Adam Aleksic is a Gen Z linguist and content creator posting educational videos under the username @etymologynerd.
The internet has transformed how Gen Z communicates. Our language is built on memes and a collective sense of wry existentialism, with our humor often turning dark or potentially dangerous, as it has when borrowing from the online community of men called “involuntary celibates.”
Incels (as they’re known) are infamous for sharing misogynistic attitudes and bitter hostility toward the romantically successful. Their ideology has even turned deadly: The 2014 Isla Vista and 2018 Toronto incel terrorist attacks killed a collective 17 people and injured another 29. Yet, somehow, incels’ hateful rhetoric has bizarrely become popularized via Gen Z slang.
In certain circles, for instance, it’s common to hear the suffix “pilled” as a funny way to say “convinced into a lifestyle.” Instead of “I now love eating burritos,” for instance, one might say, “I’m so burritopilled.” “Pilled” as a suffix comes from a scene in 1999’s “The Matrix” where Neo (Keanu Reeves) had to choose between the red pill and the blue pill, but the modern sense is formed through analogy with “blackpilled,” an online slang term meaning “accepting incel ideology.” Similarly, the popular suffix “maxxing” for “maximizing” (e.g., “I’m burritomaxxing” instead of “I’m eating a lot of burritos”) is drawn from the incel idea of “looksmaxxing,” or “maximizing attractiveness” through surgical or cosmetic techniques.
Then there’s the word “cucked” for “weakened” or “emasculated.” If the taqueria is out of burritos, you might be “tacocucked,” drawing on the incel idea of being sexually emasculated by more attractive “chads.” And, finally, we have the word “sigma” for “assertive male,” which comes from an incel’s desired position outside the social hierarchy.
So how did we get here? How did these words travel from a fringe, misanthropic internet subculture to relatively widespread use?
In the late ’90s, before social media or robust online dating, one woman in Toronto created a website for lonely singles to find loving relationships — she called it “Alana’s Involuntary Celibacy Project.” But what started as a way for people to connect eventually became a community overrun by violent men who blame women for their absence of a sex life. From there, they migrated to 4chan, an anonymous bulletin board website famous for giving us some of our most foundational online concepts, such as rickrolling, dank memes and copypastas. In many ways, this colorful memetic mosaic has had an immensely positive impact on the internet. But there’s a dark side to the site as well — certain boards, like /r9k/, are known breeding grounds for incel discussion, and the source of the incel words being used today.
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These slang terms developed on 4chan precisely because of the site’s anonymity. Since users don’t have identifiable aliases, they signal their in-group status through performative fluency in shared slang. Memes and niche vocabulary become a form of cultural currency, fueling their proliferation.
From there, those words filter out to more mainstream websites such as Reddit and eventually become popularized by viral memes and TikTok trends. Social media algorithms do the rest of the work by curating recommended content for viewers.
Here’s how that can work: I like to watch videos on urban planning, and I recently got a TikTok complaining that “it’s so hard being a walkpilled cardiomaxxer in a carcel gascucked state like Arizona.” I found the video funny, I admit, and so I “liked” it — which ended up giving me more incel-themed meme videos. And I’m not alone: Many people encounter these words in similar contexts. The term “sigma,” for example, was introduced to millions of TikTok users through the viral “Rizzler” song, with lyrics containing popular slang such as “I just wanna be your sigma.” Because these terms often spread in ironic contexts, people find them funny, engage with them and are eventually rewarded with more memes featuring incel vocabulary.
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Creators are not just aware of this process — they are directly incentivized to abet it. We know that using trending audio helps our videos perform better and that incorporating popular metadata with hashtags or captions will help us reach wider audiences. In the wake of the “Rizzler” song, for example, TikTok was awash with countless remixes, covers and memes referencing the song because creators knew those videos would perform well. As a result, the word “sigma” spread, becoming popular with Gen Alpha and younger Gen Z audiences. The same thing happened to some degree with other incel words.
It’s easy to react to these developments with concern. By incorporating incel words into everyday slang, the reasoning goes, we could be normalizing a dangerous ideology and making it more accessible to people interested in the underlying concepts. But kids aren’t actually saying “cucked” because they’re “blackpilled”; they’re using it for the same reason all kids use slang: It helps them bond as a group. And what are they bonding over? A shared mockery of incel ideas.
These words capture an important piece of the Gen Z zeitgeist. We should therefore be aware of them, keeping in mind that they’re being used ironically. In fact, it’s a delightful twist of fate that the incels’ own words are now being wielded against them. If this upsets the adults, all the better: The younger generations get to build a language of their own, distinguished from the older norms, as they have always done throughout history.
