Interrogating the incel-o-sphere: The state of the subaltern counterpublic sphere in the digital age of extremism

Playing catch up: Incel as label for loneliness

The beginnings of ‘involuntary celibate’ are relatively understudied in comparison to its present misogynist iteration. Traces of its history point to the late 1990s, when a bisexual woman, known only as Alana, began a site known as ‘Alana's Involuntary Celibacy Project’ for ‘those who were struggling to form loving relationships’ (Taylor, 2018: 7). As a self-described ‘late bloomer’, Alana created this website as a friendly forum for people to discuss relationship troubles and struggles with loneliness. It was on this site where the titular title ‘incel’ – the second iteration ² of a portmanteau of ‘involuntary celibate’ – was coined. This label signified a community of people who struggled with dating and were turning to others to find validation and support on how to get started (Kassam, 2018).

Alana believed the site to be a place where people could find community and discuss issues with relationship-finding in nonjudgmental ways. Those of all genders/sexualities were encouraged to participate, and elements of her own engagement revolved around her identity as a bisexual woman (New America, n.d.). She left the website in 2000 when she felt that her dating life was picking up (Taylor, 2018), handing it over to someone she did not know (Kassam, 2018). She was under the belief that the community would continue as a positive space; though one cannot claim that her stewardship alone would have kept the movement from sliding to its current state, it was her departure that many mark as the turn toward misogynistic extremism. This proto-incel movement is remarkably different and, perhaps as a result of infamy of the contemporary iteration, remarkably unknown; yet, this history provides necessary foundation for understanding the incel of today.

Chads, Stacys, and being red-pilled: Incel as a man frustrated by sexual relations

Yet, under all our noses (even Alana's), the incel movement became the vitriolic, misogynistic space that we all have come to know. Belonging to what has been termed the ‘manosphere’ (a historical space wherein men have expounded a dissatisfaction with the state of gender dynamics; Ging, 2019), misogynist incels in the current day are largely cisgender, heterosexual men who hold stringently antifeminist views. Misogynist incels are not new, by any means; however, their introduction in online contexts has fostered a new view of masculinity that reformulates antifeminist beliefs in a new light (Ging, 2019).

In their review of existing incel-related literature, Sparks et al. (2022) outlined three general elements of misogynist incel ideology. Perhaps most preeminent is the belief that a reversal of gender equity has taken place, wherein women are the sole arbiters of the dating market and are driven by physical characteristics alone when selecting a partner (Baele et al., 2021). Women, by this logic, are the ones who drew misogynist incels into being by only caring about looks; incels and their cadre of physical characteristics were always already a biological reality, but the rise of women's agency meant that they were free to violate biological diversity in pursuit of superficial qualities. This belief that women have reversed the gender hierarchy and only value physical attributes leans on another fundamental incel belief – that a hierarchy of appearance structures how social (and sexual) relationships develop (Baele et al., 2021; Maxwell et al., 2020). These two ideological tenets are most reflected in the discourse that pervades the incel sphere, shaping how self-ascribed incels identify as a part of this public. The last segment of contemporary misogynist incel ideology is that of violence and extremism, a tenet that has had an especially profound effect on the public.

While much of the focus on misogynist incel culture online centers on the vehement resentment of women, their violence is not found only in words. There is a growing, worrisome history of mass violence fueled by incel ideology (even if they did not identify as incels). The first documented case is that of the 2009 Pennsylvania gym shooter, who killed three women and injured nine others before taking his life, after publishing his antifeminist blog (ABC News, 2009). His violence would become a calling card for future incels, who invoked his name in their own discussions and manifestos (Sparks et al., 2022), much like the (perhaps most famous) incel attacker of Santa Barbara in 2014 who is also valorized within the community (New America, n.d.). Many of the misogynist incel-related attacks that are publicly reported on are ones that prove fatal. These attacks occur in a variety of settings and, while often targeting women directly, also unfold with collateral victims. Even those who would not be the expected target of such ideology can be affected by such violence, such as the unconscious Canadian man murdered in 2016 because his attacker claimed he felt stress over being an incel (Johnston, 2018). While police have thwarted other attacks via online surveillance of potential violent actors, the overwhelming reality points to the persistence of online platforms where misogynist incels gather to air their resentments, embolden their ideologies, and, in some cases, seek to enact violent fantasies or relieve their anger in real life.

There are several structural features that shape the ‘incel-o-sphere.’ While incels congregate on various social media platforms, they often gather on specific platforms such as Reddit and 4chan or independent forums where they will not experience moderation. A variety of activities can occur in these spaces, from discussions of personal experience to explicit lionization of those incels who became famous via mass acts of violence (O’Donnell and Shor, 2022; Speckhard et al., 2021). The mental/emotional effects of these spaces on misogynist incels are contested (Costello et al., 2022; Speckhard et al., 2021), suggesting that the bonding purported may not be entirely positive. Those who inhabit misogynist incel spaces online, however, can have a varied level of engagement, with some focused on lurking while others are concerned with repeated, consistent presence (Baele et al., 2021). Moreover, the community has taken to collecting research from various fields as evidence of their ideology, collecting this research into a ‘Wiki’ (Daly and Reed, 2022). This archive represents a space for this community to proliferate a shared understanding – if one-sided and misinterpreted – of how the world works via public research they believe supports it. Though many misogynist incels operate as ‘lurkers’, these activities and research repositories represent a new sphere of understanding and communication. This sphere, while open to the public via the virtue of internet access, is mostly inhabited by those who view themselves as incels – therefore becoming an echo chamber of similar ideas and shared sentiments against the public sphere.

A fundamental element of belonging to the Incel-o-sphere is an identification with the term (Sparks et al., 2022). In other words, much like Fraser (1992) originally wrote, to engage in incel spaces is to believe oneself to be a (misogynist) incel, rather than one universal definition (Speckhard et al., 2021). One of the ways that this identity is expressed is through language, often focused on those who ‘get it’ and those who do not. Perhaps most known is the concept of the Blue Pill or the Red Pill. This is a reference to the film The Matrix, wherein the lead character is given a choice: take the Red Pill to become aware of the simulated nature of his world or take the Blue Pill to continue living in blissful ignorance (Baele et al., 2021). A newer trend, the Black Pill, suggests that misogynist incels believe that the appearance hierarchy cannot be overcome and for ‘balance’ to be restored, a new patriarchal order must be established (Glace et al., 2021; O’Malley et al., 2022). Another version of identity via language is how incels identify those whom they resent and view as the benefactors of the appearance hierarchy. Men and women considered conventionally attractive are referred derogatorily as Chads and Stacys; Chads are lambasted for supposedly hoarding women and Stacys, despite being the object of incel's sexual desires, are dehumanized as superficial and manipulative people (Baele et al., 2021; Maxwell et al., 2020). Important to this understanding is that misogynist incels feel as though they have been marginalized, against their believed expectations, by society and treated worse based on appearance (Daly and Reed, 2022). This language is intended to identify the social relations and structural hierarchy which generated their position as misogynist incels, rather than recognition of their role in identifying with the community.

Misogynist incels can and do create alternative spheres wherein they share knowledge and discuss their experience, and even catalyze more extreme engagements (such as violence) with the public sphere. The language and identities constructed by misogynist incels points to how identification with an ideology and counteridentification against the public shapes one's engagement in this sphere. Important to note in these conversations is that incels themselves do not view their engagements as promoting violence, nor do they always endorse violence themselves (Moskalenko et al., 2022; Speckhard et al., 2021). While misogynist incels can and do post things that can be construed as endorsing violence, scholars have noted that these can be an effort to uplift oneself within the perceived discourse of a given space (Jaki et al., 2019). However, despite personal views and beliefs regarding whether one endorses violence, misogynist incel ideology can predict violent ideation, rape fantasies, and self-perceived dangerousness (Speckhard et al., 2021). Incels’ relationship to the public sphere – as simultaneous circles of secrecy online and rhetorical/physical violations of public discourse – point to gaps that remain from both Habermas's original public sphere premises and Fraser's subaltern counterpublic.

Habermas's public sphere

Jurgen Habermas first defined the public sphere (or bourgeois public sphere) in his 1962 book, which was translated into English for the first time in 1989 as ‘The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere.’ Habermas was concerned with articulating ‘a realm of our social life in which something approaching public opinion can be formed’ for which ‘[a]ccess is guaranteed to all citizens’ (1989: 49). In this pivotal work, Habermas traces the historical roots of his contemporary public sphere to changes in both economic structures (changes toward capitalism) and the governing of nations (moves toward democratic/republican states). In contributing to the rise of bourgeois society, these conditions created a space wherein bourgeois individuals could critically discuss issues of the day – first with literary texts then eventually evolving into political conversations (Habermas, 1989).

Several premises belie Habermas's (1989) public sphere. First, Habermas makes an ideological distinction between public and private. In Habermas's mind, the public sphere is for discussion of public issues – namely, politics and the state. Private affairs – such as the economy or family – are not a part of the public sphere discussion. Thus, private individuals gather together to discuss public issues as a check to the government, whose policies shape private life (Habermas, 1989). Second, he contends that all citizens should have access to this sphere and be able to participate uncoerced. Individuals should be able to speak freely and from their own needs; these discussions should be devoid of undue influence – from political institutions or private interests such as a business – and occur in a freely assembled context. Together, these understandings were, in Habermas's mind, the ways that a general public opinion coalesced. However, Habermas's premises, while lofty and perhaps desired, are an idealized view of democracy. Though he himself recognized the public sphere as an unrealized ideal that saw limited participation (Habermas, 1992), he still believed that society could strive for these ideals.

Fraser's subaltern counterpublics

Though other critiques of Habermas have existed for some time, Fraser's (1992) essay ‘Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracy’ represents a fruitful step forward in complicating his premises. Namely, Fraser forwards the subaltern counterpublic as a fundamental facet of modern public spheres, drawing on the work of Spivak (who coined subaltern) and Felski (who coined counterpublic). Importantly, rather than a direct counter or repudiation of Habermas's public sphere, Fraser instead argues that subaltern counterpublics run parallel to the public sphere. She provides several examples of said spaces at work, focusing largely on US feminist spaces in the late 20th century, to highlight how these subaltern counterpublics function.

As previously mentioned, feminist Nancy Fraser (1992) was dissatisfied with Habermas's liberal public sphere on several counts. The state of political representation and civil rights in contemporary times make complete, uncoerced, and equal participation of all communities impossible. Though she believed that Habermas's liberal public sphere was critical to the formulation of critical theory, Fraser found Habermas's idealism lacking in addressing the lived realities of marginalized communities. In fact, counter to Habermas’ historical account, Fraser argues that the modern public sphere functions only insofar as certain parties are excluded – either from participation totally or participation in ways that affirm their needs. Moreover, Fraser is concerned with the distinction between public and private that Habermas asserts as necessary; for marginalized communities – women, working class, racially marginalized, and so on – public and private are instantiated in each other. These critiques, and their critical relationship to the real world, catalyzed Fraser to develop her own conceptualization of public sphere. To Fraser, subaltern counterpublics are created by marginalized communities to ‘invent and circulate counter discourses, which in turn permit them to formulate oppositional interpretations of their identities, interests, and needs’ (Fraser, 1992: 67).

Though Fraser raised critical questions as to the Habermasian public sphere, her presentation of fragmented citizenship within the public sphere fails to capture the publics inhabited by those who do not experience a subaltern position in society. Though counterpublic may describe the spaces where people flock to resist and reimagine the public sphere, Fraser's application applies to those who feel they did not have access to the public sphere in the first place. Yet there are those who can and do seek refuge in enclosed spaces not because they did not have access to the public sphere; rather, these individuals create their counterpublics because they believe that their stronghold in the public sphere is losing ground. Fraser recognizes that counterpublics can be anti-democratic and authoritarian; however, I argue that placing such spaces in similar classification to other subaltern counterpublics, such as feminist women-only groups, fails to capture the true nature of their differing relationship to the public sphere. But, before providing deeper examination of this difference and the potential of defining a new counterpublic for these groups, we will delve into applications of public sphere to the context of social media.

Applications of public sphere to social media

The public sphere has already seen application to the new digital world by numerous scholars. In generally making more theoretical rather than empirical arguments, scholars have posited that social media contains the conditions of a public sphere (Fuchs, 2012; Van Dijck, 2012). Scholars have focused on the general accessibility of the internet, with unlimited access to information and equal participation (Fuchs, 2012; Halpern and Gibbs, 2013). Indeed, social media has enabled individuals to increase their exposure to other viewpoints on a much broader scale (Flaxman et al., 2016). Users, within these spaces, generally engage in ways that mirror Habermas's communicative action around political discourse (Shirky, 2011; Vromen et al., 2015). In these estimations, the internet is an unfettered arena for discourse that is dominated by user intent and engagement–away from influence from others. Such conditions, in theory, would set the stage for social media to become a new form of public sphere. Yet, despite arguments that social media can and should be considered a new public sphere, critiques abound as to the feasibility of applying the premises of this discursive formation to social media.

Habermas (2006), among other scholars (e.g., Fuchs, 2012; Van Dijck, 2012), believe that communicative action itself does not occur on social media for a variety of reasons. On the individual level, one may not have access to social media spaces (Fuchs, 2012), nor desire to not participate in political discourse –concerned instead with cultivating an environment where they can be entertained, see others, and other non-political forms of engagement (Kruse et al., 2018). User participation is also not always generative, as political conversations remain surface level and/or devolve into personal attacks (Halpern and Gibbs, 2013; Miller et al., 2015), increasing polarization despite broadened exposure to other views (Flaxman et al., 2016). Rosa (2022) argues this polarization is facilitated by the non-visceral nature of media-based encounters, removing the physical interaction that occurred with traditional spaces of the public sphere (e.g., cafes). While users may become more connected than ever, these critiques highlight how uninformed, unintentional ways in which users engage and perceive platforms limit participation. Focus on the user side of limited communicative action is important, but only half the puzzle.

The features of social media itself also hinder communicative action. The nature of social media – in which one presents oneself publicly for others to view – promotes a certain amount of surveillance that both hinders one's participation and the kinds of information available. When one understands that their friends and family are watching, they may not behave in the normal ways that they would if they were not being watched (Kruse et al., 2018; Staples, 2014). Algorithms which surveil an individuals’ habits online also filter content to serve the user's interest, addressing issues of unlimited information but also creating opportunities for biased, one-sided views (Collins et al., 2020), and also making them susceptible to manipulation (Woolley and Howard, 2019); relatedly, the privatization of one's viewing data also means that there is influence from social media platforms that want to encourage certain forms of participation for monetary gains (Kruse et al., 2018; Staab and Thiel, 2022). The confluence of these factors is exemplified within sites like Breitbart, which directly facilitate misinformation, antagonism, and hate (Davis, 2021). In these cases, social media constrains one's participation and one's access to information in ways that reach as high as institutional influence on things as simple as fearing others’ perceptions.

These dual approaches to understanding social media through the publics sphere prompt a question: what is, then, social media's place within public opinion formation? Disparate answers have come to the surface. Bruns and Highfield (2016) argue that social media prompts the need for a new conceptualization of the public sphere – one that is more complex and dynamic, recognizing the disparate yet overlapping micro-publics that shape general discourse. In recognition of the role that privatized interests plays in determining the engagement of users online, Staab and Thiel (2022) take an alternative approach altogether; rather than fitting social media into the existing understanding of public spheres, they suggest that social media is instead indicative of a new stage of public sphere shaped by changing economic conditions, mirroring the method of analysis that generated Habermas's original idea of public sphere. In both cases, social media undergirds the conditions by which public opinion is formed – either as evidence of overarching shifts in the overall public sphere or as a fluid, timeless place where counterpublics are constantly (re)formed. These complexities undergird the considerations I take in presenting my new formulation of the ‘ultern countersphere’.

Connections and departures with existing public sphere theories

Despite the slide into authoritarian, misogynistic rhetoric, characteristics of modern incel space also maintain certain similarities to Fraser's subaltern counterpublics. These incel spaces are created as a refuge from and alternate space for those who feel disenfranchised within the public sphere. Indeed, they establish boundaries as who is ‘in’ and ‘out’, creating a sense of identification that establishes membership within the community. This space, while open to the public via the internet, is closely moderated and populated with those who identify with incel ideology – as a lurker or active participant. These together reflect the space itself as a counterpublic, one which is meant to assuage the sting of lost access to the general sphere.

Furthermore, they are arguing that the personal is political – the conditions which shape private life are entrenched in political structures. In a sense, they are correct that the world is ordered by a hierarchy. The ways that one moves through the world are determined by policies and practices on the systemic level that are bound to these systems. However, of course, the incel community believes this hierarchy as having been erroneously reversed, not as something from which they have always been excluded, but something from which they have egregiously been removed. Rather than believing that visual hierarchies of ableism, racism, and other systems of oppression shape our world, it is the belief of incels that the hierarchy of sexual ordering should favor men, with unfettered access to women.

Forwarding the ultra altern, or ultern, counterpublic

With these considerations, I forward the idea of the ultra altern counterpublic or ‘ultern counterpublic.’ Understanding the position of incels as extremists outside and often in direct contention with the general public, I maintain the counterpublic label. However, I choose ‘ultra/ultern’ as a signifier of this community's magnification of existing, hegemonic discourse (e.g., incels with sexual politics and partnering). By forwarding the ultern counterpublic as a compliment to Fraser's subaltern counterpublic, I contribute to the multitudinous, overlapping nature of publics that many scholars since Fraser have called for.

I first discuss the perceived relationship of the ultern counterpublic to the public sphere. A paradoxical, superimposed positioning as outside and an extension to the rhetorics and structure of the public sphere provides insight into how this community views its position in society. I, then, interrogate how these counterpublics interact with the public sphere, particularly the nature of violence in ultern counterpublics. These are contrasted against Fraser's subaltern counterpublics to draw out the importance of differentiating between counterpublics. I conclude with applying these principles to another group I label as an ultern counterpublic – white supremacist groups of the 1900s, specifically the KKK.

Brief exploration of another ultern counterpublic

Exploring another extremist group, the KKK and white supremacists, can strengthen the conceptualization of ultern counterpublics as not a contemporary phenomenon, but one that can be traced across history. Three distinct waves of the KKK in the 1860s to the mid-1900s followed significant changes in the racial order of America – from the resolution of the Civil War to the rise of the Civil Rights Movement. While these groups represented extremist positions, they viewed themselves as victims of changing political opinions and their weakened prevalence within the major discourse. The ‘white race’ was dying out, losing its position and supremacy, they argued (and continue to argue). Any perceived success, integration, and acceptance of Black, Jewish, and other racial ‘minorities’ was a threat to the very nature, being, and continuance of White people. Yet, they also were extensions of existing racist beliefs that continued to persist and still maintained relative privilege within the broader public sphere. Rhetorically, much like misogynist incels who believe women should be ‘second class citizens’ (Baele et al., 2021), KKK members believed similar things of racial minorities (e.g., Black people, Jewish people).

They desired a state condition wherein their adversaries, whom they believed to be making advances that upset the natural balance of the races, were re-instantiated as lesser. These rhetorical moves evidence the same paradoxical beliefs discussed earlier – that race is a natural category (with whiteness as both supreme/good and imperiled by Blackness) but also that social/structural conditions were being reversed in ways that unfairly disempowered White people (through the enfranchisement of Black people). Much like misogynist incels, while not all Klan members committed atrocious acts of violence, the allowance and endorsements of violent fantasies eventually brutally ruptured into the public sphere. However, the KKK was not alone in its violence. Indeed, during the Civil Rights era, police violence remained brutal, particularly against those mobilizing for change. These complimenting realities – violence intended to re-establish a purportedly lost position and parallel state violence in support of similar ideology – reveals again the slippery nature of the believed ‘victim’ position of those in ultern counterpublics. When state behavior affirms the ultern counterpublic's ultimate position on the structural level, over and above believed political shifts, the ultern counterpublic and its perceptions of reality are again called into question. By participation in a cordoned off ‘echo chamber’ of sorts, ultern counterpublics function to entrench existing attitudes and form a victim position within the community that shields them from outside discourse/refutation.

The rise of social media has altered these conditions. Where KKK members gathered in secret, with actions bursting into the public via violence against minority groups or public speeches about their beliefs (which in turn was reported on in mass media), social media has allowed similar discourses to circulate more ‘openly.’ White supremacists today (sometimes aligned with the ‘alt-right,’ which overlaps with misogynist incels) flock to platforms which amplify their beliefs (such as Breitbart; Davis, 2021), yet also leverage large, mainstream platforms to draw in others (Nakamura, 2019). More specifically, white supremacist actors have explicitly utilized innocuous content to capture unsuspecting audiences before proliferating biased information (Brooks, 2020; Peng et al., 2023) – a trojan horse for ultern, extremist ideologies to draw in audiences who may support their cause. Social media enables the divisive and non-rational beliefs of these anti-publics (Davis, 2021) to flourish in siloed havens, while the supposedly-democratic features of social media are manipulated broaden their reach into the general public sphere.