Hypergottamus

Hypergamy is a sociological term whereby people, more often women in heterosexual markets, tend to prefer partners with equal or higher social, educational or economic status.

Mobile phones and dating apps expanded the visible dating pool, made status more legible, concentrated attention on high-demand users and stripped away many of the local frictions that previously distributed relationships more evenly.

One result is that low-status or low-demand men experience the dating market as more visibly exclusionary than before.

This does not fully explain incels, but it helps explain why a small subset of socially isolated men interpret ordinary rejection as evidence of a rigged sexual economy.