an incel will typically want sex and love not only, and perhaps not even primarily, for their own sake. His rhetoric betrays a desire to have these goods for instrumental reasons: as currency to buy status in masculine hierarchies, relative to the “Chads.” These are the supposed “alpha males,” whose masculine prowess contrasts with the incel’s (again, supposedly) lowly status. And an incel’s plans for revenge may therefore target not just women but also the men they perceive as besting and thwarting them.
