This story contains distressing themes and references to sexual violence and suicide
I’m in a pub in Sydney having lunch with five incels or “involuntary celibates”, and as their self-imposed name suggests, these young men define themselves by their inability to attract a sexual or romantic partner.
Incels are a subset of men - usually virgins - who congregate online and blame women for why they're not in sexual relationships. They're usually young, mostly from Western countries and represent a small amount of the population, but the online communities where they congregate appear to be growing.
My colleague Jennifer Luu and I have been speaking with the five young men online for a few weeks, who identify as incels.
We wanted to understand what's driving young men to join these groups. Now, they've agreed to speak with us in person on the condition they remain anonymous. Some have flown interstate for the meetup.
“I’ve gone outside more in the last two days, than this year,” Tom*, one of the young guys says at lunch. "Yeah, same," another agrees.
This is the group's second physical meetup. Usually, they chat with each other in a private online server (similar to a chat room).
“We had an interaction with a woman last night,” one of them tells me.
“She proved the black pill,” adds another. After spending months in incel forums, I’ve come to know what this means. It’s one of the core beliefs discussed in the forums, chatrooms, and YouTube channels where the community has flourished.
“Taking the black pill” is accepting that you've lost the genetic lottery, women will only go for a handful of the most attractive men, and it’s over for you. Some online posts from extreme incels advocate for suicide and violence as the "solution".
At lunch, the group scoffs at the idea that “being nice” or “being yourself” will help them find a woman - consolations and advice they say will never work. To them, they’re undateable.
After weeks of speaking online, five incels agree to meet with us in person. Credit: SBS The Feed
In an interview with Tom away from the group, he admits there "may be some elements of misogyny" in the community but says it's all in reaction to women rejecting them.
"I don't understand why they're so appearance-obsessed and shallow. I don't understand how they spend so much time talking about gossip and other meagre things," Tom says.
He believes women's standards have "skyrocketed" and tells me he feels his looks and autism leave him in the group of men who could never attract a partner.
"I believe that there is most likely not a single female on the planet that would be willing to date me," he says.
During our interview, Tom says he hadn’t spoken to a woman that wasn’t related to him in three years. Coming to the meetup with us broke the “streak”.
Tom was in high school a few years ago when he first casually browsed the forums. Then he started agreeing with incel sentiments - so much so that he set up a private chat room.
He estimates it's had thousands of members, but says it's hard to keep track because it keeps being pulled down by moderators. In this server, he says a "small minority" of incels in the chat room make "jokes" about rape.
Jennifer and I spent some time lurking in the chatroom. One comment we saw - though there are more - read, "no point in arguing about the age of consent when women are around. They are incapable of rational thinking when it comes to that topic."
But Tom dismisses the comments as anything more than "fun banter."
"This is just simply like angry men just saying stuff on anonymous chat rooms that they would never mean."
How the online incel world can stir violent fantasies
Ryan* says he wasn't a hardened misogynist when he came across an incel website at age 15. He was a "short" boy with some "bitterness towards women" after being bullied for his height.
Now 21, he's starting to step away from the incel world and says he feels differently about women, but spent many years in this mindset.
"Growing up, I was taught women are queens, respect women, all that stuff - everybody gets told that. But [my experiences] made me realise, oh, it's not all it's chalked up to be...everybody can be evil," he tells me.
"I wasn't ever allowed to discuss how bad women could be."
So when he found that incel website in 2017 - now the biggest incel forum on the internet - it was seductive. Most of his friends were already in these spaces, he says. And he had found a place to vocalise these thoughts and be validated by other men who similarly felt rejected and victimised by women.
We went inside an incel meetup in Australia. Credit: SBS The Feed
But the problem for Ryan is that it was never just about sex or loneliness.
At the worst of it, he used to have fantasies about "rape, violence, murder."
"There was thoughts of like, women that I did want to, you know, rape as a teenager. But it was all just to like, get back at them."
He found himself joining in conversations in incel spaces where violence is not only normalised but sometimes glorified by users. On the forums, he says he's seen gruesome videos of people being killed.
He doesn't have those thoughts anymore and tells me that he recognises they’re bad, but he blames the years of "mental conditioning'' for steering him to that headspace.
Some of the posts I've seen on the most popular forum - which has tens of thousands of members and millions of visits each month - justify rape.
"The majority of opinion is kind of disgusting,” Ryan tells me. "There's a lot of them that just enjoy seeing people suffer.”
That resentment is directed toward women and “sexually successful”, confident men, which the community labels 'Chads'.
There have been multiple deadly attacks overseas from men who call themselves incels.
One 18-month study from the UK-based Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) found last year that a post about rape was published every 29 minutes on the most popular incel website.
The head researcher of the study, Callum Hood, said some incels are spending ten hours of the day on this forum and are “beginning to express really extreme views, hateful views towards women, but also expressing quite disturbing views about their own mental health.”
It’s hard to know just how big the community is, especially when they often congregate in private servers. What Mr Hood does know, though, is that the most popular incel website is slowly increasing in visits and becoming more radicalised in nature.
“There's a really tight-knit core to this community that's really extreme, that is really in a deliberate way, constructing the ideology and building this community,” Mr Hood said.
“And these communities are being left to develop.”
Are incels violent?
Ryan was able to pull himself out of his violent thoughts, but others in the community didn't.
Some in the community depict self-described incel Elliot Rodger, who in 2014 killed six people and then himself in Isla Vista, California, as a saint.
There have been deadly attacks by incels in the UK and Canada, too.
Mike Burgess, the head of Australia’s National Intelligence agency, ASIO, told Senate Estimates in May incels were on the agency's radar as a potential threat. Mr Burgess said it was “an example of an ideology - if you can call it that - that actually can go to a threat of violence. So, yes, we’re aware of that.”
Deakin University Associate Professor Josh Roose, who studies violent extremism, said there have been no known terror attacks by incels in Australia.
But he adds this: "There are hundreds, potentially thousands of men in Australia, potentially tens of thousands of men in Australia, who feel so marginalised and alienated from wider society that they need to gather in these communities."
These days, Ryan says he's making steps toward bettering himself before worrying about getting a girlfriend.
"Slowly over time, I realised that if I keep having this horrible, toxic mindset, I'm never gonna go anywhere in life."
*Names have been changed.
- Additional reporting by Jennifer Luu
If you or someone you know is impacted by sexual assault, call 1800RESPECT on 1800 737 732 or visit . In an emergency, call 000.
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