Chapter 6 | Social media trigger: A technical tool that could divide people
The latest phenomenon in anger, violence and frustration is the “incel,” who invades social media platforms with secret hateful comments. According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary definition, an incel is a person (usually a man) who considers themselves to be involuntarily celibate and typically expresses extreme resentment and hostility toward sexually active people.
According to experts, incels hold a deep resentment against women and other men who are sexually active. “They blame women for their own lack of sexual and social status.” “In fact, most incels believe that women should be shamed and, in some extreme cases, even physically punished with sexual assault, rape or disfigurement,” says a report on Firstpost. And in extreme cases, even killed.
Social media appears to have given incels (and those who troll incels) a platform to spread insults and accusations, albeit through code language and emojis that are full of violent references.
The story of a Netflix series by Stephen Graham and Jack Thorne called Adolescence, released in March 2025, shows what happens in the lives of incels, with the story set in the United Kingdom. It stars thirteen-year-old Jamie Miller, who is arrested for allegedly murdering a classmate who rejected him and mocked him on social media for being an instigator. A detailed article by Ketaki Desai in the Sunday Times on March 23, 2025 talks about the emergence of incels, their anger, resentment, frustration, behavior and motives. The Netflix series Adolescence is a reflection of this phenomenon, she says. Desai quotes Professor Srimati Basu – head of the department of gender and women’s studies at the University of Kentucky College of Arts – who says it has a lot to do with the dreams we’re socialized to have: “You’re raised by a loving mother to think you’re a real looker, and then you meet real women who don’t care so much about your looks.” Sometimes it’s kind of tragic. But sometimes it becomes toxic. “Everyone imagines a heteronormative future where they are the heroes they see in movies.” She adds, “This is due to the inability to get into successful hero mode.”
How did this term “incels” – involuntary celibates – come about? It apparently comes from a Reddit thread “in which tens of thousands of users, mostly young men, complain about their lack of sexual activity – many of them blaming women,” says Josh O’Kane, a reporter at the Canadian newspaper Globe and Mail. According to Firstpost, “In November 2018, Reddit announced that it had banned a 41,000-member incel group for violating its rules regarding violent content.”
An August 10, 2019 New York Times report by Julie Bosman, Kate Taylor and Tim Arango highlighted the following: “In recent years, some of these men (mass shooters) have identified themselves as so-called “incels,” short for “involuntary celibates,” an online subculture of men who express anger at women for denying them sex, who often fantasize about violence and celebrate mass shooters in their online discussion groups.” In 2014, Elliot Rodger killed six people in Isla Vista, California, a day after posting a video in which he describes himself as tortured by sexual deprivation and promises to punish women for their rejection. The NYT report states that several mass murderers have cited Rodger as inspiration. According to the report, Alek Minassian, “who drove a van onto a sidewalk in Toronto in 2018, killing 10 people, had posted a message on Facebook praising Rodger minutes before the attack.” “The incel uprising has already begun!” He wrote: “All hail Supreme Gentleman Elliot Rodger.”
The NYT report was written after a violent school shooting in Dayton, Ohio, in which a man shot and killed nine people. He was known to be angry with fellow students and even threatened them with violence. According to the authors, researchers point out: “The motivations of men who commit mass shootings are often unclear, complex or unknown.” But a common denominator that unites many of them – apart from access to powerful firearms – is hatred of women, assaulting wives, girlfriends and female family members, or sharing misogynistic views online.”
It is generally concluded that perpetrators of mass shootings are most often men with a known history of domestic violence and abuse against women – all warning signs of impending large-scale violence if left unchecked or unreported. A person who feels cornered, rejected, insecure and therefore lonely finds that once they discover a community of like-minded people online, there are opportunities to vent their anger and also gain recognition.
Terrorists, advocates of extremist ideologies and fundamentalists are known to use online platforms to spread messages of hate and incite members to violence by angering, infuriating, humiliating, frustrating, feeling rejected and excluded, all of which explode into destructive acts in the real world. Political parties and leaders have started building an entire department of tech-savvy personnel whose job it is to spread negative news and rumors about their opponents and troll them to the point that they become timid and insecure.
“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic,” said Arthur C. Clarke, who first proposed the idea of geostationary satellites. What makes technology positive or negative is how it is used, with what intent and for what purpose. Online sites present both threats and opportunities for progress. These websites are used by groups and communities to rally support for a social cause and to strengthen the ethical fabric of society and promote justice and justice. Then there are these dark groups that use the same medium to create angry, frustrated communities that thrive on promoting hate and misogyny and encouraging violence and even murder. Therefore, blaming social media platforms would not be the right approach. Rather, the way forward is to create checks and balances on both the user and product sides to minimize the spread of hate and violence via social media.
Since most disorders within the individual and the groups to which he or she belongs are based on anger, the best way to create a healthy environment is to somehow contain that anger and divert it for constructive purposes. Or better yet, find ways to prevent the anger from arising in the first place.
Excerpted with permission from “Anger: Why We Get Angry and How We Should Respond to Provocation” by Narayani Ganesh, Aleph Book Company.
Feminism In India is an award-winning digital intersectional feminist media organization with the aim of learning, educating and developing feminist sensibilities and decoding the F-word among the youth in India.
