The Norwegian Reform Resource Centre for Men has set about mapping out the country's incels (an abbreviation for “involuntary celibacy”) to mitigate the threat the group allegedly represents.
What initially started as a kind of internet community for mainly young men who thought they would never experience romance, intimacy, sex or have children is now increasingly being labelled as an extremist hate group, linked to misogyny, suicide and even mass shootings.
However, despite the term being used lavishly by the media and in online communities, little research has been performed on this topic either nationally or internationally. So far, the number of Norwegian incels remains a mystery, which the research crew seeks to rectify.
“We can not know if it's 12 or 12,000. Therefore, we do not know if it is a marginal problem or a large-scale recruitment among Norwegian youth," Danel Hammer, advisor at Reform Resource Centre for Men, told national broadcaster NRK.
The admitted goal is to learn more about how these boys and men feel mentally.
“We recognise that some incels can pose a danger to others, but in this project we are most concerned about what danger they can pose to themselves,” Hammer explained.
Hammer added that suicide is a great danger for lonely men on the internet, which is often cited and even glorified.
“Incels are not only radicalised, stubborn misogynists who sit online. It can also be lonely people who lack care and networks,” journalist Ingeborg Senneset said, fearing that this radicalisation of the term prevents lonely men from seeking help. “I wouldn't be tempted to seek help if people had associated me with hate speech, violence and abuse,” Senneset mused.
Hammer stressed the problems already encountered by the project. She said that they have advertised on Reddit and various chan forums (4chan, 8chan and Endchan), but that it so far has been difficult to get in touch with Norwegian incels.
“It can be a big step to contact us. On the other hand, we have received lots of emails from incels in other countries, but they fall outside of our project,” Hammer said.
Of the few people already interviewed, none appeared to support misogyny or violence. This runs contrary to the estimate of the US non-profit Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), which described the subculture as “part of the online male supremacist ecosystem” and included it in their list of hate groups.
So far, estimates of the overall size of the subculture vary greatly, ranging from thousands to hundreds of thousands of members.