The internet is now a big contributor to language today, as evidenced by many new words and phrases being added to the dictionary. But a lot of internet users do not seem to realise the impacts some of these words may have on others, and the origins of where they came from.

If you talk to any teenager now, they will use the words ‘sigma’ ‘based’ , or ‘woke’ , and these are the words that are passed around their schools to insult or joke around with classmates. Younger people are surrounded by words like this every day, such as this now deleted example posted by Nickelodeon of Dora the Explorer saying ‘sigma’ . These words are prime examples of language that has dispersed from online fringe groups.

If we focus on the word ‘sigma’ , you must also bring in ‘alpha’ and ‘beta’ . The etymology of these words derives from the Ancient Greeks; ‘alpha’ is the first letter of the Greek alphabet, ‘beta’ is the second, and ‘sigma’ is the 18th.

These words refer to a man’s personality and were first introduced in far-right male videos, with Andrew Tate being the most popular.

A catalyst for these terms gaining traction is meme culture. Most people that have heard of these words first came across them in a meme, usually one with the ‘wojak’ face or a variation of one. ‘Wojak’ memes are crudely drawn faces used to mock the stereotypical facial features of an internet user, more specifically someone on 4chan or Reddit, which we will touch on later.

An earlier example of this is the Pepe the Frog meme, which was created by cartoonist Matt Furie for his webcomic ‘Boy’s Club’ . The difference between this and ‘wojak’ however is that Pepe was highjacked by alt-right groups , whereas ‘wojak’ was first popularized on 4chan and many modifications of the drawings came after.

However, the memes we see on mainstream internet sites are mostly harmless, and the videos and podcasts by these ‘alpha males’ are just the tip of the iceberg. These people get their information from far more extreme channels, such as 4chan, 8chan and some parts of Reddit. Within these groups, there are men who refer to themselves as ‘incels’ , or involuntary celibates.

These men have a distinct hatred for women, as they believe it is not their fault that they cannot find a woman to have a relationship with, but that society is to blame. It is here where we find the first uses of ‘sigma’ , ‘alpha’ and ‘beta’ . Unfortunately, due to 4chan being suspended, we have to turn to Reddit for information.

Not all of the people who first used these words are incels; more broadly, they are part of the homophily titled ‘the manosphere’ , which includes incels, truecels and alt-right members.

Users of these words in mainstream culture will not know their true definitions, nor the harm they can cause. A recent example is the 2023 mass shooting in a shopping centre situated in Allen, Texas. The perpetrator was a self-titled right-wing incel, and police found neo-Nazi ideologies in his online history.

Ideologies like these invite more targeted, gender-based violence too; in 2025, 17-year-old Bianca Devins was killed by a male acquaintance after she rejected him romantically. Pictures of her corpse were then shared on 4chan, where users praised the attacker for committing ‘another 4chan murder’. This was after years of online harassment by incels, with the murderer first meeting Bianca on Instagram.

These are extremes of what can happen as a consequence of the language used within these groups, but of course this does not consider the everyday struggles of the people these words target. Amnesty International wrote about the issues women, more specifically black women, have faced online.

In fact, the UK government proposed a policy change in February 2025 for gender-based abuse and online harassment to be part of the AI Action Summit due to it being so prolific in modern online culture.

Learning how words come to be and how their meanings change all the time can be a fascinating topic, but it would be ignorant to disregard the impact language can have on minority groups, and the ideals purported by alt-right fringe groups.

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