What is an incel?
This is an interesting read.
Internet phenomenon? Sign of our times? Is it a consequence of feminism? Or have there always been incels in every culture?
If you have time to read the article and feel like commenting...
Internet phenomenon? Sign of our times? Is it a consequence of feminism? Or have there always been incels in every culture?
If you have time to read the article and feel like commenting...
Comments (105)
Now that's changed. Women are no longer threatened with poverty if they don't marry, thus the emergence of the incel.
Unless the topic of the OP is really just psychobabble.
"Involuntarily celibate"... The term became ubiquitous in some internet circles a few years ago, around the same time as a mass shooting carried out by someone claiming to be motivated by sexual rejection.
In the threatening videos he uploaded prior to carrying out his murder-suicide spree, he explained (with a kind of cringe that turned him into a "meme") that he was "the perfect gentlemen", and was thus driven to extremes because of how irrational the rest of the world is (women always go for ass-holes, why don't they recognize my perfection, etc...)
Originally the term was not used for self-identification, it was a pejorative label floating down a few main-streams and applied to a certain kind of person by other groups such as "MGTOW" (a slightly different tale), but eventually communities of self-proclaimed incels emerged in digital forums of various kinds.
It's an internet phenomenon to be sure. It seemingly requires some degree of anonymity, because complaining about how you cannot get laid in public is, known even to incels, as not conducive to getting laid. But with anonymity they can share and amplify their grievances which reinforces their emotional position.
Mostly they're children who lack self-awareness and social skills (the internet will do that to you if you aren't careful).
I hate to be so corny but Yoda was right, their fear of sexual failure (causing a nocebo effect in an already challenged mind) amplifies into anger, and anger into hatred.
The internet allows similar individuals (or at least people who react the same way to "memes") to coalesce into groups, and so while there have always been some incels, there have not always been social networks of them, and they've never openly recruited (how open their communities are is relative, suffice it to say you need to know where to look or wind up there organically).
There's a poorly studied psychiatric concept called "Folie en Famille" (or folie a deux) where delusions held by one individual can be imparted to others through close proximity and isolation from outside influence. Many internet communities which thrive on the insidious persuasive power of emotional appeals function as amphitheatres where the silliest kind of nonsense can be proliferated this way.
Alex Jones' "Info Wars", and the broader conspiracy circuit used to have the digital market fairly cornered on silliness, but in recent years (perhaps with the increasing numbers of internet users) many new and somehow sillier groups have formed. The "ethno-state supporting alt-right" is one such delusional group (they believe Jews own everything and control every nation on earth, that the white race is headed for non-existence in under 200 years, and that if a million whites moved to the arctic to found an "ethno-state" it would be Eden (jump cut to a frozen and lifeless Jack Nicholson)).
The flat earth community is another example (it started as satire ten years ago but then became real; a real Pinocchio). Communist "Antifa" is another good example. The Black Nationalist movement deserves an honorable mention as well.
Social justice warriors didn't cause the incel movement, both incels and SJW's are a phenomenon that can only exist when you have a bunch of narrow minded (usually just young and stupid) individuals grouped together and somewhat isolated from other groups, who proceed to emotionally validate and manipulate one another with the same passion for truth as can be found in any hostile mob.
The internet allows (stimulates even) the weirdos to unite. "Neurodiversity" is expanding and human culture stratifying as these disparate groups push in different directions.
This is from whence the creepy crawlies came.
There have always be subperformers in every cultures. The difference nowadays is the existence of a medium which exacerbates our narcissism and which connects to others who are experiencing the same conditions. Despite there being little or no 'incel' community, those pathetic non-beings are able to reinforce their PoV by simply confirming the existence of others who are living the same situation.
My guess is that we also have The Handmaiden's Tale to blame for it. Yeah, 99.999% of people see that as a dystopia, but what about the 00.001% for whom that just described a utopia?
If it saves white people, it's worth it.
But so, how do these various groups influence events in the real world? Are we looking at a new kind of platform for a worldview? Could a religion emerge from it?
Very insightful history, BTW.
Funnily, the history of "Folie a deux" is quite interesting, and relates also to the incel problem. The term was coined by parisian newspapers and psychiatrists, when the courts started using expert opinions on the psychological causes of crimes.
Folie a deux is just another demonstration of the French predilection for low-intensity mysoginy. The explanation of a man's deviant behaviour is ; women, or more accurately, the passion of men for women.
"Cherchez la femme" is another example which came about in the same context.
Commune and reinforce. Actually pretty scary.
I mean, if you are 25 (or more) and you are extra super salty about not getting laid, isn't there a few other illegal things you could do that could solve the problem, before resorting to violence?
No. You have to blow somebody up.
Jordan Peterson is an idiot
But surely he realizes that forces monogamy isn't going to happen. So what is he doing? Just being provocative?
Setting up his next book's sales. Or trying to get another big debate/interview set up, this time with Margaret Atwood?
So this occurred to me: when we get highly upset that the Russians tried to interfere in American elections, should we consider that Russia or not, there was something unusual going on with internet interactions. People who might have previously wondered if they were just taking themselves too seriously and tossed it aside, joined up with others prone to lunacy and became alt-right (or fell completely overboard and became anti-Semitic). This was going on whether Russia was involved or not. Russia was just riding the phenomenon. True?
I apologize, but I don't get the question. Is the phenomena the elections, the elections+fake news, or just the suspicion against Russian State agents.
But considering what VS mentioned above regarding the cascade of factors by which the internet turns a handful of frustrated men into a "movement," I'm wondering if the same kind of thing contributed to Trump's win much more substantially than anything the Russians did. No injection of fake news is required if it's internally generated just by people meeting and venting at one another.
In the broader sense I think what we're looking at are regimes of cultural and ideological transmission that tend to find purchase in the unenlightened past, and in the intellectually darkened doorways of the present. wonders if a religion might emerge, but I would more specifically name it a "cult". Normally cults are physical, coherent and have charismatic leaders, but this cult is guided by its own autonomous and anonymous mob: an online Ouija board operated by sex-obsessed teens. - Teens can form international groups now. Another double edge of the digital age -. I call it a cult because they're ready to sacrifice (now in all varying degrees). Sacrifice literally means to make sacred; to worship. Cults, in my opinion, could be described as a group with a perverted object of worship.
As groups grow, their radical outliers become more numerous. I think the recipe for a violent incel is extreme sensitivity to emotional anguish, a severe lack of self-awareness, and the kind of ideological rhetoric which depicts their place in modernity as forever the sexually dispossessed misanthrope with only women and assholes to blame.
Quoting frank
Different groups affect the world in different ways. The flat earth community is run by shysters and every-once in awhile a celebrity will tweet about how the earth is flat, but beyond that they have marginal influence (though they will certainly derail the learning and intellectual development of any who fall prey to it). The alt-right is a bit more pernicious: they're slowly and subtly reviving racism and race nationalism, and while they're also a community largely run by shysters (and which intersects a broader but overall less pernicious reactionary right-wing political movement) they function as provocateurs in the political mainstream, and their main effect is to cause co-reactionary polarization. Antifa arrives in black-shirts to fight the fascists, the guy who turned up to hear about free speech is stricken with a bout of red-threat and wonders if the race nationalists actually have an argument to make. A kid makes a racist meme and an adult uses it to recruit ideological foot-soldiers in the cause against neo-hitler. Someone suggests censorship and as a result another tiny piece of the right is flung afar where patriotism blurs with emotional vigor.
I should point out again that these movements are generally characterized by identity defining emotional narratives as opposed to rational thought and analysis.
Explaining the actual position of these groups to an average "normie" is a seminar in absurdity. The flat earth community has accrued 1001 ridiculously obscure and scientifically misleading "gotchya" questions to throw at you (you will likely lose a "debate" against them). Antifa unironically believe that physical violence is a fair means of political participation. Incels believe that all women should be obligated to cater to their individual sexual needs. Ethno-state supporters believe that Alabama (or the Arctic, or a bunch of boats in international waters, or space) is the only hope for the survival of the white race. The alt-right as a whole takes the cake though. It's a smörgåscopia of the most absolutely ludicrous delusions that have ever existed.
If you enjoy absurdist humor or have morbid curiosity, the following is a summary of one of the more obscure and ridiculous genuinely held beliefs of many in the alt-right:
[hide]
note: The alt right's main shtick comes in the form of cherry picked race-realism: they take extant demographic averages and apply it to individuals. "Individual" is an evil word in their circles as they believe firmly in racial collectives, teams, which is the lens through which they interpret everything else and can help to decipher this subsequent specimen:
[/hide]
People actually believe the above. An uncomfortable number of them (just like the surprisingly bulged ranks of the flat-earthers) and their misguided views are uncomfortably difficult to dispossess them of.
But, saturating myself (seemingly masochistically) with the ideas of these groups was not without purpose. In understanding these groups I can see what it takes to actually dissuade them:
Mostly they're lacking in basic foundational knowledge (history, science and biology notably) which is why they have harder times understanding more nuanced models of reality, and which would otherwise facilitate communication. The world-views and basic set of operant truths of these groups can be so far removed from common understanding that they seem like foreign languages.
To have persuasive power over others requires that you speak their language and understand their (often emotional) set of reasons, and how to navigate and question those reasons without casting yourself as threatening opposition (all of these groups emotionally view themselves as counter-cultural heroes/martyrs). For a flat-earther it means lengthy exploration of fundamentals of physics and history of science (with pictures). For an alt-righter it means exploring evolution, genetics, statistics, economics, politics, anthropology, sociology, and everything in-between, while also somehow removing existing emotional hooks in a pain-free way (they're often barbed). For an incel it means exploring psychology (their own), their future, and human nature in general.
For instance, when an alt-righter asks me if I care about the survival of the white genome (as if it is an evolutionary imperative with normative implications), in order to have persuasive power in the interaction I need to take the question seriously. I can either argue that the demographic projections of the end of the white race are of the faultiest order (which they are), or I can try to render a more holistic portrait of biology and evolution: ethnicities and also genders can have different traits on average, which is a biologically influenced reality, but evolution does not operate on the level of race, it operates on the level of individuals, which is why no two members of the same ethnicity are exactly alike and why discriminating on the level of individual merit as opposed to ethnicity or race is the superior practice. It's also why I have an even stronger biological imperative to secure the future of my own individual genes as opposed to any random set of genes from those in my ethnic cluster, and would happily marry someone of a different ethnicity if I thought as an individual they are ideal (and therefore have ideal genes), and even if the rest of my ethnicity somehow ceased existing, my genes would continue existing in my offspring, and if they're good genes, will proliferate.
Such interactions are tedious, repetitive, obscure, at times incoherent, and piss-filled. Any verbal misstep triggers a landmeme and ends the exchange.
Culture war means peace, freedom means slavery. Ignorance is strength
Well, ask yourself, which incel is ever going to vote for Clinton? I mean, even if Trump came out and directly spoke against incels, he would still be infinitely sexier politically.
The reason is the acceleration of videogames and fantasy as teacher, rather then real life and trying shit like sports and having real life friends with real emotions.
A French psychologist - I forget which one - once stated that it took 3 generations to create a psychopath (paraphrasing, obviously).
What strikes me about the Jacobite Mag's article is how the relationship that Elliot Rodger idolized was a relationship of commodification. It's the relationship decried by Jean Baudrillard in The System of Objects. Objectification becomes part and engine of individuation, of identity building. The objects desired (women, sexual gratification, the respect of fellow sexually successfull men) are all desired as objects, as status marker, not because of themselves or of their history, but because of what they signify about their owner. That's why they won't purchase sex, because that would only be more confirmation of their status as 'renter' rather than 'proprietor'.
From what is written, there is a form of heavy awareness (but awareness of pathos) in what is expressed. I mean by this that Rodger and Minassian both very well know why and what they want from women. They want what our parents generations wanted by desiring the latest car, the nicest houses and the perfect atomic family. Rodgers and Minissian grew up idolizing successfull males and evaluating their male-ness by their possessions. The only mode of interaction they know is property, and they have been eternally denied this property. What changes, now they aren't afraid to express their desires, even though every normal person cringes at hearing them.
IMHO, this is (in part) the continuation of the prevalence of highly-fictionalised sexual courtship dynamics presented since the end of the 70s. Baby Boomers (my parents) started this dynamic, and as with everything with Boomers, they completely lacked any form of self-awareness. They wanted the trophy wife, the trophy car, the trophy house, but they wanted it because it was the dream. Incels nowadays have the self-awareness to know that there is no dream, if nothing else. But they haven't made the leap to realize that the Boomer model of courtship was also always defective (or, it worked as long as both individuals in the couple were about as shallow as the other).
This is a terrible, disrespectful discussion. Several weeks ago we had a thread about relationships between women and men where I said that our society treats men with fear and contempt. This is a very good example. Lonely, socially awkward men are suddenly narcissists and psychopaths. Their desire for normal human relationships is mocked and written off as "wanting to get laid." Your glib scorn makes me sick.
Maybe the worst part is that I'm sure there are people on this forum who fall into this category. Imagine how they feel having their friends show such disrespect.
From what I've seen, it doesn't seem that many Trump supporters fall into the alt-right category. Does anyone have specific information about this. Alt-right tend to be reactionary. They want to go back to an imagined golden age when women were subservient to men. That seems pretty far from the populism of the people who voted for President Trump.
I felt similarly sick reading this thread, so thanks for giving voice to that; I wouldn't have otherwise responded because I don't think I have the philosophical background to make an informed comment. But the only thing that really bothered me was this:
Quoting Akanthinos
Akanthinos, you're relegating actual human beings to the dubious state of pathetic non-beings based on...what?
Quoting T Clark
Agreed.
Such irony. You show your opposition to the "culture war" by demonstrating your scorn for the "warriors" on the other side. Then you tell us how to set them on the right path with your condescending pontificating.
I've seen this kind of thing before. People feel contempt for others who demonstrate weaknesses they fear in themselves. I think this is a major source of misanthropy that many men in our society feel.
:preach hands emoji:
None of which is say, by the way, that this absolves society from taking a good, long, hard look at itself and the way in which it narrativizes sex and sexuality. Incels are as much symptom as they are gangrenous disease, which is main point that the article in the OP rightly presses upon. But yeah, no sympathy for those shitcunts.
Do you identify yourself as incel ? I otherwise couldnt see why you would feel insulted.
How else qualify the pathos of someone so defined by his sexual failures that he resort to fantasysing about socially enforced monogamy? Its pathetic. Be as uptight as you like, I dont care, and I wont pretend that my perspective on sexuality is better. But dont pretend that society would be better off if we had the mores of caveman.
There are problems with our society in regard to sexual standards of practices. I refered to those problems in my post, but I guess you didnt care about that discussion. These problems have led us to a place where incels may thrive, but incels are not victims in this social dynamic. As I also mentionned, I rather think that they are not men-children, as it is often said, but rather adults who have simply followed the logic of commodification to its nihilistic end. Whats the worth of a property you can never acquire? Nothing. And once you have allowed yourself to think that women are literally worthless because you cant possess them, then Im sure the gun rampage is only but a few step further.
No. Fuck no one.
Quoting StreetlightX
So if incels are as much symptom as disease, then why are they shitcunts? Poor form, mod. Again and again.
Well yes, that seems to be the issue.
Why? Really, why.
Based on the moral quality of that (non)being.
I have no qualms about stating the fact that, once someone has moved past far enough the (admittedly hazy) moral frontier, then I stop caring entirely about their continued existence.
If you harbour resentment and violence for women based on your inability to find a mate, and wished for any form of social remedy to this, which could not possibly happen without a fullscale assault on human rights, I feel it should not be necessary to add, then you are that far removed from normal human decency.
That is a truly dehumanizing and tragically immoral position.
Oh right, I forgot you're a mod (why would I forget that anyway?); You can just ignore litigate questions. :rofl: Power is truly beautiful.
You see essential worth in human life. I dont, and Im honest about it, at least. I am not a nihilist, far from it, but a person is what it makes of itself. My cat is worth infinitely more to me than the life of, lets say, someone who would run down 12 people in the street because pornhub just isnt enough.
And no, I didnt assume you were an anti-feminist proto fascist. The *you* was fictional and impersonal. I must admit I didnt think this subject would even be controversial here. In what world do we live in that we have to entertain the sexual-resentment fueled spawn of reddit and 4chan as something that could even only potentially be not-terrible?
Still profoundly disagree here.
:meh:
:worry:
:sad:
Are you ok? You write as if you are tying a knot. If you reread what I wrote, you will perhaps see that I have cast no moral judgement on any poster here, unless perhaps those who have entertained the thought of mass murder out of sexual frustration.
If you feel bad about your relationships with women, thats something that can be discussed, but I dont see why youd want to do it in a thread specifically on incels. Perhaps you dont at all, perhaps there is nothing to discuss. I dont want you to think that I imply anything by this, but you seem to take the subject to heart, and to me it seems a pretty black/white issue. There are a few of those, I guess.
As for my history, thats fairly irrelevant. I am not the arrogant judgemental douche you try to depict in your post. You want to make me pass as a Chad? I am not. This is not me thread-bombing to post GET GUD VIRGIN. I have approached the matter at hand in my initial posts in a critical manner, and only since then have had to justify myself. Sorry to say, but the subject of a potentially violent resentment based subculture is necessarily going to come with its luggage of moral judgements. And it probably should.
The crux of the problem, as I see it, is what I quoted. You don't see essential worth in human life, per your own admission. So of course you don't see essential worth in the human life of perpetrators of moral wrongs. So you see them as less than human. That is profoundly, tragically, unbearably wrong.
So yeah, I'm not ok.
Huh. Well, in that case, cry me a river. Had I offended you because of some unknown issue, I would have felt bad. But not to your sensibilities for scumbags. If that is all you want to discuss, feel free to start another thread, entitled The desolate moral landscape of Akanthinos, otherwise my feelings toward incels is fairly otiose to this thread.
Wow, such a quick change from fake concern to disdain. As I expected, from reading your posts.
*cries river*
My sensibilities for scumbags are the same as my sensibilities for fundamentalist lunies as yourself. You're beautiful human beings. I mean that sincerely.
That's what I'm saying...although less nuanced... *hoot*
Ok, perhaps Robert Downey Jr.
Obviously, the new humanity still struggles at acting...
This is a valuable insight. Care to expand on that?
I don't see the irony. Is that the irony?
We are living in a time of political polarization, and I've briefly summarized several of the more silly extremes. Yes it's condescending (to people who belong to the groups I've characterized) because I've tied them all together as ignorant, insular, and absurd.
Failed philosophy often reads like pontification, so please point out where I've failed that I may alter my understanding or approach.
Quoting T Clark
I'm not in fact projecting my own fears onto other people and groups...
Ironic condescension aside, the misanthropy of these emerging groups is in part a symptom of the ideological isolation and emotional reinforcement that social media can facilitate. My point is that it is the mutual emotional reinforcement and radicalizing effect that an online community can provide to like minded individuals, combined with how it insulates them from mainstream and even common-sense ideas (it out-competes other sources of information), which makes ideological polarization and stratification an inevitability.
Thoughts?
P.S: The quotation you plucked is a slight modification of an Orwell quote "War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength". I modified it for my own use, which is to say that there's something very wrong with being motivated in battle by one's scorn for the other side alone, as scorn is a terrible source for justification. In a backwards mind, in a backwards land, scorn is pity and the righteous bloody.
"Once Rodger’s friends or the girls at school see him with his new thing, he thinks, he will finally have access to the prize he seeks. The more expensive, exclusive, or exotic the object, the greater its sexual exchange value. This logic extends to the literal acquisition of people ... Sex is money. Acquiring coolness and sexiness is just a matter of buying things. Desire is produced in the form of commodities. But the more items Rodger acquires, the more frustrated he becomes by their failure to give him what he really wants. Nothing stays true to its promise. At every turn, he is betrayed. But instead of questioning the logic in the first place, the logic equating the accumulation of luxury goods with sexual fulfillment, the logic of desire as a lack of something, he concludes that his problem is simply that he doesn’t have enough money. Only with a virtually infinite amount of money, he thinks, will he be finally irresistible to women.
...How different is the logic of capital and sexual accumulation Elliot Rodger articulates from the proper values of our society? What makes it pathetic when Rodger wears Gucci sunglasses to get laid and perfectly normal when his father, or Harvey Weinstein, or Donald Trump do so? Why do we, ostensibly well-adjusted bourgeoisie, think it is so absurd that Rodger expects that these commodities entitle him to sex and affection when we exhibit and encourage the same behavior ourselves?".
Well, that's quite literally insanity... Self fellating garbage as you would say.
However, what interests me is how can this logic, outlined in your post, be reasoned with? It seems like a no win situation.
I'm still trying to reason through where the incel has gone wrong in his beliefs. Namely, the assumption (grounded on what) that people are all hedonists or all subscribe to some rational self interested based theory of human behavior.
From the article:
"The community is generally resentful, misogynistic, and misanthropic, calling for violence against women and sexually successful men. They post on websites like 4chan and Reddit. They have a strange, intricate language they use to talk about their world. And they often express admiration for Elliot Rodger, the self-identified incel who went on a killing spree near the University of California, Santa Barbara in 2014 and had uploaded a series of threatening YouTube videos and a 140-page manifesto, My Twisted World, to the internet beforehand."
That's what's being discussed specifically, not just sexually unsuccessful reclusive males.
:up: I went on one of their sites (https://incels.me/) and took a quick look.
Typical threads
Main theme:
Self-indulgent self-pity/despair concerning finding a sexual partner (often backed up by scientific research to make it harder to dismiss).
"Study on the sexual market of Tinder"
"According to this analysis a man of average attractiveness can only expect to be liked by slightly less than 1% of females (0.87%). This equates to 1 “like” for every 115 females"
"There's no any discuss required. Anything is clear. It's over. What else can be added?"
"I never thought about it that way. It's like a new sort of feudalism. Ethnics and sub4 whites must toil 40 hrs a week while Chad fucks all the girls."
Even 1 YEAR OLDS AVOID unattractive people
"ugly person, ugly life."
"What's new in it? It's a damn proven point known to uglycels since Cretaceous era."
"What do you expect from them? They are the reason why suicide is deemed immoral and isn't already a fundamental right. They want us to suffer more. Younger generation of uglycels will come over listening to their bluepilled ideology only to be bullied so bad that they hate their existence. This is a propaganda to make our lives worse and our deaths painful."
"Someone please kill me"
"Time to rope"
Sub-themes: (Including) racism
[Serious] Mix breeding should be illegal
"Solid thread. Mixed breeders deserve the death penalty"
"No, it really depends. You either end up as a subhuman incel or as a giga Chad/Stacey supermodel. You can't be a normie while mixed race, you're condemned to live at one of the extreme. There's famous example of that fact here and there :"
"Venting about the disfortune of being ethnic, incel etc shouldn't be enough to get a ban or warning in my opinion. Being a nigger or ethnic a legit disadvantage. I would have nothing but sympathy if a whitecel with facial deformity kept venting about his deformity... We wouldn't call that 'deformitybaiting', so why the double-standard when its about race?.. And isn't this what this forum is for? :feelsbadman:"
Some usernames from the discussions
[b]mylifeistrash
acnescarcel
Junkyard Roach
Gremlincel
PleaseKillMeLoseSkin
UnfortunatelyINCEL98
Sadist
fukmylyf
Dispair[/b]
Typical banner ad (a computer sex game, no surprise there):
In line with what you said, ideological group isolation with emotional reinforcement that couldn't be delivered in so intense, immediate or pure a fashion from anything but social media culminating in a smorgasbord of self-indulgent masochistic emotion that's probably as addictive as it is (self-)destructive.
Reminds me of the perverse attachment to philosophical pessimism. Probably cathartic in a similar if dramatically less sophisticated way.
Not different at all.
Quoting Posty McPostface
Clearly, the incel has failed to deploy the Tic Tacs. Or, just possibly, he has deployed the Tic Tacs, and they failed to do what it said on the tin. Because after all, he wasn't worth it.
These, I think are among the casualties of the psy-ops we call 'advertising', along with the anorexics, shopaholics, gambling addicts, and so on. Fear, jealousy, hatred, are easy to invoke and manipulate and powerful motivators; tied to sexual frustration and negative identity - you're only worth what you can spend.
Try a site for anorexics for comparison. I'm not linking one here, but have an article instead. I think it would be a mistake to blame social media for this, just as it is a mistake to blame it for terrorism. The extremes are always logical extensions of 'normality'. This is what we have made; these are the values we live.
Can one criticize the botched, perverted, and sadly mass produced/manufactured Jungian collective unconscious, at all? How does one reason with this insanity?
Does it really boil down to such a truism because it really seems true and undeniable on face value...
Social media creates the echo chamber that amplifies the cry that might otherwise fall on deaf ears. It doesn't create the basic type, but it creates opportunities for its propagation and distillation, I guess.
Yes, I am aware of that. I still think the way the issue was framed demonstrates an underlying contempt and fear of men.
On the other hand... I'm still pretty burned from the men/women discussion of a few weeks ago and I'm probably oversensitive. If I want to keep credibility on this issue, I should pick my fights more carefully. Thanks for the reality check.
Oh, no worries, mate, I'm just in the process of informing myself about this stuff now anyhow.
My point is this: hateful, retrograde movements have formed before without the assistance of electronic media or the internet. The National Socialist Party had a disgusting ideology, certainly, but it also a lot of strong ordinary person-to-person glue to bond it together.
This internet-based "incel movement" is a virtual community which likely aggravates isolation, alienation, and anomie more than reduces it. There isn't much of that person-to-person chemistry which holds a PTA, Rotary, Republicans, or the Socialist Workers Party together.
One, your post did not get a fair response.
Two, right you are. I don't know any "incels", but I have known disappointed unsuccessful men all my life--indeed, I've been one at times. I don't think it's about sex. Even down and out men seem to be able to find sexual partners when they want to. It's more about not having a reasonable opportunity to gain self-respect. It's about lack of work, or bad work. It's about being devalued and not being treated as a worthwhile person. It's being discarded.
"Failure" smells bad and a lot of people shy away from the unsuccessful, and justify their distance by projecting negative characteristics onto them.
C.G. Jung „The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious
In other words, these people are manifesting the symptoms of our insanity; there is no "one" with the capacity to reason, living outside and immune from 'the factors'. Indeed the delusion of externality, and rationality is the most dangerous of all, as @Bitter Crank describes. Advertisers and politicians know what works, but have no idea of what work it does beyond the measure of 'sales' and 'votes'.
A wide variety voted for Trump. I don't think it's wise to assess them "as a group."
Similar situation here.
There's a lot to talk about this. It can even be argued that, evolutionary, we're at a disposition to take things on 'authority' and trust in order provided by that authority. To apply lofty and worthwhile ideals, some force and external factor is required to maintain and enforce it (I'm talking about education). Plato talked about this, in terms of Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
I don't subscribe to the fatalism of Jung and Freud, and believe in things like what William James had to say about the will to believe, or Dewey, which I should come around to reading one of these days.
This is a link that @praxis provided three weeks ago which talks about death rates among white men. I think these are the guys you are talking about. While death rates for others have gone down, the rates for 45 to 54 year old white Americans have actually risen significantly since 1998. Leading the rise are poorly educated white men. Causes of death - suicide, drug overdose, liver disease, or, as the article indicates, despair.
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/11/boomers-deaths-pnas/413971/
Quoting Bitter Crank
These are a few aspects of the issue that I was drunkenly trying to illustrate last night. Apologies to @StreetlightX and @Akanthinos, although I still find your disparaging comments about these people reprehensible.
There's a peculiar feeling that many of the headlines and bylines give rise to (I don't know if there's an english word for it). It happens when you see a claim or argument that you can immediately recognize is politically or emotionally controversial and that you know is specious, but because of its context or phrasing, actually addressing or responding to it would require a literary (literal?) mountain of ground-work. "Even 1 YEAR OLDS AVOID unattractive people" is a good example in the context of incels. It's a combination of revulsion at the tedious difficulty of offering a rebuke and anxiety over the chilling effect you know might occur if you do not (or if you fail).
Though for some, it must be like looking at hieroglyphics. "Giga Chad", "bluepilled, "deformitybaiting"... Giga Chad is an especially obscure symbol as far as I know (I could explain it but it's actually more absurd than the alt-right's stance on pornography which I revealed earlier). Their new language can sometimes be fun in context (example: referring to Putin as a "Chadlet": (Chad + Manlet)) but it also has the function of gate-keeping the communities. Generally only children of the internet wind up making it to these obscure destinations, and their journeys through various social media circles equip them with the underlying vernacular and facts that aggregate in the larger niche destinations, and function as language.
For instance, before Jordan Peterson unambiguously disavowed the alt-right, every alt-righter used Peterson's concepts, metaphors, and memes in their ideological nest building, and so unless you are yourself familiar with them, a chat-room full of alt-righters will erupt into derisive laughter when suddenly you're asked about whether Prozac will can help lobsters clean their room and not know how to respond (only if he's already already slain the Sea-Dragon of chaos) where failure to answer likewise loses you any chance of persuasion (because you would be uninformed. "Have you even read Siege?"). When Peterson finally did directly disparage the alt-right, (to be fair it was still coalescing into its contemporary form, so he was largely unaware of it), over-night those who sided with Peterson were gone from alt-right destinations and Peterson became a negative appeal instead of a positive one (though his vernacular remained).
In truth these-communities are deeply fractured and inconsistent, individuals with individual problems, and they are united mostly by shared emotions (emotions of discontent usually). They're somewhat fragile because of this and as evidenced by the many schisms prevalent in online social communities, which brings me back to the earlier point: without the cover and insulation that a niche corner of the internet can provide, a lot of these bad ideas would be disinfected by natural sunlight.
The internet and social media are not the original sources of our present misfortunes, though as has been made clear they have likely amplified them (in perception and effect). But when does the digital medium become the message?
In the world before social media "incels" surely existed, such as they are, but perhaps they did not have access to a digital environment which would encourage and reinforce resentment and instead would have generally resigned to work on themselves. This is a microcosm of one of the hidden features of the internet: it has something for everyone.
If the medium embeds itself in the message as McLuhan suggests, then online social media is the rat-king of all media, or rather, it creates them. The internet is great for anonymous complaining, and don't we all like to have our complaints validated? There's an emotionally validating community for everyone in this circus, and the niches continue to grow in number and diverge in intensity. It's not that the internet leads to incels, it's just aggregates them into one community (a community which has it's own demonstrable effects, such as in this case the breeding of resentment and vilification of others).
McLuhan didn't mean it literally when he said "the medium is the message", he meant that the medium warps and transforms the message; it creates an environment of it's own. When he followed that up with "And the content must be the audience", he anticipated online social media with prophetic accuracy and unfortunate understatement.
So what is exposed is a lot of unconscious thoughts and feelings, much more so than previous media. It is the medium of the collective unconscious. Sex, and more sex, and even more sex. On the one side the activities of the powerful, who have always lived out their fantasies, and on the other, the frustrations of the powerless who have not. Incels are just Weinsteins with no power, but the web treats them equally, and exposes both.
We are exposed to ourselves, and the posturing of politicians about their weapons of mass orgasm and who's going to emasculate whom, the sexual sadism of ISIS, everything that was already there but hidden, is now arrayed before us as what we vote for, what we take seriously, what we have always secretly wanted. Tic Tacs are date rape pills of the imagination.
More entertainment options, hormone disrupting plastics inundating the food supply, higher rates of obesity, there are plenty of plausible factors. Most don't explain the gender gap, which is more puzzling. Women 25-34 saw a drop, although not as large as men, but women.18-24 are ahead of 1990s figures.
There's an asymmetry there that obesity and chemical contaminants can't explain. Online dating might have some role. There is a huge gender imbalance in number of messages sent, as well as rankings of attractiveness. Male rankings of female attractiveness sort of approximate a normal distribution. Women's rankings of men is heavily left skewed towards lower numbers. Online dating filters the first step of mate selection through mostly visual queues, and that could skew things. That's just a single hypothesis I've read though, I don't know if it has much evidence. The other factor is that people tend to date those at the same educational level and men are attending college and grad school at lower rates and dropping out significantly more often.
incel = involuntarily celibate
There could be billions of people on earth right now, including men women children seniors etc... who want sex but don't have it. Therefore they are all incels.
There is also billions who could be vcel: voluntarily celibate, because they don't want herpes and child support or many other harmful things that come from sex.
Right now im a vcel
really any incel could get sex if they just lowered their standards and asked more people lol
so almost nobody in this world is a true incel. only disabled people with severe medical problems.
It's a derogatory term.
Watch how quick feminists are to label guys they don't like as incels. Yet in their next breath they claim to be accepting of mental illness haha. Total confusion and hypocrisy feeding their pathetic little egos.
Truth is they are just insulting disabled people. Who really are the only true incels.
You sound pretty bitter about the whole thing.
What about all the 40 year old women who can't get a date anymore, or a relationship.
How about we make up a term for them called insin = involuntarily single.
What is the point of this? I can also watch ethical porn and masturbate. In fucking some stranger, I'm after a hedonistic confidence boost. In fucking anyone else, I do want for them to have qualities that I can somehow appreciate. Lowering your standards is just simply unethical. You can fuck for fuck's sake, but, otherwise, there's some aspect of manipulation on the part of whoever does so, aside from that it happens to be completely dissatisfying.
Damn Sir! Excellent education on something I am unfamiliar with until it is explained.
I have three young adults living with us at the ranch and I have learned not to react to a topic I am unfamiliar with and work to remain open as I hear people's explanation or their position.
Thank you for taking the time to explain something to me and hopefully I can ask you questions as I encounter them.
Most recently has been the "imposter syndrome" and then TanaCon.
You have to respect this new generation.
Courtesy given, respect earned.
Well done :up:
Point is its all relative. Anyone can get anything if they are willing to compromise and do whatever it takes.
This is just making you sound more bitter.
It's entirely absurd for a man to voluntarily identify as being involuntarily celibate, as there is another party. It's also absurd because of that it is just kind of embarrassing. I haven't had sex in over two years and I am not proud of that, nor to I do feel a need to wage some sort of revolt online.
As far as a critique of seemingly Feminist inspired ways of digging at men in general go, I feel like we have come a long way from "nice boys" to "simps". They'll figure whatever out in good time, y'know?
I'm simply showing the parallel. Women are the same as men, but in a different way.
They do, though. See Vagabond's coverage of the topic previously in this thread.
What is the point of so-called "compromise", though!? I've been on OkCupid and Tinder. The people who, without my exploitation of the aggregate, express interest have, in varying ways, let themselves go to a considerable degree. That would seem to be terribly thoughtless, if not cruel, on my part.
He is basically just saying he can't get laid.
Which is no different then a woman saying she can't get a long term relationship.
It's because women are the gatekeepers of sex and men are the gatekeepers of relationships.
I'm not saying they're not out there. I'm just saying that it's like the equivalent of those poor young men who have to wear those hoodies that say that they are proud of their virginity because of their Christian parents.
If someone is out of shape then they can't want sex or a relationship that badly. Otherwise they would get their ass in shape.
Virgins have no std's or child support payments. lol
It's not just about being in shape, though; it's also about not having cultivated any form of personality whatsoever. I don't mind a mindless fuck, but I do really not want to date someone whom I can't hold a conversation with for more than five minutes.
Some peoples minds are a turn off, or turn on.
Yes and yes, but I feel like you haven't seen what I mean about these virginity hoodies. Various Christian groups make these proud to be a virgin hoodies which say something to that effect and I do feel like no teenager wears one without parental advisory. It's kind of an angle in college, as someone will quote unquote corrupt you, but really the sort of thing that's indicative of a humiliating form of repression characteristic of, particularly, evangelical forms of Christianity. Sex is whatever, y'know? It's like coffee. It's always pretty good, but never truly outstanding, no matter what gets put into it.
It goes beyond just it being their choice who to be attracted to, too. Too often these days women are demoralizing towards the weak.
I think it's really a matter of the (bad) philosophy of so-called "Darwinism," which really has nothing to do with the Theory of Evolution, but it has been mangled into something very dark, callous, and cruel.
Which is essentially Nazism.
Old timey religion will be saving our "soul" more and more in the future as we become more and more lost in all this progressiveness that our genetics were never meant to have.
No, look back at Vagabond's explanation. Incels want to take sexual freedom away from women. Their hero is Jordan Peterson. They're nuts.
I don't know that that truly defends incels, though.
I suffer from psychosis, which is the worst of all dating maladies. I'm invariably passed by, should I disclose this, by more or less all women by that account. Sure, they have implicitly accepted what they've learned from Hollywood, but I don't really feel like it's them to blame. There's so much shit that comes with being a woman. Men used to bitch about how they'd spend so much time in the bathroom on the shop floor because of that that was the only space that they had to organize. It sucks, but it's our world that has created our situation. They fetishize young urban professionals because of that that is the easiest way out. Sure, I could rend assunder some yuppie's worldview, given a chance to have a conversation, but what can I offer in the ways of a house, things to do, and to be considered of place in this world? It's a petty jealousy that these men have of others. It's like hating people purely because of that they are famous. It's a shit working-class resentment that ought to somehow be overcome. Nothing good will come from so-called "incels".
I was just pointing out that it is absurd to identify as an "incel" in the first place. It's like saying, "don't fuck me; I'm a weak misogynist." Honestly, those Christians even have it better. Someone wants to quote unquote corrupt them.
Incels are definitely hella nuts, though. I am aware of the trend.
I agree completely, but not everyone was born with the gift of logic like you or I.
Inceldom is a knee-jerk reaction. I can just see why it's happening.
Right, but I don't think that's a good defense.
It's like hating Kirsten Dunst, y'know? She's even been in a number of independent films. It's like some fucked shit like that.
To consider their perspective, okay, so, I resent some things. I have never been offered a certain kind of life by my dating prospects and therefore am unhappy. I resent that. I'm willing to admit it, but I don't fault with anyone else. It's just some circumstantial shit. It's like anything else. I don't know. There's a lot of piled up shit, y'know? I mean, I don't think that I've ever had genuine fun, y'know? Fuck everyone for that. That's just some circumstantial shit, though, and they can't accept that. I don't accept it, either, but I riot in different ways. I don't know. This world leads us to riot. It's all about how you do it, y'know? Some people drive Aston Martins at 125 miles per hour and some people write the word, "motherfucker", on the subway wall. That's all alright. When you go about slandering some fifty percent of the populace for your personal angst, though, that's just fucked. We can measure the relative figures, but it's the same with race, class, and whatever else. It's all just shit, y'know?
I don't know. I almost needed a car as of late and found myself feeling jealous of people who drive Volkswagen Jettas. What kind of life is that!? A Jetta is like a company man whose soul is in question. I'd like to drive a vintage Beetle. That's something to harbor jealously towards.
Totally. I've had a really rough life, and I don't really believe in fault and blame. I'm a forty year-old virgin, in fact, and my name is Andy. lol
And I don't care. I think incels are barking up the wrong tree if they claim to. Cause on the other hand, maybe they are just a bunch of dudes who just want sex.
I love Beetles. Have a toy transformer Bumblebee (except the Go-Bot.) They're a blast to ride around in, especially if they've got those old pleather seats.
Fast forward to the 21st century and now incels are able to share notes, band together for that reason, all courtesy of internet social platforms.
What about the misogyny and the paradoxical misandry?
Well, the incel phenomenon revolves around women - not being able to get them into bed to be precise. So, we have on our hands a boy/man who likes girls/women (they're looking to get laid) but once that's denied (by girls/women), like is replaced by dislike. I guess, in extreme cases, love, when unreciprocated, turns into hate. This is a paradox, no? What an incel likes/loves (females) is what an incel dislikes/hates.
Most importantly, incels seem to be under the impression that they're entitled to sex/relationship with women, only this can explain the indignation/resentment they experience and which has become a rather troubling seedbed for violence. However, if it's about rights/entitlement incels seem to have forgotten, rather conveniently overlooked, the fact that women too are entitled, they too have rights - they can choose whom they have a relationship, platonic or sexual, with. I suppose then it's a case of incels' (perceived) right [they're entitled to women's sexual favors] vs women's (actual) right [they have the right to choose their mate].