2023 — Mainstreaming the blackpill: understanding the incel community on TikTok

What the study found

Anda Iulia Solea and Lisa Sugiura analysed two incel-focused TikTok accounts, covering 52 videos and 1,657 comments. They found that incel ideology takes covert forms on the platform, using emotional appeals and pseudo-science to spread incelosphere tropes while evading moderation, and that the comment sections normalised concepts such as lookism and reinforced male-victimhood narratives. ^[1]

Why it matters here

Much of the debate about the manosphere focuses on dedicated forums, but this paper documents how the same ideas surface on mainstream platforms in softened, harder-to-moderate forms. It is used on the site to show how incel framings reach broader audiences through everyday social media rather than only in niche communities. The research reflects the work of Lisa Sugiura, whose scholarship on incel and manosphere culture is cited here to ground how these narratives circulate online.