Incelosphere: Difference between revisions

==History==

The term 'involuntarily celibate' had been used in literature prior to the internet, and sometimes, but rarely used in a semi-academic way. It wouldn't be till the internet era that the term enterered academia.  Prior to the internet the term was used '''verbatim''' in literature, including but not limited to, '''Family Herald Magazine''' 1876, '''Virginia''' by Ellen Glasgow 1913, '''The Building''' by Peter Martin 1960, '''Law and Liberation''' by Robert E. Rhodes 1986, '''Criminal Tendencies''' by William O'Rourke 1987, '''Human Sexuality: the search for understanding''' by David Knox 1984, and '''Understanding Sexuality''' by Adelaide Haas and Kurt Haas 1990.  While never using the verbatim terms, "involuntarily celibate", or, "incel", [[Michel Houellebecq]] may have written about the subject most directly and at length through his many fictional works about involuntarily celibate and miserable men.

Famous pre-internet incels include [[Emily Dickinson]] 1830 who suffered from agoraphobia, [[Joseph Merrick]] aka the Elephant Man 1862 who suffered from severe  face and body deformities, artist [[Van Gough]] 1853, who was perpetually rejected and eventually pursued a relationship with a hooker, philosopher [[Friedrich Nietzsche]] 1844 who was famously rebuffed by every woman he approached and died from an STD he contracted from a hooker, [[G. H. Hardy]] 1927 a famous mathematician who couldn't bear looking at himself in the mirror and never held steady relationships with women, and English recording artist [[Nick Drake]] who suffered from extreme shyness of women<ref>https://pleasekillme.com/remembering-nick-drake/</ref> and died a virgin (to most analyses).

Professor of psychology [[Brian Gilmartin]] published a book called '''Shyness & Love: Causes, Consequences, and Treatment''' in 1987, arguing for inceldom to be treated as a medical condition and for society to take it more seriously.  At that time his term for inceldom was, 'love-shyness' but before his death used the term, "incel" and "love-shy" interchangeably in a lost documentary.<ref>https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2u4fol</ref>

The first pick-up artist [[Ross Jeffries]] publishes "How to Get the Women You Desire Into Bed" in 1992, arguing against [[nice guy]] behaviour.  The [[alt.seduction.fast]] Usenet newsgroup was founded by Lewis De Payne, a student of [[Ross Jeffries]] in 1994. In the same year, [[Michel Houellebecq]] published his first novel, "[[Whatever]]", which frankly discusses increased sexual stratification and pauperization.  

Although the term "incel" did exist in the late-90s, the most common term in the incelosphere used to refer to involuntarily celibate people in the 90s was, "socially anxious men", on the [[alt.support.shyness]] Usenet Group and "AFC" meaning "average frustrated chump" on the [[alt.seduction.fast]] (ASF) Usenet newsgroup. [[Alana's Involuntary Celibacy Project]] coined the word [[incel]] in 1997 which eventually cultivated into academic research on incels.  This research was published and called the [[Donnelly Study]] by sociologist [[Denise Donnelly]]. The terms "incel" and involuntary celibate" subsequently became valid sociological terms. A mailing list (forum) was created on the Project's site in 1997, the first official incel forum.  In 1998, members of [[alt.support.shyness]] were invited, helping to populate the mailing list.  Alana's mailing list was a [[feminist]] forum, and Alana had created the first incel forum as a lesbian with dating experience.  Alana stopped maintaining the forum around 2003.  A year later, in 1998, the first online German incel community, [[Parsimonyforum 3708]] of the [[Absolute Beginners]], was established.<ref>https://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?depth=1&hl=en&rurl=translate.google.co.uk&sl=de&sp=nmt4&tl=en&u=https://wiki.abtreff.de/archive/index.php%253Ftitle%3DHistorie.html&xid=17259,15700022,15700124,15700149,15700186,15700190,15700201,15700214&usg=ALkJrhhzVfHdI_o1SzzjjtagKVbEFA_C7w</ref>

In 2000, [[Beate Küpper]], wrote a psychology dissertation called, "[[Are singles different from the others?]] : a comparison of singles and couples", exploring the causes of, "involuntary singles", as opposed to, "voluntary singles".<ref>http://www-brs.ub.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/netahtml/HSS/Diss/KuepperBeate/</ref>  In 2002, she later publishes the book called, "[[Are singles different?]] A Comparison of Singles and Couples Series: Focal Points of Personality.<ref>http://www.single-generation.de/wissenschaft/beate_kuepper.htm</ref>

In 2003, [[love-shy.com]] started as an anonymous board before it switched to non-anoymous a couple years later. The Japanese inspired image-board [[4chan]] also started this year as an anonymous community.  In 2004, Alana's former community and project moved to a new forum called [[Incelsite]], and in 2006 this forum was rebranded to [[IncelSupport]].  In 2004, Tectum Verlag, a German scientific book publisher publishes [[Olaf Wickenhöfer|Olaf Wickenhöfer's]] study of, "involuntary single[s]", citing Donnelly, Gilmartin, and Küpper, as well as his own study.<ref>http://www.single-generation.de/single-kultur/olaf_wickenhoefer.htm</ref>  In 2006, [[Arne Hoffmann]] publishes a book called, "Untouched", chronicling the stories of 11 incels, as well as reviewing the available literature on the subject and publishing new essays on the subject of inceldom.<ref>http://www.single-generation.de/single-kultur/arne_hoffmann.htm#unberuehrt</ref> In 2006, the Japanese Marxist incelospherian group [[Kakuhido]] emerges, doing public protests of Christmas, Valentine's Day, and White Day all that same year.   

In 2008, 4chan's [[r9k]] board appeared, the first [[4chan]] board that arguably became an unofficial incel forum.  Since 2008, [[r9k]] defined most of what media as of 2018 refers to as "incel subculture".  Also, in 2008, the first clip of the unreleased US incel documentary [[The Incel Project]] was uploaded to blip.tv. The developing documentary seemed to have stalled sometime between 2012-2014, with only a couple clips floating around. Around 2008, the anti-feminist [[True Forced Loneliness]] 'movement' started, a space adjacent to incel boards consisting of three (later 16+) vloggers and a website complaining about dating from a societal perspective. In 2009, [[love-shy.com]] came under the adminship of an extremely anti-feminist admin for a couple years.  This is the same year that the [[PSL]] boards started, a sequential group of raucous forums that happened to contain a lot of involuntary celibates. In 2011, the subreddit [[foreveralone|r/foreveralone]] and would go on to become one of the most gender-inclusive spaces of the incelosphere. In 2013, [[IncelSupport]] crashed, and all forum posts were lost in the process.