Aesthetics of misogyny and the repulsive gaze: Worldview, affect, and ideology in incel imagery

Abstract

Like most online radical movements, the incel community heavily relies on images to express and amplify its ideology; yet its visual practices have not yet been comprehensively analysed. Using an original dataset of 31,925 images scraped from seven online spaces of the ‘incelosophere’, we implement the first large-scale, systematic analysis of incel images. Combining a codebook-guided quantitative analysis with a qualitative interpretation of representative images, we demonstrate the merits of studying incel imagery to enhance more frequent methods such as textual analysis. Specifically, our study documents three major roles played by images in the incelosphere. First, they consolidate incel misogynist and lookist narratives by exhibiting archetypal group categories. Second, they structure the community’s collective affective expression, intensifying shared emotions and shaping members’ perceptions of self and others. Third, images reflect divisions within the incelosphere, demonstrating the ideological and platform-specific heterogeneity of this ecosystem and evidencing influence from far-right digital milieux.