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This happened years ago before most of the big reddit controversies popped off and before words like incel and red pill were coined. There used to be a medium sized community called /r/foreveralone. It was mostly a community for people who were romantically alone and provided support and semi-edgy memes about it. Mostly though it was a support group by the time I found it. It was a decent community then full of lonely people who mostly encouraged each other and tried to help each other overcome those mental blocks we all set up that keep us from what we want.
Over time though new users started to migrate into the sub offering a different kind of support. They would claim that women were to blame for their lonely state and their rhetoric became increasingly aggrieved and violent. Around this same time /r/redpill was coming into it's prime and sucking many users down a very dark path. The /r/foreveralone community fractured and a schism created two groups within the community, those that wanted it to remain mutual support and chuds that wanted more red pilled content. Unfortunately the chuds won.
Despite many efforts my members of the community and mods to combat the problem nothing worked. I know many users also reached out to the reddit admins for help, but they chose to do nothing. After unmasking who knows how many chuds posting for support only to try to manipulate the community I left and moved on with my life. But it wasn't until months or years later (I can't remember the exact timeline) that the reddit admins squashed /r/redpill and helped the /r/foreveralone community recover their subreddit, but even now it's still fairly poisonous.
Like Facebook and X after them, reddit had a choice to keep the community free of knuckle dragging chuds, but chose not to for some vaguely defined, free speech ideal. That's why reddit sucks.
It's always bothered me how incel's are discussed when really, the group they are referencing are often sexually active but just deeply misogynistic. Meanwhile many people who are closer to the 'forever alone' crowd deserve genuine sympathy. Being lonely sucks, and being unable to 'obtain' a partner is lonely.
Beyond that - some people will just throw out 'incel' as a catch all for "took issue with any pro-woman or pro-lgbt statement".
Yeah, incel today has more angry loner vibes than anything. It was never a really good term though because involuntary celibate is not an accurate way to describe either the modern chuds or the older /r/foreveralone community members. It's got misogyny baked right in because it externalizes the cause of isolation when in most cases those folks are their own worst enemy when it comes to dating.
The /r/foreveralone community had a somewhat derogatory term to describe it, terminally special. So many of the people who would come to the community looking for help or support would receive pretty excellent and sometimes very personalized advise and do nothing but explain how their specific circumstances meant they couldn't use dating apps or join a group around a hobby or whatever. They preferred to remain isolated rather than leave their comfort zone and where experts at making excuses.
Those folks are one of the reasons the red pill message was so successful in the community. It didn't require them to change anything about how they were approaching dating. It's picky women or alpha males or whatever and never themselves.
This reminds me of something I heard many years ago, "people love to hear good things about their bad habits." It unfortunately doesn't surprise me that red pill won out. Those who don't want to do and self work are prime targets. Those who are overwhelmed by the work but still are willing to do it, can still get sucked in. Humans are fascinating. Even if that fascination isn't all good.