wordcel

English

Etymology

From word +‎ -cel (“denoting a type of incel”).

Noun

wordcel (plural wordcels)

1. (Internet slang) Someone (not necessarily an incel) with high writing skills and verbal intelligence, often portrayed as rivals to the shape rotators (who have stronger mathematical and technical skills).

   Coordinate term: shape rotator

   • 2022 February 7, Matthew Gault, “OK, WTF Are Wordcels and Shape Rotators?”, in VICE‎^[1], archived from the original on 2023-06-30:

     According to roon, shape rotators like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg have recently gained historical power and are changing the world. The wordcels are pissed about it and struggling to maintain their own relevancy as the world changes around them.

   • 2023 January 5, “Tesla suffers from the boss’s fixation on Twitter”, in The Washington Post‎^[2], Washington, D.C.: The Washington Post Company, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 5 January 2023:

     You can think of Musk's acquisition of Twitter as the latest sortie, a takeover of the ultimate wordcel site by the world's most successful shape rotator.

   • 2023 March 1, Adrian Chen, quoting Malcolm Harris, “Malcolm Harris on Palo Alto, Political Awakenings, and Being Replaced by Robots”, in Interview‎^[3], New York, N.Y.: Interview, Inc., →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 2023-05-31:

     I mean, maybe their goal is to make unemployed the people who write emails. Maybe that's like, "This is revenge on the wordcels," or whatever. It's that [Isaac] Asimov story where they just get calculators for everything and then they're like, "Holy shit, you can add numbers in your head? That's the craziest thing in the world. You're a genius."

Further reading

• “Wordcel / Shape Rotator / Mathcel”, in Know Your Meme, launched 2007
• “wordcel”, in Urban Dictionary, launched 1999.