The term incel stands for involuntary celibacy and in recent years an internet culture has emerged where self-identifying incels have created their own terminology and community. Most research on incels focuses on mental health, violence and misogyny. No previous research has been done on incels and religion. Through this study, I intend to contribute to an increased understanding of the incel milieu with the, so far, unique perspective on religious expressions within the incel environment. The purpose of this essay is to investigate which religious expressions are represented among self-identified incels on the internet forum incels.is and in which contexts these are expressed during the years 2019-2024. I have used Kozinet's netnographic method to collect the data, which showed that religious expressions were above all used as 1) an explanation for why inceldom is a fact and 2) as the solution to inceldom. The analysis shows that belief in God is not the main reason for advocating religious systems. It is more often about a counter-cultural perspective where it is believed that religion has a favorable view of women, the family and sex. It also emerged that certain religious decisions, such as conversion, depend on a rational choice. Finally, religion is also shown to create meaning and purpose for some incels in this life or in death, where religion offers them either a way to deal with the difficult life situation they find themselves in, or to strengthen their self-esteem by, for example, looking up to Jesus as a role model because he was an "volcel".
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:umu-226268 |
| Date | January 2024 |
| Creators | Aneröd, Cathia |
| Publisher | Umeå universitet, Institutionen för idé- och samhällsstudier |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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