By Libby Broome
If you’re like me, you’ve probably seen a post like this while scrolling on Instagram or TikTok, or any of those other mindless places where you procrastinate:
Maybe you gave it a like and forgot about it until you saw another one with similar language, and then another, and then, before you knew it, all your friends started talking like incels and you did too. Maybe you still don’t know you’re talking like an incel, because you don’t know what an incel is. Maybe you know what an incel is, but you aren’t intimately familiar with their slang, because you value your mental health and don’t need to know exactly what crimes the latest darling of the looksmaxxing community is streaming live.
If so, then I’m jealous, because my linguistic curiosity knows no bounds. Either way, hopefully you’re still curious about why, exactly, this slang exploded in popularity online, and why generations Z and alpha seem to find it so fun, despite its deeply misogynistic and racist origins.
The ‘incel dialect’ is more specifically a ‘cryptolect’: a jargon developed to signal an in-group identity and exclude outsiders. Elle Hunt describes this language as feeling ‘impenetrable’ for those not in the know. But the spread of this language in online spaces, and especially its integration into gen Z and alpha culture, has largely erased the ‘crypto’ elements of the cryptolect. At this point, incelspeak is closely linked to gen Z slang and is so widespread I hear it in most conversations with my friends.
So how did we get here? It’s hard to point to one cause. Slang has a life of its own; it helps people signal that they’re a part of something, whether that be an online gaming community, or a dangerous fringe alt-right movement. Just think about the era of LOLcats, the rise and fall of Doge and, more recently, the sudden influx of gen alpha slang. After slang becomes mainstream, it tends to fall out of favour with its original users and often becomes seen by those users as ‘cringe’ – see Elon Musk’s co-opting of Doge, or think of your parents asking you to explain ‘skibidi rizz’.
But this doesn’t seem to have happened with incelspeak. It has certainly broken containment, but incels are still using it. Partly this is because the spreading of incelspeak to ‘normie’ circles happened as a result of incels, not in spite of them. Linguist and content-creator Adam Aleksic, or @etymologynerd, has a great video discussing how and why incels use memes to spread their slang outside their circles, and why linguistic invention is so key to demonstrating an in-group identity.
Another reason – the stronger reason, in my opinion, than the active spread of these memes by incels – is that incel slang incentivises linguistic play and invention, and as a species we love linguistic play. According to linguists Antonio Benítez-Burraco, ‘verbal play is a key component of many socialisation strategies…particularly, by subcultures, or marginalised groups’. It sounds simple, but words like ‘skibidi’ and ‘rizz’ got so popular because they sound funny to us; they capitalise on our linguistic fascination for the unexpected and nouveau.
Incelspeak is full of linguistic play. The vast majority of incel slang is formed in prefix–suffix pairs: looks-maxxing, frame-mogging, black-pilled; all these phrases are easy to split up and reimagine in increasingly absurd and funny ways.
Gen Zs who use this language are usually doing it intentionally and knowingly. In my experience (and yes, unfortunately I do speak like this more often that I’d like), it’s a form of irony that works to remove the power of the language and frame the incel movement as absurd.
But not everyone knows about or understands the underlying ideologies in incelspeak. Spend five minutes on any incel forum (or don’t, if you value your peace of mind), and you’ll see the misogyny and racism in full force. ‘Foid’ (female humanoid) is used in place of ‘woman’; ‘JBW’ (Just Be White) suggests white men are the peak of sexual desirability. These are the sorts of terms that thankfully haven’t made it to the mainstream. But is ‘mewing’ or ‘mogging’ a gateway to increasingly harmful language?
I don’t think it’s possible to keep up with the background, associated values and potential repercussions of every new meme and trend, and I don’t think using this language makes you an incel (language by itself is not inherently evil). But it is important that we understand the origins of the words we’re using so that we don’t unknowingly become a vehicle for hateful ideas to spread.
If people want to call themselves a pastapilled meatballmaxxer, or a moviepilled Letterboxdcel, I say let them – as long as they know where this language originated and how to spot where it is being used un-ironically.
Libby Broome is a Masters student at the University of Melbourne. She has previously been published in Cordite Poetry Review. While not thinking too much about linguistics, you can find her crocheting, logging movies on her Letterboxd, and falling down Wikipedia rabbit holes.
Cover Photo by Vardan Papikyan on Unsplash
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