I think I should add, in regards to girls asking out guys and the incel community, you can read their forums and find situations where they describe ABSOLUTELY getting hit on, and them thinking that they're being "mocked" or perhaps worse, that getting a girlfriend would be a bad thing because all women are constantly having sex with "chad" even when in a relationship - that is, that the only reason that a woman could be taking an interest in them is as a sugar daddy ("beta bux" using their language) while fucking the man they "really" want on the side. These guys are genuinely in a prison of their own making, and women becoming more confident and able to approach men, which you would think would grant them hope and make them think that life isn't so bad, actually has the opposite effect on them.
Oh I can definitely see that. I was more referring to "shy guys" rather than incels. But then again, how the fuck does a woman know which one she's dealing with nowadays?
She doesn't, which is a massive part of the problem. As the quote goes:
Men are afraid that women will laugh at them.
Women are afraid that men will kill them.
Frustratingly, this disparity will continue to reinforce the current imbalance between dating behaviors that maximizes the representation of bad actors in the active dating population. Good men are not only afraid that women will laugh at them, they are afraid that women will fear them.
One January, I was asked out by a friend of a friend. At the time, I was months out of an abusive relationship and I was reeling. Also, I didn't know this guy very well. Our mutual friend was a solid point in his favor, but it was almost all I had to go on. I had every reason to be afraid of men, and especially of men showing interest in me. My suitor didn't know that; he just knew that I'd been dating someone and that it had ended badly.
I don't know if it was instinctive or conscious on his part, but he did everything he could to make sure I felt safe. Our first few dates were in public places. We drove separately; I was never alone with him. He offered to pay for food, etc., but never insisted. He didn't make sudden moves and he didn't invade my personal space. On the third date, after dropping me off (I was comfortable enough to ride with him by then), he tried to kiss me and I panicked a little. But the thing is, he moved slowly and telegraphed what he was doing so I'd have time to say no - which I did, and which he immediately respected. I remember his body language going from romantic to platonic-supportive so fast it was like he'd flipped a switch. (Contrast my abusive ex, who, the first time he kissed me, dove in for a peck so quickly it was over before I could process what was happening.) At that point I invited him in and told him enough of the story, and that I wasn't ready for another relationship. He said he understood and asked if we could still be friends; I said sure, as long as there's no pressure.
He backed off so completely that for a while I thought he'd lost interest. We hung out as friends all summer, and by August we were dating. We ended up staying together for five years, ultimately breaking up over an incompatibility that was no one's fault.
My point is, yes, women will be afraid of good men - but there are concrete things that good men can do to make women feel safe. I am immediately suspicious of men who complain that women are "unfairly" afraid of them, because at best they're not listening or putting in the work to be nonthreatening. At worst, they're predators who are frustrated by a lack of easy targets.
edit: just to be clear, @Paladin, I don't mean to imply that's what you were doing
I remember for a long time I was told I was an anti complimenter. In that someone would compliment me and I would immediately turn it down because I had such low self esteem.
Its why Self depreciating humor is dangerous, at some point its less humor and flat out "i hate myself.
we banned this kind of self-talk inthe house. It crops up a lot in the process of deflecting toxic behavior on discord in e.g. League games. You miss a skillshot, immediately go "omg I'm trash, deleting this account and jumping off a bridge, I'm disgusting, everyone int now plz". It got so bad that we legit had to stop allowing the kids to do it.
My story - I had arrived at a place, age 20, where I believed I'd be alone forever because I was an irredeemable nerd that no one found attractive, and that all women would eventually cheat on me even if I was dating them... because that was my uniform experience throughout middle & high school even when I was dating a cheerleader. It's a really good thing incels didn't exist in the 90s, and I'm lucky that I didn't end up in that scene because the vox article would be including quotes from spool32 going 'when did it all go so damned toxic'.
Luckily, Bel was having none of it. 24th anniversary coming up!
I think I should add, in regards to girls asking out guys and the incel community, you can read their forums and find situations where they describe ABSOLUTELY getting hit on, and them thinking that they're being "mocked" or perhaps worse, that getting a girlfriend would be a bad thing because all women are constantly having sex with "chad" even when in a relationship - that is, that the only reason that a woman could be taking an interest in them is as a sugar daddy ("beta bux" using their language) while fucking the man they "really" want on the side. These guys are genuinely in a prison of their own making, and women becoming more confident and able to approach men, which you would think would grant them hope and make them think that life isn't so bad, actually has the opposite effect on them.
That mentality of "if a girl's forward with me they must be fucking with me" is something that is usually ingrained pretty early and is really hard to break out of later in life. I can't say for how widespread this behavior is in general, but I went to a very urban public high school, and especially cruel girls who flirted with the social outcasts just to fuck with them(hey you're cute - haha jk like anyone would be interested in you) were absolutely a thing during my time there and it really messed some kids up.
I know I ran into this a lot in my schoolin' days and it got bad enough that when I was asked out by a coworker at my old job, I thought it was a joke and hurt their feelings really bad as a result. I legitimately couldn't process a woman actually being interested, and just thought she was trying to sucker me into an embarrasing moment (she asked me out openly in front of other coworkers). Now, 10+ years later, I don't even know how to process that. I'm full of regrets about shit like that, but I'm happily married so I think my regret kinda starts and ends with, "I wish I hadn't hurt her."
Children being cruel to one another is definitely a factor, but I can't help but be angry with myself about past mistakes like that. Especially when they're around a decade after high school.
Honestly I think positive stories about "I was you, but I didn't let it control me" can help incel, or incel curious people. Just knowing they are't alone, and that their toxic internet friends aren't the only people who have ever suffered a fear of rejection or being alone.
Hell I bet even the "chads" they so readily shit on have been afraid to ask a girl or guy out and have sat there heart in hand afraid they were about to have their life ruined too.
I would like some money because these are artisanal nuggets of wisdom philistine.
I only really dated one person in high school, and it was just for a couple months. Eventually she had one of her friends break up with me for her, over the phone (double whammy). That fucked me up for several years.
It was more than a decade later I would learn that she was only dating me while waiting for a particular other guy to become available. Dumped me as soon as he split with the girl he was dating. When I learned about it, all I could do was laugh, but if I had known at the time, holy shit that would have sent me to a truly awful place.
Honestly, accepting you might be alone forever is healthy. You aren't due companionship, and you may just spend this whole life mostly alone. That's a thing that can happen. Treating it like some kind of fate worse than death and putting a ton of pressure on not letting it happen or feeling like garbage if/when it does is, in my opinion, super unhealthy and drives folks to unhealthy behaviors and beliefs.
We might spend this life mostly alone. that's a thing that can happen for no other reason than luck, and it is far more likely for that to be the case than for you to find someone or be with them till the end.
Like even as someone who currently has someone I have to accept they might die tomorrow, and that in their wake I may find nothing but ample time to myself for the next 30 to 40 years. That's just a thing that may happen.
I accepted a potential lifetime of being alone in the 10th grade, and started to look at it as the plan rather than as some kind of life long punishment for something. It really helped me relax in social situations. Who cares if I screw up, I'm probably going to be alone forever anyways, may as well be myself while I do it.
Eh. It's a need for many people. There shouldn't be social pressure but it can be harmful even without it.
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EncA Fool with CompassionPronouns: He, Him, HisRegistered Userregular
So much of the problem here is that socialization is not something you can shopping list and requires incredibly complicated to describe but, once developed, easy to do cognitive skills like reading subtext and dealing with emotional vulnerability.
Not having a cohort of friends learning these things along with you and/or supportive parental figures to help you figure these things out are a real setback.
Honestly, accepting you might be alone forever is healthy. You aren't due companionship, and you may just spend this whole life mostly alone. That's a thing that can happen. Treating it like some kind of fate worse than death and putting a ton of pressure on not letting it happen or feeling like garbage if/when it does is, in my opinion, super unhealthy and drives folks to unhealthy behaviors and beliefs.
We might spend this life mostly alone. that's a thing that can happen for no other reason than luck, and it is far more likely for that to be the case than for you to find someone or be with them till the end.
Like even as someone who currently has someone I have to accept they might die tomorrow, and that in their wake I may find nothing but ample time to myself for the next 30 to 40 years. That's just a thing that may happen.
I accepted a potential lifetime of being alone in the 10th grade, and started to look at it as the plan rather than as some kind of life long punishment for something. It really helped me relax in social situations. Who cares if I screw up, I'm probably going to be alone forever anyways, may as well be myself while I do it.
So much of this is true. I can't even properly describe how at peace I was when I got there. My friends thought it was so sad when I explained it to them. And then when I hit it off with my wife, they were all really happy, and mentioned how wrong I was to have been at peace with being alone. Like, fucking, no, I wasn't wrong. I was truly happy. That I ended up snagging a wife doesn't mean I was living a lesser life before that.
Honestly, accepting you might be alone forever is healthy. You aren't due companionship, and you may just spend this whole life mostly alone. That's a thing that can happen. Treating it like some kind of fate worse than death and putting a ton of pressure on not letting it happen or feeling like garbage if/when it does is, in my opinion, super unhealthy and drives folks to unhealthy behaviors and beliefs.
We might spend this life mostly alone. that's a thing that can happen for no other reason than luck, and it is far more likely for that to be the case than for you to find someone or be with them till the end.
Like even as someone who currently has someone I have to accept they might die tomorrow, and that in their wake I may find nothing but ample time to myself for the next 30 to 40 years. That's just a thing that may happen.
I accepted a potential lifetime of being alone in the 10th grade, and started to look at it as the plan rather than as some kind of life long punishment for something. It really helped me relax in social situations. Who cares if I screw up, I'm probably going to be alone forever anyways, may as well be myself while I do it.
There are so many unstated assumptions/premises here I don't think I can unpack them all. I will pick out a couple that I want to reject. First, I reject the idea that either you're in a romantic/intimate relationship or you're alone/lonely. For one thing, it's quite possible to be in a relationship and still be lonely. For another, even if you aren't in a romantic/intimate relationship, you can still have meaningful and enriching relationships with other people. Second, I reject the idea that because something is an effective coping strategy in response to a bad situation, that makes it healthy. People who grow up believing that their lives are essentially meaningless and empty if they aren't in a relationship may need to come to grips with the idea that they may be alone forever, but that's only because they got fucked up with that first bad idea originally.
Everyone has traumatic stuff happen growing up with regards to romance or dating. Or even after we've grown up.
You should just force yourself to take risks anyway, which gets easier with repetition, or accept that not everyone has everything and this part just isn't for you. What Incels do is use this very common experience and build a very ill-advised self-image out of it, then weaponize it against both themselves and others until many lives are destroyed.
Surely there are more options than just "play the numbers game/take risks" and "accept that you'll always be alone".
I know from my own past that it's not a fun position to be in, and there are no good options. If you're in that "forever alone" state 99.9% of the time no one will help you out of it. No one's going to drop a relationship or even casual intimacy into your lap. It's why pick-up artists and the like exist and have followings, there's a lot of desperate young men who have no idea how to get what they need.
It's the kind of thing that makes me wish prostitution was safer/legalized. It wouldn't form a long-term solution but I think it would provide an outlet for young men desperate to experience that facet of human life. It's easy to say it ain't all that once you've been there, but from the outside looking in it's a weight like nothing else.
A major issue is also dealing with the socialization of others, especially with all of the toxic behaviors people have ruining various kinds of social opportunities for good faith actors.
The fact that a genuine, non-aggressive, no- consequence compliment to a passerby is likely to come off as threatening is horrible for everyone involved.
I've had friends stressed out about their cuteness factor but unless they mention it I can't compliment them because the comfort level is going to nose dive if I say "oh my god you look so cute tonight" without prompting because they deal with lots of street harassment.
Honestly I think positive stories about "I was you, but I didn't let it control me" can help incel, or incel curious people. Just knowing they are't alone, and that their toxic internet friends aren't the only people who have ever suffered a fear of rejection or being alone.
Hell I bet even the "chads" they so readily shit on have been afraid to ask a girl or guy out and have sat there heart in hand afraid they were about to have their life ruined too.
Those positive stories can be a double-edged sword, though. If you're happily married you could be an asshole for dangling your good fortune in front of them. And if you're single you could be a beta cuck trying to justify your existence to them.
Parents don't know what to do about this situation. I was on a parenting group online with a parent of teenagers whose boys were getting into an alt-right scene online and none of us had any idea.
Let me preface by saying that I am not a parent. But even into my late 30s my parents would sit down with me and talk about things they saw me doing that they felt we're wrong and giving me a chance to explain or counter their perception. Sometime it developed into an argument, others we just agreed to disagree, or let it lie.
I feel like if you see your child developing in a dangerous way, you owe it to them and your self to treat it like the crises it is, and have multiple sit downs to try and talk with them. If they start to tune out or things get heated, take a break and pick it up again the next day.
These things don't develop in a day, and certainly can't be fixed in one. Best analogy I can think of is over eating and exercise routine.
Honestly, accepting you might be alone forever is healthy. You aren't due companionship, and you may just spend this whole life mostly alone. That's a thing that can happen. Treating it like some kind of fate worse than death and putting a ton of pressure on not letting it happen or feeling like garbage if/when it does is, in my opinion, super unhealthy and drives folks to unhealthy behaviors and beliefs.
We might spend this life mostly alone. that's a thing that can happen for no other reason than luck, and it is far more likely for that to be the case than for you to find someone or be with them till the end.
Like even as someone who currently has someone I have to accept they might die tomorrow, and that in their wake I may find nothing but ample time to myself for the next 30 to 40 years. That's just a thing that may happen.
I accepted a potential lifetime of being alone in the 10th grade, and started to look at it as the plan rather than as some kind of life long punishment for something. It really helped me relax in social situations. Who cares if I screw up, I'm probably going to be alone forever anyways, may as well be myself while I do it.
I don't think everyone's made for that, and I don't think it's healthy for everyone. We are social creatures, and there is a certain evolutionary imperative still rattling around in there. I once faced the idea of being forever alone and it terrified me to the point of self harm. I understand some people can work with it, but some just aren't made that way and there's no safety net for them.
Parents don't know what to do about this situation. I was on a parenting group online with a parent of teenagers whose boys were getting into an alt-right scene online and none of us had any idea.
I might have some insights into this - if you'd like to send folks my direction I'm open to conversations about how we helped the boys not end up as alt-right shitheels. Also both my sons are on the forum now that they're over 18, and I'm sure they'd be willing to talk about what it was like at ground zero of gamergate and the alt-right as a 16-20yr old.
Honestly, accepting you might be alone forever is healthy. You aren't due companionship, and you may just spend this whole life mostly alone. That's a thing that can happen. Treating it like some kind of fate worse than death and putting a ton of pressure on not letting it happen or feeling like garbage if/when it does is, in my opinion, super unhealthy and drives folks to unhealthy behaviors and beliefs.
This is a gentler version of a common response I see on social media: nobody is entitled to a sexual or romantic relationship.
While that is technically true, i think it needs to be tempered a lot. Imagine if we responded that way to homophobia (many gay people raised with homophobic morals turn to celibacy for a while) or the desexualization of people with disabilities. (There is a wealth of writings from people with disabilities about how desexualization affects them.)
Going through your entire life without a romantic or sexual relationship is painful for most people. Some asexual people may want the emotional intimacy of a relationship but not sex; some schizoid people may want sex but not intimacy. Vanishingly few people thrive with neither.
But, I think it also needs to be repeated, frequently and loudly, that American toxic masculinity intensely exacerbates sexual deprivation by socializing men to put all of their emotional eggs in one metaphorical basket: we're taught to seek emotional intimacy and nonsexual physical affection from our romantic partners, to the exclusion of other sources. This causes single men to suffer from endemic loneliness while simultaneously forcing wives and girlfriends to take on more emotional labor than they should be saddled with.
Feral on
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
also, re: actuallyforeveralone, I can say that for me it was a relief because I was able to be comfortable with myself instead of Trying To Get Laid. I have... a very high libido, and that shit was quite hard (ayyy) to deal with but growing comfortable in my skin and accepting that I was OK as me without a companion directly, and I mean heavy-bright-line directly, led to a confidence that Bel found attractive enough to chase after even while I was kinda oblivious. When women stopped being a goal, they started being people and at least in my experience that attitude puts you about a million miles above the rest of the pack in terms of being desirable companionship.
Everyone has traumatic stuff happen growing up with regards to romance or dating. Or even after we've grown up.
You should just force yourself to take risks anyway, which gets easier with repetition, or accept that not everyone has everything and this part just isn't for you. What Incels do is use this very common experience and build a very ill-advised self-image out of it, then weaponize it against both themselves and others until many lives are destroyed.
Surely there are more options than just "play the numbers game/take risks" and "accept that you'll always be alone".
I know from my own past that it's not a fun position to be in, and there are no good options. If you're in that "forever alone" state 99.9% of the time no one will help you out of it. No one's going to drop a relationship or even casual intimacy into your lap. It's why pick-up artists and the like exist and have followings, there's a lot of desperate young men who have no idea how to get what they need.
It's the kind of thing that makes me wish prostitution was safer/legalized. It wouldn't form a long-term solution but I think it would provide an outlet for young men desperate to experience that facet of human life. It's easy to say it ain't all that once you've been there, but from the outside looking in it's a weight like nothing else.
My point is that there is no such thing as a "forever alone" state. At most there are states of "alone now and trying" and "alone now and not trying", and in the former there are any number of things that could be tried, some more advisable than others.
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FencingsaxIt is difficult to get a man to understand, when his salary depends upon his not understandingGNU Terry PratchettRegistered Userregular
Everyone has traumatic stuff happen growing up with regards to romance or dating. Or even after we've grown up.
You should just force yourself to take risks anyway, which gets easier with repetition, or accept that not everyone has everything and this part just isn't for you. What Incels do is use this very common experience and build a very ill-advised self-image out of it, then weaponize it against both themselves and others until many lives are destroyed.
Reinforcing the toxic-masculine ideal that men should confront psychological pain by powering through it; that acknowledging it and talking about it is a waste of time; is deeply counterproductive.
Considering I went to a therapist talking about exactly this for years, maybe ease off.
Everyone has traumatic stuff happen growing up with regards to romance or dating. Or even after we've grown up.
You should just force yourself to take risks anyway, which gets easier with repetition, or accept that not everyone has everything and this part just isn't for you. What Incels do is use this very common experience and build a very ill-advised self-image out of it, then weaponize it against both themselves and others until many lives are destroyed.
Surely there are more options than just "play the numbers game/take risks" and "accept that you'll always be alone".
I know from my own past that it's not a fun position to be in, and there are no good options. If you're in that "forever alone" state 99.9% of the time no one will help you out of it. No one's going to drop a relationship or even casual intimacy into your lap. It's why pick-up artists and the like exist and have followings, there's a lot of desperate young men who have no idea how to get what they need.
It's the kind of thing that makes me wish prostitution was safer/legalized. It wouldn't form a long-term solution but I think it would provide an outlet for young men desperate to experience that facet of human life. It's easy to say it ain't all that once you've been there, but from the outside looking in it's a weight like nothing else.
My point is that there is no such thing as a "forever alone" state. At most there are states of "alone now and trying" and "alone now and not trying", and in the former there are any number of things that could be tried, some more advisable than others.
Well yeah, like any other dark time once you come out the other side it all feels inevitable and silly. But when you’re there it can feel like forever and it can feel hopeless. People take the outs they can find, some of them less savoury than others. For myself, I know I wasn’t thinking about gender dynamics and potential toxicity when skimming PU artists, that came way later once I was comfortable.
I think I should add, in regards to girls asking out guys and the incel community, you can read their forums and find situations where they describe ABSOLUTELY getting hit on, and them thinking that they're being "mocked" or perhaps worse, that getting a girlfriend would be a bad thing because all women are constantly having sex with "chad" even when in a relationship - that is, that the only reason that a woman could be taking an interest in them is as a sugar daddy ("beta bux" using their language) while fucking the man they "really" want on the side. These guys are genuinely in a prison of their own making, and women becoming more confident and able to approach men, which you would think would grant them hope and make them think that life isn't so bad, actually has the opposite effect on them.
That mentality of "if a girl's forward with me they must be fucking with me" is something that is usually ingrained pretty early and is really hard to break out of later in life. I can't say for how widespread this behavior is in general, but I went to a very urban public high school, and especially cruel girls who flirted with the social outcasts just to fuck with them(hey you're cute - haha jk like anyone would be interested in you) were absolutely a thing during my time there and it really messed some kids up.
I had a couple girls in jr high that somehow found my phone number and kept trying to get me to do things like meet them in the girls locker room naked. They were the only female contact I had at the time, so I kept taking their calls. This was after another girl had convinced me that what my (soon ex) girlfriend really wanted was an extremely graphic "love letter", which she even wrote for me to copy.
God DAMN.
I'm lucky that nothing quite that bad happened to me in high school. Maybe the worst thing was overhearing the girls in yearbook committee (I was the only male member) debating whether me or one other guy in school was weirder when they thought I'd left to go to the bathroom (I was actually in the back room working on the computer).
They at least said the other guy was weirder.
Hexmage-PA on
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CambiataCommander ShepardThe likes of which even GAWD has never seenRegistered Userregular
I forgot to add to my story - but when I found Strikor, I was also at the point where I was comfortable with "forever alone" and thought that was my fate. I think you find that a lot more in romantic stories than you might expect. Being comfortable with who you are is incredibly inviting to other people, and hanging all your life's hopes on getting a significant other puts so much pressure on every interaction you have that all those interactions are going to be inherently uncomfortable for everyone involved.
"If you divide the whole world into just enemies and friends, you'll end up destroying everything" --Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind
I forgot to add to my story - but when I found Strikor, I was also at the point where I was comfortable with "forever alone" and thought that was my fate. I think you find that a lot more in romantic stories than you might expect. Being comfortable with who you are is incredibly inviting to other people, and hanging all your life's hopes on getting a significant other puts so much pressure on every interaction you have that all those interactions are going to be inherently uncomfortable for everyone involved.
Everyone always told me this, and I never believed them. Felt like Ivory Tower bullshit. But of course, in retrospect it’s completely correct.
I think I should add, in regards to girls asking out guys and the incel community, you can read their forums and find situations where they describe ABSOLUTELY getting hit on, and them thinking that they're being "mocked" or perhaps worse, that getting a girlfriend would be a bad thing because all women are constantly having sex with "chad" even when in a relationship - that is, that the only reason that a woman could be taking an interest in them is as a sugar daddy ("beta bux" using their language) while fucking the man they "really" want on the side. These guys are genuinely in a prison of their own making, and women becoming more confident and able to approach men, which you would think would grant them hope and make them think that life isn't so bad, actually has the opposite effect on them.
That mentality of "if a girl's forward with me they must be fucking with me" is something that is usually ingrained pretty early and is really hard to break out of later in life. I can't say for how widespread this behavior is in general, but I went to a very urban public high school, and especially cruel girls who flirted with the social outcasts just to fuck with them(hey you're cute - haha jk like anyone would be interested in you) were absolutely a thing during my time there and it really messed some kids up.
I have had that reaction before and even when it was happening I could understand that was just fucked up but the instinctive defensiveness was still there. I have no idea why I get that reaction from time to time it really makes no sense and is not reasonable.
I think I should add, in regards to girls asking out guys and the incel community, you can read their forums and find situations where they describe ABSOLUTELY getting hit on, and them thinking that they're being "mocked" or perhaps worse, that getting a girlfriend would be a bad thing because all women are constantly having sex with "chad" even when in a relationship - that is, that the only reason that a woman could be taking an interest in them is as a sugar daddy ("beta bux" using their language) while fucking the man they "really" want on the side. These guys are genuinely in a prison of their own making, and women becoming more confident and able to approach men, which you would think would grant them hope and make them think that life isn't so bad, actually has the opposite effect on them.
That mentality of "if a girl's forward with me they must be fucking with me" is something that is usually ingrained pretty early and is really hard to break out of later in life. I can't say for how widespread this behavior is in general, but I went to a very urban public high school, and especially cruel girls who flirted with the social outcasts just to fuck with them(hey you're cute - haha jk like anyone would be interested in you) were absolutely a thing during my time there and it really messed some kids up.
I had a couple girls in jr high that somehow found my phone number and kept trying to get me to do things like meet them in the girls locker room naked. They were the only female contact I had at the time, so I kept taking their calls. This was after another girl had convinced me that what my (soon ex) girlfriend really wanted was an extremely graphic "love letter", which she even wrote for me to copy.
God DAMN.
I'm lucky that nothing quite that bad happened to me in high school. Maybe the worst thing was overhearing the girls in yearbook committee (I was the only male member) debating whether me or one other guy in school was weirder when they thought I'd left to go to the bathroom (I was actually in the back room working on the computer).
They at least said the other guy was weirder.
It wasn't that bad - I was savvy enough not to go along with it. But the sad part was no matter what they did, there was still a part of me that kept wanting to talk to them in hopes that they'd like me if they stopped mocking me and got to know me. Not one thought like "Why would I like them?"
Everyone has traumatic stuff happen growing up with regards to romance or dating. Or even after we've grown up.
You should just force yourself to take risks anyway, which gets easier with repetition, or accept that not everyone has everything and this part just isn't for you. What Incels do is use this very common experience and build a very ill-advised self-image out of it, then weaponize it against both themselves and others until many lives are destroyed.
Surely there are more options than just "play the numbers game/take risks" and "accept that you'll always be alone".
I know from my own past that it's not a fun position to be in, and there are no good options. If you're in that "forever alone" state 99.9% of the time no one will help you out of it. No one's going to drop a relationship or even casual intimacy into your lap. It's why pick-up artists and the like exist and have followings, there's a lot of desperate young men who have no idea how to get what they need.
It's the kind of thing that makes me wish prostitution was safer/legalized. It wouldn't form a long-term solution but I think it would provide an outlet for young men desperate to experience that facet of human life. It's easy to say it ain't all that once you've been there, but from the outside looking in it's a weight like nothing else.
My point is that there is no such thing as a "forever alone" state. At most there are states of "alone now and trying" and "alone now and not trying", and in the former there are any number of things that could be tried, some more advisable than others.
Well yeah, like any other dark time once you come out the other side it all feels inevitable and silly. But when you’re there it can feel like forever and it can feel hopeless. People take the outs they can find, some of them less savoury than others. For myself, I know I wasn’t thinking about gender dynamics and potential toxicity when skimming PU artists, that came way later once I was comfortable.
The disconnect for me remains around the alchemy of turning "not being in a relationship right now" into a "dark time". I spent 22 years not in a relationship and parts of it sucked but I was never that fixated on the lack of a girlfriend as such a huge problem.
Everyone has traumatic stuff happen growing up with regards to romance or dating. Or even after we've grown up.
You should just force yourself to take risks anyway, which gets easier with repetition, or accept that not everyone has everything and this part just isn't for you. What Incels do is use this very common experience and build a very ill-advised self-image out of it, then weaponize it against both themselves and others until many lives are destroyed.
Surely there are more options than just "play the numbers game/take risks" and "accept that you'll always be alone".
I know from my own past that it's not a fun position to be in, and there are no good options. If you're in that "forever alone" state 99.9% of the time no one will help you out of it. No one's going to drop a relationship or even casual intimacy into your lap. It's why pick-up artists and the like exist and have followings, there's a lot of desperate young men who have no idea how to get what they need.
It's the kind of thing that makes me wish prostitution was safer/legalized. It wouldn't form a long-term solution but I think it would provide an outlet for young men desperate to experience that facet of human life. It's easy to say it ain't all that once you've been there, but from the outside looking in it's a weight like nothing else.
My point is that there is no such thing as a "forever alone" state. At most there are states of "alone now and trying" and "alone now and not trying", and in the former there are any number of things that could be tried, some more advisable than others.
Well yeah, like any other dark time once you come out the other side it all feels inevitable and silly. But when you’re there it can feel like forever and it can feel hopeless. People take the outs they can find, some of them less savoury than others. For myself, I know I wasn’t thinking about gender dynamics and potential toxicity when skimming PU artists, that came way later once I was comfortable.
The disconnect for me remains around the alchemy of turning "not being in a relationship right now" into a "dark time". I spent 22 years not in a relationship and parts of it sucked but I was never that fixated on the lack of a girlfriend as such a huge problem.
I guess it’s different for different people. It was painful for me. I was young and insecure, and being unable to start a relationship was murder for what was left of my self esteem. Throw in the cultural hype around sex, the social value system built around it, and watching all your peers get busy while you're out in the cold.... yeah, it can suck. I'm happy now, and I'm not talking from a place of bitterness. I just remember clearly how it felt, and how it basically consumed my world to the exclusion of all else.
Some people just do better alone. I never did. My wife is in Iran right now for a few weeks and I'm dyyyyyyyyying. I've always been around people and having an empty home is killing me.
I think I should add, in regards to girls asking out guys and the incel community, you can read their forums and find situations where they describe ABSOLUTELY getting hit on, and them thinking that they're being "mocked" or perhaps worse, that getting a girlfriend would be a bad thing because all women are constantly having sex with "chad" even when in a relationship - that is, that the only reason that a woman could be taking an interest in them is as a sugar daddy ("beta bux" using their language) while fucking the man they "really" want on the side. These guys are genuinely in a prison of their own making, and women becoming more confident and able to approach men, which you would think would grant them hope and make them think that life isn't so bad, actually has the opposite effect on them.
Oh I can definitely see that. I was more referring to "shy guys" rather than incels. But then again, how the fuck does a woman know which one she's dealing with nowadays?
She doesn't, which is a massive part of the problem. As the quote goes:
Men are afraid that women will laugh at them.
Women are afraid that men will kill them.
Frustratingly, this disparity will continue to reinforce the current imbalance between dating behaviors that maximizes the representation of bad actors in the active dating population. Good men are not only afraid that women will laugh at them, they are afraid that women will fear them.
One January, I was asked out by a friend of a friend. At the time, I was months out of an abusive relationship and I was reeling. Also, I didn't know this guy very well. Our mutual friend was a solid point in his favor, but it was almost all I had to go on. I had every reason to be afraid of men, and especially of men showing interest in me. My suitor didn't know that; he just knew that I'd been dating someone and that it had ended badly.
I don't know if it was instinctive or conscious on his part, but he did everything he could to make sure I felt safe. Our first few dates were in public places. We drove separately; I was never alone with him. He offered to pay for food, etc., but never insisted. He didn't make sudden moves and he didn't invade my personal space. On the third date, after dropping me off (I was comfortable enough to ride with him by then), he tried to kiss me and I panicked a little. But the thing is, he moved slowly and telegraphed what he was doing so I'd have time to say no - which I did, and which he immediately respected. I remember his body language going from romantic to platonic-supportive so fast it was like he'd flipped a switch. (Contrast my abusive ex, who, the first time he kissed me, dove in for a peck so quickly it was over before I could process what was happening.) At that point I invited him in and told him enough of the story, and that I wasn't ready for another relationship. He said he understood and asked if we could still be friends; I said sure, as long as there's no pressure.
He backed off so completely that for a while I thought he'd lost interest. We hung out as friends all summer, and by August we were dating. We ended up staying together for five years, ultimately breaking up over an incompatibility that was no one's fault.
My point is, yes, women will be afraid of good men - but there are concrete things that good men can do to make women feel safe. I am immediately suspicious of men who complain that women are "unfairly" afraid of them, because at best they're not listening or putting in the work to be nonthreatening. At worst, they're predators who are frustrated by a lack of easy targets.
edit: just to be clear, Paladin, I don't mean to imply that's what you were doing
Beyond deflecting blame, the fact that most of the education men get comes from these horror stories with a very sparse foundation of examples of good behavior and ideology makes them afraid of coming across as monsters or creeps - or, in those with low self esteem, actually being monsters or creeps. For many socially quiet individuals, this means restraining or actively ignoring their romantic intuition until it dies.
Then there are those who also pick up on this fear of being feared, but project it into others as they have little insight into their own mental state.
Paladin on
Marty: The future, it's where you're going? Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
Much like how it's common for people to not like kids until they have one and all the chemicals snap into place, the desire for a relationship can be triggered by ending up in one. I was basically asexual and proud of it until a friend came over and our hands brushed while watching a movie and now it's a huge part of who I am and a lack of contact is driving me nuts.
Everyone has traumatic stuff happen growing up with regards to romance or dating. Or even after we've grown up.
You should just force yourself to take risks anyway, which gets easier with repetition, or accept that not everyone has everything and this part just isn't for you. What Incels do is use this very common experience and build a very ill-advised self-image out of it, then weaponize it against both themselves and others until many lives are destroyed.
Surely there are more options than just "play the numbers game/take risks" and "accept that you'll always be alone".
I know from my own past that it's not a fun position to be in, and there are no good options. If you're in that "forever alone" state 99.9% of the time no one will help you out of it. No one's going to drop a relationship or even casual intimacy into your lap. It's why pick-up artists and the like exist and have followings, there's a lot of desperate young men who have no idea how to get what they need.
It's the kind of thing that makes me wish prostitution was safer/legalized. It wouldn't form a long-term solution but I think it would provide an outlet for young men desperate to experience that facet of human life. It's easy to say it ain't all that once you've been there, but from the outside looking in it's a weight like nothing else.
My point is that there is no such thing as a "forever alone" state. At most there are states of "alone now and trying" and "alone now and not trying", and in the former there are any number of things that could be tried, some more advisable than others.
Well yeah, like any other dark time once you come out the other side it all feels inevitable and silly. But when you’re there it can feel like forever and it can feel hopeless. People take the outs they can find, some of them less savoury than others. For myself, I know I wasn’t thinking about gender dynamics and potential toxicity when skimming PU artists, that came way later once I was comfortable.
The disconnect for me remains around the alchemy of turning "not being in a relationship right now" into a "dark time". I spent 22 years not in a relationship and parts of it sucked but I was never that fixated on the lack of a girlfriend as such a huge problem.
I guess it’s different for different people. It was painful for me. I was young and insecure, and being unable to start a relationship was murder for what was left of my self esteem. Throw in the cultural hype around sex, the social value system built around it, and watching all your peers get busy while you're out in the cold.... yeah, it can suck. I'm happy now, and I'm not talking from a place of bitterness. I just remember clearly how it felt, and how it basically consumed my world to the exclusion of all else.
Some people just do better alone. I never did. My wife is in Iran right now for a few weeks and I'm dyyyyyyyyying. I've always been around people and having an empty home is killing me.
I never did watch any of my peers getting busy. I guess I heard a few things here and there, but I really don't remember it being that much of a conversation topic. It must have been happening, but it wasn't top of mind. Maybe everyone clammed up about sex stuff around me because I had a way of making things weird.
Hope you see your wife again soon, weeks apart sounds rough.
I think there is a nugget of truth that changing economic factors, sexual norms, and attitudes towards relationships/marriage have not benefited men. There are a lot of sad lonely men out there.
I have to imagine though that the incel movement is a small group of insane people and worrying about them as part of some greater trend in society seems silly.
I think there is a nugget of truth that changing economic factors, sexual norms, and attitudes towards relationships/marriage have not benefited men. There are a lot of sad lonely men out there.
There were even more lifelong lonely men before modern sexual morals changed, because in times past, experimenting or sleeping around was playing with fire for any woman who wanted to live a "respectable" life. Any sane woman needed at least a promise of engagement before getting into bed, or risk being left an outcast with a baby in her arms and no means to feed it. This meant that any man who couldn't persuade a woman to marry him probably died a virgin or had his only sexual experiences with prostitutes. "Free love" has only been a benefit to men.
I think there is a nugget of truth that changing economic factors, sexual norms, and attitudes towards relationships/marriage have not benefited men. There are a lot of sad lonely men out there.
I have to imagine though that the incel movement is a small group of insane people and worrying about them as part of some greater trend in society seems silly.
Lets say that they are rare - 1 in 1000 people feel so bad about dating that they just give up, and quietly brood or eventually commit suicide. If 1 in 10 of them decided to get violent, that violence would be lost in general criminal statistics. Just some violent crazy.
But if those 1 in 1000 are all then connected up, we've moved from that one strange kid in school to all of Vermont or Wyoming taking the Blackpill. And I think from this thread alone we're not talking 1 in 1000 people not feeling that modern dating is working for them. It's much higher, and also a global movement. And as far as active members, I'd be surprised if Incel reddits had less than 200,000 subscribers.
With the rest of the world cheering you on, that 1 in 1000 is now 7.7 million people. Doesn't take a lot to spark anything with those numbers.
Humans are really bad at telling how big something is and are marginally better at telling how awful something is. I wouldn't be surprised at any number of radical incels
Paladin on
Marty: The future, it's where you're going? Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
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BethrynUnhappiness is MandatoryRegistered Userregular
Humans are really bad at telling how big something is and are marginally better at telling how awful something is. I wouldn't be surprised at any number of radical incels
Ignoring No True Incel stuff, given inceldom has a fairly explicit philosophy going beyond just "lonely hearts" we can make reasonable estimates from things like pageviews for r/braincels and similar content aggregators for their particular brand of insanity.
I think there is a nugget of truth that changing economic factors, sexual norms, and attitudes towards relationships/marriage have not benefited men. There are a lot of sad lonely men out there.
I have to imagine though that the incel movement is a small group of insane people and worrying about them as part of some greater trend in society seems silly.
As many guys in this very thread have attested, the outer edges of incel philosophy are really easy to fall into for a lot of guys at a certain age. And once people are in, it's apparently quite difficult/unlikely to escape. Add that to the fact that the inner rings of inceldom include rape, murder, and suicide and I think no matter what the current number of incels might be it's something we should, as a society, think about how to address. Even if all of the places where incels gather up and vanished tomorrow there'd be new ones soon enough. The internet makes it very easy for groups of people to get together and reinforce their group-think into a sharp-edged blade of crazy and feelings of "I can't get a girlfriend, I'm never going to, I hate that other guys are getting girlfriends when I can't and I wish someone would just like me already" are very common in young men. Incels aren't going away without some kind of group action to make them go away.
Pools deep, waters are choppy. We should definitely do something about the riptide and whirlpool though, seeing as everyone has to take a swim at some point.
Humans are really bad at telling how big something is and are marginally better at telling how awful something is. I wouldn't be surprised at any number of radical incels
Ignoring No True Incel stuff, given inceldom has a fairly explicit philosophy going beyond just "lonely hearts" we can make reasonable estimates from things like pageviews for r/braincels and similar content aggregators for their particular brand of insanity.
I wouldn't trust pageviews. I went there just to get the subscriber number, which is about 65k. Bunches of pageviews can come from a few extremely involved people or people who visit for other reasons than buying into the ideology.
Marty: The future, it's where you're going? Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
Humans are really bad at telling how big something is and are marginally better at telling how awful something is. I wouldn't be surprised at any number of radical incels
Ignoring No True Incel stuff, given inceldom has a fairly explicit philosophy going beyond just "lonely hearts" we can make reasonable estimates from things like pageviews for r/braincels and similar content aggregators for their particular brand of insanity.
I wouldn't trust pageviews. I went there just to get the subscriber number, which is about 65k. Bunches of pageviews can come from a few extremely involved people or people who visit for other reasons than buying into the ideology.
Media attention also generates pageviews, from either curious and horrified onlookers. Much the same way youtube shitlords usually end up profiting from negative media attention unless the attention is so bad that youtube themselves step in and remove or demonetize the video or even the whole channel.
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One January, I was asked out by a friend of a friend. At the time, I was months out of an abusive relationship and I was reeling. Also, I didn't know this guy very well. Our mutual friend was a solid point in his favor, but it was almost all I had to go on. I had every reason to be afraid of men, and especially of men showing interest in me. My suitor didn't know that; he just knew that I'd been dating someone and that it had ended badly.
I don't know if it was instinctive or conscious on his part, but he did everything he could to make sure I felt safe. Our first few dates were in public places. We drove separately; I was never alone with him. He offered to pay for food, etc., but never insisted. He didn't make sudden moves and he didn't invade my personal space. On the third date, after dropping me off (I was comfortable enough to ride with him by then), he tried to kiss me and I panicked a little. But the thing is, he moved slowly and telegraphed what he was doing so I'd have time to say no - which I did, and which he immediately respected. I remember his body language going from romantic to platonic-supportive so fast it was like he'd flipped a switch. (Contrast my abusive ex, who, the first time he kissed me, dove in for a peck so quickly it was over before I could process what was happening.) At that point I invited him in and told him enough of the story, and that I wasn't ready for another relationship. He said he understood and asked if we could still be friends; I said sure, as long as there's no pressure.
He backed off so completely that for a while I thought he'd lost interest. We hung out as friends all summer, and by August we were dating. We ended up staying together for five years, ultimately breaking up over an incompatibility that was no one's fault.
My point is, yes, women will be afraid of good men - but there are concrete things that good men can do to make women feel safe. I am immediately suspicious of men who complain that women are "unfairly" afraid of them, because at best they're not listening or putting in the work to be nonthreatening. At worst, they're predators who are frustrated by a lack of easy targets.
edit: just to be clear, @Paladin, I don't mean to imply that's what you were doing
we banned this kind of self-talk inthe house. It crops up a lot in the process of deflecting toxic behavior on discord in e.g. League games. You miss a skillshot, immediately go "omg I'm trash, deleting this account and jumping off a bridge, I'm disgusting, everyone int now plz". It got so bad that we legit had to stop allowing the kids to do it.
My story - I had arrived at a place, age 20, where I believed I'd be alone forever because I was an irredeemable nerd that no one found attractive, and that all women would eventually cheat on me even if I was dating them... because that was my uniform experience throughout middle & high school even when I was dating a cheerleader. It's a really good thing incels didn't exist in the 90s, and I'm lucky that I didn't end up in that scene because the vox article would be including quotes from spool32 going 'when did it all go so damned toxic'.
Luckily, Bel was having none of it.
I know I ran into this a lot in my schoolin' days and it got bad enough that when I was asked out by a coworker at my old job, I thought it was a joke and hurt their feelings really bad as a result. I legitimately couldn't process a woman actually being interested, and just thought she was trying to sucker me into an embarrasing moment (she asked me out openly in front of other coworkers). Now, 10+ years later, I don't even know how to process that. I'm full of regrets about shit like that, but I'm happily married so I think my regret kinda starts and ends with, "I wish I hadn't hurt her."
Children being cruel to one another is definitely a factor, but I can't help but be angry with myself about past mistakes like that. Especially when they're around a decade after high school.
Hell I bet even the "chads" they so readily shit on have been afraid to ask a girl or guy out and have sat there heart in hand afraid they were about to have their life ruined too.
pleasepaypreacher.net
It was more than a decade later I would learn that she was only dating me while waiting for a particular other guy to become available. Dumped me as soon as he split with the girl he was dating. When I learned about it, all I could do was laugh, but if I had known at the time, holy shit that would have sent me to a truly awful place.
We might spend this life mostly alone. that's a thing that can happen for no other reason than luck, and it is far more likely for that to be the case than for you to find someone or be with them till the end.
Like even as someone who currently has someone I have to accept they might die tomorrow, and that in their wake I may find nothing but ample time to myself for the next 30 to 40 years. That's just a thing that may happen.
I accepted a potential lifetime of being alone in the 10th grade, and started to look at it as the plan rather than as some kind of life long punishment for something. It really helped me relax in social situations. Who cares if I screw up, I'm probably going to be alone forever anyways, may as well be myself while I do it.
Not having a cohort of friends learning these things along with you and/or supportive parental figures to help you figure these things out are a real setback.
So much of this is true. I can't even properly describe how at peace I was when I got there. My friends thought it was so sad when I explained it to them. And then when I hit it off with my wife, they were all really happy, and mentioned how wrong I was to have been at peace with being alone. Like, fucking, no, I wasn't wrong. I was truly happy. That I ended up snagging a wife doesn't mean I was living a lesser life before that.
There are so many unstated assumptions/premises here I don't think I can unpack them all. I will pick out a couple that I want to reject. First, I reject the idea that either you're in a romantic/intimate relationship or you're alone/lonely. For one thing, it's quite possible to be in a relationship and still be lonely. For another, even if you aren't in a romantic/intimate relationship, you can still have meaningful and enriching relationships with other people. Second, I reject the idea that because something is an effective coping strategy in response to a bad situation, that makes it healthy. People who grow up believing that their lives are essentially meaningless and empty if they aren't in a relationship may need to come to grips with the idea that they may be alone forever, but that's only because they got fucked up with that first bad idea originally.
I know from my own past that it's not a fun position to be in, and there are no good options. If you're in that "forever alone" state 99.9% of the time no one will help you out of it. No one's going to drop a relationship or even casual intimacy into your lap. It's why pick-up artists and the like exist and have followings, there's a lot of desperate young men who have no idea how to get what they need.
It's the kind of thing that makes me wish prostitution was safer/legalized. It wouldn't form a long-term solution but I think it would provide an outlet for young men desperate to experience that facet of human life. It's easy to say it ain't all that once you've been there, but from the outside looking in it's a weight like nothing else.
The fact that a genuine, non-aggressive, no- consequence compliment to a passerby is likely to come off as threatening is horrible for everyone involved.
I've had friends stressed out about their cuteness factor but unless they mention it I can't compliment them because the comfort level is going to nose dive if I say "oh my god you look so cute tonight" without prompting because they deal with lots of street harassment.
Those positive stories can be a double-edged sword, though. If you're happily married you could be an asshole for dangling your good fortune in front of them. And if you're single you could be a beta cuck trying to justify your existence to them.
Let me preface by saying that I am not a parent. But even into my late 30s my parents would sit down with me and talk about things they saw me doing that they felt we're wrong and giving me a chance to explain or counter their perception. Sometime it developed into an argument, others we just agreed to disagree, or let it lie.
I feel like if you see your child developing in a dangerous way, you owe it to them and your self to treat it like the crises it is, and have multiple sit downs to try and talk with them. If they start to tune out or things get heated, take a break and pick it up again the next day.
These things don't develop in a day, and certainly can't be fixed in one. Best analogy I can think of is over eating and exercise routine.
MWO: Adamski
I don't think everyone's made for that, and I don't think it's healthy for everyone. We are social creatures, and there is a certain evolutionary imperative still rattling around in there. I once faced the idea of being forever alone and it terrified me to the point of self harm. I understand some people can work with it, but some just aren't made that way and there's no safety net for them.
I might have some insights into this - if you'd like to send folks my direction I'm open to conversations about how we helped the boys not end up as alt-right shitheels. Also both my sons are on the forum now that they're over 18, and I'm sure they'd be willing to talk about what it was like at ground zero of gamergate and the alt-right as a 16-20yr old.
This is a gentler version of a common response I see on social media: nobody is entitled to a sexual or romantic relationship.
While that is technically true, i think it needs to be tempered a lot. Imagine if we responded that way to homophobia (many gay people raised with homophobic morals turn to celibacy for a while) or the desexualization of people with disabilities. (There is a wealth of writings from people with disabilities about how desexualization affects them.)
Going through your entire life without a romantic or sexual relationship is painful for most people. Some asexual people may want the emotional intimacy of a relationship but not sex; some schizoid people may want sex but not intimacy. Vanishingly few people thrive with neither.
But, I think it also needs to be repeated, frequently and loudly, that American toxic masculinity intensely exacerbates sexual deprivation by socializing men to put all of their emotional eggs in one metaphorical basket: we're taught to seek emotional intimacy and nonsexual physical affection from our romantic partners, to the exclusion of other sources. This causes single men to suffer from endemic loneliness while simultaneously forcing wives and girlfriends to take on more emotional labor than they should be saddled with.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
My point is that there is no such thing as a "forever alone" state. At most there are states of "alone now and trying" and "alone now and not trying", and in the former there are any number of things that could be tried, some more advisable than others.
Considering I went to a therapist talking about exactly this for years, maybe ease off.
Well yeah, like any other dark time once you come out the other side it all feels inevitable and silly. But when you’re there it can feel like forever and it can feel hopeless. People take the outs they can find, some of them less savoury than others. For myself, I know I wasn’t thinking about gender dynamics and potential toxicity when skimming PU artists, that came way later once I was comfortable.
God DAMN.
I'm lucky that nothing quite that bad happened to me in high school. Maybe the worst thing was overhearing the girls in yearbook committee (I was the only male member) debating whether me or one other guy in school was weirder when they thought I'd left to go to the bathroom (I was actually in the back room working on the computer).
They at least said the other guy was weirder.
Everyone always told me this, and I never believed them. Felt like Ivory Tower bullshit. But of course, in retrospect it’s completely correct.
I have had that reaction before and even when it was happening I could understand that was just fucked up but the instinctive defensiveness was still there. I have no idea why I get that reaction from time to time it really makes no sense and is not reasonable.
It wasn't that bad - I was savvy enough not to go along with it. But the sad part was no matter what they did, there was still a part of me that kept wanting to talk to them in hopes that they'd like me if they stopped mocking me and got to know me. Not one thought like "Why would I like them?"
The disconnect for me remains around the alchemy of turning "not being in a relationship right now" into a "dark time". I spent 22 years not in a relationship and parts of it sucked but I was never that fixated on the lack of a girlfriend as such a huge problem.
I guess it’s different for different people. It was painful for me. I was young and insecure, and being unable to start a relationship was murder for what was left of my self esteem. Throw in the cultural hype around sex, the social value system built around it, and watching all your peers get busy while you're out in the cold.... yeah, it can suck. I'm happy now, and I'm not talking from a place of bitterness. I just remember clearly how it felt, and how it basically consumed my world to the exclusion of all else.
Some people just do better alone. I never did. My wife is in Iran right now for a few weeks and I'm dyyyyyyyyying. I've always been around people and having an empty home is killing me.
Beyond deflecting blame, the fact that most of the education men get comes from these horror stories with a very sparse foundation of examples of good behavior and ideology makes them afraid of coming across as monsters or creeps - or, in those with low self esteem, actually being monsters or creeps. For many socially quiet individuals, this means restraining or actively ignoring their romantic intuition until it dies.
Then there are those who also pick up on this fear of being feared, but project it into others as they have little insight into their own mental state.
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
I never did watch any of my peers getting busy. I guess I heard a few things here and there, but I really don't remember it being that much of a conversation topic. It must have been happening, but it wasn't top of mind. Maybe everyone clammed up about sex stuff around me because I had a way of making things weird.
Hope you see your wife again soon, weeks apart sounds rough.
I have to imagine though that the incel movement is a small group of insane people and worrying about them as part of some greater trend in society seems silly.
There were even more lifelong lonely men before modern sexual morals changed, because in times past, experimenting or sleeping around was playing with fire for any woman who wanted to live a "respectable" life. Any sane woman needed at least a promise of engagement before getting into bed, or risk being left an outcast with a baby in her arms and no means to feed it. This meant that any man who couldn't persuade a woman to marry him probably died a virgin or had his only sexual experiences with prostitutes. "Free love" has only been a benefit to men.
Lets say that they are rare - 1 in 1000 people feel so bad about dating that they just give up, and quietly brood or eventually commit suicide. If 1 in 10 of them decided to get violent, that violence would be lost in general criminal statistics. Just some violent crazy.
But if those 1 in 1000 are all then connected up, we've moved from that one strange kid in school to all of Vermont or Wyoming taking the Blackpill. And I think from this thread alone we're not talking 1 in 1000 people not feeling that modern dating is working for them. It's much higher, and also a global movement. And as far as active members, I'd be surprised if Incel reddits had less than 200,000 subscribers.
With the rest of the world cheering you on, that 1 in 1000 is now 7.7 million people. Doesn't take a lot to spark anything with those numbers.
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
As many guys in this very thread have attested, the outer edges of incel philosophy are really easy to fall into for a lot of guys at a certain age. And once people are in, it's apparently quite difficult/unlikely to escape. Add that to the fact that the inner rings of inceldom include rape, murder, and suicide and I think no matter what the current number of incels might be it's something we should, as a society, think about how to address. Even if all of the places where incels gather up and vanished tomorrow there'd be new ones soon enough. The internet makes it very easy for groups of people to get together and reinforce their group-think into a sharp-edged blade of crazy and feelings of "I can't get a girlfriend, I'm never going to, I hate that other guys are getting girlfriends when I can't and I wish someone would just like me already" are very common in young men. Incels aren't going away without some kind of group action to make them go away.
I wouldn't trust pageviews. I went there just to get the subscriber number, which is about 65k. Bunches of pageviews can come from a few extremely involved people or people who visit for other reasons than buying into the ideology.
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
Media attention also generates pageviews, from either curious and horrified onlookers. Much the same way youtube shitlords usually end up profiting from negative media attention unless the attention is so bad that youtube themselves step in and remove or demonetize the video or even the whole channel.