Talk:Incel

Debunking black pill

The article needs a section dedicated to proving that the black pill ideology is objectively false using scientific studies. It is crucial to show young men that the extreme claims made by hardcore incels are incorrect and that this ideology can be extremely dangerous. It can lead to depression, body dysmorphia, harmful practices like bone-smashing, and, in extreme cases, even suicide or violent outbursts. The idea that one's lack of a romantic partner is solely due to physical appearance is an oversimplification. In reality, the reasons are often far more complex. Most people regardless their gender experience periods of involuntary celibacy at some point in their lives. The real question is: should this define who you are? Should a struggle confine you? The black pill ideology teaches that it does, which is why it is so important to debunk it. I strongly urge you to include a section dedicated to exposing the flaws of the black pill with factual, scientific evidence. Cherubionita (talk) 23:33, 8 March 2025 (UTC)

"lack of a romantic partner is solely due to physical appearance" That is news to me. When it comes to attracting potential romantic partners, the socioeconomic status always seems to be more important than the physical appearance. To paraphrase something that my brother has been repeating for the last 30 or 40 years: "the one with the greatest wealth gets the greater number of lovers. The one with no wealth gets no love." Dimadick (talk) 21:17, 9 March 2025 (UTC)

Well you don't have to convince me about that black pill is not real! :) Cherubionita (talk) 18:07, 10 March 2025 (UTC)

Hi, Cherubionita, a prerequisite for any such section would be reliable sources to support it. *We* as Wikipedia editors cannot be the ones to debunk anything; we can only relay the debunking done by reliable sources. Do you have any? Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 22:22, 9 March 2025 (UTC)

I can provide you only scientific studies that indirectly debunk every claims of the black pill. Like this one: https://datepsychology.com/male-attractiveness-and-sexual-partner-count/

As you can see according to numerous studies male attractiveness not a good indicator of success with women. It is a minimal difference between the most attractive and the least attractive men sexual partner count by life time.

I can provide a compilation about these to debunk one by one every claims that black pill has. Cherubionita (talk) 18:11, 10 March 2025 (UTC)

While I personally agree with you that the various incel pills are entirely nonsense, the source you provided looks to be WP:SPS - as such it's of limited use within the context of Wikipedia. Simonm223 (talk) 19:43, 10 March 2025 (UTC)

Unfortunately the article linked to debunking blackpill as pseudoscience is not a scientificly debunking the blackpill. Actually the methodology used in the article is mainly nitpicked posts from incelforums. This is not scientificly debunking the philosophy of the blackpill. Nor do I think one can scientificly debunk such a sociological claim. I would argue that argument based on evolutionary biology or psychology would be much better fit for "a scientific attempt". KalleHmath (talk) 01:18, 25 August 2025 (UTC)

That's not how Wikipedia works. To use words like "pseudoscientific", we don't need things to be directly debunked to every random person's desired threshold of confidence; it's enough to cite that reliable sources consider it pseudoscientific, as the source in question indeed does. And regardless, something doesn't need to be "scientificly [sic] debunk"ed to be considered pseudoscientific. "Pseudoscientific" and "false" are not identical in meaning. Many scientific theories have been disproven; that doesn't make them pseudoscientific, and inversely, many pseudoscientific "theories" have not been scientifically disproven. Indeed, a key feature of many pseudoscientific "theories" is that they are unfalsifiable; that is, they can't be disproven, because they don't say anything coherent enough to disprove, or they don't stand still long enough to be disproven, or any number of other things. Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 01:43, 25 August 2025 (UTC)

"The blackpill is comprised of commonly held beliefs, such as hypergamy, the 'just be white' (JBW) theory, the 80/20 rule of dating, lookism, the halo effect and sexual racism that rely on pseudoscience" is false statement. There is statistical data and it is well agreed on evolutionary biology that a hypergamy is real. Lookism, halo effect and sexual racism are all as well scientificly proven in psychology and sociology. KalleHmath (talk) 02:56, 26 August 2025 (UTC)

I'm afraid that Wikipedia's policies require us to stick with the book from the academic publisher and not the statement from an anonymous person on a talk page calling it 'false'. MrOllie (talk) 03:02, 26 August 2025 (UTC)

Well the sources are on the wikipedia pages of those topics such as the page of hypergamy. KalleHmath (talk) 03:20, 26 August 2025 (UTC)

No. This would make the article seem less neutral. MoJoBroBro (talk) 17:53, 6 November 2025 (UTC)

Hey Cherubionita, could not agree more that countering the black pill is vital. Id class it as a second order problem on a level with AI & climate change. While it may be a net consoling & protective influence to a small minority, it's a clear net negative for tens of millions of young men & women across the world.

This said refuting the black pill effectively is a little more challenging than perhaps meets the eye. Even if your link was a meta-study in a top journal rather than just a blog, us including it in our article might do more harm than good. The article is largely aiming to disprove the popular wisdom that the type of men incel call Chads commonly have the most sexual partners. It's not trying to disprove the central black pill point that Incel's romantic status results from their looks. In fact, parts of it reinforce the black pill. Direct quote: Additionally, it may mean that being mid is sufficient. The “looks test” is binary. You pass it, you’re in, and from that point you can choose to pursue casual sex or you can choose to have a relationship. You meet the threshold.. with the obvious corollary that if you're below mid and you don't pass the threshold , you're not in the game and aren't going to get any sex, just as the black pill prophets preach.

It would sadly likely be no more effective than to repeat common gaslighting from the BrazillianMartian IT era "TeeHee Inkwell! Looks don't matter silly! I'd rather date an ugly 5'4" Janitor who is kind, than a Brad Pit lookalike who is mean. It just so happens I'm dating a 6'3" Timothée Chadamet type, but the only reason I'm with him is his caring personality."

Let's review how your concern is covered in the top tier reliable sources - as Writ Keeper is saying these are really important if you want to change content here on Wikipedia. As of 2025, you get a largely different picture depending on what discipline you look at. In sociology and related fields, the attitude to incels remains broadly hostile, with little analyses of value. Albeit things have improved a little in recent years e.g as per this relatively compassionate 2024 systematic review: The incel phenomenon: A systematic scoping review . (This one is open access and you can read for free, other sources are behind paywalls unfortuneatly)

The CVE and especially Cognitive science fields mostly take a much more sympathetic and insightful view on incels. It was from CVE that we had probably the first journal article to discuss the need to refute the blackpill in a sensible way (2021). As the below review level articles show, in Psychiatry there's much emphases on incels wellbeing and promoting their best interests, including mentioning the importance of helping them move beyond their black pill outlook, but there's little in the way of actual debunking of core black pill concepts: Psychosocial Characteristics of Involuntary Celibates (Incels): A Review of Empirical Research and Assessment of the Potential Implications of Research on Adult Virginity and Late Sexual Onset or Involuntary Celibacy: A Review of Incel Ideology and Experiences with Dating, Rejection, and Associated Mental Health and Emotional Sequelae

This just released study does specifically debunk certain black pill attitudes: Seeing through the black-pill: Incels are wrong about what people think of them But if focuses on showing that how contrary to what Incels think, the general public is largely sympathetic to incels, would like them to have romantic success, and mostly doesnt blame them for their predicament. But even if incels believed this (& ~90% of hardcore incels won't IMO) I don't think it speaks to your central concern.

As you suggest, there are indeed extreme incels who claim a mans looks are the only thing that matters for dating success, with some even saying it's been like that forever. Which would be contrary to the finding of virtual every single 20th century study that's considered this question. But pointing this out is only going to debunk the weaker versions of black pill ideology, making black pill overall even more potent. The smarter research cells already know a mans looks used to be far less important, having reviewed for example the Personal sections of late 19th & early 20th century newspapers, where they report that single women often said they don't care about looks , and never give good looks or height as a required characteristic- just good character, money and sometimes status or class. But the world has changed since then. Young women now earn 9% more than young men across the UK, with a similar situation existing in some US localities (though not at State level AFAIK, and certainly not nationwide.) A minimal level of good looks is now considerably more important for a young man's dating success than it was even 15 years back. There's no up to date high quality source to refute this unfortunately, nor is there likely to be for some years (though would love to be wrong.) Countering the black pill here needs some subtlety, though I'm going to go out on a limb and say you have been helpful in this regard. FeydHuxtable (talk) 20:48, 11 March 2025 (UTC)

Edit request - typo

"Incels also argue that dating apps have amplified and intesified female hypergamy"

Change "intesified" to "intensified" NaniTheDandelion (talk) 10:18, 12 June 2026 (UTC)

 Done Plantdrew (talk) 15:13, 12 June 2026 (UTC)

Involuntary celibacy redirect

Propose Involuntary celibacy to redirect to Sexual abstinence. According to lead Incel is subculture, not the involuntary celibacy itself. Sexual abstinence covers involuntary celibacy. HudecEmil (talk) 12:46, 28 June 2026 (UTC)

The place to propose this is at WP:RFD. ~Sangdeboeuf (talk) 02:22, 29 June 2026 (UTC)

"Involuntary celibacy" listed at Redirects for discussion

The redirect Involuntary celibacy has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2026 July 1 § Involuntary celibacy until a consensus is reached. HudecEmil (talk) 21:36, 1 July 2026 (UTC)

Edit request to complete RfD nomination

Involuntary celibacy has been listed at Redirects for discussion (nomination), but it was protected, so it could not be tagged. Please add:

{{subst:rfd|content=

to the top of the page and }} to the bottom to complete the nomination. Thank you. ~Sangdeboeuf (talk) 23:50, 5 July 2026 (UTC)

 Done Left guide (talk) 01:28, 6 July 2026 (UTC)

"Member of an online subculture"

Thread retitled from Dangerous Conflation.

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

Describing any given incel as "a member of an online subculture" is a dangerous generalization. It indirectly funnels involuntarily celibate people (particularly men, of course) towards online communities that often feed into toxicity towards women and society more broadly. And yes, I did read "Q2" and "A2" at the top of this page. I maintain the criticism of this description. I think something as simple as ". . . who is sometimes . . ." before the aforementioned definition would help resolve this conflation. To put it another way: not all -- and in fact probably not even MOST -- incels are a part of some incel community online. A lot of people are involuntarily celibate but never feel obliged to join a group of them online, and I think it's harmful to them (and to the general public) to suggest otherwise. AnonAJ (talk) 14:27, 15 July 2026 (UTC)

The term 'incel' is not typically used to refer to the group of people you are concerned about. MrOllie (talk) 14:30, 15 July 2026 (UTC)

What do you think "incel" is short for? ~2026-39811-70 (talk) 14:31, 15 July 2026 (UTC)

For the members of online subculture described by the article. Portmanteaus are not abbreviations. MrOllie (talk) 14:34, 15 July 2026 (UTC)

"Incel" is literally (actual use of "literally") an abbreviation, to be clear.

And also: no. AnonAJ (talk) 14:35, 15 July 2026 (UTC)

Nah. The article is correct as-is and follows the usage of the cited reliable sources. We're not going to take your word over theirs. MrOllie (talk) 14:38, 15 July 2026 (UTC)

Ya, the article is incorrect as-is.

"We're" I couldn't care less about your opinion or jacketing yourself under an appeal to majority lmao AnonAJ (talk) 14:40, 15 July 2026 (UTC)

And not all -- and in fact probably not even MOST -- people opposed to fascism are part of some antifa community online. Nevertheless, Antifa_(United_States) exists. Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 14:30, 15 July 2026 (UTC)

I would have the same criticism, to be clear. But regardless, I don't think I said anything about Antifa. AnonAJ (talk) 14:33, 15 July 2026 (UTC)

You shouldn't. Words can have meanings other than what their face value might imply. "Antifa", despite being literally a contraction of "antifascist", isn't used to mean just anyone who's against fascism. It's used to denote members of a particular political movement. "Incel" is the same way. If you're someone who has never had sex despite wanting to, yet you don't like what the incel online subculture promotes or represents, congratulations: you're not an incel. Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 14:36, 15 July 2026 (UTC)

I should, I do, and I will.

You are objectively incorrect in your analysis of what makes someone an incel. AnonAJ (talk) 14:37, 15 July 2026 (UTC)

Then cite your sources. To move this outside of pure abstraction and more towards Wikipedia policy: articles, their subjects, and their coverage are dictated not by naive interpretations of words, but by what's represented in reliable sources. Reliable sources consistently use "incel" to refer exclusively to the subculture without qualification, so Wikipedia does too (much in the same way that antifa does, which is why I bring it up). If you want to change that, you'll need to provide reliable sources to indicated that "incel" means something else, which is something that the many many people who have made similar complaints in the past have failed to do. Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 14:41, 15 July 2026 (UTC)

Naive? Okay bud.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/incel

Boy, THAT was real hard to find. I mean, WOW!

Ohhhh nooooo not an appeal to historicismmmmmmm AnonAJ (talk) 14:44, 15 July 2026 (UTC)

Uh...did you even read your own link? a person (usually a man) who is or identifies as involuntarily celibate and typically expresses extreme resentment and hostility toward those who are sexually active. What about that supports your position that incels are broadly not part of the subculture? Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 14:47, 15 July 2026 (UTC)

Yeah, I did. You seem confused. This might help:

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/typically AnonAJ (talk) 14:49, 15 July 2026 (UTC)

You'll need to do better than that. Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 14:55, 15 July 2026 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.