Asadullah Bin Amir 

Prof. Shamecca Harris 

04/06/20 

English 

Reading Response #2 

The excerpt from “Our Incel Problem” by Zack Beauchamp captures an online community by the name of Incel. At the beginning of the launch of this community it was set to bring people together who were awkward in the subject of dating or life in general. Incel became a platform for individuals to express their problems and to find comfort in advice given from strangers. However, it was soon almost unrecognizable when an incident involving two people. When Two college students were injured, and one ended up dying while about 26 other people were injured. It was later found that the driver was a part of the modern Incel community. The modern Incel community is mainly made up of males, and became very sexist over the few years. The community was unrecognizable from its origin, where the community was very welcoming and open – minded but now existed as a very close minded community full of hatred. The author then moves on to describe how he discovered said online community and describes it as a very hostile place where men have been bashing females for being shallow creatures. As shown in this quote, “ amounting to fundamental rejections of women’s sexual emancipation, labeling women shallow, cruel creatures who will choose only the most attractive men if given the choice”. Due to these patterns and trends, it is quite obvious that Incel as a community is very hostile and dangerous towards women.

By reading an excerpt from “Our Incel Problem” by Zack Beauchamp, he describes an incel (involuntary celibacy) community. In the past two decades, most of the Incel community has been affected by the community’s thinking and knowledge. A belief called “the blackpill” arises in this community, which is a sense of sexism. They mark women as a very low-level superficial creature, thinking that women will only choose excellent or attractive men. However, this belief is nothing but the dark side of their hearts, causing them to gradually separate from society.

The psychology of these patterns or trends informs the insider is relatively easily influenced by the behavior of others. As in the article, Abe suffered a bad emotional experience when he was young, the trauma in his heart transferred his emotions to the Internet. There are many young boys with similar experiences in the incel community, so when they get together, they will express their dissatisfaction. According to a survey of some users, most of these incels are under 30 years old and live in Europe or North America. The main attractor of this site is white. Their prejudice against women is the main issue discussed in this community. The incel ideology can easily push young people to extremes, and some terrorist attacks caused by incel have occurred in Toronto. In this community, they had many ideas of harming women and pushed the mistakes to women’s perspective. Gradually incel became a hate group that encouraged violence.

The author tells us about this group because it is not just a group that shares words. The existence of this community has already affected society. When we understand the mood and feelings of insiders, we can know what type of crowd they gather from. There is no doubt that we need to prevent their ideological violence from becoming behavioral violence.

“Our Incel Problem” by Zach Beauchamp is about an online community called Incel. At first, this community brought people together who were awkward when it came to dating or just life in general. It became a space for members to communicate their problems and frustrations when it comes to romance.  In its earlier days, the incel community was most focused on advice and advice-giving becoming friendly and welcoming but the author soon notes the big change in the online community a decade later. However, it was soon almost unrecognizable when an incident involving two people. Two college students were injured; one ended up dying while about 26 other people were injured. It was later found that the driver was apart of the modern Incel community. The author explains how the Incel community is now mostly made up of men and is now very sexist. It is apparent the transition from being an open-minded community being welcoming and friendly to becoming closed-minded and full of hatred. The author talks about how he discovered this new form of the online community and describes it as “ amounting to fundamental rejections of women’s sexual emancipation, labeling women shallow, cruel creatures who will choose only the most attractive men if given the choice” while blaming women because they have lack of romance in their life. There is an obvious trend of hostility in this new form of the community and how it is made up of men instead of previously being made up of both men and women. The patterns and trends of this online community inform the insider experience that this community is now very hostile a dangerous towards women. Not only does it show their hatred towards women, but also the insecurities they have and cant deal within a proper way. This connects to the bigger picture in which the behaviors of the incel community can be dangerous in real life and is becoming a problem not only online but in real life.

The author, Zach Beauchamp, introduces us with a person who exemplified what an incel originally meant back when the term and community was formed so that we have it as a comparison for what present-day incels stand for. When first formed, the incel community was created for both sexes to provide comfort for the socially awkward and assist others in talking to the opposite sex; Whereas now, the incel community is mainly dominated by men who hold misogynistic views in place, justifying their hatred and (desired) violence towards women. They also hold these values in place due to the ideology that women would never be attracted to them, but instead a man that is deemed more physically attractive. The insider also notices and retells accounts of men who enter the community potentially as a way to not feel isolated in whatever experience of rejection they have gone through. This assists the insider and reader in recognizing who is part of the community, their values, experiences and perspectives. The incel community, though largely discussed online, nonetheless still largely represents a community of men with misogynistic concepts who desire, support and/or cause harm upon women. This reflects the social values a large amount of men within the Western society have towards women, which then is made more visible through politics and cultures that focus on women.

Syed Shataj Hosain

Writing For Social Science

Professor Shamecca A. Harris

Discussion Post- 3

6th April, 2020.

                  “When Words Do More Than Just Hurt” by Ramandeep Kaur is about the K-pop community which is pretty famous around global growth of  Korean culture. In his essay he talks about a famous K-pop celebrity Suli whose real name is Choi Junri, she was a former member of K-pop girl group. Sulli attempted suicide on her own apartment since she was dealing with depression for many years. After this incident, her fans used social media platforms to show their sympathy toward her. Some used #Sulli on twitter and shared her good memories. After her death, many people apologize for their hate comments about the idol. However, it was not the first time that an idol in the online community was bullied and lost life. The author did a great job on the content and development because he provided all the content to understand the topic for the readers. I would like to give him 100%  for the content and development. Also, the organization, style and for the creativity he should get above average because he mentioned everything and followed the rubric. The author described the topic very well for the audience to understand the content and his grammar and mechanics were on point. So, it concludes total (A-).

Syed Shataj Hosain

Writing For Social Science

Professor Shamecca A. Harris

Discussion Post- 2 

6th April, 2020.

                        “Our Incel Problem” by Zack Beauchamp talks about a group of teenagers who become using a phrase to describe their romantic troubles called “Incel” on the internet. Incels are a member of an online subculture whose belief that they are unable to find romantic or sexual partners depire wishing for one. Incels are mostly white male, male and homosextulas who are mainly from East Asian, South Asian, black, and Latino. Discussions in incel forums are often characterized by those males who are mentally unstable, autism, racism, people who get violated againt sexaility and poeple who suffered personal trauma. The author  Zack Beauchamp mentioned that all the members of the intel community share the same beliefs and they have suffered the common things. Like most of the members believe that they were ugly, labelled themselves as losers, they were not capable of love because of some childhood trauma which ruined their romantic chances. The pattern and the trend for the community shows that they all believe the same thing that  they were sexually deprived due to social awkwardness. Some of them were bullied so badly that they have lack of self confidence which led me to develop severe anxiety and self-hatred. Recently, the intel community has increasingly become more extremist and focused on violence. As an insider they all went through the same thing according to them and that is why they love being a part of intel subculture. Some members of incel communities have led to numerous bans from websites and web hosts. The analysis of the author towards this community relates to a wider context by informing people about the intel subculture. Many people do not know about their subculture which can harm them on social media or in real life. Incels came to wider public notice with the banning of the subreddit and when a series of mass murders were committed by those members of the intel community. Some of them describe how so many people do not understand their feelings and the suffering except their own members who suffered the same thing as them. However, the intel world gets scary when it comes into real life. 

The Incel society had developed overtime from what they originally were when they began. The author noticed that the Incel society back then used to go online and ask each other about advice when it came to them being hurt by a significant other or a person they really liked. However, overtime that had changed. The website then became a platform of hatred for women. As the author investigated more he had seen that this platform was full of men that seen women has toxic human beings. They wish a lot of hatred on women and even banned them from the platform. The author of the writing has gotten a lot of information himself by reviewing the comments of what the people feel. He has seen that these people are full of hate but mainly because they are very hurt. So they wish bad upon women and sometimes even talk about hurting women. As stated in the text, the Incels had worshipped a man who killed people on the sidewalk with his fan, giving him praise and gratitude for eliminating people who supported being around women. Unfortunately, the author saw these patterns the more he scrolled through the site. It showed people’s true intentions on the site when it came to women. The author’s text relates to the wider text because it shows how people come together that have something in common and look for support from each other and sometimes that support may be harmful but people still want to be accepted.

Zach Beauchamp’s “Our Incel Problem” highlights the highly controversial online community and their shift to radicalism and misogyny. The Involuntary Celibacy, or Incel community was created over 20 years ago, and it gave “awkward” people a space to be themselves, since they were not comfortable with themselves in the real world. The community was open for all genders until recently, when angry young men overwhelmed the community, and changed how it is perceived as for years to come.

Beauchamp provided many patterns of trends that describe members of the Incel community. For instance, he shows how the early years of the Incel community had members who were shy and awkward in real life. He describes this community as an environment where both genders had the platform to ask their burning questions about the opposite gender in a welcoming way. Afterwards, Beauchamp shows the shift in the community where it became more hostile. This new trend in members became young boys and men who are angry at the world because of their lack in romantic relationships. This shift is very remarkable because the once peaceful online community became one of the internets infamous groups.

These patterns and trends inform the insider experience in the community. It does because the Incel environment before the shift was more welcoming compared to the modern Incel community.  Beauchamp calls the members “Social Justice Warriors” because they positively impacted the lives of other Incel members. Thus, you can characterize the members of the old Incel group as caring individuals. However, after the Incel community shifted into what it is now, we can consider the members of the community as violent because of their anger the members have against women. He writes, the members of the Incel community “reject of women’s sexual emancipation, labeling women shallow, cruel creatures who will choose only the most attractive men if given the choice.” Thus highlighting the drastic shift in the community. To summarize, Beauchamp’s analysis of the Incel community displays the ideals former Incel members had compared to modern members.

In conclusion, the Involuntary Celibacy, or Incel group is a group who helped people feel more comfortable with themselves for over 2o years. The group, who was once welcoming to men and women, provided a sense of community for people who considered themselves as outcasts in society. However, the community’s members and focus shifted into something darker; destroying the welcoming community and twisting into something unrecognizable to its original members. Nevertheless, the community still resonates and gives a strong sense of belonging to the current members which is the communities goal in the first place.

The author notes that the members of the incel community tend to blame women for not being able to date. According to Beauchamp, this led to violence and mistreatment of women. What was meant to be a community for those who deemed themselves awkward when it comes to dating turned into a misogynistic community. Another pattern is of how they despise women and believing that they are shallow and only go for cute or attractive guys after dating does not work out for them. They also tend to be cruel to the women in their life and are prone to commit harassment and sexual assault. 

These patterns inform the insider experience in this community by highlighting shared opinions and activities among the incel community. They tell us that they have a low-self esteem, they think that since their relationship did not work is because the woman they were with did not find them attractive thus prompting them to despise women. The incel community managed to find people whom they can relate to and vice versa and somewhat comfort each other. But over the years, the community became a place for hatred that for the most part was directed at women from men who experienced rejection.

The author’s analysis of this community relates to a wider context that involves violence. The author managed to find out that those who were and still are part of the incel community tend to become more violent and prone to commit mass rape, sexual assault, and even kill others as seen in the Toronto incident.

“Our Incel Problem,” by Zack Beauchamp, is an essay that focuses on learning about the online community of incels. The group include members who have difficulty in forming romantic relationships. The members originally described their romantic troubles as “involuntary celibacy”, but later this phrase developed and became the term incel. 

Patterns Mr. Beauchamp decided to include in his essay was how the members viewed themselves, and why they considered themselves incels. Each individual in the community shares some sort of insecurity. This insecurity causes them to be shy which creates the awkwardness in their relationships.  According to Miguel, a member of this community, incels have either been bullied, or have autism, or unattractive faces. These traits are said to lead himself as well as others to rejection by women. John, a 30-year-old incel, describes his personal trauma with the community. He says that he tried everything he could think of to succeed in the dating field. Nothing worked, and when he went to his female friends for help in searching for women to date, his friends never described him as being attractive or cute. With these conceptions John concluded that he was ugly and hopeless with women, which led him to the community.

Reading Zack Beauchamp analysis on the incel community I was able to conclude that the incel community is misguided. Mr. Beauchamp concluded in the excerpt that the incel community was filled with misogynistic rage. A perfect example of this misogynistic rage and misguided energy would be when incel individuals began to call for acid attacks and advocate for killers who destroyed relationships.  In most of the personal stories, originally each individual that joined the incel community came to the internet for help. They were in search of new ways/methods to improve on their insecurities, so that they can pursue romantic relationships. The wider context is that if the community does not change they will go down a path of hatred instead of pursuing their original goals.