Identity Construction in a Misogynist Incels Forum

Michael Yoder, Chloe Perry, David Brown, Kathleen Carley, Meredith Pruden

The 7th Workshop on Online Abuse and Harms (WOAH) Long paper Paper

TLDR: Online communities of involuntary celibates (incels) are a prominent source of misogynist hate speech. In this paper, we use quantitative text and network analysis approaches to examine how identity groups are discussed on incels.is, the largest black-pilled incels forum. We find that this community
You can open the #paper-ACL_7 channel in a separate window.
Abstract: Online communities of involuntary celibates (incels) are a prominent source of misogynist hate speech. In this paper, we use quantitative text and network analysis approaches to examine how identity groups are discussed on incels.is, the largest black-pilled incels forum. We find that this community produces a wide range of novel identity terms and, while terms for women are most common, mentions of other minoritized identities are increasing. An analysis of the associations made with identity groups suggests an essentialist ideology where physical appearance, as well as gender and racial hierarchies, determine human value. We discuss implications for research into automated misogynist hate speech detection.