Are incels cool now?

“Did you see that hypergamous LTB foid try to crack a chadlite, even though he mogs her to death? Worse than gore.”

Just a few years ago, most people wouldn’t know what any of those terms meant, unless you were a 40-year-old living in his mom’s basement. Recently, however, this vernacular has escaped controversial incel subculture and reached the mainstream.

In 1997, a Canadian woman created a MySpace forum called Invcel, later shortened to incel, which stood for “involuntary celibate.” She hoped to find an online community to discuss her loneliness but instead sparked a misogynistic phenomenon among anonymous forum users on 4Chan and Reddit. Men who self-identify as incels subscribe to the ideology that women owe them sex, but are purposefully depriving them of it due to female superficiality. Terms like hypergamy, LTB and foid all stem from a biological deterministic mindset. Hypergamy is the concept that all women want to date equal or above their league, whether it be looks, wealth or social status. LTB stands for “low tier Becky,” one of the many hierarchical categories to describe a woman’s attractiveness. Foid originates from the term femoid (female android) and is meant to dehumanize women. These terms are undeniably misogynistic and perpetuate an unhealthy, nihilistic mindset that often leads to a deteriorating mental health.

So if these terms stem from such horrifying origins, why are they so prevalent in our Instagram reels?

During the early 2020s, every post on Instagram or TikTok seemed to be a form of digital activism, but as we enter the latter half of the decade, there seems to be increasing critique of the internet’s “wokification.” Perhaps the inundation of performative reposts and cancel culture thinkpieces wore out our generation. As a result, politically incorrect and alt-right terminology is increasing in popularity.

However, I don’t believe that every person who uses the word foid truly, deep down thinks that women are nothing more than sex robots. Admittedly, my friends and I use the term casually and without much thought behind it. But what makes this immoral language humorous? I’d argue the appeal is the countercultural aspect of it — it feels rebellious to use these extremist terms against the overly woke and sensitive parts of the internet.

“There has always been a countercultural use of language. Ironically, today it happens to be happening a lot on the right,” said James Slotta, associate professor of linguistic anthropology. “You think back to the 60s and 70s, you find people on the left doing the same thing.”

So does this mean that Gen Z is becoming more conservative? Not necessarily. Instead, it shows a change in what nonconformism looks like. Counterculture has never inherently belonged to one political party. The Beat Generation challenged the social conventions of their time from the left. But if progressive ideas become increasingly dominant within our digital space, then it’s inevitable that right-wing ideas would be the logical counter.

“The point is to get a reaction out of people, in part. Whether people really believe the thing or whether they’re doing it just to get that reaction — who’s to say?” Slotta said. “But it’s interesting that our politics and our language use revolves around trying to elicit a kind of condemnatory reaction from authority figures.”

These words have been separated from their origins and been repackaged as satire. Someone can say “foid” not because they genuinely believe women are inferior, but because they know the word is shocking.

But is that distinction enough to make the language harmless?

The short answer is no. It becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish between irony and plausible deniability when satire is so prevalent. Harmful ideology can easily be veiled under the “it’s just a joke” argument.

Corporate communications junior Grace Nagy explains why she no longer uses the slang “bird,” a term referring to a woman who lacks self-respect to appeal to men.

“We cannot be out here basically doing what men already do to us, and that’s belittling us for our decisions and not hearing us out or trying to even understand where we’re coming from,” Nagy said. “Sometimes we’re our own worst enemy.”

Widespread use of this slang gives incel communities a larger audience. While the average user may not endorse its ideology, its normalization risks making misogynistic rhetoric seem more acceptable.

We don’t need to eradicate all internet slang from our vocabulary, but we do need to understand what we are saying. Counterculture is important because questioning the mainstream leads to healthy discourse, but when the goal becomes shock value, harmful language is normalized without its original context. Our responsibility is to evaluate where our slang comes from and recognize when it becomes irresponsible to use.

Xu is a government and journalism junior from Fort Worth, Texas.

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