Abstract
Research into the incel subculture explains the role of the internet through the concept of the echo chamber to presume that the subculture has indoctrinated vulnerable men into a shared worldview. The problem with the echo chamber is that it fails to capture the fragmented, mutually antagonistic, and alienated nature of the incel subculture, which is awash with constant infighting and division. It is unclear as to what exactly the unity is that generates the subculture as well as the process of transition and escalation. The glue that holds the echo chamber thesis together is the notion that either debate has been lost or incels are now ideologically unified, but investigation into incel forums shows that they are divided and argumentative. We are thus left with a caricature of the incel as a nihilist extremist that is in tension with the expressions in the incel forums themselves. In contrast to the echo chamber, I have opted for an approach that I have dubbed alternative research. Through a Deleuzoguattarian framework that revolves around the concept of cynic- capital, I argue that the internet is a repurposed text-based research apparatus that extracts a desire and compels it towards an intellectual labour. The indefinite conditions of production within the internet milieu as a research apparatus mean that these desires form enduring habits around the surplus of incels’ intellectual engagements. Through my method of rhizo-textual analysis, I used the theory of alternative research to topologically map the tensions between users and theory across three forums: incels.is, looksmax.org, and r/incelexit. I found that disputes operate uniquely in each of these forums, corresponding to normative criteria of acceptability that is generated by a schema. The criteria persist through dispute to reveal the unity of the forum within a shared irrationality, attribution of the problem, and moral valuation. The incel on incels.is understands the problem as a being created by the evil Other known as Stacy, the looksmaxer of looksmax.org understands the problem as the ugly body through erotic capital, and the reforming incel of r/incelexit understands the problem as the bad misogynist mind. As ideas collide across these forums through dispute, users who reproduce these normative criteria generate arguments that promotes intellectual engagement, and users who do not reproduce them represent a threat to the forum and risk ejection through a ban. Each forum appropriates the irrationality of a desire to self- loath through body dysmorphia produced by a failure to meet the conditions of masculine sexuality, but each forum as a site of research repurposes this irrationality through a schema that determines the rationale of the problem and morality. In contrast to the echo chamber, alternative research better captures the dynamics of unity and diversity of the incel subculture.