How Geek Media Created the Modern Incel

Five years ago, a self-proclaimed “incel” (involuntary celibate) extremist named Alek Minassian drove a van down a busy sidewalk in Toronto, killing 10 and injuring 16. Minassian participated in online message boards for incels, and stated he used the van as a weapon as part of the “beta uprising” (“beta” is a term within incel message boards referring to unattractive incel men).

Involuntary celibates are typically heterosexual men who claim they are celibate (and often virgins) not by their own choice but because of the women around them. Alek Minassian’s act of violence was hardly the first or last committed by an incel. In 2014, Elliot Rodger — with whom Minassian later claimed he had been in contact — killed six and wounded 13 in Isla Vista, California. Rodger, who is now referred to by incels as “Saint Rodger,” claimed the rampage was a reaction to being rejected by women. Multiple shootings have since been tied to the incel movement, including a 2015 attack in Roseburg, Oregon, a 2019 Tallahassee yoga studio shooting, and a 2020 Canadian machete attack at a massage parlor.

So how did we get to the point where some men consider rage and violence a reasonable reaction to being denied sex? There are undoubtedly many factors that created this reality, but one is likely the rise of “geek” media — or media that recognizes any man’s “right” to sex regardless of women’s desires — since the early 2000s. This genre has raised a generation of misogynistic geeky men to feel entitled to sex.

In a 2019 article entitled Fairy-Tale Logic from “Beauty and the Beast” to the Incel Movement, Shannan Palma analyzes how themes in various types of media connect with incel culture. Stories of men deserving women no matter the circumstance are tales as old as time, according to Palma, who cites Beauty and the Beast as a prime example: the Beast, a literal monster and kidnapper, is shown as deserving of Belle’s love and respect and wins her over as soon as he turns human (and handsome). Palma also relates fairy tales to more modern media, where geeks go from “zero to hero and women are expected to change only to assist the man’s development. For example, in the reality TV show Beauty and the Geek, women are given challenges that revolve around accepting the “geeks,” whereas the men are challenged to develop stereotypically masculine tasks that have nothing to do with the women. This reinforces the incel mantra that more attractive men, who they call “Chads,” win over women who are “dumb” enough to fall for the trap, which results in less attractive men being alone.

The other side of the coin of incels hating attractive women who go for attractive men is their assumption that unattractive women should be available to them. One example of this can be found in the movie Ready Player One. Wade Watts, the film’s protagonist and geek extraordinaire, pines after a fellow video game player Samantha Cook, who is too cool and out of reach inside the game world to respond to him romantically or sexually. Outside of the game, though, she is revealed to be flawed in appearance (a small facial port wine stain) and, therefore, a woman he can win over.

Incel culture is also reinforced through the media’s regulation of what virginity even is. One 2009 study interviewed 61 young adults about their experiences with virginity and how it related to the media they watched as virgins. The study found that films that depicted virginity as an important topic largely sent the message to viewers that virginity is either a gift for someone else or a stigma. These portrayals are usually gendered, with women’s virginity often being a gift (as in Sweet Sixteen) but a stigma for men (American Pie). The concepts of virginity displayed in the media the interviewees had watched in their past often were similar to the interviewees’ own experiences and feelings about virginity. In this way, the media’s embodiment of male virginity as a stigma — something to be lost immediately or else face emasculation — heightens incels’ feelings of anger when faced with their own virginity.

One of the most harmful ways the media creates incels, though, is its casual and permissive treatment of violence perpetrated by “undesirable” men. Researchers Jeff Preston and Lindsay Rath-Paillé explore this concept in their 2023 analysis of the movie Joker. The film, and others like it, excuse the Joker’s violent actions by linking the character’s actions with disability and childhood and societal trauma and violence. Incels, according to Preston and Rath-Paillé, particularly relate to this character’s desperation for sexual and romantic fulfillment, which is denied the protagonist by the woman he is obsessed with. The murder of that woman, among others, is justified by his mental illness, which has overlapped with society’s justification of mass murders as victims of mental health crises.

Of course, we cannot blame these movies alone for how incels have interpreted them. That said, it’s clearly worth considering how what we all view on our screens perpetuates justifications of male violence and male ownership of women.