are seen as living in an illusion, rejecting Incels’ understanding of experience and desiring to integrate into society (Hoffman et al., 2020; Svenning & Åkne, 2020). The bluepill term has been IDEOLOGY OF INVOLUNTARY CELIBATES 13 appropriated into other parts of speech including Bluepilling (i.e., the act of not agreeing with Incels’ worldview), Bluepillers (i.e., nonmembers of Incel community who congregate on their websites), and Bluepilled (i.e., fully disintegrated individuals from Incel community, often called ‘normies’; Rummelhoff, 2020; Svenning & Åkne, 2020). Although bluepill is opposed to the fundamental beliefs of the manosphere and Incel ideology, bluepill rhetoric has been communicated within the Incel community, showing value and importance under Incels’ all-encompassing philosophy. The blackpill is an “epiphany” that differentiates itself from the binary pill concept adopted from The Matrix. The two primary perspectives grounded in the blackpill worldview is that one’s place in the society is determined by physical characteristics, and women are responsible for creating a hierarchy of attractiveness (Hoffman et al., 2020). One aspect on the role of physical characteristics in society is called Lookism where factors of an individual that are out of one’s control, including facial structure, receive more acceptance and value than factors that are in one’s control, including things like fitness level and health (Papadamou et al., 2020). If an Incel member symbolically swallows the blackpill, he is aware of how immutable reality is and views it as impossible to escape the social hierarchy of attractiveness (Baele et al., 2020). The blackpill perspective differs from the redpill worldview because those under a redpill perspective hope they can take advantage of knowing how society works to help them escape from their current dilemma (p. 9). To ingrain themselves in the blackpill worldview, Incel rhetoric is framed under “scientific blackpill.” The scientific blackpill is a pseudoscientific sociology of sex focusing on female hypergamy, socioeconomic status, and attractiveness that developed special language adopted by Incels to substantiate their belief (Gallagher, 2020). Additional forms of blackpill rhetoric involved the use of the suffix “-maxxing” as a coping strategy. The suffix is used at the end of activities Incels participate in to forget about their IDEOLOGY OF INVOLUNTARY CELIBATES 14 inability to find a romantic partner, including words like ‘drugsmaxxin’ and martialartsmaxxing (Conley, 2020). These characteristics of Incel discourse are important for potentially assessing their ideology on the premise of communication, as language is a central component of how the community expresses themselves together and to others. Besides blackpill ideology, Incel literature has also expressed Misogyny, Nihilism and Fatalism as three major categories influencing Incels’ ideology. Misogyny has been the forefront for academic study on Incels and the manosphere (Bratich & Banet-Weiser, 2019; Conley, 2020; Jaki et al., 2019; Rummelhoff, 2020; Scaptura, 2019). Farrell et al. (2019) identified nine lexicons of misogynistic terms found from six million posts on subreddits related to the Manosphere. Some of these keywords were utilized under the misogynistic category of worldview, along with others being adopted under the other two categories. Additionally, Baele et al. (2019) identified adjectives associated with women on Incel forums. Those adjectives were also utilized in keyword searches for misogyny. Nihilism has been interpreted to be a core characteristic of Incels’ worldview, typically through its association with blackpill discourse (Bratich & Banet-Weiser, 2019; Conley, 2020; Williams & Arntfield, 2020). Nihilism is seen as a rejection of principles, ultimately believing that life is meaningless. Similarly, fatalism has been found as a proponent of Incels’ ideology, typically through its adoption of lookism (Cottee, 2020; Gallagher, 2020; Williams & Arntfield, 2020). Fatalism is seen as not only a rejection of society, but an inability to make a difference. Fatalism has also been expressed on Incel Wiki in its association with Biological Essentialism, a claim that biological instincts cannot be overridden. Therefore, it is a waste of time to enforce the change (Incel.Wiki, 2020). However, these ideologies lack comparison to other ideologies potentially associated with Incels and further investigation is needed to confirm their consistent presence within the community. The communicative features of ideology found by Hodge and Kress (1993) was the basis IDEOLOGY OF INVOLUNTARY CELIBATES 15 of thought for conceptualizing Incels’ overarching philosophy. Since ideology is viewed as “a systematically organized presentation of reality,” there must be a prior description of truth for ideology to be defined (p. 15). Creating such descriptions involve language and selection. Previous studies have analyzed Incels’ ideology using a communicative perspective. Conley (2020) identified three communication frames for how Incels discourse their ideology, which included cultural framing of women, grievance framing, and acceptance framing. Incels are willingly expressive to what is causing such grievances, as well as other injustices (Papadamou et al., 2020). Therefore, there must be some relationship between linguistic processes and an all-encompassing ideology. Thus, assessing Incels’ ideology through the lens of communication is necessary to understand their perception of reality. Dark Tetrad’s Relationship with Inceldom Paulhus and Williams (2002) evaluated the interworking of three socially aversive personalities to construct a ‘Dark Triad.’ The authors interrogated narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy to see if the constructs were one and the same. Although the constructs were moderately associated, they were not equivalent. Each construct held separate, specific characteristics, but the summation of them created a non-pathological model of personality. Buckels et al. (2013) validated the addition of sadism into the conceptual model to account for cruelty and forms of violent behavior. Therefore, a new ‘Dark Tetrad’ formed and would be viewed as intersecting model of separate, specific dark characteristics. The Dark Tetrad model has gained momentum with researchers to assess its applicability in predicting norm-violating behavior and maladaptive personality traits (Muris, Merckelbach, Otgaar & Meijer, 2017). Besides individual personality, the model’s utilization has expanded to assess social elements, including vulgar language, social values, and workplace behavior (Garcia, 2020; Jonason, Strosser, Kroll, Duineveld & Baruffi, 2015; LeBreton, Shiverdecker & IDEOLOGY OF INVOLUNTARY CELIBATES 16 Grimaldi, 2018). Likewise, communication behaviors have recently been assessed with the model. With in-person communication, Koscielska et al. (2019) found that Machiavellianism and sadism predicted tactics to obtain sex. Similarly, psychopathy has been linked to workplace bullying and inflicting emotional pain through language (Boddy, 2011; Tracy, Lutgen-Sandvik & Alberts, 2006). Understanding each Dark Tetrad construct within Incel ideology may endorse a need to further analyze such relationships within Incels’ communicative behaviors. Although narcissism has been conceptualized in several forms, the common factor across the literature is conceptualization it as personal self-centeredness (Bizumic & Duckitt, 2008). Core features of narcissism besides personal self-centeredness have included conceit, self-indulgence, and disregard for the needs of others (p. 440). Holtzman, Vazire and Mehl (2010) identified four categories of behaviors commonly associated with narcissism in academic literature. These included extraverted and disagreeable acts, academic disengagement, and sexual language use. Each of these four categories of behavior has been found with analyzing Incels. Although extraversion is not a component of Incels’ personality (Bieselt, 2020), extraverted acts have emerged among members, including group orientation regarding Incel worldview (blackpill) and society (Incels vs normies), along with communication between one another on various online forums (subreddits, Incel.co & social networking sites). Disagreeable acts include language discourse involving swearing, arguing and words of anger. Incels’ rhetoric is grounded in anger, a key driver in congregating groups on websites. Their discourse may involve calls for action, but often is used as a collective channel for venting resentment (Ging, 2019). Additionally, Incels tend to use more swear words in general than expected, aggressively aimed at others outside of their social group (Jaki et al., 2019). Sexual language use was also common with narcissists, even when removing words associated with anger. As expected, misogynistic discourse has been prevalently identified in Incel research. Moreover, research has indicated that IDEOLOGY OF INVOLUNTARY CELIBATES 17 there is a correlation between misogynistic language use and rape crime statistics (Fulper et al., 2014). Although Incels have not been directly linked to a prevalence of rape crimes, their discourse around sexual violence (Conley, 2020; Jaki et al., 2019) and their usage of sexual phrases like “femoids” and “roasties” indicate a similar narcissistic expression (Baele et al., 2019). Lastly, exploitative and entitlement, characteristics of narcissism found in Raskin & Novacek (1989), lead to further academic disengagement. Incels not only have a specific ideological framework for quasi-scientific biology, but they also have shown to disengage from society altogether (Gallagher, 2020; Hoffman et al., 2000). Besides the behaviors of narcissism, research has grown to analyze narcissism in various environments for behaviors to manifest. Popular environments have included the workplace, dating, and most recently, social media. Studies assessing narcissistic individuals online indicate these individuals tend to self-promote and have higher levels of social activity within online communities (Buffardi & Campbell, 2008, Carpenter, 2012; Mehdizadeh, 2010). Incels tend to spend more time online, as the landscape allows them to hide behind a veil of technology. Although Incels have low self-esteem and self-worth, Mehdizadeh (2010) found that individuals with low self-esteem spent a greater amount of time on social media sites and providing self-promotional content. Machiavellianism arose from a selection of specific statements from Niccolò Machiavelli’s original books (see Christie & Geis, 1970). The manipulative personality demonstrated in the book is grounded in using others for personal gain regardless of other individuals’ self-interest (Wilson, Near & Miller, 1996). Yet, Machiavellianism has been positively associated with antisocial behavior and alienation of others (McHoskey, 1999). Machiavellianism tends to be elaborated upon in Incel discourse more so than the other constructs. In Talton’s (2020) linguistic analysis of the subreddit, r/TheRedPill, findings IDEOLOGY OF INVOLUNTARY CELIBATES 18 indicated Machiavellianism is a synonym for manipulation. Essentially, the discourse found that when using the term ‘Machiavellian,’ Incel men should manipulate any opportunity in any way possible for the purpose of leveraging their power over women. Additionally, Van Valkenburgh (2019) provided a content analysis of documents on r/TheRedPill’s sidebar. The list of twenty-six links contained reading material related to redpill philosophy. The study showed that the term Machiavellianism was adopted to project women’s intentions of manipulating others. However, the term also “justifies men’s adoption of a similarly Machiavellian mind-set.” (p. 13) The journey that an Incel may experience when adopting redpill or blackpill ideology must ignore emotions and desires of others and instead rely on knowledge of these philosophies as a guide to social truth. Like narcissism, Machiavellian men engage in more online self-promotion (Abell & Brewer). Self-promotion has been directly linked to creating a desired image of competence (Turnley & Bolino, 2001). Incels lack the social and perceived physical capability of competently finding a sexual partner for themselves. Therefore, there only self-promotion is through criticism towards others, typically society and women (Baele et al., 2019; Conley, 2020; Papadamou et al., 2020). Williams & Arntfield (2002) analyzed how homicide offenders following Incel ideology misattributed blame. The observed areas of misattributed blame included sexual relationships, as expected, but also employment issues, lack of friends, and family problems. Within their examination, offenders would self-promote their difficulties by uttering feelings of hopelessness and helplessness. Voicing hopelessness and helplessness does not directly relate to self-promotion as a drive towards competence, but these expressions indicate that Incels falsely perceive in their level of competence towards understanding reality and must self-promote their issues as a coping mechanism (Conley, 2020). Psychopathy is considered the most treacherous construct of the original Dark Triad IDEOLOGY OF INVOLUNTARY CELIBATES 19 model (Paulhus & Williams, 2002). Psychopaths are not only disagreeable but maintain a low level of anxiety even during instances of thrill-seeking behavior. To differentiate itself from Machiavellianism and narcissism, the Hare Psychopathy Checklist-revised (PCL-R) is the standard for diagnosing subclinical psychopathy (Hare, 1991). Twenty-two separate items found within the rating scale provide an amalgamation of key characteristics of psychopathy, including moral insensitivity, thrill-seeking behavior, and lack of empathy. Violent Incel offenders exhibited lack of empathy, specifically in denying any legitimacy towards victims (Williams & Arntfield, 2020). Online trolling behavior has been correlated with psychopathy in its ability to reinforce impulsivity and thrill-seeking behavior (Bennett, 2019). Online trolling has also been correlated with misogynistic discourse, internet echo-chambers, and characteristics of the manosphere where Incels reside (Jaki et al., 2019; Lumsden, 2019, Ribeiro et al., 2020). Lastly, Incels perceive themselves as victims. Consequently, they justify themselves with aggressive attacks against women as not only reasonable, but moral (Rummelhoff, 2020). To account for the enjoyment of cruelty in non-pathological personalities, sadism was added to the dark triadic model (Buckels et al., 2013). Like narcissism, researchers have not been able to create a formal definition of sadism. For this thesis, sadism was defined based on the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) classification, in which, “recurrent and intense sexual arousal from the physical or psychological suffering of another person, as manifested by fantasies, urges or behaviors” (American Psychiatric Association, 2013, p. 695). Fantasizing is a common ideological trait among Incels. Violence and sexual conquest have been observed to be the most popular topics (Scaptura & Boyle, 2019; Williams & Arntfield, 2020). Incels have also explicitly detailed depictions of sexual violence, along with insults and shaming others for personal gratification (Jaki et al., 2019). Sadism shares a common characteristic with psychopathy in online behavior. Online IDEOLOGY OF INVOLUNTARY CELIBATES 20 trolls (i.e., individuals who provoke others through deception and harmful behavior) tend to not only be male but have high levels of trait sadism and psychopathy (Sest & March, 2017). Besides trolling behavior and self-promotion, other behaviors have unfolded based on the shared characteristics of the Dark Tetrad, including disagreeableness, aggressiveness, and emotional coldness (Paulhus & Williams, 2002). Logically, Incels have shared these traits by communicating detachment from society under blackpill philosophy along with expressing antagonistic language across forums and the corners of the internet. Although these constructs are considered distinct from one another, the expressions individuals communicate under the Dark Tetrad show the importance of its applicability in analyzing extremist behaviors. However, there is no extant academic literature showcasing the Dark Tetrad being utilized in analyzing extremists’ perceptions and expressions of reality, dependent on digital platform. There is a relationship between personality and ideology, as shown in a dual-process motivational model, in which these constructs impacted sociopolitical behavior (Duckitt & Sibley, 2010). Furthermore, highly competitive and dangerous ideological attitudes have been found to be associated with the Dark Tetrad constructs (Zeigler-Hill et al., 2020). Hence, there must be value in finding overlap of principles that may influence Incels’ ideology, which established the primary research question in this thesis: RQ: How does Incel discourse relate to the Dark Tetrad, depending on digital platform? The research question resulted in two hypotheses for this thesis. The first hypothesis was created from the original research question stating: Hypothesis 1a: Dark Tetrad constructs will occur more on Incels.co than YouTube. Since Dark Tetrad constructs are considered socially aversive, Incels.co will have a greater frequency of instances due to the prior literature establishing its notoriety and support for radical discourse. In addition to the first hypothesis comparing Incels.co to YouTube, and additional IDEOLOGY OF INVOLUNTARY CELIBATES 21 hypothesis was asserted comparing Dark Tetrad constructs to prior Incel-researched philosophies, specifically misogyny, nihilism, and fatalism. The assertion is that: Hypothesis 1b: Dark Tetrad constructs will occur less frequently than prior Incel-researched ideologies. There is an expectation of boundary condition for Dark Tetrad, as it was applied as an external theory while communication scholars have already found instances of misogyny, nihilism, and fatalism. Therefore, the inductive approach to this thesis yields a natural expectation of greater frequency of these ideologies than the external theory applied. Method To answer the two hypotheses proposed, a qualitative content analysis was performed to identify frequencies between Incel ideological rhetoric and Dark Tetrad constructs. Two forms of content analysis were created to evaluate how the digital platform affected Incels’ strategies to communicate their perspective of reality. The first analysis evaluated Incels’ ideology on Incels.co while the second analysis evaluated their ideology on YouTube. Data The thesis combined both quantitative and qualitative analysis to identify and select data for evaluation. Ribeiro et al. (2020) was able to highlight that Incel ideology is a cross-platform phenomena, and that a multi-platform study was a necessity to understand emerging perspectives and movements found under the Incel philosophy. To satisfy a cross-platform analysis, data were extracted from two separate platforms, YouTube and Incels.co. Incels.co is currently one of the most active sites for the Incel community, garnering over 200,000 threads and 12,000 members (Incels.co – Involuntary Celibate, 2020). Incels.co website was chosen not only for its popularity, but for its relationship with Incels Wiki (a popular search engine for Incel terminology) and its obvious status as a proponent for disseminating Incel rhetoric. For example, membership on IDEOLOGY OF INVOLUNTARY CELIBATES 22 Incels.co are only for men, and users cannot share experiences of romantic interaction unless paid explicitly. YouTube was selected due to its lack of utilization within Incel literature and to provide a comparison between a popular and fringed social media platform. Considering members on these two digital platforms communicate and interact differently, comments found on YouTube’s top channels discussing Incels were selected as a source for data. Additionally, the “Must-Read Content” category was selected as the additional data set from Incels.co. The category was chosen, purposively, to extract the most popular rhetoric and likely to disseminate Incels’ perspective on ideology. The collection of threads was located at the top of the website and was described as, “The most noteworthy and thought-provoking threads out there.” (Incels.co – Involuntary Celibate, 2020). Sources The primary sources were Incel YouTube channels and the “Must-Read Content” category threads. The YouTube channels were a purposive sample from the Incel Vlogger Navbox found on Incel Wiki, a “Top 10 Incel YouTubers” found on Incel TV, and a comprehensive list of Incel youtubers from the subreddit /Incelswithouthate (U/mukerflap, 2020). The channels were identified and organized, and the top channels were selected, totaling fifteen channels. Each channel had its videos’ comments scraped to analyze Incel ideology and Dark Tetrad characteristics. Procedure A quantitative analysis of extracting data from Incels.co occurred during the month of November, 2020. Threads were scraped on the website using Web Scrapper, a browser extension that builds sitemaps to customize data extraction from websites (Webscraper.io, 2020). The extension scraped 118 threads and gathered 4,556 comments (M = 38.61, SD = 14.96) along with information on the subcategory the thread was under, the title, and the rhetoric from the original IDEOLOGY OF INVOLUNTARY CELIBATES 23 post itself. To gather the popular Incels’ ideology on YouTube, the study searched through Incel Wiki, YouTube, and Reddit to identify potential influencers. After identifying the Vlogger Navbox on Incel Wiki, each “Active on YouTube” member was analyzed to see if they were dispensing Incel ideology. For example, St. Nevergiveup and Just James are identified on Incel Wiki, but have never disseminated Incel ideology, rather their content may inadvertently sympathize or relate to Incels. Next, one channel that was displayed on the website was Incel TV, a popular channel with over 13k subscribers. On their channel, a popular video that can be found with a simple Google search was “Top 10 Incel YouTubers.” Although the video was released in November 2018, the importance was seeing if any mentions from YouTubers on Incel Wiki appeared in the video. Lastly, a subreddit associated with Incels released a post with a comprehensive list of Incel youtubers. Therefore, 42 possible YouTube channels were assessed. However, only 32 of those channels were usable in the study, either due to attrition or permanent banning due to violation of YouTube’s policies. The 32 channels were screened and organized based on subscriber counts, number of mentions from the three sources, and any unique attributes. Then, the top 15 channels were chosen. The top three videos on each channel were scraped for comments within each video (M = 307.15, SD = 419.26), along with gathering information on the date, author, and popularity of comment using ScrapeStorm, a user-friendly paid subscription web scraping tool for online meta-data (ScrapeStorm, 2019). Scraping was conducted on YouTube between December, 2020 and January, 2021, using and data was organized by combining each video’s meta-data in a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet. In total, 45 data sheets emerged from YouTube along with 13,822 comments to analyze (see Table 1). Measures Each analysis included three categories of ideology identified in Incel literature: IDEOLOGY OF INVOLUNTARY CELIBATES 24 misogyny, nihilism and fatalism. By including these categories, the study was able to evaluate the frequency of Dark Tetrad constructs in conjunction with previous cited ideological structures found in Incel literature. The first analysis assessed how Incels discoursed their ideology on Incels.co in relation to the four classifications under the Dark Tetrad along with the three categories identified in prior Incel literature. Each classification and category received a numerical code while each category had three-to-five keywords used to search for mentions of Incel ideology (see Table 2). If these categories were interpreted in the comments or posts on Incels.co, an additional spreadsheet cataloged the frequency with reference to which classification of ideology it associated with. The second analysis analyzed Incel ideology on YouTube to evaluate the relationship between the constructs found under the Dark Tetrad and comments disseminating misogyny, nihilism, and fatalism. If these categories were interpreted in the comments or posts on YouTube, an additional spreadsheet cataloged the category with reference to which classification of ideology it associated with. Three-to-four subclassifications under the Dark Tetrad were appropriated to provide additional insight to the expression of Dark Tetrad by Incel members. The study implemented concepts from The Hypersensitive Narcissism Scale (HSNS), the Machiavellianism Scale (MACH-IV), the Hare Psychopathy Checklist-revised (PCL-R), and the MTC Sadism Scale (MTCSS) (Hare, 2008; Hendin & Cheek, 1997; Láng, 2020; Longpré, Guay & Knight, 2019). Sadism also included the general classification of violence to compare expressions of misogynistic violence to other forms of violence found within the analysis. The scales used under each Dark Tetrad construct were utilized based their applicability towards linguistic interpretation (see Table 2). Additionally, findings from Hancock, Woodworth & Boochever (2018) and Ten Brinke, Porter, Korva, Fowler, Lilienfeld & Patrick (2017) were used to expand the criteria of psychopathy, since there was an overlap of similar expressions found in these IDEOLOGY OF INVOLUNTARY CELIBATES 25 constructs, including trolling behaviors, lack of empathy, emotional language, and aggressiveness. Results Frequency of Distribution: Incels.co The first analysis, conducted on Incels.co, detected 1,747 instances of ideological rhetoric. Incels.co’s distribution of instances included: Narcissism (15.80%), Machiavellianism (14.76%), Psychopathy (2.12%), Sadism (12.20%), Misogyny (23.41%), Nihilism (6.30%) & Fatalism (25.41%). The frequency distribution of ideological instances on Incels.co is shown in Table 3. Dark Tetrad constructs resulted in 44.88% of distribution of ideological instances, while Incel literature ideologies resulted in 55.12%. The Dark Tetrad constructs that were most prevalent were Narcissism and Machiavellianism, due to common rhetoric towards exploiting and manipulating others, sexual language use, and egotistical entitlement. Sadism was scarcely behind with frequent communication involving violence, often with cruel intentions (see Table 5). The most common rhetoric from prior Incel literature was fatalism on Incels.co, specifically numerous occurrences of biological essentialism and lookism in Incel communication. Incel members would express disdain for normies and other groups while expressing a fatalistic attitude with comments including, “Yes, it is all an illusion, once you are enlightened you just become totally cynical to everything because you realize most normies are braindead sacks of meat and chemicals.” Combined, these two sub-categories accounted for 73% of the instances of fatalistic rhetoric on Incels.co. Narrowly, misogyny had only 2% less instances than fatalism. Misogynistic discourse on Incels.co primarily consisted of hostile language and calls for sexual violence such as, “I hope the whore gets raped then she can press actual sexual assault charges.” Most rhetoric discussed by Incels on Incels.co favored sexual IDEOLOGY OF INVOLUNTARY CELIBATES 26 violence instead of physical violence. Surprisingly, the website did not include discussion of concepts related to patriarchy or homophobia often. The only time these ideological concepts occurred were in comments associated with Incel subcultural language (Alpha) and associating an individual to having homosexual characteristics (Faggot). Nihilism was the least common ideological construct from prior Incel literature discoursed on Incels.co. The nihilistic rhetoric expressed on Incels.co focused primarily on skepticism towards society and concluding the inability to make a difference. Frequency of Distribution: YouTube The second analysis detected 619 instances of ideological rhetoric on YouTube. YouTube’s distribution of constructs consisted of: Narcissism (13.57%), Machiavellianism (4.52%), Psychopathy (2.42%), Sadism (4.36%), Misogyny (18.10%), Nihilism (9.37%) & Fatalism (47.66%). Dark Tetrad constructs resulted in 24.87% of distribution of ideological instances, while Incel literature ideologies resulted in 75.13% of ideological instances on YouTube. Table 4 shows the frequency distribution of ideological instances on YouTube. The most common Dark Tetrad construct found on YouTube was Narcissism, including instances of strong sexual language use and occurrences of egotistical entitlement. Egotistical entitlement often associated with comparing Incels to females, especially towards their applicability of finding a dating partner. For example, one user stated, “Female 5s think they deserve 10 guys and 5 guys getting matched with 1 girl and the girls still acting like the guy is lucky.” Unlike Incels.co, there was not as strong of a prevalence of Machiavellianism and Sadism on YouTube. Although there were instances of Machiavellianism with exploitive and manipulative discourse, the prevalence was far less on YouTube than on Incels.co. Additionally, Sadism was not prevalent due to fewer instances of violence in general, resulting in less frequencies of cruelty, fantasies, and trolling behavior. Like Incels.co, psychopathy was the least prevalent Dark Tetrad IDEOLOGY OF INVOLUNTARY CELIBATES 27 construct found in Incel discourse on YouTube. Fatalistic rhetoric was the most popular Incel-researched ideology expressed on YouTube, accounting for nearly half of instances within the comments. Narratives were more abundant on YouTube than Incels.co, predominantly due to focusing on Incels’ relationship with MGTOW and the manosphere, accounting for 22% of instances of fatalistic rhetoric. YouTube commenters expressed desire to interact under the manosphere doctrine with commentary like, “I would like to voice with my voice this video on my mgtow/Brazil channel.” However, there were not any instances of commentary specifically regarding men’s rights. Instead, Incels discussed the impact of being a “beta” on their ability to find a partner more repeatedly with comments. Remarks included “Well, sometimes a beta looking guy can get a lot of female attraction if he has a very dominant position in the society,” and “If you want more chicks don't be their 'fan' beta sissy gamer boy.” This focus on biological essentialism towards themselves lead to further discussions of attraction and face value in lookism, reporting 38% of total instances of fatalistic rhetoric. Misogyny was the second most common prior Incel-researched ideology on YouTube in which 18% of instances on YouTube held misogynistic language. Specifically, patriarchal commentary and hostile rhetoric was most abundant. Patriarchal commentary focused on the usage of the term “alpha” such as, “It's pretty obvious, women go after alpha males,” while the term “bitch” was used abundantly to view women as, “usually complete air heads or shallow bitches.” Calls for physical or sexual violence towards women were minimal, and instances of belittlement and homophobia did not occur on the social media platform. Like Incels.co, nihilism was the least common prior Incel-researched ideology to be spoken on YouTube. However, although the frequency of instances was less on YouTube than on Incels.co, YouTube showed that a greater percentage of nihilistic commentary with 9.37% compared to Incels.co which only had 6.30% of nihilistic commentary. Depictions of IDEOLOGY OF INVOLUNTARY CELIBATES 28 hopelessness and helplessness were the most characteristic of nihilistic rhetoric on YouTube, comprising of discourse such as, “Sad and painful to watch, no good looking women will ever want an ugly dude! End of story.” Visualization of Ideological Constructs on Incels.co To further evaluate the distribution of Incel-researched ideological constructs, multiple sunburst charters were created to evaluate the relationship between Dark Tetrad and the three ideologies identified in Incel literature. The sunburst chart is utilized to display this hierarchical data, represented by a layered circle with the innermost circle as the top of the ideological hierarchy. Figure 1 is the sunburst visualization demonstrating the distribution of ideological rhetoric on YouTube and aggregates Incel literature and Dark Triad constructs into two colors. The red signifies the ideologies already identified in Incel literature while the blue signifies the ideologies under the Dark Tetrad. Figure 1. Visualization of Incels.co’s ideological distribution. Colored based on hierarchical ideologies (red = Incel-researched ideologies; blue = Dark Tetrad ideological concepts). Organized using Microsoft Excel. Expanding on this visualization, Figure 2 was created to differentiate each ideological IDEOLOGY OF INVOLUNTARY CELIBATES 29 construct on YouTube. This was done to indicate the relationship between prior ideologies identified in the incel literature and Dark Tetrad. For example, both YouTube and Incels.co had the same top three ideological constructs, fatalism, misogyny and narcissism. However, the distribution of these ideological construct differ, as shown in Figure 2 and Figure 4. Figure 2. Visualization of Incels.co’s complete ideological distribution. Colored based on associated ideology (red = Misogyny; blue = Narcissism; green = Machiavellianism; yellow = Sadism; purple = Nihilism; black = Psychopathy; aqua = Fatalism). Organized using Microsoft Excel. Visualization of Ideological Constructs on YouTube Two sunburst charts were created to visualize the ideological distribution on YouTube. Figure 3’s color dispersion is based on comparing Dark Tetrad constructs with prior Incel-researched ideologies found in academic literature. Figure 4’s color dispersion is to show the complete ideological distribution found on YouTube. Note that the distribution of ideologies on YouTube was not similar to Incels.co, wherein fatalism, sadism, and Machiavellianism had the IDEOLOGY OF INVOLUNTARY CELIBATES 30 greatest range of distribution on both platforms. Figure 3. Visualization of YouTube’s ideological distribution. Colored based on hierarchical ideologies (red = Incel-researched ideologies; blue = Dark Tetrad ideological construct). Organized using Microsoft Excel. Figure 4. Visualization of YouTube’s complete ideological distribution. Colored based on associated ideology (red = Misogyny; blue = Narcissism; green = Machiavellianism; yellow = IDEOLOGY OF INVOLUNTARY CELIBATES 31 Sadism; purple = Nihilism; black = Psychopathy; aqua = Fatalism). Organized using Microsoft Excel. Combined Visualization of Incel-researched Ideological Construct Expanding on the frequency of Incel-researched ideological constructs, two figures were created to show the summation of frequencies on both Incels.co and YouTube. Figure 5 depicts the frequency distribution of the hierarchical ideologies on both social media platforms. Notice in Figure 5 that the frequency of ideological instances is greater on Incels.co than YouTube. In addition, the range of within frequencies is greater towards Dark Tetrad constructs. Figure 5. Comparative Instances of Incel Ideology. Colored based on hierarchical ideologies (black & red = Dark Tetrad; blue & yellow = prior Incel literature) and social media platform (black & blue = Incels.co; red & yellow = YouTube). Organized using Microsoft Excel. Figure 6 magnifies the comparative instances of Incel Ideology by demonstrating the frequencies of each keyword and sub-classification. Notice how sexual language use yields a frequency rate for Narcissism on both Incels.co and YouTube. On the contrary, the difference of fatalistic rhetoric used is evident in which “normies” and “cucks” were discussed far greater on Incels.co while MGTOW and attraction were discussed far greater on YouTube. IDEOLOGY OF INVOLUNTARY CELIBATES 32 Figure 6. Comparative Instances of Incel Ideology with sub-classifications. Colored based on hierarchical ideologies (black & red = Dark Tetrad; blue & yellow = prior Incel literature) and social media platform (black & blue = Incels.co; red & yellow = YouTube). Organized using Microsoft Excel. Qualitative Results The Incel community has grown in notoriety and inquiry with the increase pervasiveness of radical behavior on and off social media-based technological platform. This thesis focused on the relationship of the Dark Tetrad construct within Incel discourse. While the primary effort of this thesis was to assess Dark Tetrad within Incel discourse, secondary efforts were placed to compare its prevalence dependent on social media platform and in conjunction with prior Incel-researched ideologies. This was done to provide a cross-platform analysis of Incel ideology to further analyze emerging ideologies and movements within this community (Ribeiro et al., 2020). The study found occurrences of Dark Tetrad constructs and Incel-researched ideologies on both platforms of social media. As expected, instances of the constructs and ideologies were far greater on Incels.co than YouTube. In addition, Incel-researched ideologies were more prevalent than Dark Tetrad. Although the commentary favored nihilism, fatalism, and IDEOLOGY OF INVOLUNTARY CELIBATES 33 misogynistic discourse, more than one instance of ideology was often present in the commentary. In a post on the subforum /It’sOver on Incels.co, a user commented, “His entire life has been a lie. He’s a failure like me. I would kill the bitch, then rope.” This comment holds instances of sadism, misogyny, and nihilism, demonstrating one example of the interaction of ideologies expressed by the Incel community. Even though the prevalence of the Dark Tetrad constructs and Incel-researched ideologies cannot correspond to conclusive evidence, the context of these instances and frequencies used offer insight into Incels’ socially dependent identity. Incels’ Out-Group Rhetoric The assortment of commentary that was founded on both social media platforms provided insight to the perception of Incels’ reality. Interestingly, the language chosen on Incels.co varied considerably with YouTube. Specifically, Incel members on Incels.co focused on out-group rhetoric, exaggerating the negative qualities of people outside of their community (Tajfel, 1970). The misogynistic terms of Femoid and Roastie, along with the fatalistic terms Subhuman, Cuck, and Normie were found on Incels.co instead of YouTube, often times in association with other ideological instances. For example, a user on Incels.co commented that encompassed a plethora of misogynistic keywords mentioned in the study: “She's fucking hideous, I'd struggle to even get hard if I ever had a chance to bang her. How does this disgusting creature even get that much male attention (even though it's provided by similarly disgusting beta cuck)? If this ugly femoid lives life like this then what about a becky? A Stacy?....... It's actually over for every subhuman now.” Ideological instances of out-group rhetoric occurred in association with blame and distrust. Greater frequencies of blame and distrust occurred on Incels.co, as it was being used to condemn others, including betas, normies, and general society. The reason for the focus of out-group rhetoric on Incels.co was their adoption and perspective of the blackpill doctrine. IDEOLOGY OF INVOLUNTARY CELIBATES 34 Incels.co held a much more favorable view of the blackpill doctrine than on YouTube, demonstrating an affective component of their social identity. The power that comes from believing in the blackpill was common with remarks like “This is what we know as a hydrogen bomb blackpill” and “They are scared of our idea of the blackpill spreading. That actually has a chance to fuck up the system.” The core feature of the blackpill is focusing on individuals or society as the out-group. Since blackpill views society as a hierarchy determined by women, acceptance of such philosophy results in criticism and negativity towards such outgroup (Hoffman et al., 2020). However, the specific subcultural language Incels exhibited and acceptance of blackpill ideology on Incels.co was not prevalent on mainstream social media, decreasing the likeliness and ability to mobilize individuals into further extreme discourse (Farrell et al., 2019; Gaudette et al., 2020). Incels’ In-Group Rhetoric On YouTube, there was a larger occurrence of in-group commentary among Incels than on Incels.co. To begin, a larger focus within the community was towards alphas and betas. For Incels on YouTube, commentary towards alphas was positive since there was a drive to become such idea, creating in-group rhetoric. On a popular Incel YouTube video discussing Indian men and dating, a user commented, “Please do Latinos! Many of us have natural game and can be alpha.” Like alpha, the use of the term beta on YouTube was focused on inclusion and association. Perspectives like this includes comments like, “BETA UPRISING NOW!” and “The betas will have our day.” Further instances of in-group rhetoric occurred regarding MGTOW. The positive comments were in relation to the cognitive aspect of social identity, where they viewed MGTOW as a path to assimilation of the self into the in-group (Moon et al., 2013). Clear examples included, “That is why I am going MGTOW because MGTOW is the only way to live” IDEOLOGY OF INVOLUNTARY CELIBATES 35 and “The truth hurts…but this why I still be MGTOW.” While commentary towards MGTOW was different on Incels.co, the self-concept of Incels differ on the two platforms, demonstrating various cognitive connections within the Incel group towards the manosphere doctrine. As such, Incels may struggle with understanding their relation within themselves as a group and as part of the manosphere community. Lookism was the only sub-classification of fatalistic ideology that had greater instances on YouTube than Incels.co. On YouTube, physical attractiveness was one of the central categories of conversation among Incels. The most popular Incel-related YouTube channel, FaceandLMS, dedicates the entire channel in discussion of this ideology. LMS stands for “looks money status” and suggests women only pursue men that have these categories, instead of intelligence or personality (Young, 2019). From an in-group perspective, Incel commenters on YouTube focused on how changing physical aesthetic is near possible yet finding satisfaction and community with one another. While this fatalistic focus was still negative, ingroup discourse emerged through valuing dimensions attempting to make incels look relatively good (Hornsey, 2008). Intelligence, money, and other social categories allowed Incels to focus on in hopes of gaining favoritism and recognition within their group. The last example of in-group rhetoric was the inclusion and discussion of Incel channels between one another on YouTube. A commenter on Based Pluto stated, “Face, Pluto and Oreo man. Holy Trinity,” meaning that his channel, FaceandLMS and an older discontinued channel by a YouTuber named Oreo Man are common sources of receiving Incel ideology on YouTube. Additionally, channels like Incelmatics have commented between one another. When analyzing Forever Alone Guy’s top videos, they replied with, “We at incelmatics feel exactly like you! If your’e up for an interview leave us a comment.” exhibiting commentary that Incels members flock to the same channels, fostering a specific group within the Incel community. By being IDEOLOGY OF INVOLUNTARY CELIBATES 36 considered valuable, important, and influential, Incel members on YouTube, especially content creators, were more likely to have a higher evaluative social identity than ones on Incels.co. The internet is a facilitator for developing new avenues of social identity, as shown with comparing Incels on YouTube and Incels.co (Ciszek, 2017). The majority of commentary by Incels focused on out-group rhetoric, with large frequencies of misogynistic language towards women and skepticism towards society. However, YouTube demonstrated to be a hub for in-group commentary by Incel members, focused on their assimilation into the manosphere community, valuing components that make themselves look popular, and discussion of like-minded channels on the website. The contrasting behavior exhibited by these two social media platforms acknowledges Incels’ identity as socially dependent. In turn, Incels’ rapid growth and dissemination of doctrine across the internet has resulted in a loosely centralized identity yet is heavily dependent on the social platform the doctrine is established on. Incels’ Dark Constructs The thesis investigated the utilization of Dark Tetrad, a psychological construct first formulated by Paulhus and Williams (2002). The application of this construct was used to construct an appropriation of the construct for communication literature. Since communication is the construction of reality, assessing a construct used in radical extremist research under the lens of language offered new insight that would not typically be explored in communication literature. This study found fewer instances of Dark Tetrad constructs in Incel discourse than prior-Incel researched ideologies. For Incels.co, narcissism and Machiavellianism were in the top four most frequently discussed ideological constructs but were still below fatalism and misogyny. YouTube had even fewer occurrences, such that the only Dark Tetrad that was prevalent was narcissism. Nonetheless, it is worth observing how each Dark Tetrad construct appeared for Incels, since each construct highlights characteristics within Incels ideological focus IDEOLOGY OF INVOLUNTARY CELIBATES 37 or flaws with the design of the study. Narcissism was the most popular Dark Tetrad construct displayed by Incel discourse in the study. Although there were no instances of self-promotion or grandiosity, there was a plethora of sexual language use and occurrences of narcissistic entitlement. The lack of instances relates to prior studies confirmation of Incels’ low self-esteem (Jaki et al., 2019). Low self-esteem also shows to be exacerbated by lookism instead, hence the greater instances of that ideological commentary (Conley, 2020). The abundance of sexual language used by Incel members resulted in narcissism being popular. Although sexual language use is very similar to misogyny, the instances detected did not only account for misogyny, but demonstrated an over-saturation of sexually suggestive commentary in general. In Table 5, the example used to display sexual language use shows language that was not selected within misogyny. This relates to Holtzman et al. (2010) finding that narcissists may manifest sexual strategies in their everyday lives through extensive use of sexual language. The quantity displayed by Incel members needed to be apparent within the analysis, but not to oversaturate the findings and comparison within other ideologies. Expressions of entitlement, the most maladaptive facet of narcissism, were also shown on Incels.co and YouTube. Although relatively small, the occurrence of such commentary further demonstrates that narcissistic qualities emerge under Incels’ blackpill doctrine. Machiavellianism had the greatest range of frequency dependent on social media platform. As such, Machiavellianism was not within the top categories on YouTube. However, the reasoning for the distribution was centered on the topic of content discussed on the platform. On Incels.co, Machiavellian commentary was prevalent due to threads dedicated to exploiting women on Tinder and the scientific blackpill. Exploitation of women was popular out-group rhetoric discussed on the website, specifically in ways to maximize the number of women you can have sex with within a given time frame. The regularity of this commentary recounts IDEOLOGY OF INVOLUNTARY CELIBATES 38 Koscielska et al (2019) and their prediction of sexual coaxing through Machiavellian communication. The scientific blackpill favored manipulative rhetoric instead of exploitive rhetoric. Table 5’s example phrase regarding manipulation came from a scientific blackpill thread focusing on feminism in nature. As narcissism related similarly to misogyny, Machiavellianism showed resemblance to fatalism. Since scientific blackpill focuses on fatalistic concepts like hypergamy and attractiveness, the frequency of commentary towards these fatalistic topics correlated in greater occurrences of Machiavellian discourse. YouTube had significantly less instances of Machiavellian ideology, due to a lack of content towards the exploitation and manipulation of others, characteristics of out-group rhetoric. Sadism appeared within Incel discourse, essentially through violent commentary. Although violence has been a central element of studying Incels (e.g., Hoffman et al., 2020; Jaki et al., 2019; Young, 2019), assessing the relationship of violence (physical, sexual, other) within categories of ideology (sadism and misogyny) offered a deeper understanding of the violent characteristics that emerged. The instances of violence driven rhetoric were more complex than originally expected. In the frequency distributions of both YouTube and Incels.co, instances of violence under the sadistic ideology category were always greater than frequencies of violence found under misogyny. The reason for this was due to the addition of other commentary outside of the keywords of Hurt, Punch, Choke, Rape, Sodomize, or Gangbang. The majority of extra instances of violent commentary came from the term Rope. Roped refers to the action of hanging oneself by using rope, often associated with committing suicide (Cottee, 2020). However, this term was found to be utilized in not only violent commentary towards oneself, but with others. An example comes from an Incel.co thread on the relationship between height and ethnicity towards attraction. A user wrote, “Superficial western women deserve the rope, along with the Jews that made them this way.” Besides this term, commentary related to celebrating the violent IDEOLOGY OF INVOLUNTARY CELIBATES 39 acts of prior Incel terrorists were mentioned. Individuals often suggested others to “go ER” and illicit actual violence outside of the form (Young, 2019). Due to the inability to discuss violence on YouTube, there were less frequencies of violent commentary. In turn, fantasies, cruelty, or trolling rhetoric in association with violence predominately appeared on Incels.co, further contributing to the difference between behaviors shown YouTube vs Incels.co. Expanding on sadistic, violent commentary expressed by Incels, the privacy policies and public element of each digital platform may influence the dispersion of violent ideology. The lack of appearance on YouTube may correspond with YouTube’s hate speech policy. YouTube has the ability to monitor and remove content promoting violence or hatred against others (“Hate speech policy – YouTube Help”, 2021). However, on Incels.co, the only regulation for violent commentary is the use of the “NSFW” (i.e., Not Safe for Work) tag (Incels.co - Involuntary Celibate, 2020). Since Incels.co fosters taboo parts of Incels ideology, Incels.co may serve as the true habitat for the group. Conversely, on YouTube, Incels are representing their group in a more public setting. YouTube serves as the main forum for video content viewership, reaching 90 percent of internet users in the United States (Tankovska, 2021) In relation to social identity theory, if a group perceives that society maintains a stigma towards the group, members may avoid labels or identifications of affiliation to evade such stigma (Myaskovsky & Wittig, 1997). Since violent commentary is associated with Incel ideology, Incels may evaluate this communicative behavior and choose not to express it in order to prevent being further scrutiny by the public. Psychopathy served to be the most difficult Dark Tetrad construct to utilize within communication literature and in the study. To reiterate, the study had to use additional findings from Hancock et al. (2018) and Ten Brinke et al. (2017) to create different expressions of this construct compared to the other Dark Tetrad constructs. Consequently, four classifications of IDEOLOGY OF INVOLUNTARY CELIBATES 40 psychopathy appeared including Lack of Empathy, Blame, Negative Emotional Language, and Incomprehensible discourse. However, negative emotional language and incomprehensible discourse were discarded from the study. Negative emotional language was discarded due to an oversaturation of occurrences within the analysis. If this sub-classification was included, psychopathy would easily be the most common ideological construct discussed within the Incel community. However, there was an inability to decipher if the negative emotional language directly associated with psychopathic behaviors. Incels most often were discussing things with a negative connotation, regardless of if it was in-group or out-group rhetoric. The dominance of this communicative characteristic would have devalued the occurrences and instances of other ideologies found within Incel discourse. For incomprehensible discourse, the subjectivity of this category resulted in failure to decipher poor reading achievement as a precursor for psychopathic tendencies. As a result, psychopathy was the least prevalent ideology found within Incel discourse. Although there were instances of each Dark Tetrad constructs in Incel discourse, Incels mainly propagated narcissistic, sexual language and exploitative Machiavellian dialogue. The instances of Sadism and Psychopathy were far less due to errors in sub-classification selection and limits of violent commentary on YouTube. Although the utilization of the Dark Tetrad cannot be conclusive, this study introduces how to conceptualize psychological constructs into communication literature. By providing a model of blackpill ideology is characterized using Dark Tetrad, a thorough comprehension unfolded understanding Incel ideology. To visualize this new understanding of Incel ideology, Figure 7 was created to showcase the relationship of prior Incel-researched ideologies and Dark Tetrad concepts on Incels’ blackpill doctrine. The top four frequencies of ideology on Incels.co were utilized in the figure. Although YouTube had a different distribution of top ideologies, Incels.co demonstrated to be the most representative of IDEOLOGY OF INVOLUNTARY CELIBATES 41 current Incel ideology and social identity, especially in influencing others towards radicalization. Figure 7. Visualization of Blackpill ideology by Incels using Dark Tetrad and established Incel-researched ideologies. Colored based on associated hierarchical ideology (dark blue = Dark Tetrad; grey = prior Incel literature, black = blackpill ideology) Organized using Microsoft Excel. Discussion A digital analysis of Incel activity was conducted, in which instances of radical and violent commentary emerged (Conley, 2020; Papadamou et al., 2020; Scaptura & Boyle, 2020). The analysis included nihilism and fatalism to evaluate in conjunction to Dark Tetrad constructs, and to further investigate these ideologies in Incel-researched literature. Misogyny has been found to be a core feature of Incels’ ideology (Ging, 2019; Jaki et al., 2019; Rummelhoff, 2020), but nihilism and fatalism have been associated with blackpill discourse, biological essentialism, Blackpill Narcissism Misogyny Machiavellianism Fatalism IDEOLOGY OF INVOLUNTARY CELIBATES 42 and Incel-specific calls for violence (Bratich & Banet-Weiser, 2019; Incel.Wiki, 2020; Williams & Arntfield, 2020). Within this thesis, the frequency of these ideologies were confirmed to be various. For fatalism, it showed to be the most popular ideological construct to be discussed within the Incel community, regardless of social media platform, validating its inclusion within Incel literature. Although nihilism was not as extensive as other ideologies, the fact that each sub-classification was mentioned by Incels and was utilized differently on each platform supports its appearance and association with Incel ideology. The focus and deployment of nihilistic and fatalistic rhetoric by Incels has been confirmed within this thesis and supports findings within prior Incel-researched literature (Conley, 2020; Cottee, 2020; Jones, 2020; Gallagher, 2020; Williams & Arntfield, 2020). Besides investigating prior Incel literature, analyzing the communicative discourse of Incels in the thesis advanced understanding of their ideology and perspective towards violence. First, the linguistic and communicative analysis of ideology conducted in this study coincided with efforts within the academic literature to characterize the Incel community (Baele et al., 2020; Conley, 2020, Jaki et al., 2019). By analyzing ideology through communicative discourse, this thesis was able to assess and account for a diverse range of beliefs among members within the Incel ideological movement (Schull, 1992). Second, a method of analyzing Incel violence was provided within the study. Conflicting with Jaki et al. (2019), references towards violence were primarily in association with sexual violence, where Rape was found more in commentary than Kill. In their study, references to violence were collected between November 2017 and April 2018, three years prior to the collection of this study. The study focused on violence commentary in association with Alex Minassian’s Toronto van attack and found the frequency of messages that contain the world kill was correlated to when his attack occurred (p. 19). To contrast, the last violent incident in association with Incel ideology occurred in February, 2020, when a 17-year- IDEOLOGY OF INVOLUNTARY CELIBATES 43 old stabbed a woman as a form of retribution for rejection by women (Gallagher, 2020). Although violence in general was discussed, commentary on the acceptance and justification of rape was more dominate than violence. This finding relates to the needs of the academic literature cited in Ribeiro et al. (2020). The emergence and movement of Incel ideology is relatively young. Having comparisons of ideological perspective and language selection by the Incel community offers further understanding to their assessment of violence. The exploration of the study reinforces Incels’ commitment towards violent rhetoric. Potential studies should continue evaluating Incels as a new terrorist threat that can be compared with other extremist communities (Hoffman et al., 2020; Whitfield, 2020). To advance comprehension of Incels’ communicative discourse, locus of control becomes a worthwhile mechanism for exploring Incels’ reasoning for their rhetoric. Locus of control serves as a way for individuals to interpret situations they encounter (Rotter, 1966). Individuals may interpret what happens within the situation internally by associating themselves as the influence, typically through assessments of their own skills, esteem, and motivations (Levenson, 1981). Individuals may also interpret their situation externally, producing feelings of powerlessness and attributing the results to something outside of their control (Aube, Rousseau & Morin, 2007). The content analysis performed revealed compelling evidence that Incels engage in communication that indicates an external locus of control. Researchers have found classic fatalism and external locus of control to be positively correlated among individuals (Shahid, Beshai & Del Rosario, 2020). Correspondingly, an individual’s manipulativeness or expression of Machiavellianism has also been correlated (Richford, 1981). Strengthening the relationship between this mechanism and Incels, research has arisen gauging its influence on Incels’ vocabulary and narratives (Brzuszkiewicz, 2020). Incels’ discussion of their loneliness due to women’s unrealistic demands and promiscuity, genetic determinism, and society’s IDEOLOGY OF INVOLUNTARY CELIBATES 44 influence on dating are the pillars to which external locus of control becomes institutionalized by the community. Thus, Incels believe in the “myth” of self-improvement or internal factors influencing their position (Brzuszkiewicz, 2020). The ideological instances of fatalism and Machiavellianism found within the discourse of Incels supports the mechanism of external locus of control. While this thesis expanded the understanding of Incels’ ideology, the focus was also to adopt new measures to assess ideology, specifically outside of the communication discipline to offer new insight to extremist discourse. The utilization of the Dark Tetrad expands on the relationship between psychology and communication, especially in relation to online social activity (Craker & March, 2016; Goodboy & Martin, 2015; March et al., 2017). Likewise, Dark Tetrad has shown to be effective in assessing extremists in prior literature. Although prior studies have used Dark Tetrad in predicting radicalization (i.e., Pavlović & Wertag, 2021), Dark Tetrad was applied in relation to extremists’ ideology and communication. In terms of ideology, the study offers a new structure of applying Dark Tetrad towards ideology through the lens of radical extremism, as most studies connecting Dark Tetrad and ideology are through a socio-political lens (Bardeen & Michel, 2019; Moor, Kapelles, Koc, & Anderson, 2019). By providing a model combining Dark Tetrad and Incel ideology, future researchers can compare Dark Tetrad constructs found within this extremist community with other extremists. Furthermore, the academic literature should expand on the relation of Dark Tetrad and extremists by applying it towards religious ideology, a potential component of an individual’s radicalization process (Morgades-Bamba, Raynal & Chabrol, 2020). By focusing on the religious component of ideology in relation to the Dark Tetrad, new findings about the extremist communities may occur. Conclusion IDEOLOGY OF INVOLUNTARY CELIBATES 45 Although this thesis found insight to the Incels’ ideology, several limitations occurred. The measures of each Dark Tetrad constructs were self-produced. Although the sub-classifications were appropriated from established measures in psychological literature, the adoption of these classifications were used under a lens of communication and discourse rather than psychology and personality. The choices used for each sub-classification could easily be changed and manipulated for further inquiry. For example, bullying rhetoric was not utilized to assess psychopathy (Boddy, 2011). As psychopathy showed to be the most difficult to appropriate into communication, further research could be used to pinpoint specific psychopathic tendencies that could be easily analyzed through frameworks of communication, instead of general language characteristics like trolling, negative language use and incomprehensible discourse. Besides the selection of ideologies being limited, the methods of analysis were limited as well. The study applied quantitative and qualitative methodology in gathering and analyzing communication data. The quantitative characteristics of the study included the frequency distribution but does not offer any statistically significant results, hindering the validity of the data discovered. The qualitative characteristics of the study included the researcher’s analysis of commentary by Incels, the purposive sampling of YouTube channels, and identification of themes related to language selection, view of existence, socially dependent identity, and Dark Tetrad. These characteristics obstruct the reliability of the procedures, as there may be unconscious bias that may have influenced the findings (Noble & Smith, 2015). Time and space must always be considered with limits within research. As this study demonstrated to have differing results on violence rhetoric than in previous research (Jaki et al., 2019), accounting for how time may influence Incels’ ideology is crucial. Incels respond to events and adjust their commentary accordingly. The occurrence of COVID-19 may have IDEOLOGY OF INVOLUNTARY CELIBATES 46 indirectly affected the study due to the Incel community having less opportunities for publicly exhibited violence. If opportunities for violence is not apparent, discussion and dissemination of violent ideology may be less likely to appear. Sexual desire and behavior significantly increased during the COVID-19 pandemic for women and minority men (Starks et al., 2020; Yuksel & Ozgor, 2020). Therefore, it is plausible that the increase focus of sexual violence by Incels would indirectly occur from COVID-19. This research is not claiming that capturing ideological data of Incels at this moment is the best reflection of their doctrine. Instead, this research provides a snapshot of Incels communicating online, while testing the impact of psychological measures used in communication literature. Lastly, the collection of data was limited within the analysis. Although the user, number of likes, and title were scrapped during collection, the analysis did not reflect these characteristics in the results. Although each comment showing Dark Tetrad constructs or other ideologies is important, future research should also take into consideration the likeliness of the individual seeing that comment. As YouTube and other social media platforms weigh the comments in terms of popularity and relevancy, accounting for that in data analysis may offer what ideologies are more likely to circulate to other individuals as well. The expansion of Incels and their radical ideology has resulted in violent actions and evaluation by academic scholars. By studying this community’s ideological focus, researchers have gained insight into Incels’ attributes and perceptions of reality. In doing so, the study analyzed the applicability of Dark Tetrad constructs with Incels’ blackpill doctrine and overarching philosophy. Although there was an inability to provide conclusive, statistical validation to using Dark Tetrad constructs, a new model encompassing Incel philosophy has been introduced that utilized the psychological measure, further investigating the applicability of the Dark Tetrad within communication literature. In addition, the study was able to broaden IDEOLOGY OF INVOLUNTARY CELIBATES 47 comprehension of the language and vernacular selected by Incels, validated the appearances of nihilism and fatalism among Incels, and revealed how Incels’ social identity is dependent on the platform they are on. The thesis introduced a multi-discipline framework to assess an online radical community. In doing so, a dark depiction of involuntary celibates evolved, substantiating a bleak perspective towards reality. IDEOLOGY OF INVOLUNTARY CELIBATES 48 References Abell, L., & Brewer, G. (2014). Machiavellianism, self-monitoring, self-promotion and relational aggression on Facebook. 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IDEOLOGY OF INVOLUNTARY CELIBATES 59 Table 1 Incel-related YouTube Channels Used Channel Total Comments FaceandLMS 4083 Incel TV 2612 HeedandSucceed 2592 You wouldn't like me when I get gutta 1464 Incelmatics 766 Decline 643 Blue Skies Media 356 Downhill D Miller 246 Forever Alone Guy 222 Steven B 203 Rejected From Eve 183 TheBasedPluto 149 LoneWolf87 122 PinkyCulture 108 TFL at War 73 13822 IDEOLOGY OF INVOLUNTARY CELIBATES 60 Table 2 Classifications & Keywords Used in Analysis Subject Identifiers Classification Sub-classification Keywords Code # Narcissism 70 Self-promotion/ Grandiosity 71 Sexual Language Use 72 Entitlement 73 Machiavellianism 80 Manipulation 81 Exploitation 82 Distrust 83 Psychopathy 90 Lack of Empathy 91 Blame 92 Negative Emotional Language 93 Incomprehensible discourse 94 Sadism 100 Trolling 101 Violence 102 IDEOLOGY OF INVOLUNTARY CELIBATES 61 Fantasies 103 Cruelty 104 Misogyny 5 Belittling Femoid 6 Roastie 7 “Other” 8 Homophobia Dyke 9 Fistfucker 10 Faggot 11 “Other” 12 Hostility Bitch 13 Cunt 14 Whore 15 “Other” 16 Patriarchy Alpha 17 Conquer 18 Suppress 19 “Other” 20 Physical Violence Hurt 21 Punch 22 Choke 23 “Other” (KILL) 24 Sexual Violence Rape 25 IDEOLOGY OF INVOLUNTARY CELIBATES 62 Sodomize 26 Gangbang 27 “Other” 28 Nihilism 29 Skepticism Disbelief/belief 30 Distrust/trust 31 Suspicion/conclusion 32 “Other” 33 Hopelessness Despair 34 Discouragement 35 Misery 36 “Other” 37 Delusion Fiction 38 Deception 39 Misconception 40 “Other” 41 Helplessness Powerless 42 Incapable 43 Failure 44 “Other” 45 Fatalism 46 Stoicism Cuck 47 Hypergamy 48 IDEOLOGY OF INVOLUNTARY CELIBATES 63 Detached 49 “Other” 50 Narration MGTOW 51 Men’s Rights 52 Story/Narrative 53 “Other” 54 Biological essentialism Stacy’s 55 Normies 56 Beta 57 “Other” 58 Lookism Face 59 Attractiveness 60 Subhuman 61 “Other” 62 Note. Search terms for each Dark Tetrad component was appropriated from the HSNS, MACH-IV, Hare Psychopathy Checklist, and MTC Sadism Scale. Search terms for misogyny are a combination of Farrell et al. (2020) and Baele et al. (2019) misogyny. Narration and Stoicism moved from Misogyny to Fatalism due to their association with fatalistic values. Nihilism and Fatalism terms were self-produced. IDEOLOGY OF INVOLUNTARY CELIBATES 64 Table 3 Frequency Distribution of Incel Ideological Rhetoric and Dark Tetrad Constructs on Incels.co Classification Subclassification Keywords Frequency N % Narcissism 276 15.80 Self-promotion 0 0 Sexual Language 251 14.37 Entitlement 25 1.43 Machiavellianism 258 14.76 Manipulation 68 3.89 Exploitation 110 6.30 Distrust 80 4.57 Psychopathy 37 2.12 Lack of Empathy 15 .86 Blame 22 1.26 Sadism 213 12.20 Trolling 19 1.10 Violence 102 5.84 Fantasies 32 1.92 IDEOLOGY OF INVOLUNTARY CELIBATES 65 Cruelty 60 3.34 Misogyny 409 23.41 Belittling Femoid 69 3.96 Roastie 28 1.61 Homophobia Dyke 2 .11 Fistfucker 0 0 Faggot 28 1.60 Hostility Bitch 50 2.87 Cunt 20 1.14 Whore 95 5.44 Patriarchy Alpha 21 1.21 Conquer 1 .05 Suppress 0 0 Physical Violence Hurt 0 0 Punch 2 .11 Choke 1 .05 Kill 11 .63 Sexual Violence Rape 79 4.52 IDEOLOGY OF INVOLUNTARY CELIBATES 66 Sodomize 0 0 Gangbang 2 .11 Nihilism 110 6.30 Skepticism Belief 30 1.73 Trust 5 .29 Conclusion 39 2.24 Hopelessness Despair 8 .46 Discourage 0 0 Misery 7 .40 Delusion Fiction 8 .46 Deception 0 0 Misconception 3 .17 Helplessness Powerless 2 .11 Incapable 4 .22 Failure 4 .22 Fatalism 444 25.41 Stoicism Cuck 87 4.99 Hypergamy 20 1.14 IDEOLOGY OF INVOLUNTARY CELIBATES 67 Detached 1 .05 Narration MGTOW 4 .22 Men’s Rights 0 0 Narrative 8 .46 Biological essentialism Stacy 20 1.14 Normie 153 8.77 Beta 59 3.38 Lookism Face 39 2.23 Attraction 21 1.20 Subhuman 32 1.83 Total 1747 100 Note. “Other” keyword searches were discarded due to lack of frequency of alternative choices. Negative Emotional Language was disregarded due to over-saturation. Incomprehensible Discourse wase disregarded due to inability to associate reading achievement and psychopathic behavior. IDEOLOGY OF INVOLUNTARY CELIBATES 68 Table 4 Frequency Distribution of Incel Ideological Rhetoric and Dark Tetrad Constructs on YouTube Classification Subclassification Keywords Frequency n % Narcissism 84 13.57 Self-promotion 0 0 Sexual Language 78 12.60 Entitlement 6 .97 Machiavellianism 28 4.52 Manipulation 10 1.61 Exploitation 15 2.42 Distrust 3 .49 Psychopathy 15 2.42 Lack of Empathy 6 .97 Blame 9 1.45 Sadism 27 4.36 Trolling 4 .64 Violence 20 3.23 Fantasies 2 .32 IDEOLOGY OF INVOLUNTARY CELIBATES 69 Cruelty 1 .17 Misogyny 112 18.10 Belittling Femoid 0 0 Roastie 0 0 Homophobia Dyke 0 0 Fistfucker 0 0 Faggot 0 0 Hostility Bitch 36 5.81 Cunt 2 .32 Whore 4 .64 Patriarchy Alpha 55 8.88 Conquer 1 .17 Suppress 1 .17 Physical Violence Hurt 0 0 Punch 1 .17 Choke 0 0 Kill 5 .81 Sexual Violence Rape 7 1.13 IDEOLOGY OF INVOLUNTARY CELIBATES 70 Sodomize 0 0 Gangbang 0 0 Nihilism 58 9.37 Skepticism Belief 8 1.29 Trust 3 .49 Conclusion 2 .32 Hopelessness Despair 8 1.29 Discourage 5 .81 Misery 6 .97 Delusion Fiction 3 .49 Deception 1 .17 Misconception 1 .17 Helplessness Powerless 4 .64 Incapable 2 .32 Failure 15 2.41 Fatalism 295 47.66 Stoicism Cuck 4 .64 Hypergamy 18 2.91 IDEOLOGY OF INVOLUNTARY CELIBATES 71 Detached 2 .32 Narration MGTOW 66 10.67 Men’s Rights 0 0 Narrative 10 1.61 Biological essentialism Stacy 7 1.13 Normie 19 3.07 Beta 55 8.88 Lookism Face 42 6.79 Attraction 69 11.15 Subhuman 3 .49 Total 619 100 Note. “Other” keyword searches were discarded due to lack of frequency of alternative choices. Negative Emotional Language was disregarded due to over-saturation. Incomprehensible Discourse wase disregarded due to inability to associate reading achievement and psychopathic behavior. IDEOLOGY OF INVOLUNTARY CELIBATES 72 Table 5 Example Phrases of Each Ideological Construct/Concept Classification/Subclassification/Keyword Example Phrase Narcissism/Sexual Language Use “She was taking loads from her husband and then taking loads from Chad while her husband was gone. Imagine fucking your wife and sticking your dick in her Chad cum filled vagina, is there anything more cucked?” Narcissism/Entitlement “Blackpill should ultimately lead to taking away women's rights so they can't fuck chad endlessly.” Machiavellianism/Manipulation “Women are more like animals than men are, its like they aren't really conscious of their own existence, so easily manipulated by agendas and also still so easily manipulated by their own programming, they lack true introspective thought, which is why their conversations are never about such things.” Machiavellianism/Exploitation “Women have evolved to see niceness and vulnerability as a weakness that can be exploited, and are repulsed by it. What they say they want is just socially acceptable nonesense. Even nice chad gets cucked by IDEOLOGY OF INVOLUNTARY CELIBATES 73 bad boy chad.” Machiavellianism/Distrust “I've seen two therapists, and every time I avoid telling too much about me. You can't trust them.” Psychopathy/Lack of Empathy “Emapthy is a meme onto itself. Its so subjective and disappears so easily.” Psychopathy/Blame “Blame the retarded pussy cucks who validate these fat bitches.” Sadism/Trolling “Imagine her guzzling down his HIV ridden semen while licking every last drop that got on her fingers. She would rather do that than to be in the same room as incels. Hahahahahahahhaahahahaha” Sadism/Violence “I hope he blows his brains out.” Sadism/Fantasies “women start sucking and fucking at around 12-14(sometimes even earlier) and by the time she is 20 they already have 8 years of experience.they have fucked a million guys,done every dirty position in the book,sucked chad anus,licked his dirty shit,swallowed enough cum to fill 5 bottles…” Sadism/Cruelty “I just find it funny how women still aren't IDEOLOGY OF INVOLUNTARY CELIBATES 74 being kept in cages and pissed on.” Misogyny/Belittling/Femoid “If this ugly femoid lives life like this then what about a becky?” Misogyny/Belittling/Roastie “Roasties would rather watch chads face then any of that.” Misogyny/Homophobia/Dyke “I hate dykes. Those carpet munchers need to do us all a favor, and rope.” Misogyny/Homophobia/Faggot “I have never seen a masculine looking man wear earings. Only faggot-like men wear earings JFL” Misogyny/Hostility/Bitch “2/10? you're being generous there, friend. That bitch is a 0. She's a gross fat slob.” Misogyny/Hostility/Cunt “Forced prostitution please, so cunts like this will be banged with ugliest 0,1/10 truecels.” Misogyny/Hostility/Whore I want to kill the next whore that complains about the "patriarchy." Misogyny/Hostility/Alpha ” Everything is fine, except for the fact that INCELS ARE THE REAL ALPHA-MALES but Incels are also gentlemen, so you'll be treated as shit no matter what.” Misogyny/Patriarchy/Conquer “He raped her. So yes, it’s true that she was conquered by brute force, but that’s what she’d been wishing for, of course.” IDEOLOGY OF INVOLUNTARY CELIBATES 75 Misogyny/Patriarchy/Suppress “I cannot think of a better way for suppressing female hypergamy.” Misogyny/Physical Violence/Choke “They want the amoral bad boy who will choke her.” Misogyny/Physical Violence/Kill “I want to kill the next whore that complains about the ‘patriarchy’.” Misogyny/Sexual Violence/Rape “But, of course, there is a correlation between the pain caused by rape and the likelihood of orgasm.” Misogyny/Sexual Violence/Gangbang “You’re literally raising a stacy just so she can get gangbanged by 50 men a week.” Nihilism/Skepticism/Belief “I initially shared your belief, But, that fantasy you and I have in our minds, is non-existent in the 21st century. It's unrealstic, especially for incel-tier guys.” Nihilism/Skepticism/Trust “Why would you trust shit like this straight from the mouthpiece of Jew York?” Nihilism/Skepticism/Conclusion “In conclusion, I am not even at the level of a guy who is shorter than a girl, never went to a barber and whose overall appearance is bad.” Nihilism/Hopelessness/Despair “That daily dose of anger is what motivates me to say fuck the world, get rich, and try to improve my position from hopeless bottom IDEOLOGY OF INVOLUNTARY CELIBATES 76 dweller.” Nihilism/Hopelessness/Discourage “Why have courage cause we're never gonna make it.” Nihilism/Hopelessness/Misery “what is a man supposed to do at that point? Live in suffering, sadness, pain and misery till eventual death? Fuck this life honestly...” Nihilism/Delusion/Fiction “Bluepill in genre fiction: you get a second chance to woo a girl.” Nihilism/Delusion/Deception “We have all been deceived yet most don’t even know it.” Nihilism/Delusion/Misconception “What annoys me most about the so-called ‘beautiful’ People is that they're delusional. They're incapable, physically and mentally, of experiencing life as a less than desirable person.” Nihilism/Helplessness/Powerless “Am I to accept myself as a powerless truecel.” Nihilism/Helplessness/Incapable “No matter what I do I can't catch a break whether it's in real life or a game I hate it here , I think about suicide every single day.” Nihilism/Helplessness/Failure “Once you become honest with your sexual failure and willing to bring up sex in politics you can come up with some very high IQ IDEOLOGY OF INVOLUNTARY CELIBATES 77 views.” Fatalism/Stoicism/Cuck “All Incels will be given Euthanasia if refusing to be a cuck slave by the Government.” Fatalism/Stoicism/Hypergamy “Wtf...I...this is just...hypergamy is fucking insane...this fat fucking whale gets that many matches and likes...in that short time.” Fatalism/Stoicism/Detached “Even prostitutes won’t hug me, it’s a cold world for some of us.” Fatalism/Narration/MGTOW Incels.co:“Guy was creative and to me more deserving of being the black pill saint than elliot as he made fun of everyone and was one of the first to shit on mgtows.” YouTube: “This is why I started watching MGTOW. They have helped me find something to follow.” Fatalism/Narration/Narrative “These feminists and soys are too far gone to be capable of thought beyond what they already think they know that guides their lifestyle and beliefs to fit a narrative.” Fatalism/Biological essentialism/Stacy “At least Chad men get Stacy as reward for his hard work.” Fatalism/Biological essentialism/Normie "normies have to make efforts and spend their IDEOLOGY OF INVOLUNTARY CELIBATES 78 money on pussy.” Fatalism/Biological essentialism/Beta “Every romance movie aimed at males is about a beta male being valued for his personality.” Fatalism/Lookism/Face “Going to photoshop my face whiter. Time to ascend boyos.” Fatalism/Lookism/Attraction “REAL women (let alone real Asian women) are more concerned with their timeless inner beauty, NOT their short-term fertile looks. Men in general should deserve. *I should know: I've came across some of the stupidest Asian women that makes you wanna die sooner!” Fatalism/Lookism/Subhuman “You will never have this, incels don’t deserve this because we are subhuman orcs. We deserve to fuck other incels or to meet our end at the gallows if we don’t wageslave and provide for our corporate feminist overlords.” Note. Detection of ideological concept can occur through exact keyword matching, or qualitative analysis depicting phrase to relate to ideological construct.