In my experience, you are correct. The incel movement (and others like it) is a targeted attempt to enflame naive and susceptible target(s) to a polarized view of the world.

This is beneficial to the manipulators for various reasons, be they financial or political.

Guys, the incel “movement” is just dudes not getting laid and whining about it.

It’s as old as time. They just happen to be on the Internet now and we’ve atomized society to the point where they’re super common.

Most everyone is an incel until they’re not. After all - there’s a point where you want sex and aren’t getting it. Thus, an incel.

I think you're underselling the problem a bit. Before the internet, dudes who whine about not getting laid were generally not able to organize effectively into social echo chambers, at least to the same extent as today. In 'meatspace', people are exposed to other people who have a wide array of experiences, including older more experienced men who tell the young incels to quit bitching and go talk to women.

Online, in incel echo chambers, such voices of reason and wisdom are expelled. The incels then spiral into unchallenged worldviews that alienate them from the general public, isolating them from women and everybody else even more than they were before.

Idk man - we've got all kinds of crazy ass ideas from back in the past. The idea of echo chambers seems to be way more easy to come by when you're living in a small town in the middle of nowhere and that's all the info you've got to go on. The internet is big and pushes all kinds of crazy shit your way.

Nowadays, you're constantly pushed all kinds of random shit. The usual incel rhetoric that I see is - there's not many women to talk to. Which is mostly attributed to the decline of social spaces due to again - whole atomized society stuff and late stage capitalism, yadda yadda. (If you haven't heard about it yet - just read some robert putnam)

Yup. <cue the "How are sex and air alike?" joke>