Kaitlyn Tierney is the co-founder and CEO of Diverting Hate. Diverting Hate is a U.S based organization that uses diversion tactics to disrupt the algorithm and direct young men to social supports. The organisation’s mission is to make misogynistic rabbit holes, “impossible to fall into.”
Diverting Hate originated as a class project Tierney was involved in while completing her master’s degree at the Middlebury Institute in California.
Through a nationwide competition funded by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Tierney and classmates were tasked with finding a way to prevent targeted violence through shared experiences and values.
“At the foundations of most extremist ideas is misogyny, so we were trying to work backwards from how it is that someone might become radicalised online specifically.”
“We honed in on Incel ideology as our focus. What are some of the grievances and characteristics of someone that is indoctrinated into inceldom?” says Tierney.
Incel stands for unintentionally celibate, a community of men who find themselves unable to form the romantic or sexual relationships they desire, and as a result are angry at women and society. In recent years, Incel activity has been responsible for terror attacks motivated by hatred for women.
As part of an investigation into Australia’s incel community a team from SBS Australia interviewed a young man who identifies as an incel.
In 2018, Alex Minassian drove a rental van down Toronto’s Yonge Street, killing 11 and injuring 15. In a post to Facebook shortly before the attack, Minassian wrote, “The Incel Rebellion has already begun! We will overthrow all the Chads and Stacy’s! All hail the Supreme Gentleman Elliott Roger.”
Chads and Stacy are terms used by incels to describe the men and women who society favours. Chads date Stacys and Stacys want Chads, leaving incels out of the romantic equation. Elliott Roger is considered among incels to be the first incel.
Tierney and other researchers found that many men who ended up becoming radicalised by incel ideology needed support before they tumbled down the rabbit hole.
Commonalities between radicalised individuals included looking for support or intimate relationships, being frustrated by their outcomes, feelings of rejection, hopelessness, depression, loneliness and suicidality, says Tierney.
“There are a lot of different influencers capitalising on loneliness, capitalising on depression and taking advantage of vulnerable men,” she says.
A question formed for Tierney and her team. “How can we maybe direct them away from that content and towards organisations that are trying to do right by men, who are trying to help men find community, find confidence, become vulnerable, work through some of these harder mental health obstacles like depression and loneliness?” she says.
Once the team identified common risk factors which make men vulnerable to incel radicalization, the method behind Diverting Hate began to take shape.
Diverting Hate uses digital ads on social media platforms and websites like YouTube to target an audience that may be engaging with the manosphere.
“We use key terms like red pill or alpha male. We try to target channels like Andrew Tate’s and the likes of Andrew Tate to surface an ad for our partners in the hopes of diverting them away from the manosphere and towards one of our partners,” says Tierney.
Identifying the entry points to radicalization is key to understanding how young men can fall into ideologies they may not have intentionally searched for. The two primary entry points studied by researchers at Diverting Hate are the financial entry point and the dating entry point.
“Financial hacks are a very popular Internet trend,” says Tierney.
“People are making a lot of money off trying to be a financial coach or trying to teach someone the game of finance. That was a way that Andrew Tate positioned himself for a really long time.”
Tierney uses the example of YouTube’s sign-up process to explain how the algorithm can lead viewers into content they didn’t intend to search for.
“When you first join, you can choose finance, sports games, art history. Those topics are sort of a leading point into many other realms. At a certain point, once engaged with this type of rhetoric, those negative messages are used as clickbait to get people to engage more.”
The transition from being prompted to watch legitimate videos by the algorithm to watching clickbait or misogynist content can be subtle.
“A lot of these channels will have sort of the guise of we’re talking about finance or we’re talking about current events here. Once you actually listen to the whole video or you start to dive in a little bit more than you realise,” says Tierney.
Tierney says that tying misogynistic ideology to content like health, fitness, or business, means that creators are afforded a level of protection. The entry point of financial coaching or promising success is often used by fans of Tate to excuse his misogynistic ideology.
“An argument that many young men will make is oh, I don’t believe in his sexist things, but I do like what he has to say about money. And you it’s the same kind of argument you could hear with certain politicians; I don’t agree with that, but I like the policy. That’s an entry point,” Tierney says.
Tierney also studies the dating entry point, she says that the pickup artist community is a common gateway to incel ideology. It often starts with men who are frustrated, curious, or trying to figure out how to be successful in dating, according to Tierney.
“Dating hacks or dating tricks can go from one pool of, here’s how to be confident, here’s how to present yourself, and all of a sudden now you’re on a video of how to manipulate her, how to objectify her so she’ll listen to you,” says Tierney.
In the video below, posted to Instagram by @datingrelationship123, Tate discusses how he teaches women with “red flags” (Tate gives the example of a woman who parties, or a woman who has male friends) to respect masculinity.
“If she’s never had anyone to teach her that respect, well maybe you’re the man who’s going to make her respect. You’re going to make her appreciate masculinity,” Tate tells the camera.
“The girls who were the biggest red flags, and the girls who looked like the most problems, after I d*ck them once and ignore them (and they’ve never been ignored in their life), they’re the ones who crumble hardest,” Tate says of his method.
At the end of the clip, Tate smirks and adds, “I’ll teach you to respect masculinity one way or another. Don’t worry.”
Says Cousineau, “We don’t hear about pickup artists in the context that we did, but 50 years ago, 20 years ago, that was a thing. People were doing it in bars, there were books and there were courses. This is an old grift.”
According to Tierney, the dating entry point to inceldom actually became a phenomena in response to backlash against pick up artists (PUAs), whose teachings failed to secure dates for the men using them.
What resulted was a group of men congregating in online forums, such as Reddit, to discuss their frustrations.
“They went to vent about how pickup artists are con men and they didn’t actually help them get a girlfriend or have a romantic partner like what they were seeking. That sort of frustration with the pickup artist community led to a lot of incels gathering frustrated and venting about it,” says Tierney.
It’s important to note, says Tierney, that online misogyny is not spread exclusively by men.
“There are plenty of female influencers who are also using the exact same rhetoric that you hear from the manosphere in order to capitalise on the sort of influence and monetary gains they can make on these platforms by projecting the same message.”
Tierney points to TradWifes (traditional wife), a social media phenomenon where women promote their “traditional” lifestyle. Content posted by TradWife accounts include homemaking tutorials or discussions of why it’s important to be submissive to one’s husband. Notably, many videos discuss the concept of submission to their husband within a religious context.
In the post below, Instagram user Hannahlee Yoder lists the ways that she is submissive to her husband and invites followers to comment responding with how they submit in their marriage.