I have spent a year inside the incel community in the UK and abroad – a world of loneliness, isolation and extreme misogyny – for a TV programme. It could be the most depressing documentary I’ve ever made, and there are quite a few contenders. Like crabs in a barrel, angry, young, virginal men brainwash each other with an ideology that tells them that only extremely good-looking men are successful with women and in life, and that if they don’t meet that criteria, women won’t. he will only ignore you, but set out to destroy you. He encourages anyone who doesn’t have the right jaw shape, who isn’t tall enough, or who isn’t a “Chad” (an extremely attractive man) to give up. It also points them to an ultimate enemy: women. Lonely teenagers who are not naturally social or who are not good at sports or popular use the internet to find their community. You already know, you’ve seen people do it. You’ve probably replaced physical interaction with a digital one more times than you’d like to admit. But the incel world takes it further – and radicalises young men. It is a world in which the separation between physical and virtual is non-existent. Where people’s entire social circles are anonymous users on the other side of the planet, and the users see themselves as vicious people, too ugly to ever love, too weird to ever care. They are associated with the idea that they are biologically different from the “norms”. They are addicted to despair. Ideology is called “the black pill”. It is a nihilistic conspiracy theory that refers to the blue and red pill dilemma from the Matrix movies. Once you take the pill, you can never go back. The conspiracy convinces its followers that looks are everything and that women are uncontrollably attracted to good-looking men and repelled by everyone else. If you are not attractive, your options are violence or suicide. This has led to mass shootings and murders around the world. Elliot Rodger killed six people in Santa Barbara, California in May 2014. He recorded a video before the attack in which he detailed his inspiration: the women who had ignored him. In the UK, Jake Davison, a young man from Plymouth who was known to hang out on incel forums, killed five people in 12 minutes in August 2021, including his mother. The truth about Looksmaxxing. Photo: pr “If you look at a lot of mass murderers and serial killers, they’ve mostly been lonely men who’ve cut themselves off from society,” an incel named Tuna tells me while sitting by a canal in Camden, London. “I’ll be honest, I’ve entertained the idea of shooting a part,” he says. Consistently throughout the making of the documentary, I found myself speechless. Like when I found out that incels were hammering their faces to try and rearrange their jaws in a process called “lookmaxxing.” Or when I met an incel woman, a “femcel,” who told me she spent her days watching “gore” videos (showing people being murdered and horribly tortured). She told me that doing this made her “more empathetic.” Her story represents the development of the problem. It attracted the very people who suffered the most from it: women. Every person I met on this extraordinary journey felt compassion for those who had resorted to violence. They said they understood what it’s like to be repeatedly rejected and excluded, and some seemed drawn to the attention that comes with violence. In the violent world of incels, there isn’t much hope. Ideology itself is against hope. he drives his hundreds of thousands of young followers into a state of despair. Many of the people I met during this film had decided that their only option was suicide. The creators of one of the most popular incel sites had even created a pro-suicide site for this very purpose. But I also met someone who proved that there is some hope that incels can be brought back from the brink. We filmed several times with a man called D and saw him make a radical reversal. After spending time with us and talking to a woman for the first time, he concluded that “the internet doesn’t have all the answers. The Internet can’t predict everything… You have to get out there and see life for yourself.” D described the incel movement as “more of a crisis of hope than anything else. People want people. They want to feel connected. they want to feel part of something bigger than themselves.” Kaitlyn Regehr, associate professor of digital humanities at University College London, told us that “incel terminology and culture” is becoming “much more popular” – and creating a “more generalized misogyny”. He talks about normalization which means extreme forum content is moved “off the screens and onto the streets”. At the end of making the documentary, I felt a real sense of sadness. Many of our interviewees were visibly depressed and severely lonely. But I also felt afraid of where they would end up if they didn’t get the help they needed. Help that wouldn’t come in internet forums, but through trained professionals in the real world. The Secret World of Incels is on all 4. In the UK, you can contact the Samaritans on 116 123 and the domestic abuse helpline is 0808 2000 247. Other international helplines can be found via www.befrienders.org
