Ensamhet blir allt mer normalt i det svenska samhället, paradoxalt nog är det inte normativt att vara ensam. Det blir tydligt när det kommer till unga mäns intersubjektiva förståelse för ensamhet och hur det uttrycks på Flashbacks incels-forum. Denna uppsats syftar till att genom antropologiska metoder och men en socialkonstruktivistisk analys med förankring i kritisk mansforskning och queerteori utforska incels uttryckta upplevelse av ensamhet i det svenska samhället. Det finns samhällsstrukturer om relationskapande och maskulinitet som skapar, påverkar och reproducerar ensamhet, vilket denna studie avser att förstå. Incel-fenomenet ifrågasätts därmed i denna studie som en social konstruktion, det vill säga, istället för att utgå från att det är ett hälsoproblem eller säkerhetsproblem, så ifrågasätter studien huruvida dessa benämningar, och de diskurser som dem bygger på, återspeglar fenomenets sociala förutsättningar. Fokuset är således inte att värdera eller förringa incels. Uppsatsen bygger främst på intervjuer med självidentifierade incels och netnografiska observationerna från Flashbacks forum, vilket ligger till grund för analysen. Det huvudsakliga resultatet pekar på att det inte finns någon entydig definition av incel men att det existerar en tydlig bild av incels-typen som har olika associationer beroende på kontexten i vilken det studeras. Den uttryckta upplevelsen av ensamhet bland svenska incels varierar men gemensamt är att samtliga behöver förhålla sig till maskulinitetsnormer och heteronormativa strukturer för samlevnad i Sverige. De som inte uppfyller samhällets förväntningar utsätts för sanktioner i form av marginalisering, patologisering och exkludering. Vilket i sin tur skapar förutsättningar för unga män att relatera till incels genom genmanskapen av det lidande ensamheten frambringar hos dem.

Technological advancements and affordability enable voicing of social injustice, feelings of deprivation, and oppression. Spatial barriers no longer pose obstacles to connecting with like-minded (or dissimilar) others to define and refine ingroup and outgroup. Some scholars anticipate that the internet liberates the discussion of opinions, others claim social networking platforms play a role in the polarisation of the public by creating echo chambers. However, it is recognised that ideas, ideologies, and social movements spread across the internet at an unprecedented pace. Connecting with others with whom one shares deprivation in a support network offers a sense of belonging. Broad scholarly literature addresses opinion polarisation and potential radicalisation in online social media platforms. However, quantifying radicalisation trajectories in fringe online communities like the misogynist incels are still to be done. In this thesis I study the online presence of the incel community. Incels are mostly young men who feel stigmatised and need to hide their incel existence. Incels voice their feelings of deprivation of a relationship and sex with a willing partner. This unfulfilled masculinity and sense of entitlement to sex cause frustration and anger which are vented in online forums blaming primarily women and feminism. Calls for action to social change, even for violence is common. However, incels do not unanimously consider violence a solution, many demonstrate the tame side of the so-called blackpilled mindset, the acceptance of powerlessness, and nihilism. Regardless, some scholars view the community as potentially dangerous to society, labelling them as terrorists. This study investigates whether participating registered users of the Incels.is website display increasing tendency toward expressing utterances with the themes of misogyny, harassment, nihilism, and moral outrage in their posted messages, and whether users gradually become more aligned with the general perception of incels in previous scholarly work. In other words, this work tests whether active participation increases the frequency of utterances of misogyny, harassment, and moral outrage, thus demonstrating a radicalisation tendency or increased nihilism. To answer the research question, I first scraped the Incels.is website, and retained ~5.38M posts published over 4 years for analysis. Next, a subset of posts was manually labelled to train a supervised text classification model (BERT). Finally, the results of the classification task were complemented with Ordinary Least Squares regression (n = 4623). The analyses uncover temporal user-level radicalisation trajectories, and increased nihilism. More specifically, the duration of active participation (in days) and the number of posted messages positively predict the count of moral outrage, misogynistic, harassing, and nihilistic content.

Les célibataires involontaires (Incel) sont une communauté d’hommes qui ont commencé à attirer une attention scientifique, avec des démonstrations empiriques de propos misogynes, et des théorisations émergentes d’un parallèle entre les situations d’incels et les violences sexuelles animées par griefs. La présente étude vise ainsi donc en premier lieu à examiner si effectivement un célibat involontaire est lié autant à la solitude (autant comme caractéristique d’un célibat involontaire, mais aussi comme antécédent fréquent de crimes sexuels) et des attitudes soutenant des agressions sexuelles, mais elle vise aussi à voir si une situation de célibat involontaire, la solitude et des cognitions soutenant les agressions sexuelles sont reliées à des comportements d’agressions sexuelles. Un questionnaire sollicitant des hommes adultes à la recherche d’une relation amoureuse (N = 814), certains d’entre eux (61.5%) s’identifiant comme incel, a été conduit en ligne. Les analyses ont montré que l’endossement d’idées incels, de cognitions soutenant les agressions sexuelles et la solitude étaient reliés à l’autodéclaration d’avoir commis une agression sexuelle par le passé, et que la solitude en plus de certaines cognitions soutenant les agressions sexuelles étaient associées avec l’inclinaison à commettre une agression sexuelle dans le futur, mais l’endossement d’idées incel n’était pas relié à l’inclinaison à commettre une agression sexuelle dans le futur. Ces conclusions suggèrent que des recherches subséquentes sont nécessaires pour mieux comprendre la relation entre les situations de célibat involontaire et les violences sexuelles, et les implications que ceci aurait dans les secteurs d’intervention primaire, secondaire et tertiaire. / Involuntary celibates (Incels) are an online community of men that have begun to draw scientific attention, with some empirical demonstration of misogynistic views, and emerging theorization observing parallels between their situation and grievance-fueled sexual violence. The present study therefore firstly aimed to examine whether indeed inceldom is linked to both loneliness (as a hypothesized characteristic of inceldom as well as a frequent antecedent to sexual offending) and rape-supportive attitudes, and secondly, to see whether inceldom, loneliness and rape-supportive cognitions are related to behavioral outcomes of sexual aggression. A survey of adult men seeking romantic relationships (N = 814), some of whom (61.5%) identifying as incels, was conducted online. Regression analyses showed that regardless of incel self-identification the endorsement of incel ideas, rape-supportive cognitions and loneliness were related to self-disclosed previous sexual aggression, and that loneliness and some but not all rape-supportive cognitions were associated with inclination towards committing future sexual aggression, but endorsement of incel ideas was not related to inclination towards future sexual aggression. These findings suggest that further research is needed to better understand the relationship between inceldom and sexual violence and the implications that this would have for primary, secondary and tertiary interventions.