Everyone is talking about incels and the manosphere – what now? A conversation with Taylor Lorenz
“Platforms are overrun with [misogyny]. And they’re monetizing it. These men [social media bosses] are able to monetize and build these massive businesses around hating women.” That’s what journalist Taylor Lorenz told CCDH’s CEO Imran Ahmed in a live conversation on the spread of extreme misogyny online and our research.
“There is a lot of latent misogyny in our culture, and it ends up reflected in these online spaces because people feel there’s sort of a permission structure for it online, whereas there’s not as much of a permission structure for it in the physical world,” said Taylor.
“It’s scary because [misogyny has] been so normalized. And it’s been normalized not just by the internet but by people in power.”
Imran called misogyny the “original sin of the internet”. Taylor spoke about how social media companies are failing to stop misogynistic influencers from monetizing their hateful content and pointed out how certain social media CEOs spread harmful misogyny themselves.
“Look at Elon Musk, right? He’s out there himself spouting misogyny and some of the first people that he allowed to monetize on X and basically monetize outrage bait were deep misogynist far right extremists,” she said.
Taylor Lorenz is an independent journalist and creator of the Usermag newsletter. She is also author of the book “Extremely Online: The Untold Story of Fame, Influence, and Power on the Internet.”
“Misogyny is such a core hate. But you see it intersects so heavily with ableism, with homophobia, with racism, antisemitism, islamophobia. Literally, all forms of hate,” said Taylor. She highlighted how the playbook used by bad actors to spread extreme misogyny is the same one used to attack other communities online: “It doesn’t end with women. They want to oppress everyone who is marginalized.”
Watch the full interview here:
In May, CCDH showed that the world’s largest incel forum has nearly doubled in size since our “Incelosphere” report in 2022, with the forum receiving 2.7 million visits only in the first three months of 2025. Incels, misogynistic influencers like Andrew Tate, and other communities of the Manosphere spread extreme misogyny that can lead to real-world violence.
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