This guide is for frontline practitioners and social service workers, as well as individuals with an interest in the incel community. Moonshot is conducting the first systematic, multi-platform study of the online incel ecosystem with financial support from Public Safety Canada’s Community Resilience Fund, and in collaboration with the Canada Centre for Community Engagement and Prevention of Violence. Our project aims to increase understanding and awareness of the phenomenon, and improve the capacity of Canadian practitioners to understand and interrupt incel mobilization to violence.
This guide is the first step in that process. It provides a general introduction to incel terminology, logic and symbology, in order to help practitioners understand the incel ecosystem. The prevalence and obscurity of incel-specific jargon and imagery can act as a barrier to understanding incel ideology, conducting research, and designing interventions to support incels and prevent their mobilization to violence, which includes attacks fueled by violent misogyny, interpersonal violence directed at women, suicidal ideation, and acts of self-harm.
Incels have developed their own coded and highly specialized language, and use it to communicate in online forums and spread their ideology. This guide aims to demystify the jargon and symbols they employ providing definitions, establishing context, and demonstrating how language choices fit into their wider system of belief. By doing so, we hope to empower practitioners to accurately identify individuals who are involved with the incel community, understand their unique frames of reference, and engage with them in an informed, skillful way.