Members of fringe groups espousing anti-women rhetoric are migrating from milder online communities and becoming more toxic, data research suggests. A recent study into the so-called “manosphere”—a network of Reddit pages, social network accounts, YouTube channels and message boards—used a machine learning tool from Google to help track the “toxicity” of user comments, and detailed a clear rise in hate speech over time. These niche communities do not just shout into the void, their actions have previously sparked online harassment campaigns and violent outbursts. The scattered collection of male supremacy groups is by no means limited to the involuntary celibate (Incel) community, which shot to the mainstream’s attention in 2018 when a man killed 10 people in Toronto after using the term “Incel Rebellion” on social media.
Broadly, members of the incel community gather anonymously to blame women for their lack of sexual relationships, in some cases advocating for physical and sexual violence as a result. But such groups date back years, and fresh analysis indicates a concerning trend: users are moving from tamer communities in favor of groups with “severe toxicity” ratings. Researchers built a dataset of about 7.5 million posts from seven forums and over 30 million posts from 57 Reddit pages, known as subreddits, that are linked to the manosphere. Forums included Incels.is, The Attraction, SlutHate and Rooshv. Reddit groups included Pick Up Artists (PUA), Men’s Rights Activists (MRA) and Men Going Their Own Way (MGTOW).
via newsweek: ‘Manosphere’ Communities Are Becoming More Toxic, Showing ‘Nihilistic and Extreme Anti-Women Ideologies,’ Study Shows