TIL that the term incel (involuntary celibate) was coined by a woman using the handle "Alana" in 1997 to describe her own personal circumstance, and through the 2000s there were two rival forums
incel.myonlineplace.org and
love-shy.com.
The former grew from an online community based around Washington DC founded by Alana and had an emphasis on supportive threads, self help, moderating misogyny & welcomed men and women, and ultimately dissolved when the domain was not renewed in 2013 .
The later emphasized free speech which spiraled into shame, rage and blame, migrated to 4Chan, then Reddit, and was finally subsumed into the Redpill community and then the modern Groyper movement.
Online social anthropology is pretty damn fascinating. Makes you wonder what could have been...