
In the 2000s, incel communities became more extremist as they adopted behaviors common on forums like 4chan and Reddit, where extremist posts were encouraged as a way to achieve visibility.

Over the next decade, the membership of and online fringe right-wing communities like 4chan increasingly overlapped. While IncelSupport welcomed men and women and banned misogynistic posts, 's userbase was overwhelmingly male. It was less strictly moderated than its counterpart, IncelSupport, which was also founded in the 2000s. The message board was founded in 2003 as a place for people who felt perpetually rejected or were extremely shy with potential partners to discuss their situations. She expressed regret at the change in usage from her original intent of creating an "inclusive community" for people of all genders who were sexually deprived due to social awkwardness, marginalization, or mental illness. When she read about the 2014 Isla Vista killings, and that parts of the incel subculture glorified the perpetrator, she wrote: "Like a scientist who invented something that ended up being a weapon of war, I can't uninvent this word, nor restrict it to the nicer people who need it". Things have changed in the last 20 years". That's a pretty sad version of this phenomenon that's happening today. In 2018, Alana said of her project: "It definitely wasn't a bunch of guys blaming women for their problems. She stopped participating in her online project around 2000 and gave the site to a stranger. During her college years and after, Alana realized she was bisexual and became more comfortable with her identity. In 1997, she started a mailing list on the topic that used the abbreviation INVCEL, later shortened to "incel", for "anybody of any gender who was lonely, had never had sex or who hadn't had a relationship in a long time". Titled "Alana's Involuntary Celibacy Project", the website was used by people of all genders to share their thoughts and experiences. The first online community to use the term "incel" was founded in 1993 a Canadian university student known only by her first name, Alana, created a website to discuss her sexual inactivity with others.


For other uses, see Incel (disambiguation).Īn incel ( / ˈ ɪ n s ɛ l/ IN-sel, an abbreviation of " involuntary celibate" ) is a member of an online subculture of people who define themselves as unable to get a romantic or sexual partner despite desiring one.
