Talk:Incel/Archive 12

Thread retitled from Restoration of outdated, inadvertently pro-misogynist & WP:OR violating lede.

There's so much that's problematic with the just restored lede it would take thousands of words to fully explain. I'll focus mainly on the 66 word sentence starting. The subculture's attitude can be characterized by... It's unattractive writing & has been described as "arguably the most expansive demonising sentence in the history of humanity." Those judgments are admittedly subjective, but its an objective fact that the sentence violate our WP:OR policy. It's supported by the burton source and the 'resentment-etc' cite bundle.

The Burton source admittedly supports characterising incels as misogynist. But broadly it's sympathetic to incels, as one would expect from Anthony Burton, a scholar of great integrity and intelligence. Burton doesn't support the rest of the sentence - actually he strongly contradicts parts of it. For example, after mentioning Minassian, he writes almost all incels attempt to distance themselves from this violence . So allmost all the 66-word sentence generally has to rely on the 'resentment-etc' bundle, and sadly the WP:OR violations there are blatant.

To support the 'Misanthropy' adjective, the bundle lists just this vox source. It again supports characterising incels as misogynist, but says nothing about Misanthropy for incels as a whole. (At best, it weakly implies "radical incels" might be Misanthropes)

Similarly, to support the 'Self-pity' adjective, the bundle lists just this usa today source. All it says about self-pity is Posts from self-identified incels range from self-pitying (many call themselves ugly or even subhuman) to misogynistic to violent . That might support saying some incel posts express self-pity, but it's reaching way beyond what the source says to rely on it for the much stronger claim that the sub-culture is characterised by self-pity.

If it was just this article's effect on incel's best interests, I'd not be bothered. The POVs so extreme it's very likely helping them, in line with recent research finding a majority of the public are sympathetic towards incels. Similarly, while a few police forces are still given nonsense briefing about incels being a significant terrorist threat, not a single Five Eyes intelligence mid ranker specialising in Digital believes that as of 2025. Attention is rightly all on these guys.

But sadly, over the past 7 years or so this article, and perhaps especially the 66 word sentence, has been extraordinarily successful in making incels seem super bad and interesting in the eyes of young academics. Hence incels now by far the most well known of all Manosphere sub-cultures. Almost all social scientists have heard of incels, whereas in some surveys only a minority are au fait with Red Pillers, and less than fifth know about MGTOW. Granted, Blackpill has had significant impact on the mainstream, and some incel memes have proved potent. But overall, less than 1% of young men frequently look at incel content. Whereas the vast majority have a least some exposure to broad-sense manosphere - red pill influencers are all over the big mainstream platforms, and far more appealing to the average lad than incels, who are now minor players at best when it comes to driving misogyny. With the massive rise in misogyny among GenZ this last few years, it's been great to see Adolescence at last drawing attention to the wider manosphere. The last thing we need is the old WP:OR violating lede sucking all the oxygen back out of wider Manosphere research. FeydHuxtable (talk) 22:42, 15 May 2025 (UTC)

I see from searching the archives that the "demonising" quote is quoting yourself a year ago, in a talk page conversation where you never answered Writ Keeper's points: So, I'm curious what *actually* reliable sources you're intending to base any rework of this article on, because none of these seem to be both reliable and supportive of your intended changes and If you want to rewrite this article to be about "unwanted celibacy", you're going to need sources that actually discuss it in those terms.

If you think the sentence with common descriptors needs to be edited, that's perfectly well worth discussing (and I agree that it's overlong at this point). But that doesn't justify the complete reversion of the lead.

You argue that this is the stable version, but I would argue it isn't — the previous version (or one very close to it) has been in place far longer, including while the article passed GA. The edit several months ago that slashed the lead was never discussed, had no edit summary explaining why it was necessary, and moved portions of the lead into such strange places I wasn't even sure it was intentional.

As for the rest of your comment, it's getting a bit exhausting constantly replying to your years-long habit of making unsupported claims that this Wikipedia article is somehow "bad for incels' best interests" (see, for example, this 2020 discussion) and, now, absurdly, influencing academia. As you know, Wikipedia articles follow the sourcing, not the other way around, and I would suspect it is far more likely that academics and counterterrorism researchers were interested by, say, the dozen or so mass killings over the last decade than by a Wikipedia article that you claim was so POV it dared to repeat the very well-sourced claim that incels are misogynist, misanthropic, etc.

For next steps, I propose we restore the lead as of this revision and then we can discuss the long descriptors sentence and consider trimming it down to a smaller list of the most widely used and less duplicative descriptors. Work for you? GorillaWarfare (she/her • talk) 14:48, 16 May 2025 (UTC)

I prefer the longer lead as a starting point as we consider future tweaks. I am likely to respond much better to concerns based on Wikipedia policy/guideline or appeal to sources rather than trying to guess what is good or bad for incels. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 15:20, 16 May 2025 (UTC)

Agreed with both GW and FFF. In fact, the lede as it is now has been described as "the most blandly undescriptive lead in the history of the entire cosmos". By me. Just now. Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 15:21, 16 May 2025 (UTC)

The shorter version is too short and is not that stable. There is, of course, room for improvement, but this ain't it. This version should be restored. OP's argument against has too much OR. Grayfell (talk) 22:13, 16 May 2025 (UTC)

Hey GW, were I up for re-writing the article, I'd first humbly request a fresh start, or at least if we could set aside various unwise IAR arguments I made in previous years. A 2025 re-write could lean more on systematic reviews or at least other types of review level WP:RS:

As per first sentence of Review article , such high-tier WP:RS summarize "the current state of understanding on a topic" . Relying on review articles - as opposed to using our own discretion to pick out things to say from the many thousands of individual studies & newspaper articles - gives us a better chance of complying with WP:Due. Even on a page like this that's been lucky to have sustained attention from several gifted editors. This might be especially clear on the hostility:compassion dimension. RS#1 is free to read , but #2 & #3 are pay walled, so to quote an Louis Bachaud open access article that cites them: Research in psychiatry and mental health therefore insists on incels’ wellbeing and recognizes them as a particularly fragile demographic (BTW, Bachaud's maybe the most gifted manosphere & incel researcher out there. Maybe a bit early in his career to cite him much in our articles, but he's awesome at putting these things in their wider context and repeatedly summarises the ever evolving research space, so would recommend anyone who needs a deep understanding of incels & manosphere to follow his work. ) If this article could be allowed to reflect the POV found in review articles then I'd suspect there would be fewer editors arriving on this talk page complaining of excess hostility, perhaps making it a less exhausting job for the good WP:Stewards here.

Naturally, Incel is partly a popular topic, so I'd not suggest removeal of all cites to popular magazines etc, just to trim a few, especially the ones 5 or more years old. Unless perhaps in a section covering recent historical attitudes. Same with older individual studies. All this said GW, unless you personally requested it, I'm not sure it would be top of my priority to undertake such a re-write. We're not in 2020 or even 2024 anymore, certain +ve outcomes that NPOV coverage of this topic might have led to back then are now closed off, at least in my imperfect perception.

Focussing on the 'unwanted celibacy' thing might help illustrate the wider consideration here. I'd no longer look to include that at all. Here's the article that first explicitly distinguished 'unwanted celibacy' (life circumstance) from 'involuntary celibacy' (sub-culture). The authors found that men suffering 'unwanted celibacy' but in no way associated with incel subculture still had significantly higher levels of misogyny than sexually satisfied men. There's been other studies that find an interesting U-shaped relationship, with those having both minimal & very high numbers of sexual partners showing higher misogyny than those in the middle. (On average, there are plenty of virgins & Cassonova's who are still very pro-woman.) But in the current climate I'd not see it as a net +ve for this sort of knowledge to be displayed more prominently. Most if not all who might react pro-socially already know - sensitive & experienced women become aware of the U shape relationship with out needing to hear about studies, in some cases consciously deciding to discriminate against chads as potential sex partners. (Only about 1 in 8 sexually active hetrosexual woman are like that though, so it's sadly not the sort of thing likely to show up in studies that could be used to refute the blackpill). In the current climate, others could perceive even a purely descriptive summary of the studies as an attempt to subtly guilt trip them into having sex with ugly men to reduce misogyny, & react in the other direction - this sort of effect would likely outweigh any benefits.

Ok, I typed all that in case you're especially interested in my views on this, per your curiosity emphasised in green (I normally only see editors do that to indicate a direct quote). And as it may be useful for future article improvement. But it's not germane to my current concerns, which are focussed on the lede and my strong preference for the shorter version. Your proposal doesn't work for me at all. In fact, I can't imagine anything worse than bringing back the 2024 lede and word-smithing the 66 word sentence. That would likely make it even more impactful and de-humanising! But I guess it doesn't matter what I think. I've already expressed my WP:OR concerns as clearly as I can, but have no support & 4 editors in good standing against. Much as I appreciate the graceful elements in your reply & the humour from others who chimed in above, I can't bring myself to self-revert. The best I can say is it would not be edit warring if anyone else does. FeydHuxtable (talk) 12:40, 17 May 2025 (UTC)

I have no objections to these sources being incorporated into the article if they have more information to add (and would note that the Sparks source is already being used fairly heavily). They seem pretty good at a glance, though I've not yet read them in depth.

I would reiterate that we really need to focus our work here on complying with Wikipedia policy, and not on what specific editors think would be beneficial to incels or any other group. Your conversation about a Wikipedia article influencing women either to "hav[e] sex with ugly men to reduce misogyny" or to "react in the other direction", combined with your discussions of influencing academia, are concerning from a WP:NPOV perspective. We are not in the business (nor should we be) of dictating where scientists direct their research, or trying to make members of incel communities feel better about themselves, or influencing women in their dating or sexual choices.

Regarding the green, I was quoting. Those were comments by Writ Keeper in the previous discussion.

I've restored the previous lead per the emerging consensus here, and am still open to suggestions on the sentence that seems to be the basis of most of your concerns with the lead, but would again encourage you to focus on Wikipedia policy around sourcing and NPOV rather than trying to make sentences less "impactful". GorillaWarfare (she/her • talk) 14:36, 17 May 2025 (UTC)

While I'd much prefer deletion, WP:OR violations in the sentence could be eliminated simply by changing the opening words from "The subculture's attitude can be characterized by" > "The subculture's discourse has been criticised for including". With that change, no part of the sentence would be drawing a conclusion not supported by the sourcing. FeydHuxtable (talk) 16:09, 17 May 2025 (UTC)

Can you expand on what exactly that change fixes in your mind? GorillaWarfare (she/her • talk) 19:57, 17 May 2025 (UTC)

I'm completely new to this article and talk page. I can see the answers to that question are in the first six paragraph post to this talk section and in the last sentence of Feyd's previous comment above. The sources don't say the subculture has an attitude, they say that some of its members have written and said things with the attitudes in question. So I would agree with the proposed change to the beginning of the sentence. 98.147.21.126 (talk) 18:39, 19 May 2025 (UTC)

Succinctly and accurately put IP. You know, before Louis Bachaud came along, Naama Kates had seemed to be shaping up to be the most influential voice on the incel topic. Here's a track she made with legendary guitarist G. E. Stinson - I was feeling exactly like the mood in that track until you rescued me! You've got to the heart of the matter, but there's two other aspects. Proposed change would also resolve WP:OR in the sense that the excellent Burton source would no longer directly contradict parts of the sentence it's cited to support.

Last but not least, the change would help a little in resolving NPOV issues arising from the sharp contrast between the article's hyper-hostile tone & the relatively compassionate way incels are looked at by the general public and across various academic disciplines. I was going to keep my mouth shut on this per requests made above, but I've long been passionate about the near impossible task of making things better for incels ( E.g as recently mentioned despite strong views on global warming risks I took an incel related flight across the Atlantic back in 2023. ) And GW's generous wording on what the 'change fixes in my mind' does kind of invite this sort of response.

The good custodians on this page are of course entitled to request folk refrain from making arguments based on what's good for incel's or indeed wider matters like reducing misogyny. To be clear though, that's not generally reflective of Wikipedia policy, or the unwritten rules that govern the editing community. We do have an influential essay that says editors are not suppose to use the encyclopaedia to right great wrongs, but few take those words literally. All the essay actually says is that one should follow the sources rather than lead them - e.g., you shouldn't go beyond what the sources say even if you have strong views about "evil inkwells". It may be interesting to break down how the editing community stands in relation to "dont try to right great wrongs"

Carebears > 50% , editors who like most of the world's people have affinity with the Golden Rule. They believe in putting policy first, but see no contradiction in trying to achieve social good. For example, if they have expertise to improve NPOV on two different articles, they may chose to spend their energy on the one they feel would have the most +ve impact.

Hobbyists ~25% , scholarly editors who just like to impartially follow the sources without worrying about societal impact - they might be very caring in their off wiki lives, but see editing as a break from real world responsibilities. While these guys aren't closely aligned with carebears, they also aren't opposed to them.

RGW literalists, make up about 10% of the editing base, and while good faith, sincerely believe that editors should never be concerned about article impact. Fortunately, carebears can normally quite easily sidestep these literal minded types.

POV warriors compose about 5% of our editing base, and while they may pay lip service to RGW and actual policy, they are concerned chiefly with distorting article NPOV in favour of their agendas.

Griefers, making ~2% of our editing base, again may profess to believe in policy, but are secretly motivated just by causing strife. It's to the communities credit that so few have this as their primary motivation, considering how much stress there now is in the wider world. (Most of the inter editor drama we have is due to good faith differences of opinion)

Over-carers at < 2% are why our WP:RGW essay is necessary. They are good faith, but don't believe their altruistic emotions should take second place to policy. The reason there are so few of them is that they soon find themselves perma'd , leaving out of frustration, or upgrading to carebears.

Switching back to the problematic sentence, Ed Conduit has been a practicing psychologist for over 40 years & an author published by Routledge. He paid with his own money to have a journal article published saying this about the problematic sentence : There appear to be ten depersonalising mass nouns in this one sentence, with no sentience attributed to the persons. Instead, they are referenced with ten pejoratives that readers might perceive egocentrically as causes of harm to themselves. ... Should Wikipedia and the BBC slur incels, who are at high risk of suicide ...? We shouldn't want to risk influencing the public to perceive incels in such -ve egocentric ways, which would only make life even harder for them. Especially as even if we properly sourced every -ve quality the 66 word sentence attributes to incels, there's still nothing like that sentence even in the most anti-incel WP:RS . As per review articles linked to above, Conduit's compassion towards incels is characteristic of psychiatry, psychology and related disciplines. I've long pondered why the good WP:Stewards here seem to have such divergent views, as the ones I'm most familiar with like GW & WK seem exceptionally compassionate when I see them about elsewhere. Even the best of us have blind spots, so it could be for all sorts of reasons, though normally the cool kids never stoop to virgin shaming. (And at least some of the stewards here could easily be in the cool gang if they wanted to ) I wonder if they've been influenced by spending time on certain websites populated by folk not cool enough to be on tiktok, insta or snap? Not going to name the main website Im thinking of, and in fairness the young folk who populate it have it harder than folks from older generations like Ed Conduit or G. E. Stinson. The just published 2025 global flourishing study has confirmed that across the world, the long established U shaped pattern for youth & old ages to be the happiest times of life no longer holds true, with youth now an especially miserable time for many. This is partly related to the global sex recession, so I guess not surprising that some feel the need to punch down on incels. There are fell influences at play in the realm of Eros. These are the forces Im now called to contend with, requiring somewhat more painful & exhausting efforts than the most intense wikipedia discussion, so it's unlikely I'll have time for further editing for a while. But nice to depart on a note of agreement thanks to you IP. FeydHuxtable (talk) 23:28, 19 May 2025 (UTC)

I've made an edit that will hopefully address your concerns. Re: the rest of your comment, to be honest, I don't have the bandwidth to engage with the extended meta-commentary, much of which is off-topic for article improvement and includes several assumptions about editor motivations. GorillaWarfare (she/her • talk) 17:39, 22 May 2025 (UTC)

Yeah this is one of the reasons I think that having a seperate article for involuntary celibacy is important, the incel subculture that came in the 90s-2010s is misogynistic and extremist but the term "involuntary celibacy" is a completely different thing. Aradicus77 (talk) 02:33, 1 August 2025 (UTC)

Talk:Incel/Archive 12

Restored lede

Neutrality issue, inclusivity

Related Articles

Related Articles

majority of the public are sympathetic towards incels

RS#1 The incel phenomenon: A systematic scoping review

RS#2 Psychosocial Characteristics of Involuntary Celibates (Incels): A Review of Empirical Research and Assessment of the Potential Implications of Research on Adult Virginity and Late Sexual Onset