De Vettor et al. (2025) — Involuntary Celibacy (Incel) Identity: A Thematic Analysis of an Online Community’s Beliefs and Emotional Experiences
De Vettor, M., Lo Buglio, G., Barsanti, A., Ciocca, G., Gennaro, A., Goksal, R., Lingiardi, V., Giovanardi, G. & Boldrini, T. (2025). Involuntary Celibacy (Incel) Identity: A Thematic Analysis of an Online Community’s Beliefs and Emotional Experiences. Societies, 15(2), 44. https://doi.org/10.3390/soc15020044
What this source contributes
A thematic analysis of one thread on an independent Italian incel forum: 453 contributions from 52 users, coded by two raters. The thread was started by a woman describing her own missed adolescence, which gave the study something most forum research lacks, a direct exchange between the community and an outsider who claims the same pain. Four themes emerged, named in the forum’s own words: “non-persons are not like us” (114 occurrences), “I have no life” (52), “without experiences in adolescence you are ruined” (45), and “only ours is true suffering” (42).
The authors read the community’s identity as built on gender role stress, specifically acceptance threat: the felt failure to meet the expectations of dominant masculinity. Their analytical move is to apply Halpin’s weaponized subordination to the material. Incels place themselves at the bottom through the look-money-status theory, collectively accept that position as permanent, and then use it to justify misogyny: subordinate men employing dominant practices, with their own lowness as the licence. Suffering does double duty, as the thing the community shares and as the proof that outsiders cannot be taken seriously.
The study is the first on an independent forum rather than a moderated subreddit, and the first on an Italian community. Its limits are the ones the authors name: one thread, one country, and none of the silent members who read but never post.
Analytical function in Incel
This source carries the Friction. The entry’s claim that the name is used as a weapon rather than only suffered comes from here, with the “non-persons” count as the concrete evidence and Halpin’s concept as the frame. It also supplies the echo chamber as one of the main mechanisms by which the red pill is taught, which is what connects Incel to Echo Chamber in the vault. The introduction’s summary of earlier work (Speckhard’s survey figures, the fearful attachment style found with the Incel Traits Scale) is the route through which those findings reach the entry.
About the author(s)
The team spans developmental and clinical psychology at Padova, Sapienza Rome, Trento and Pegaso. Giovanardi and Boldrini are corresponding authors; the work was funded under Italy’s PRIN 2022 programme.
Related entries
- Incel — the primary source for the Friction and for the two-sided reading of the name
- Blackpill — the study documents the black pill as the majority position in the sampled community
- Dehumanization — “non-person” as the forum’s standard word for women, counted
- Echo Chamber — named as an indoctrination mechanism for red pill ideology
- SMV (Sexual Market Value) — the look-money-status theory that places incels at the bottom