The Incel Project (partially found documentary series; 2008-2012)
Title card.
Status: Partially Found
This article has been tagged as NSFW due to its adult themes.
The Incel Project was a series of documentary episodes released from 2008-2012 on the now defunct video-sharing site blip.tv.[1] It was being made by an unknown person with the email incel57@yahoo.com, possibly member of the early feminist incel forum called IncelSupport. The documentaries non-blip.tv homepage was involuntarycelibacy.com (now defunct). Non-draft or final-cut episodes appear to be straight interviews and often exceeded 20 minutes. The series was released as a work-in-progress to be assembled into a condensed final cut documentary, perhaps with other footage. 2 different drafts of a final cut were also uploaded to blip.tv.
Background and Contents
In 1997, Alana created Alana's Involuntary Celibacy Project as an academic project and email listserv to fuel academic research into involuntary singledom. This culminated in a series of academic papers by the sociologists Denise Donnelly, Elizabeth Burgess, and Laura Carpenter. This feminist listserv eventually transformed into a full-blown webforum using conventional forum software called IncelSupport. Author Talmer Shockley was notably a member of IncelSupport and is featured in this documentary. Laura Carpenter is also featured. This suggests this documentary was associated with IncelSupport rather than love-shy.com (which has it's own popular documentary).
Documentary appears to be shot from a social-justice and medical perspective. Content is mostly dry and clinical, and included are highly topical discussions about mental health, stigma of incels, inceldom, and "coming out" as an incel.
Reception and Cancellation
There are a few forums posts from people who watched the documentary in development, but not many of course as this documentary is technically unreleased. One of the forum reviews was positive and talked about a Laura Carpenter interview. They said she talks about involuntary celibacy leading to more involuntary celibacy since the individual's self esteem is lowered the longer he or she lives with it, and possible partners being turned off by the seeming oddity of an older virgin.
Production halted sometimes between 2012-2014. In 2014, a forum user of a separate forum called PUAhate.com (pick-up-artist hate.com) named Elliot Rodger went on a shooting spree in the name of self-professed involuntary singledom. This event may have precipitated the cancellation of the release of this documentary, even though IncelSupport denied Elliot Rodger was an active member of their forum.
Unreleased Final Cut
Two drafts of the final cut were released, however, from Webarchive it does not appear a final-final cut was ever released.
Availability
Most info from the web series is available from Webarchive snapshots of the channel on Blip.tv. Only segments of 2 interviews survive, perhaps not the full footage of those 2 interviews that were released. Seemingly random people preserved segments of 2 interviews of the psychologist and advocate for love-shy men named Brian Gilmartin, as well as a segment of an interview of author Talmer Shockley. Outside of the Gilmartin and Shockley footage the rest is totally lost.
There have been efforts to preserve Blip.tv content before it's shutdown in 2015. No archives appear to contain this documentary however.
How to possibly find the rest
There may be a blip.tv archive somewhere that has this. If not, the most available leads for copies of the documentary include sociologist Laura Carpenter and author Talmer Shockley as Gilmartin is dead.
Episodes
| # | Episode Title | Runtime | Release Date | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Dr Gilmartin | 16:57 | June 28, 2008 | [1] Partially Found |
| 2 | IncelSupport Member, 40 | 14:29 | July 22, 2008 | [2]Partially Found |
| 3 | IncelSupport Member, Mid-30s | 22:06 | October 1, 2008 | Lost |
| 4 | Two Friends | 12:18 | June 26, 2008 | Lost |
| 5 | Texas Interview | 38:07 | July 27, 2009 | Lost |
| 6 | IncelSupport Member, early-40s | 21:03 | September 7, 2009 | Lost |
| 7 | College Student | 47:55 | October 26, 2009 | Lost |
| 8 | Gay Man, late-40s | 10:37 | January 6, 2011 | Lost |
| 9 | IncelSupport Member, Late-30s | 18:43 | November 30, 2011 | Lost |
| 10 | IncelSupport Member, Late-30s | 15:37 | January 29, 2012 | Lost |
| 11 | Draft #1 | ? | ? | Lost |
| 12 | Draft #2 | ? | ? | Lost |
| 13 | Final Cut | ? | ? | Unreleased, possibly never finished |