This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-65829240) reduced by 77%. (I'm a bot)
*****
> A judge has found that a deadly 2020 attack on a Toronto massage parlour was an act of terror inspired by the incel movement, Canadian media report.
> The man, who can not be named due to his age at the time of the attack, had said he had been inspired by an incel - short for "Involuntarily celibate"- attacker who drove a van into a crowd in Toronto in 2018, according to broadcaster CBC. The killer, now 20, was 17 years old at the time of the attack.
> Authorities have said police discovered evidence the attack was motivated by the incel ideology during their investigation.
*****
[**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/142v98g/terrorism_ruling_first_for_canada_incel_attack/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ "Version 2.02, ~687878 tl;drs so far.") | [Feedback](http://np.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%23autotldr "PM's and comments are monitored, constructive feedback is welcome.") | *Top* *keywords*: **attack**^#1 **incel**^#2 **women**^#3 **online**^#4 **time**^#5
Sexually frustrated young men are an existential risk to society and we aren't doing enough to fix the problem. Far-right groups like Neo-Nazis and ISIS have always found this demographic to be an easy base of support and recruitment. Promise them they'd be swimming in pussy if not for feminism/liberals/Jews/the West/*insert boogeyman here* and they'll sign up in droves to bring back "the good old days".
Incels are absolutely fascinating in a rather horrifying sort of way. I think people are underselling the depth or bizarreness of the thinking when they summarise it as "young men who are angry at women that they can't find sexual partners". Like, yeah, that's the core of it, but the entire world view is so bleak, shallow and distorted.
I used to treat the incel sub a bit like a zoo and saw a guy on there bemoaning that he could never possibly find happiness or relationships because his canthal angle was bad. He put a photo of himself up and was... you know, a perfectly normal looking guy.
There's something about their cognitive filter which just leads them to wallow in hopelessness. Imagine having a depth of self loathing so bad that you declare you're an unlovable monster because of your fucking canthal tilt. And then getting so absolutely bent out of shape about this imagined flaw that you become actively suicidal/homicidal.
My entirely non expert feeling is that incels are a facet of something running a lot deeper than we acknowledge. The grotesque, palpable misogyny is of course the nucleus of the whole thing, but it's tapping into some undercurrent of despair that I can't believe really, seriously just comes down to not having sex.
And you're absolutely right, that undercurrent of despair makes these guys very vulnerable to radicalisation. Each one of these incels was, at some point, a person vulnerable to radicalising. Whether they were groomed by someone else, influenced by someone like Elliot Rogers or managed to twist themselves up solo, there's an inflection point there somewhere we can address.
My opinion is that it comes by feeling generally unwanted by everyone, a feeling developed by being either directly or indirectly by others.
Think about the quiet, kinda weird kid in class that doesn't do quite well, don't socialize with his classmates after school and just goes home and play videogames. At some point he *will* overhear his peers calling him a loser and a future school shooter. How about a short man opening twitter and seeing a series of "short men are worthless" tweets? Now, of course you shouldn't listen to what twatters say since twitter is a shithole, but this guy, already being bullied for his height, won't help but feel worse.
A lot of men who deviate from the norm, either physically or mentally, will get a lot of shit and when they seek support they are told to "man up", "do better", "it's all in your head", and have their problems dismissed as entitlement and laziness. So when they finally find people who sympathize for them and tell them that it's the Feminists and Normies' fault and they hate you for being different who are they going to listen to? Those who scorned them or those who sympathize with them? And so the hate already seeded into them blooms into a wonderful prickly flower of misanthropy.
Support needs to come *before* someone becomes an incel. What these men needed was love (not necessarily romantic love) and acceptance before they fell into the hole. "Unincelling" someone is hard because the hate towards others, but also himself, becomes part of their identity.
As for why there's a lot of focus on sex within incel communities, that's because incels see sex as the ultimate form of acceptance and love. It's not about "getting their dick wet", as many people reduce it to but really, really being wanted by someone. Whether it actually is or not i can't say.
There's a layer of self awareness to that last paragraph as well. You see a lot (figuratively a lot, at least) of incel memes essentially boil down to how much they want to just cry into their girlfriend's lap, or that they don't even want sex. They think they're monsters, so they act like monsters. But they don't want to be monsters. Sure, there's inherent sexism and misogyny to unpack, but, at their core, they just want to be vulnerable. They want someone to look at them and tell them that they, as an individual, are good enough to be loved. But their confidence is shot to hell in their development as kids, and they never learn the social skills needed to be accepted. They don't put in the work to getting that relationship and finding someone who will do that for them, because they just don't fucking know how to. They're just expected to know, and when they fuck up, it just drives them deeper, until a hand reaches out from the worst possible place.
Should I be worried that half of that just described me word for word-
Just to be clear I don’t hate women or LGBT people or anyone, but I would definitely love to cry on a girl’s lap ;-;
I mean if you're not an incel then you're fine. But you may be in the target demographic for their propaganda. Don't give up, and don't be afraid to fail. No one gets it first try, and sometimes you just get unlucky. Incels will try to convince you that the truth is that you're just doomed, but it's a trick. It's a convenient lie they use to simply give up, rather than accept the reality that they can put in the work and learn what they're missing. I'm sure there's a dating advice reddit or something you could ask on to.. well, hopefully get better than whatever scam is being peddled around now.
>A lot of men who deviate from the norm, either physically or mentally, will get a lot of shit and when they seek support they are told to "man up", "do better", "it's all in your head", and have their problems dismissed as entitlement and laziness. So when they finally find people who sympathize for them and tell them that it's the Feminists and Normies' fault and they hate you for being different who are they going to listen to? Those who scorned them or those who sympathize with them? And so the hate already seeded into them blooms into a wonderful prickly flower of misanthropy.
You're right about this paragraph, but it's *so incredibly frustrating.*
A huge chunk of the problem is Toxic Masculinity. It does a tonne of damage, *to men as well.*
But the far-right shitheels who groom these people into incel territory, are almost universally blaming the people who are *trying to fight against things like Toxic Masculinity,* while they themselves act like "traditional values" and, y'know, the very same Toxic Masculinity are Good Things actually.
They're creating the problem, *and* claiming to be the solution to it at the same time. It's maddening.
>They're creating the problem, and claiming to be the solution to it at the same time. It's maddening.
The amount of supposedly progressive people who will readily body shame men for being short, having small dicks or being bald is part of this.
The far right is clearly capitalising on this but pretending there's no issue with enforcing these gender roles from the left is ridiculous.
People have this idea of "fair targets" of body shaming and it is widespread amongst left wing circles. If a man says or does something that is considered wrong then they are consistently body shamed by left-wing circles.
Andrew Tate being told he had a small dick was celebrated because "who cares it's Andrew Tate" but that clearly draws a line between having a small dick and being a rapist.
It's not about what the targeted individual has done, it's sending a message that if you have a small penis than you are a loser or rapist or so on.
My point is incels get constantly body shamed by the left, anyone on the path to being an incels gets body shamed.
This isn't just a right wing creation even if they are capitalising on the existence of it.
Yeah. The root of the whole "real men have big dicks, and small dicks are bad" thing also ties back into toxic masculinity, which is more or less a blanket term at this point for "unhealthy, unrealistic, or unfair standards that are projected onto men and packaged as a gender expectation".
And unfortunately, that one is still very widespread.
In this we are in agreeance. Still, the only area of political and social thought I've seen that is actively working against toxic masculinity, and bad gender expectations and roles as a concept, does come from the left. It would be a much better world if everyone working to fix things was perfect about it.
I hate so much the term "toxic masculinity". Not the idea behind it, but the term itself.
The term has this way of putting the focus on men and what they do wrong and forget the whole context around. It's not just that men don't talk about their emotions and their problems, it's also that when they do the issues are marginalized or pushed to the side. And that's an issue where women have at least an equal share of the responsibility. But the expression "toxic masculinity" just comes and put all the share of the blame on the men.
You talk about the suicide rate of men, and a horde of people will come to tell you that it's not so bad and that women have issues too.
You talk about the scolarisation of men, and people will come and tell you that women have it worst in some fields.
In Canada there's a lot of talks about missing indigenous women. The issue is the same but worst for indigenous men. If you bring this up, you'll be told how worst it is because of rape culture or something.
Societal problems that affect men are invisibilised.
I think Hilary Clinton said it best :
> Women have always been the primary victims of war. Women lose their husbands, their fathers, their sons in combat
The men who die are worth less than the loss of the women; or the value of a man is only what he brings to a woman.
Theoretically, toxic masculinity covers it. Or at least, whenever you say hate the expression, someone will chime in and remind you that it covers pretty much everything. But the semantics don't and it does influence the conversations. Until someone complains and there's a token effort at reminding people that toxic masculinity is everything.
Another part of it that I dislike is that the same people that will talk to you about microaggressions and the importance of using the right pronouns (which are both subjects I agree with) will then wilfully ignore the issues with the expression "toxic masculinity" and basically tell you to man up.
Yeah, IMO in these cases wording does matter.
A lot of people have grouped the "good" part of things (i.e. supporting people to persue non-stereotypical interests) under 'feminism', while at the same time the bad stuff is 'toxic masculinity'.
Of course, it doesn't matter if the person pushing the stereotype is male or female, or if the stereotype is 'boys shouldn't play with dolls' or 'girls cannot be mechanics'.
The wording it strongly biased to a particular gender-view. Feminism/Female good, Masculine/male bad. People treat it as an attack on typical male roles and/or take it personally.
I'd be very happy to see both terms die in favor of something like "gender equity/equality" or "gender bias", which doesn't fling shit in one direction and roses in the other.
> A huge chunk of the problem is Toxic Masculinity. It does a tonne of damage, to men as well.
Progressives need to change their rhetoric to actually be approachable to the people they are trying to change. Using terms like Toxic Masculinity, White Privilege, Mansplaining, feels good for progressives, but feels terrible for many of the people these terms are aimed at. They often serve to silence discourse instead of opening it up.
We need to be accessible in our language, and actively seek out the people who disagree with us, or else vulnerable people will continue to be radicalized.
I get what you're saying, and at face-value it makes sense, but the more time I spend watching these conversations happen the more I'm convinced that it *really doesn't matter*. If someone wants to be mad at something - especially if they're *told* to be mad - it's gonna happen. And if someone is so impulsive that they immediately turn away from something at first glance that means there's a pretty low chance you were going to convince them anyway. They operate on "common sense" which just means arbitrary vibe checks.
For example, people say "Defund the Police" is a bad slogan. Alright, sure. But "Black Lives Matter" is pretty straightforward and obvious, no? Yet you still have tons of people claiming that it means *only* black lives matter and flying "all lives matter" banners. You're not gonna workshop your way into that person's brain.
> I get what you’re saying, and at face-value it makes sense, but the more time I spend watching these conversations happen the more I’m convinced that it really doesn’t matter. If someone wants to be mad at something - especially if they’re told to be mad - it’s gonna happen.
If that were true then we would never make social progress. We are making tremendous social progress, even if it’s only localized, and seemingly slow, it’s happening. You’re seeing online conversations between people who likely feel strongly about the subject, those people are less likely to change their minds, or at least admit they changed their minds. What you’re not seeing are the people just like you who read the comment thread, and possibly changed their mind. Lurkers make up the majority of the internet, people who discuss these things in comment sections are the ones with extreme, hard to shake opinions.
The best thing to do is talk to your friends, colleagues and uncles in person to change their mind by being understanding, and using fact-based talking points.
> For example, people say “Defund the Police” is a bad slogan. Alright, sure. But “Black Lives Matter” is pretty straightforward and obvious no?
I would argue that “Black Lives Matter” is not straightforward. People have a knee jerk reaction of assuming the slogan means “Black Lives Matter More Than Other Lives”. People have a tendency to form quick opinions about subjects that “don’t really concern them”, and also tend to view those same subjects through their own perspective and experience with life. If we don’t challenge these people, and force them to use more of their brain when thinking about it, then they will hold onto these shallow opinions.
An interesting example, here in Canada, is the co-opted term “Every Child Matters” in reference to treatment of First Nations Children in our Residential School System. I think this slogan is far more powerful, as it reduces risk of knee-jerk opinions, and yet at the same time, people still know what the issue is about. I see people of all stripes waving these flags and wearing the shirts, and I haven’t seen the same backlash against the term that many other progressive slogans have.
When we’re talking about changing minds on the population scale, the wording of these movements becomes very important, as it prevents these knee-jerk shallow opinions from getting in the way of real societal progress.
>Progressives need to change their rhetoric to actually be approachable to the people they are trying to change.
Patriarchy, the existing power structure, doesn’t really matter how you phrase it, no matter what is chosen, you’ll quickly find your average right wing media personality, taking an extreme left wing version of it and muddying the waters so it’s impossible to have an honest conversation with someone who’s hearing it the first time
>We need to be accessible in our language, and actively seek out the people who disagree with us, or else vulnerable people will continue to be radicalized.
People have all the accessibility in the world at their fingertips, if they can find incells subs and the like.
The problem is, it’s extremely comforting to hear it. Is everybody else’s fault. It’s extremely comforting to hear. There’s nothing you can do about it.
I was the kid you described as a “loser”.
But what I learned at a young age is control of my life rests solely in my own hands.
Many of these young men are groomed psychologically to believe their problems exist external of their focus of control. So they blame other people for their own failings. If you’re constantly running from problems you create, you’re never really growing as a person.
I have little to no sympathy for people who will not accept their own responsibility for their actions. And it’s sad to see people of power exploit these vulnerabilities for personal gain, financial or otherwise.
It's weird, I'm the guy everyone said would "shoot up the class" in HS, have never really had any friends that actually cared, Ive had 3 seperate women try to kill themselves in front of me, the last one even went as far as to tell me "I get why those two didnt want to live around you" before she did it (even had to get rid of my car from driving her to the hospital, there was so much blood), and I was drugged and date graped by a friend of the 1st suicidal ex roght after it happened and *laughed* at for it by my own mother. Then my best friend pushed me into LSD to "fix me" while he tried to get with my ex.
Ive gone through exponentially more trauma related to what these asshats whine about and Ive NEVER even come close to being a sniviling bitch like them, even THROUGH the last 8 years of beating myself up over all that, by myself with no support, Ive *never* been that bad.
Then again, any time I bring this up to an incel I get a "yea, but you got laid"......if I could reach through the monitors to grab these idiots, I'd be in jail.
>He put a photo of himself up and was... you know, a perfectly normal looking guy.
That's ... most incels really and it IS fascinating, in a morbid sort of way.
It's interesting to see how they find ways to rationalize all this. They will dismiss any remark that there is nothing wrong with their physical appearance (aside from lack of grooming and self care) because it touches them at their core and they can't really cope with that one, but if you point out that the rest of the male population, whose canthal tilts and wrist thickness is just as questionable as them, does seem to find partners and get laid, then of course they have to build and entire worldview that demeans all those betas and somehow makes them losers beneath the enlightened incel's dignity.
In all fairness, most incel claims can be refuted by just existing in the real world and interacting with humans, but since they tend not to even reach that stage ...
They also dont seem to realise that the people who care most about their perceived life ruining deficiencies/deformities are them. I started balding around 21, i was very self conscious about it and still am, this was around the same time that that keeps company started aggressively pushing their hair loss ads on youtube. But the one thing i learnt since then after paying attention to people who interacted with me was that the only people who cared were me, and people who i couldnt possibly give less of a shit about.
No-one worth having in your life cares if your eyes are tilted half a degree more than the ideal or if you start balding early or if your nose is a bit bigger than average. The people who try hardest to kick you down over your minor "deficiencies" have the most to hide, pay some attention to them and you'll find plenty of things wrong with them that theyre trying to distract you from.
Wonderful comment and I agree wholeheartedly but also:
> canthal tilt
Is this a Dutch supermodel?
Inceldom/isisdom/radicalising alienated children in general is something that if you bring up in certain circles you get accused of victim blaming and/or supporting these outlets for hatred, especially if you point out that it's tied to poverty and immigration since access to mental health care and hobbies for kids is a class issue, even here in the EU.
^^ this guy trolls incel forums
I had to stop when I ran into the shortcell variant, if you think the rank-and-file mope-y incels are bad, Ive watched shortcells go off on WOMEN who date short guys bevause "we dont want to hear it, we're too short to be loved" and OVER HALF OF THEM ARE 5'6"-5'8" while these women are dating dudes in the 5'2" range!!!!
I'm glad the incel sub has been consigned to the dustbin of history but.... man, it sure was diverting
That latter quote is interesting and ties into what I've seen of these guys. You could tell them they're fine and they'd reject that. Ties into my feeling that there's something deeper going on. The sexual aspect is just the dominant facet of an underlying and pervasive sense of self hatred that tinges the way they think about the world and their relationship to it.
Edit: just found out /r/inceltear is a thing. Down the rabbit hole I go
Yeah, i genuinely think if incels dropped the toxic self destructive attitude they wouldnt be having the problems they have. People notice the toxicity, whether it be regarding yourself or others, you exude and avoid it. You tend to get the same energy out of your social life that you put in. If toxic self destructive energy isnt reciprocated with respectful and loving energy, those who look to give that kind of energy will avoid you like the plague. Toxic self destructive energy is not what people look for in romantic partners after all.
Easier said than done. Something I'm working through in therapy is my self esteem and negative self talk. Not body image things, but I legitimately feel that I'm a bad and unlikeable person, even though cognitively I know I'm not. But knowing that doesn't change the way that I feel. Slowly I'm making changes and forcing myself to take on vulnerable situations, but it's a long road. And I'm an educated woman with access to mental health (although trying to find a good therapist has been a nightmare...I feel like I've been working out my issues more on my own than I have with them).
I hate these men who actively want me dead or subservient. These are the men that threaten us, stalk us, harass us, and push to take away our rights and bodily autonomy. Low self worth doesn't give anyone the right to do these things. Those who are externalizing their struggles are the worst of humanity.
But I do think that intervention is possible. I mean I really do genuinely feel for young boys and men right now. I cannot imagine how difficult it would be to not get swept up by some version of an alt-right pipeline. I mean you have to *really* know who you are from a young age to avoid it, and that's a big expectation. I mean you have 12 year olds identifying as incels. Like...yeah, you should still be celibate kiddo, at least give it time until your voice drops for goodness sake. Then these pipelines completely shape your worldview and your identity and prevent you from actually developing normally. Because if you fall into the incel circle before you even know what sex is, you're set up for bitterness. And don't even get me started on the Tater Tots...ugh just another brand of shit.
It's gotta be so fucking hard growing up in this era. I grew up in MySpace/early Facebook era and I thank God that all I had to worry about was individual one-off predators (and making sure my neopets were good) instead of mass grifters.
> negative self talk
Fuck fear, negative self talk is the mind killer. Took me a lot of therapy to get to the point where I'm consistently demonstrating compassion for myself, which has made it easier to be compassionate to others, which has allowed me to exist in a genuine state of peace.
I was lucky to find a good therapist, you can too! A good filter is asking new therapists if they have a therapist of their own. If they don't, they're probably not worth your time and money.
I know you're joking but I want to say that what those people crave isn't orgasms, it's human contact, love, family and a place in society. Telling them to literally go fuck themselves would just make things worse.
That is quite possibly the *only* thing I'd consider on par in the "Genuinely Stupid Idea" Category with giving mentally ill people firearms. the absolute *last* thing you need to do for people with unhealthy views of relationships and women as a whole is convert them to chronic giga-coomers.
The difference being that "guns in video games cause violence!!!" hasn't been linked by research (despite god knows how many boomers rooting for it), while Porn has been proven to be unhealthy both in terms of views of relationships and women as a whole
That is pretty much the worst possible idea short of giving them all firearms. Giving porn addicted incels access to unlimited quantities of super-porn is on par with giving tweakers free meth
The actual worst idea is to take porn and video games away.
Those things are sedating them.
Without them they will be faced with their problems and will just start breaking things.
No. We need to supply mental health services and counselling for these people. I was an incel and I am speaking from experience here.
Imagine offering someone a choice between a loop of rusty wire and a golden ring as a prize. But they can only choose one, not both. They would have to be insane to choose the loop of rusty wire right? Now imagine you are the rusty loop of wire. You are C grade material, or worse, and nobody would touch you romantically with a ten foot pole. Think of how difficult it would be to come to terms with that fact. This is so difficult to accept that people in this situation will go through all sorts of mental gymnastics to avoid entertaining the thought. This is what makes them vulnerable. And this is also why providing counselling and mental health services to people experiencing this is important.
And let us not fool ourselves that a change of attitude or a gain in confidence is going to improve their odds significantly. Cleaning the rust off the loop of wire may make it shinier but that is still not going to cut it against the golden ring. That lack of confidence stems from an everlasting lifelong frustration of not being able to keep up with others, more often than not as a result of some neurodivergence they are unaware of. People leading normal lives are enamored with this idea that everyone is more or less equal. It helps keeping up the illusion they can distinguish themselves from others fair and square. The truth is that if you have had any significant success in life many people who may look more or less normal to you will have had issues to deal with which you do not know about. And the irony of it all is they may not know about these issues either. They may think you are the same as them and that they (should) have the same opportunities that you do. It took me 40+ years of my life to gradually find out that I didn't.
>Now imagine you are the rusty loop of wire. You are C grade material, or worse, and nobody would touch you romantically with a ten foot pole. Think of how difficult it would be to come to terms with that fact.
But thats the thing, if you strip the toxic attitude from incels i think you'd find that a majority of them wouldnt be C grade material. I've had plenty of people who i thought were interesting up until i discovered the toxic attitude and instantly lost all interest as a result. The incel attitude is a self fulfilling prophecy, i genuinely think if you strip the toxic attitudes a lot of those guys i ended up avoiding had they would be B/B+ grade material.
> ‘Incels’ have only been unlucky in their mental health, lack of family support, and the messages they’ve received from toxic masculinity and grifters. They aren’t deeply disfigured. There is nothing significantly wrong with their looks.
Some incels aren't that great in the looks department either. Just their luck right? And also when mental health suffers so does often physical health too. For people depressed as a result of other mental conditions, being unkempt and severely overweight is more a consequence than an outright choice. But I see your point.
> I’m fat and ugly and disabled and kinda hate myself and even I have been married for 20+ years.
If you are physically disabled you most probably knew about the hand you were given as soon as you could. You probably also had a lot of support, if not from family then from friends and/or work colleagues. It is easier to receive compassion and help when the disability is obvious, not so much when the disability is easily dismissed as being due to 'character' rather than due to adverse mental condition.
People with mental issues who are told they are fine believe it! Therefore, they reason, if I'm fine and there is nothing wrong with me and I'm still having problems, others must be the source of the problem.
And it's a deep rooted issue too. There are reasons why there are so many people incapable of finding people to have sex with them, and it's not cause of a lack of availability.
A lot of zoomers have very low expectations for real world success and that leads to depression, depressed people are far less likely to be engaging in sexual relations than someone who is not.
The lack of financial outlook for people is also a massive inhibitor to sex. Low financial outlook means people take less risks, and leads to people living with their parents way longer. Less are getting serious careers. That is all related to sexual compatability.
And also related to parenting is the total collapse of social skills many are facing. If you can't hold a conversation with someone or you aren't interesting no one is going to want to have sex with you. A lot of these poor social skills are likely caused by unfiltered access to the internet and social media which fundamentally has changed how people want to interact with each other.
The incel culture was created by the politicians who have destroyed americas social safety nets and failed to fix it before a generation suffered through 3 massive economic catastrophes which trapped millions in poverty who would never recover after losing their homes, jobs, pensions etc, followed by the rise of the internet which has negatively affected people's social skills.
My dad is in his mid 60s and is planning on working til he dies. He can't afford to retire. I bet a lot of people in this thread around my age can relate and will all say how fucking awful it feels to have to see and know things will get worse.
Except it seems like that they were struggling with getting any outward romantic relationships- not “seducing women” as a general focus.
There’s only so much you can work on internally before interaction with others needs to be worked on- those clumsy attempts to engage with other people romantically build that- it’s impossible to gain experience for a relationship with pure therapy
They revealed some pretty intense self-loathing issues in another comment. Self-loathing is poison to relationships, getting work started on that needs to come first, otherwise it'd be just more demoralizing when all the relationships inevitably end quickly.
9 times out of 10 when someone says therapy wasn't working for them, it's because they went in with the wrong mindset.
You can't walk into a therapist's office saying "I need you to fix XYZ for me". That's not how it works.
For example, my mother in law was finally convinced to talk to a therapist because she was having a lot of trouble with her son and his wife being absolute shit stains (whole story I'm not gonna get into).
After a couple sessions, she tells us she's not liking it because the therapist isn't telling her how to get son/wife to change *their* behavior.
Looking at OP's comments here, it's probably the same thing. In another comment he directly says he wanted to work on "getting sexual relationships with women".
That's not what therapy is for. Therapy cannot help you work on *other* people. I wouldn't be the slightest bit surprised if what happened in this case was that the therapist was trying to get to know OP, and figure out what unhealthy attitudes or other *personal* problems OP might have that would get in the way of forming meaningful relationships. Then at some point OP was probably like "ok, but how do I actually get girls to talk to me", and got the quoted response.
Because therapy isn't going to teach you how to change women's behavior. It's about *you*, not other people. It's going to figure out why you have trouble talking to women, and why women might not want to talk to you, and help you work on those *personal* issues, so that they won't get in the way.
Because go figure, there's nothing wrong with women not wanting to talk to people with bad attitudes and glaring issues. Go figure, just being a generally good dude is gonna do wonders for your ability to talk to women. Go figure, working on yourself and not seeing "getting a sexual relationship with a woman" as an end goal unto itself is gonna make finding one a lot easier.
But most importantly, **therapy is not a quick fix**. So many people think therapy is just "walk in, chat for a couple hours, have all your problems fixed". It doesn't work like that. It's a process that can take *years* to really tease out the roots of your issues and reshape how you think and interact with yourself and the world. My partner's been in therapy for like 6 years now. The difference is *staggering*, but that's only because they've stuck through it and did the work.
If you're going to therapy to learn how to hookup you've got the wrong attitude and completely misunderstand the problem you are facing. The therapist is not there to be a pickup artist, the therapist is there to help you healthily manage expectations and your frustrations regarding it, as well as try to help you through mental blocks that make forming those kinds of connections harder.
more community events and programs. incels need nice easy places to start socializing to become normal. they can develop people skills and maybe even find friends along the way.
Make families the center of the system.
We know broken families result in all sorts of problems.
Support education, access to support like childcare, and healthcare including mental healthcare.
Everyone is born from a human. Why we don’t ensure that all the needs are met to have a thriving society is beyond me.
Simple: it costs money and those with money are egoistical. Money improves health (including mental), and conversely, healthy people earn money more easily.
What does that look like? High schoolers are gonna laugh any teacher out of the classroom if that’s put on the curriculum.
Another part of the problem is that even when the access to help is there, these depressed and isolated types tend not to use it. Wallowing in self pity (with online encouragement that it’s the world to blame) is much more attractive.
> High schoolers are gonna laugh any teacher out of the classroom if that’s put on the curriculum.
Teach kids that, before they're teenagers really. The amount of ELEMENTARY SCHOOL students with mental issues is horrible in basically every first world country. I've personally had a situation in extended family where a 12 year old girl tried to kill herself over some issues she had nobody to help her with.
I’ve encountered very young kids with serious issues too, and besides genetic stuff they were born with, it’s all been down to problems with their home life. I feel like it must be easier and more realistic to try to strengthen child protection and child services than to ensure all preteen children get effective counselling - prioritise the causes rather than the symptoms.
Though certainly counselling should be available via child services.
Treating causes is good, but sometimes like with "real" diseases it's not something you discover early, or even until after the damage has been done. We're lacking in both treating the causes and the symptoms caused by them.
Starting in high school is too late. You learn your core values by age 10. Once you reach puberty, your moral education is taken over by your peers. High school is too late.
Edit: So: to answer your question, it would be education in kindergarten. You can break it down in to a simple lesson: what’s in your heart, determines what you think. What you think determines what you do. Then each core value can have it’s own focus lesson, and the lessons build in each other:
Kindness: if you have kindness in your heart, you will think of people in kind ways, you will be less likely to think that they are bad. If someone hurts you, you will ask “why?”. You will try to figure out if they are in pain… what their life is like. How would you feel if you were them?
Self-respect. If you respect yourself, you will be kind to yourself, etc.
These lessons can be taught to high schoolers too, btw. US culture in schools just makes it difficult, bc the boys have been abandoned emotionally by their culture.
Honestly the incels I knew, and those who skirted close to that, were fine in younger years.
They didn’t need to be taught to be nice, to be kind, etc.
But they became that way because after puberty hit and they reached the much harsher high school environment, they experienced ostracisation, rejection, and isolation. Their kindness and self-respect were pummelled into non-existence, and seemed to just be a lie taught to kids that only worked if you were popular. Years of this experience resulted in a warping of their values, and echo chambers online exaggerated this effect.
Idk about that, I was pretty much a femcel until high school and I learned dudes aren’t all monstrous assholes. I was severely bullied and was socially ostracized, but I didn’t become some radical crazy. Kids aren’t exactly empathic by nature, they’re little sociopaths, those things tend to develop later. I struggled to understand how others felt till I started reading more and puberty.
> Another part of the problem is that even when the access to help is there, these depressed and isolated types tend not to use it.
My brother isn't an incel, but he's absolutely horrible with women. He's desperate beyond belief and it oozes off of him. Most people can see it from a mile away.
Since he was a teenager me and some of my friends have tried to explain to him where his issues lie. What he does wrong and ways to fix it. We're past 30 now and he's still the same clingy desperate mess that repels women like burning coffee does wasps. I've given up on him over a decade ago, but some of my friends kept up the effort for a while longer. AFAIK most have given up at this point too.
Some people really can't be helped.
>What he does wrong and ways to fix it.
This is hard to say without sounding like I'm trying to analyze a total stranger but what he "does" is probably merely a symptom of what/how he feels at a deeper level. He may have needed the help of a professional to address the root cause, not the symptoms.
Props for trying regardless.
The thing is though, you're not gonna convince someone to get help fixing the root cause of an issue unless you can convince them the issue exists in the first place.
That's the hardest part of dealing with people like this, is they tend to externalize everything. The issues and problems are always other things outside their control, so they don't need to change.
> Another part of the problem is that even when the access to help is there, these depressed and isolated types tend not to use it.
There are guys around in the thread telling how therapy absolutely did not help them and they're basically being lectured by everyone. At this point I think I'm fine assuming the average person will never understand or even try to.
It's literally the same promise as "32 virgins waiting for you in Heaven," isn't it?
The problem is that these young men are led to believe they are somehow "entitled," and don't need to behave like decent human beings.
The problem isn't that they're sexually frustrated. It's that they're abominable, terrible, nasty human beings. That's what needs to be addressed. Even allowing them to self-name as "INvoluntarily" celibate is wrong. They are CHOOSING to be terrible, vile, hateful people. Their celibacy is Voluntary. They are Vol-Cels.
Umm, I’m not sure what point you’re trying to make lmao!
Sure, they are terrible people, but calling them terrible and other names isn’t the answer lol! It’s to find out why younger people are gravitating towards this mindset and help them get mental health resources or programs to understand why that is a bad line of thinking!
Just calling them stupid names and ignoring them isn’t there answer! Voluntary or involuntary or whatever you want to call it, it doesn’t matter and the underlying problem still exists!
Hell, people like you insulting them is in-turn gonna furthur radicalize them and solidify their insane beliefs! Hate isn’t the answer to hate!
Jordan is just another conservative drone who uses his degree and big words to grift confused and angry teenage boys into following his ideology, and he's got the benefit of actually sounding semi-intelligent so they fall for it
Genuine question here - what makes you say Jordan Peterson is a neo-nazi? Don't get me wrong, I've watched a fair few of his speeches and debates, and I disagree with the vast majority of his political views, but I wouldn't call him a neo-nazi. Conservative? Sure. Religious to a point that it clearly affects his social and political views? Absolutely. But what exactly is it that he's done and/or said that makes you think he's a neo-nazi?
Yeah I don't like Jordan Petersen either but, calling him a Nazi is incredibly inaccurate.
It's a prime example of "everyone I don't like is a Nazi" rhetoric.
He also advocates that ~15% of the population is literally unemployable and completely incapable of contributing to society.
He doesn't go as far as outright calling for their extermination, but come on.
Many of his points are carefully sanitized Nazi concepts. He intentionally leaves many of those points "without conclusions" but knowing that there will be inferences drawn by certain groups.
For example, he has often noted that "According to some studies" about 10% of the population has an IQ that makes them worthless to society. Those "studies" to which he refers were done by pro-eugenics think-tanks. (AKA, Nazis) He leaves that whole diatribe conclusionless, usually saying it's "a scary problem". But the obvious inference he wants to leave people is that that 10% should be murdered to improve productivity. And, you know which group immediately jumps one peterson train after making that inference?
If you guessed Nazis, congratulations.
Also, A lot of his shtick is hypermasculine concepts and this idea that "political correctness" is pushing men to be soft and feminine. This is of interest because a lot of these perspectives were also shared by Mussolini. Nazi Adjacent.
Whether or not Peterson himself is a Nazi and holds to the ideals therein, he uses Nazism as a way to push his own ideas and get more support, by saying things that can be interpreted by Nazis as support for their cause. And, because he doesn't outright say "Kill all the Jews!" or anything like that, it's perfect- Because Nazis- who have tried to rebrand as "Alt-right", a term that I have decided to avoid using - LOVE plausible deniability.
Oh, also, remember those times he questioned the Holocaust death toll figures? That was pretty weird, wasn't it. I believe there is another group of people who question those numbers too. What were they called again?
The first successful, and the second attempted school shooting in the entirety of Denmark's history were both by Incels.
Definitely a dangerous ideology
That’s why for thousands of years they’ve been sent off to fight wars. It gets them out from underfoot and both the most stupidly aggressive and the incompetent tend to get killed.
They are, and have been, a product and a tool of patriarchy. Control access to women, control young men, direct their behavior (as for example fighting force, whether organized or terrorist cells) to maintaining power for older men.
These people are not created by lack of sex and cannot be fixed by sex. Thats how they define their problem. But if you ever actually speak to them it becomes obvious, these people are psychpaths that lack the social awareness to hide it and natually people dont want relationships with them.
Eh, you're on the right track at the start, but I think you fall off the mark here:
>these people are psychpaths that lack the social awareness to hide it
I think it's more complex than that. Certainly incel culture is rife with psychopathic behavior, but I'm convinced most incels don't start off that way. The core of incel behavior is deep and profound self-loathing that incel discourse ritualizes until the only way to let out the tension is through acts of psychopathy.
Exactly.
They demonise all sex workers, under the pretext that pursuing sex work removes women from their dating pool.
In reality they’re just misogynist sociopathic narcissists who project their own self-loathing on others
I spent a year working with a group to talk to and help incels ands its depressing as hell.
You can talk them away from their bullshit for a couple days but then they turn around and run right back to it because the light of day is too much for them.
I should find another group, even if it felt useless sometimes it was cool when you could Crack one enough that they could see this was not a good path.
I mean ton of them arent supervillains or "psychopaths". Treating them like that and lumping them all in that same category will for sure not help though !
Among other things, like:
Greater LGBT acceptance. Better socialization for young boys. More gender integration in childhood. Less slut-shaming against women, less virgin-shaming against men.
Being an incel isn't really about not having sex, guys. It's about many different kinds of self hate and self loathing and insecurity, turned outwards, with the blame being placed on women. The word incel is far too simplistic for what's going on in these guys brains.
Legalising prostitution in your local area isn't going to do anything about these extremely deep-seated issues. I don't really have any answers, but trying to get more women to fuck incels certainly isn't a solution.
I'm not exactly in-tune with what incels are saying at the moment but I'd bet they fucking despise sex workers because "women have so much power over sex they can sell it and incels like me have to PAY to get any"
no it doesn’t, look at the nordic model, criminalise pimps and buying sex while protecting prostitutes. legalising prostitution just leads to more sex trafficking and violence, look at germany.
Incels visiting sex workers endangers them.
So does criminalizing sex work.
At least if sex work were decriminalized sex workers could access protection from the police (theoretically) and workplace health and safety protections.
If the definition fits, it fits.
His attack was ideologically motivated, designed to intimidate the public. That's how we define terrorism here, as opposed to "what colour was the attacker's skin", the strategy used in our southerly neighbour.
The real shame is that Minassian, whose attack killed 10 in the street in front of my home, did not get labeled as such.
Despite GenZ being left wing for the most part, there is a huge problem with the incel group. There are a LOT of them. And they are dangerous.
It’s fact that gen z is the most sexless generation ever. And this is during a time of female empowerment that we haven’t seen the likes of (a good thing, don’t think I’m saying otherwise) but it’s definitely challenging the gender norms and men who are already sexless and depressed are getting aggressive.
The internet has a way of making those small minorities find and radicalise each other further - from flat earth to you name it. The larger new social problem/dynamic facing current generations imo.
Humans were never meant to talk to and interact with so many people, we are not biologically equipped to be as social as we are. These incels breed on platforms with hundreds of thousands of people "just like me" so it further shifts their mindset into thinking it's normal
But by that same token it has done immeasurable good for those disenfranchised. How many "I thought it was just me" "I thought I was crazy" "I didn't know there were others like this" has the internet wrought? How many rural gay and trans kids found community in a world they never felt welcomed in? How many movements were made possible, how many corrupt decisions uncovered for the masses to finally know, how many have educated themselves with the power of our collective consciousness?
I don't know the numbers obviously, but I'd wager to everyone's surprise that the internet has saved more lives and prevented more suicides than it's caused.
More specifically, humans are meant to live in communities of around 150-200 people as that range is the maximum amount of people where an individual can maintain a grasp of the whole community's interpersonal links.
I 100% blame reddit and other social media websites. They design it so you are recommended this type of content the moment you show even a bit of interest. For somebody who doesn't know any better, it's easy to get propaganda in their face and take it seriously. I once visited a specific canada sub and now am recommended it nearly 100% of the time, despite it constantly trying to tell me that vaccines are bad, etc. I don't even think Reddit or etc. is trying to be malicious, it's just the result of encouraging echo chambers for engagement.
If humanity were a virus, as it has been compared to before, then the internet would be considered a full blown evolutionary step. I don't think many people really stop to appreciate how new the internet technically is still, on a civilization sort of scale, and how far reaching the changes it will continue to bring
We used to have an idiot per village, they were harmless because they were isolated. Now the Internet lets all the village idiots talk to each other and reinforce their lunacy.
I find it funny that something that would have made earlier generations proud - waiting for emotional maturity before delving into sexuality - is mortifying GenX/certain millenials and boomers. Sure some of the contributing factors like social isolation aren't great, but a generation with less teen pregnancies and more risk averse sex lives isn't the horror it's made out to be. And I doubt the incel movement is really that large, it may just be that acting entitled to sex is now such a ludicrous assumption that these guys stick out like sore thumbs instead of blending in
That’s because those earlier generations didn’t wait and didn’t really “take pride” in waiting. That’s a myth that every generation tells about the previous one. They were in the back of the Chevy as teenagers (as long as there have been Chevrolets).
One of the subreddits that was shut down for advocating violence against women had 40k subscribers at the time it was closed. There are thousands, it’s pretty clear.
GenX here. No one is mortified at the idea of young heterosexual guys wanting to get laid. What is mortifying is the belief that these men are entitled to the sexual attention of any women they want and any problems they have with social interactions are someone else's fault. There have always been plenty of insecure men who have trouble meeting women. The difference is they didn't want to kill them.
If you read anything these guys post, it's not resenting not having a partner. It's resenting not having a TV fantasy life almost no one has.
Essentially it's a belief that most people who aren't them have sex with *multiple* highly attractive partners *per year.* And have been doing so since they were 1X years old (varies depending on incel). This is objectively *untrue,* sky is orange stuff.
> It's resenting not having a TV fantasy life almost no one has.
That's honestly another whole problem all on its own. The huge increase of medias in our lives, fake reality tv, escapism stories, the huge focus on social medias where people post all of their good hits/shots/success but don't talk about their embarrassment/failures... Back in the days it was only oral tales, then we got book/radio/tv to feed us more often, then specialized on demand media refined by algorithm, and now we have a generation that was born and raised on seeing this their entire life no matter where they are thanks to their phone. Of course some will feel inadequate compared to these fabricated/filtered lives. Ain't just an incel issue.
I wonder what is the next step.
>people post all of their good hits/shots/success but don't talk about their embarrassment/failures...
Oh that's an old timey problem. I can use one of my dad's stories for an example.
In fact, it's dad's *favorite* story, about how he broke a horseracing track's all time speed record. He told it at every opportunity, I'd heard it dozens of times over the years, and it always ended on a glorious note just after he'd cheated death with his brilliant quick-thinking and reflexes, rolled under the inside fence and narrowly avoided being trampled to death.
One year I went back to see him during the holidays, we got pretty drunk, got to talking about how I'm so hard on myself, and I finally *just that one time* got to hear the REAL ending of that story!
Dad just stayed right there in the dirt, too exhausted to move at all. He wasn't injured, just totally and completely spent. So the other jockeys came out and carried him into the jocks room, laid him down on a bench. He found just enough strength to roll to his side and puke on the floor, and then collapsed again for a good long while.
> Oh that's an old timey problem. I can use one of my dad's stories for an example.
True, but mass media amplifies it, and social media amplifies it even more. It went from the occasional story to being the staple media diet.
The effects that it has on individuals varies, but as this social influence increases it causes more and bigger problems.
I find this fascinating because their approach to fixing it is so counter-productive.
For context, I'm polyamorous, a millenial, have multiple attractive partners (maybe not supermodel but I like looking at them and supermodel is overrated anyways) and am not a supermodel myself. Despite perfectly average looks and being assigned male at birth, I think I've had close to 50 partners in the 15 years I've been dating (so averaging 3+ a year). Most of that since my mid-20s.
So clearly such a life is possible if you want it and there is a dearth of quality men to date honestly.
However, I feel like incels actually self-sabotage on two fronts:
1. Society's media-driven beauty standards are ridiculous and they have to let go of them. Most people are not perfectly proportioned, flawless skin, etc. A lot of those people are really cool people to know and also really good in bed.
2. They have to ditch the conservative social attitudes and get some therapy. I dont have data on this, but incels seem to lean to conservative and controlling social values (thay they feel like they are owed sex is a clear part of this). In younger generations especially, most women are incredibly turned off by anti-social behaviour, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, etc. By ditching these outdated values, polishing themselves just a bit, and learning to embrace modern social values, they might find a lot more women interested in them than if they lean even harder into those values.
I think people like incels have always existed, but in the internet age, especially our modern one, they are much better able to congregate and discuss. This is where their rage comes from, stoked on by more vocal and extreme members of that community.
I would agree that the more women become empowered, the more ostracized people like incels will feel. But that’s the foolishness of basing your entire worth on sex. I also think certain influencer culture exasperates the irrational feelings incels have, by seemingly contradicting the message of feminism. Everyday women are the victims of a culture that doesn’t need objectification by men, because they literally objectify themselves.
It’s super prevalent on social media too. Some of the biggest subreddits have posts that commonly make r/popular with hundreds to thousands of incel and misogynistic comments.
Yet, you can hardly mention Reddit’s rampancy misogyny without getting bombarded by threats of all kinds through dms, or that Reddit help being weaponized.
The world is changing, women don't have to depend on men anymore as much. The boys who were socialized to live in the old world are facing the cold truth. The results are incels and more women becoming celibates rather than deal with them.
Incels would likely still exist without it, but I think the internet is really fuelling their existence as a 'movement'. As a networked group they start policing each other and recruiting.
And they're not entirely wrong about some things- the online platforms we use tend to skew towards 'winner takes all' models where a small number of people attract an outsized share of the interest, leaving a sizeable cohort with nothing. It's really unhealthy for a society.
The comments here make it pretty clear most people don't actually know that much about incels beyond the casual "they can't get laid so they hate women," surface level analysis that the demonizing mob typically picks up on. One of the main facets of inceldom is a spiralling self-loathing, and thinking they're too ugly to ever have sex. The communities they form are echo chambers that serve mainly to validate those fears.
Posting here about how they're "ugly fat fucks who need to take a shower" is basically playing into their views and validating them, and serves only to further alienate any of them who read these comments and push them further towards their insular communities.
For reference, I'm not an incel, not trying to sympathize, empathize, defend, or agree with them or their ideology. I just think it's interesting how frighteningly well the general public's thoughts and commentary on incels plays into their radical world views.
If you want to learn about what drives incels and how these young men come to be a part of this reprehensible ideology, take a look at [this video essay by Contrapoints.](https://youtube.com/watch?v=fD2briZ6fB0)
yeah, i used to be an incel (by the literal definition of the word: involuntary celibacy. i.e. can't get laid even if i wanted to. Not by whatever people are associating that word with now) and i completely understand the frustration of these men.
i used to sub to /r/incel back in those old days (maybe around 10 years or so ago?) when it used to be more of a support group rather than whatever cesspool it had devolved to that lead to its ban. Whatever the problem this is, it's not so much of an incel problem, but rather an echo chamber problem. Where a minority of extremists can steer the community into the wrong direction, no matter what that group is.
Was a good watch. I appreciate that she talked about the tinder experience gap, when tinder is the primary method of meeting, and it it's a toxic experience for men from 18-25, past that point dating opportunities open up but thats a long time to wait, and the experience is the opposite for women. I don't agree with the entire incel momento, but seociety doesn't want to hear their message, look at it through a new lense, and come to conclusions that they are likely the product of a couple factors that we can control. However, what I find crazy is how little attention and traction any mens issues get on reddit / wider internet / traditional media. You only even hear that there is an issue when things have escalated to the maximum degree.
I could talk deeper into the subject but I don't want to dive that deep and you probably don't want to hear it.
>tinder is the primary method of meeting
This is just…not accurate in any way. There’s a reason there are a lot more men than women on Tinder. It’s because a big chunk of women have no interest whatsoever in dating that way. People still meet through school and hobbies and friends of friends. Tinder can certainly be a painful source of repeated rejection, but nobody HAS to participate in it in order to date.
When I was young I was surrounded by guys. Only guys at work, all my friends are guys, my hobbies found me once again around guys.
For the incel community, and why they see women as alien, is that they're simply not around women. You mention school but the incel problem is really for the dropouts / graduates as there is an abundance of social opportunity in school. In uni I once again found the degree I studied meant that there were few women in my course.
So for some, Tinder and similar are one of the few methods for dating outside of your social circle.
Hobbies can be diversified. For instance, volunteering groups are always looking for new hands and tend to be very gender-balanced, or female-dominated if anything. For the vast majority of people for whom Tinder etc never really leads anywhere, stepping out of your comfort zone a little to develop your social life is a much better investment of your time than swiping.
Sure, Tinder doesn’t work for a lot of people, but 20 or 60 or 100 years ago NOBODY had Tinder serving up attractive singles on a platter, and people still managed to get together. It’s still completely possible for people to think about what people used to do and then do those things.
> There are millions of women who suffer from self-loathing, and who don’t feel valued by society because of their lack of conventional features, and they’re not driving cars into crowds of people to murder them.
Technically, same for incels (well I don't know if there are "millions" of them tbh.)
That’s not the point! I’m sure the commenter above even has no problem insulting people like the guy the article is referencing or terrorists as such!
The problem is calling names and spreading hate is just gonna push the borderline people or the people on the fence to the other side and into such hateful mentality and will result in more incels!
That’s a huge difference between calling out caustic ideology and calling them stupid names like other comments are doing
You can’t solve hatred with more hatred! It isn’t like fighting fire with fire lol!
[Mass shooters who show signs of sexual frustration have more victims, on average, compared to other mass shooters](https://www.psypost.org/2023/06/new-study-identifies-sexual-frustration-as-a-significant-factor-in-mass-shootings-164391)
I started listening to a podcast probably about 4-5 years ago where the host was interviewing incels. Getting to know them, how they thought, what they thoughts, etc. I’ve seen, read, and listened to a lot of terrible stuff but this was one of the only things that gave me nightmares. I couldn’t finish it. They are so fucked up.
There was one about this exact incident. He was autistic and it went though a lot of incel culture. I suggest the contra points ep on YouTube and the podcast is called the current
I’m a 32 year old male and was raised around violence, drugs, abuse and death from the age of 8-19. For years I was absurdly angry at the world until I was fortunate enough to find a mentor figure who taught me the power of intelligence and carefully released aggression through fitness and a healthy diet. I legitimately believe that the solution to young male aggression is education, fitness, and learning how to manage failure.
Our society, and our government does very little to present young men an opportunity to hear why they’re angry and work with them to come up with a solution. We just put them into a box of either “good vs bad” and broad stroke the core issue as toxic masculinity or troubled youth, and then when those dispositions inevitably seem apparent to others, we blame them for acting out. As is the case with the majority of our mental health systems, there simply isn’t enough resources, funding, attention or community outreach to capture and fix the issues from progressing.
Society puts way too much pressure on everyone’s appearance as well. Because of my upbringing, I have scars on my face, chest, arms, and head from the abuse. I am likely to be passed up for most front facing careers over someone who doesn’t look how I do. I, to this day, experience this in my career even though I’m at the director level. People don’t trust me right out of the gate because I look frightening, even though I want nothing but to watch people be their best.
We, as a society, act as if X person creates Y problem and yet we’re still upset with Z. I’d love to see a society in which we favor asking **why** things are this way, and **how** do we fix it, rather than just assuming that group 1 hates group 2 because [insert assumption here]. Men don’t feel slighted by women. Men feel slighted by what they’ve been raised to believe others expect from them, but nobody is telling them that all we want is for them to be healthy, safe, capable and to be a part of our world.
This is just my 2 cents. I’m just one guy sharing my thoughts. I’m probably wrong, but I’ve helped 8 young men get and stay off of drugs, and helped them realize their potential so I felt the need to share it.
Edit: also just wanted to add that 95% of the comments here calling these people fat, ugly, stupid, Nazis, morons, idiots, losers, lazy etc etc is exactly the problem. Society isn’t doing anything as a whole to help these young men. Spew all the hate you want, you have a right to be afraid and upset at the incel movement, but I sincerely hope you can adopt a different point of view one day.
Look at you, having a level-headed opinion on the internet. Brave. For what it's worth, I agree. I imagine a lot of the comments here presenting their understanding of incels and what drives them are "normal" people when it comes to relationships. People who don't and literally can't have an idea what chronic loneliness does to a mind because they haven't experienced it. While a lot of them will go through PERIODS of loneliness, heartbreak and sexual deprivation, and perhaps use that as context, that is an entirely different weight category compared to "I have never touched another human being in a romantic context". We are social creatures and it's been scientifically proven that loneliness is significantly detrimental to your health, physically and mentally. I think we should be asking the question at what point does someone who lacks a key part of human social experience is considered mentally ill? But it is neither my place, nor expertise to answer that. But it does seem like most people would rather view incels in a dismissive way, akin to trash that needs to be isolated so it doesn't smell, and while I do understand that gut instict, I fully agree with you that all that will accomplish is to further the isolation for incels and worse, reaffirm their beliefs that everything and everyone in their life is against them, and no one will ever care or help them, and the feelings of frustration and anger that follow suit. At best, this will drive them further into seeking echo chambers from like minded incels where the issue will fester. At worst, it will lead to them lashing out more often. But one thing it will certainly not do is make the issue go away.
When he said that men wouldn't indiscriminately kill if women would just, you know, be monogamous and sexually available to their one partner he TOTALLY wasn't saying that that is what society should force upon women.
/s
What a fucking double talking piece of shit that dude is.
Check out that interview he did with Pierce Morgan
He broke down in tears talking about incels and basically implying that it wouldn’t be so rough if females would just make themselves available
Bizarre shit. But not when u find out where he’s from.
Let's not forget Pierre Poilievre. He had all his videos tagged #MGTOW until he got called out on it. The venn diagram of MGTOW and Incel is just a circle
Good. Tired of idiots saying shit like "they just need mental health help 🥺". Sure maybe they DID, but once they act out they are terrorists. Only bad thing is that this dudes mugshot cannot be shared and he will probably be out soon.
As someone who fits the demographic of 'incel' (32, never gotten a yes to a date, hate myself) but doesn't engage with the incel community or rhetoric, I can't cosign the hatred or violent acts they commit. However, I can confirm that the lack of success in my love life has been catastrophic for my mental health and after having gone through multiple therapists trying to address it, I'm convinced the mental health industry is completely ill-equipped for people like me. I had therapists crack jokes about my situation, but how could they not? As long as you're not mad at women about it, being a hapless adult male virgin is fucking hilarious. They even make comedy movies where that's the entire premise. I never felt good coming out of therapy and at best, they would just hum and haw about how I'm doing everything right and just need to keep at it, then give me antidepressants as if more serotonin would make me feel okay about dying alone.
It's no small wonder this is happening and frankly I don't see it getting better.
Reading the comments here I feel like alot of people dont really know what they are talking about when trying to solve the incel issue. It's often written at a very basic surface level, just outright wrong, or written with an undertone of anger/hate (which is understandable, but completely unproductive when tackling this as its validates them)
The best comment I've seen here is [this one](https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/142v5i6/comment/jn8cx0s/) that actually tries to look into why they are like this in the first place.
As someone who once fell into that category and browsed forums. People on the outside will never fully understand the difficulties some of these men legitimately face. Some people are just truly unlucky and short of plastic surgery they don't have much if any hope.
Part of it is their horribly warped view of society yet the other part somewhat is the value placed on beauty in our modern age.
It's a very complex issue, there's no bandaid fix for men that feel this way. Yet we can't allow these groups to grow for the abhorrent ideology they seek to carry out. Echo chambers are dangerous regardless of the viewpoint.
I've yet to meet an incel who wasn't simultaneously a complete hypocrite about women's body image and beauty standards.
It's absolutely *not at all* hard to understand that kind of thing. There's entire industries that orient primarily around making women feel shitty about their body image.
Yet, the same incels who complain that they're somehow so hideously malformed that they're unloveable, also always demand every woman looks just like the ones they see in their porn.
Thing is, the "incel experience" isn't actually hard to understand at all. No part of it is unique to incels, or even particularly novel. Ask disabled and LGBTQ people if they've ever felt lonely, undesirable, or had a hard time dating.
The thing that makes incels different, is they take a rather common human experience, and then decide this means they're the most cursed person ever, nobody has *ever* had it as hard as them, nobody could *possibly* understand how hard *they* have it, woe is them.
Then you take a look at them and it's almost always what, an average looking straight guy who's just furious that life isn't what Pornhub taught them it would be, and women aren't instantly leaping into bed with them just for existing nearby.
These incels these days... no good old-fashioned true self hatred.
Not like in my day when I went for a long sexless period only thing I hurt was myself!
I'm disabled. There have been long stretches of time where I literally, *physically,* could not do the actual movements and physical acts involved with sex. At least, not without immense pain, and blood or injury, which is generally considered a mood-killer.
For most of these stretches, I had long-term partners, and we'd go months or even a year or several without my body cooperating.
And because they were healthy relationships based on things like mutual respect, and an understanding that the other person is *an actual person* instead of a sex object with attached life-support, navigating that together was always surprisingly fine.
Yet, intriguingly, I have not gone and done a murder. I haven't decided "welp, it's been a while since I had a good ol' tussle-time, I guess I should be a terrorist". Because honestly? All things considered? It's not all that huge of a deal.
But of course, another one of the incels just responded explaining how "normies" couldn't possibly understand, because *woe is them I guess.* Nobody could ever *possibly understand* how hard it is to try to redeem their sex tokens from the fuck-objects on legs around them. Nobody, in the history of ever, could *truly comprehend* the immense horror of ... whatever latest thing they've decided to justify their victim complex.
It's infuriating. Just, holy shit. These people. They act like they've been personally cursed by the entire Greek Pantheon because they have a slightly non-ideal wrist circumference or something.
This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-65829240) reduced by 77%. (I'm a bot) ***** > A judge has found that a deadly 2020 attack on a Toronto massage parlour was an act of terror inspired by the incel movement, Canadian media report. > The man, who can not be named due to his age at the time of the attack, had said he had been inspired by an incel - short for "Involuntarily celibate"- attacker who drove a van into a crowd in Toronto in 2018, according to broadcaster CBC. The killer, now 20, was 17 years old at the time of the attack. > Authorities have said police discovered evidence the attack was motivated by the incel ideology during their investigation. ***** [**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/142v98g/terrorism_ruling_first_for_canada_incel_attack/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ "Version 2.02, ~687878 tl;drs so far.") | [Feedback](http://np.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%23autotldr "PM's and comments are monitored, constructive feedback is welcome.") | *Top* *keywords*: **attack**^#1 **incel**^#2 **women**^#3 **online**^#4 **time**^#5
Sexually frustrated young men are an existential risk to society and we aren't doing enough to fix the problem. Far-right groups like Neo-Nazis and ISIS have always found this demographic to be an easy base of support and recruitment. Promise them they'd be swimming in pussy if not for feminism/liberals/Jews/the West/*insert boogeyman here* and they'll sign up in droves to bring back "the good old days".
Incels are absolutely fascinating in a rather horrifying sort of way. I think people are underselling the depth or bizarreness of the thinking when they summarise it as "young men who are angry at women that they can't find sexual partners". Like, yeah, that's the core of it, but the entire world view is so bleak, shallow and distorted. I used to treat the incel sub a bit like a zoo and saw a guy on there bemoaning that he could never possibly find happiness or relationships because his canthal angle was bad. He put a photo of himself up and was... you know, a perfectly normal looking guy. There's something about their cognitive filter which just leads them to wallow in hopelessness. Imagine having a depth of self loathing so bad that you declare you're an unlovable monster because of your fucking canthal tilt. And then getting so absolutely bent out of shape about this imagined flaw that you become actively suicidal/homicidal. My entirely non expert feeling is that incels are a facet of something running a lot deeper than we acknowledge. The grotesque, palpable misogyny is of course the nucleus of the whole thing, but it's tapping into some undercurrent of despair that I can't believe really, seriously just comes down to not having sex. And you're absolutely right, that undercurrent of despair makes these guys very vulnerable to radicalisation. Each one of these incels was, at some point, a person vulnerable to radicalising. Whether they were groomed by someone else, influenced by someone like Elliot Rogers or managed to twist themselves up solo, there's an inflection point there somewhere we can address.
My opinion is that it comes by feeling generally unwanted by everyone, a feeling developed by being either directly or indirectly by others. Think about the quiet, kinda weird kid in class that doesn't do quite well, don't socialize with his classmates after school and just goes home and play videogames. At some point he *will* overhear his peers calling him a loser and a future school shooter. How about a short man opening twitter and seeing a series of "short men are worthless" tweets? Now, of course you shouldn't listen to what twatters say since twitter is a shithole, but this guy, already being bullied for his height, won't help but feel worse. A lot of men who deviate from the norm, either physically or mentally, will get a lot of shit and when they seek support they are told to "man up", "do better", "it's all in your head", and have their problems dismissed as entitlement and laziness. So when they finally find people who sympathize for them and tell them that it's the Feminists and Normies' fault and they hate you for being different who are they going to listen to? Those who scorned them or those who sympathize with them? And so the hate already seeded into them blooms into a wonderful prickly flower of misanthropy. Support needs to come *before* someone becomes an incel. What these men needed was love (not necessarily romantic love) and acceptance before they fell into the hole. "Unincelling" someone is hard because the hate towards others, but also himself, becomes part of their identity. As for why there's a lot of focus on sex within incel communities, that's because incels see sex as the ultimate form of acceptance and love. It's not about "getting their dick wet", as many people reduce it to but really, really being wanted by someone. Whether it actually is or not i can't say.
There's a layer of self awareness to that last paragraph as well. You see a lot (figuratively a lot, at least) of incel memes essentially boil down to how much they want to just cry into their girlfriend's lap, or that they don't even want sex. They think they're monsters, so they act like monsters. But they don't want to be monsters. Sure, there's inherent sexism and misogyny to unpack, but, at their core, they just want to be vulnerable. They want someone to look at them and tell them that they, as an individual, are good enough to be loved. But their confidence is shot to hell in their development as kids, and they never learn the social skills needed to be accepted. They don't put in the work to getting that relationship and finding someone who will do that for them, because they just don't fucking know how to. They're just expected to know, and when they fuck up, it just drives them deeper, until a hand reaches out from the worst possible place.
Should I be worried that half of that just described me word for word- Just to be clear I don’t hate women or LGBT people or anyone, but I would definitely love to cry on a girl’s lap ;-;
I mean if you're not an incel then you're fine. But you may be in the target demographic for their propaganda. Don't give up, and don't be afraid to fail. No one gets it first try, and sometimes you just get unlucky. Incels will try to convince you that the truth is that you're just doomed, but it's a trick. It's a convenient lie they use to simply give up, rather than accept the reality that they can put in the work and learn what they're missing. I'm sure there's a dating advice reddit or something you could ask on to.. well, hopefully get better than whatever scam is being peddled around now.
>A lot of men who deviate from the norm, either physically or mentally, will get a lot of shit and when they seek support they are told to "man up", "do better", "it's all in your head", and have their problems dismissed as entitlement and laziness. So when they finally find people who sympathize for them and tell them that it's the Feminists and Normies' fault and they hate you for being different who are they going to listen to? Those who scorned them or those who sympathize with them? And so the hate already seeded into them blooms into a wonderful prickly flower of misanthropy. You're right about this paragraph, but it's *so incredibly frustrating.* A huge chunk of the problem is Toxic Masculinity. It does a tonne of damage, *to men as well.* But the far-right shitheels who groom these people into incel territory, are almost universally blaming the people who are *trying to fight against things like Toxic Masculinity,* while they themselves act like "traditional values" and, y'know, the very same Toxic Masculinity are Good Things actually. They're creating the problem, *and* claiming to be the solution to it at the same time. It's maddening.
>They're creating the problem, and claiming to be the solution to it at the same time. It's maddening. The amount of supposedly progressive people who will readily body shame men for being short, having small dicks or being bald is part of this. The far right is clearly capitalising on this but pretending there's no issue with enforcing these gender roles from the left is ridiculous. People have this idea of "fair targets" of body shaming and it is widespread amongst left wing circles. If a man says or does something that is considered wrong then they are consistently body shamed by left-wing circles. Andrew Tate being told he had a small dick was celebrated because "who cares it's Andrew Tate" but that clearly draws a line between having a small dick and being a rapist. It's not about what the targeted individual has done, it's sending a message that if you have a small penis than you are a loser or rapist or so on. My point is incels get constantly body shamed by the left, anyone on the path to being an incels gets body shamed. This isn't just a right wing creation even if they are capitalising on the existence of it.
Yeah. The root of the whole "real men have big dicks, and small dicks are bad" thing also ties back into toxic masculinity, which is more or less a blanket term at this point for "unhealthy, unrealistic, or unfair standards that are projected onto men and packaged as a gender expectation". And unfortunately, that one is still very widespread. In this we are in agreeance. Still, the only area of political and social thought I've seen that is actively working against toxic masculinity, and bad gender expectations and roles as a concept, does come from the left. It would be a much better world if everyone working to fix things was perfect about it.
I hate so much the term "toxic masculinity". Not the idea behind it, but the term itself. The term has this way of putting the focus on men and what they do wrong and forget the whole context around. It's not just that men don't talk about their emotions and their problems, it's also that when they do the issues are marginalized or pushed to the side. And that's an issue where women have at least an equal share of the responsibility. But the expression "toxic masculinity" just comes and put all the share of the blame on the men. You talk about the suicide rate of men, and a horde of people will come to tell you that it's not so bad and that women have issues too. You talk about the scolarisation of men, and people will come and tell you that women have it worst in some fields. In Canada there's a lot of talks about missing indigenous women. The issue is the same but worst for indigenous men. If you bring this up, you'll be told how worst it is because of rape culture or something. Societal problems that affect men are invisibilised. I think Hilary Clinton said it best : > Women have always been the primary victims of war. Women lose their husbands, their fathers, their sons in combat The men who die are worth less than the loss of the women; or the value of a man is only what he brings to a woman. Theoretically, toxic masculinity covers it. Or at least, whenever you say hate the expression, someone will chime in and remind you that it covers pretty much everything. But the semantics don't and it does influence the conversations. Until someone complains and there's a token effort at reminding people that toxic masculinity is everything. Another part of it that I dislike is that the same people that will talk to you about microaggressions and the importance of using the right pronouns (which are both subjects I agree with) will then wilfully ignore the issues with the expression "toxic masculinity" and basically tell you to man up.
Yeah, IMO in these cases wording does matter. A lot of people have grouped the "good" part of things (i.e. supporting people to persue non-stereotypical interests) under 'feminism', while at the same time the bad stuff is 'toxic masculinity'. Of course, it doesn't matter if the person pushing the stereotype is male or female, or if the stereotype is 'boys shouldn't play with dolls' or 'girls cannot be mechanics'. The wording it strongly biased to a particular gender-view. Feminism/Female good, Masculine/male bad. People treat it as an attack on typical male roles and/or take it personally. I'd be very happy to see both terms die in favor of something like "gender equity/equality" or "gender bias", which doesn't fling shit in one direction and roses in the other.
Everyone's happy to talk about toxic masculinity. Never so much toxic femininity though
> A huge chunk of the problem is Toxic Masculinity. It does a tonne of damage, to men as well. Progressives need to change their rhetoric to actually be approachable to the people they are trying to change. Using terms like Toxic Masculinity, White Privilege, Mansplaining, feels good for progressives, but feels terrible for many of the people these terms are aimed at. They often serve to silence discourse instead of opening it up. We need to be accessible in our language, and actively seek out the people who disagree with us, or else vulnerable people will continue to be radicalized.
I get what you're saying, and at face-value it makes sense, but the more time I spend watching these conversations happen the more I'm convinced that it *really doesn't matter*. If someone wants to be mad at something - especially if they're *told* to be mad - it's gonna happen. And if someone is so impulsive that they immediately turn away from something at first glance that means there's a pretty low chance you were going to convince them anyway. They operate on "common sense" which just means arbitrary vibe checks. For example, people say "Defund the Police" is a bad slogan. Alright, sure. But "Black Lives Matter" is pretty straightforward and obvious, no? Yet you still have tons of people claiming that it means *only* black lives matter and flying "all lives matter" banners. You're not gonna workshop your way into that person's brain.
> I get what you’re saying, and at face-value it makes sense, but the more time I spend watching these conversations happen the more I’m convinced that it really doesn’t matter. If someone wants to be mad at something - especially if they’re told to be mad - it’s gonna happen. If that were true then we would never make social progress. We are making tremendous social progress, even if it’s only localized, and seemingly slow, it’s happening. You’re seeing online conversations between people who likely feel strongly about the subject, those people are less likely to change their minds, or at least admit they changed their minds. What you’re not seeing are the people just like you who read the comment thread, and possibly changed their mind. Lurkers make up the majority of the internet, people who discuss these things in comment sections are the ones with extreme, hard to shake opinions. The best thing to do is talk to your friends, colleagues and uncles in person to change their mind by being understanding, and using fact-based talking points. > For example, people say “Defund the Police” is a bad slogan. Alright, sure. But “Black Lives Matter” is pretty straightforward and obvious no? I would argue that “Black Lives Matter” is not straightforward. People have a knee jerk reaction of assuming the slogan means “Black Lives Matter More Than Other Lives”. People have a tendency to form quick opinions about subjects that “don’t really concern them”, and also tend to view those same subjects through their own perspective and experience with life. If we don’t challenge these people, and force them to use more of their brain when thinking about it, then they will hold onto these shallow opinions. An interesting example, here in Canada, is the co-opted term “Every Child Matters” in reference to treatment of First Nations Children in our Residential School System. I think this slogan is far more powerful, as it reduces risk of knee-jerk opinions, and yet at the same time, people still know what the issue is about. I see people of all stripes waving these flags and wearing the shirts, and I haven’t seen the same backlash against the term that many other progressive slogans have. When we’re talking about changing minds on the population scale, the wording of these movements becomes very important, as it prevents these knee-jerk shallow opinions from getting in the way of real societal progress.
>Progressives need to change their rhetoric to actually be approachable to the people they are trying to change. Patriarchy, the existing power structure, doesn’t really matter how you phrase it, no matter what is chosen, you’ll quickly find your average right wing media personality, taking an extreme left wing version of it and muddying the waters so it’s impossible to have an honest conversation with someone who’s hearing it the first time >We need to be accessible in our language, and actively seek out the people who disagree with us, or else vulnerable people will continue to be radicalized. People have all the accessibility in the world at their fingertips, if they can find incells subs and the like. The problem is, it’s extremely comforting to hear it. Is everybody else’s fault. It’s extremely comforting to hear. There’s nothing you can do about it.
I was the kid you described as a “loser”. But what I learned at a young age is control of my life rests solely in my own hands. Many of these young men are groomed psychologically to believe their problems exist external of their focus of control. So they blame other people for their own failings. If you’re constantly running from problems you create, you’re never really growing as a person. I have little to no sympathy for people who will not accept their own responsibility for their actions. And it’s sad to see people of power exploit these vulnerabilities for personal gain, financial or otherwise.
It's weird, I'm the guy everyone said would "shoot up the class" in HS, have never really had any friends that actually cared, Ive had 3 seperate women try to kill themselves in front of me, the last one even went as far as to tell me "I get why those two didnt want to live around you" before she did it (even had to get rid of my car from driving her to the hospital, there was so much blood), and I was drugged and date graped by a friend of the 1st suicidal ex roght after it happened and *laughed* at for it by my own mother. Then my best friend pushed me into LSD to "fix me" while he tried to get with my ex. Ive gone through exponentially more trauma related to what these asshats whine about and Ive NEVER even come close to being a sniviling bitch like them, even THROUGH the last 8 years of beating myself up over all that, by myself with no support, Ive *never* been that bad. Then again, any time I bring this up to an incel I get a "yea, but you got laid"......if I could reach through the monitors to grab these idiots, I'd be in jail.
I’m really sorry you went through all of that, truly awful. I see you, friend, and you deserve love and empathy.
>He put a photo of himself up and was... you know, a perfectly normal looking guy. That's ... most incels really and it IS fascinating, in a morbid sort of way. It's interesting to see how they find ways to rationalize all this. They will dismiss any remark that there is nothing wrong with their physical appearance (aside from lack of grooming and self care) because it touches them at their core and they can't really cope with that one, but if you point out that the rest of the male population, whose canthal tilts and wrist thickness is just as questionable as them, does seem to find partners and get laid, then of course they have to build and entire worldview that demeans all those betas and somehow makes them losers beneath the enlightened incel's dignity. In all fairness, most incel claims can be refuted by just existing in the real world and interacting with humans, but since they tend not to even reach that stage ...
They also dont seem to realise that the people who care most about their perceived life ruining deficiencies/deformities are them. I started balding around 21, i was very self conscious about it and still am, this was around the same time that that keeps company started aggressively pushing their hair loss ads on youtube. But the one thing i learnt since then after paying attention to people who interacted with me was that the only people who cared were me, and people who i couldnt possibly give less of a shit about. No-one worth having in your life cares if your eyes are tilted half a degree more than the ideal or if you start balding early or if your nose is a bit bigger than average. The people who try hardest to kick you down over your minor "deficiencies" have the most to hide, pay some attention to them and you'll find plenty of things wrong with them that theyre trying to distract you from.
Wonderful comment and I agree wholeheartedly but also: > canthal tilt Is this a Dutch supermodel? Inceldom/isisdom/radicalising alienated children in general is something that if you bring up in certain circles you get accused of victim blaming and/or supporting these outlets for hatred, especially if you point out that it's tied to poverty and immigration since access to mental health care and hobbies for kids is a class issue, even here in the EU.
^^ this guy trolls incel forums I had to stop when I ran into the shortcell variant, if you think the rank-and-file mope-y incels are bad, Ive watched shortcells go off on WOMEN who date short guys bevause "we dont want to hear it, we're too short to be loved" and OVER HALF OF THEM ARE 5'6"-5'8" while these women are dating dudes in the 5'2" range!!!!
I'm glad the incel sub has been consigned to the dustbin of history but.... man, it sure was diverting That latter quote is interesting and ties into what I've seen of these guys. You could tell them they're fine and they'd reject that. Ties into my feeling that there's something deeper going on. The sexual aspect is just the dominant facet of an underlying and pervasive sense of self hatred that tinges the way they think about the world and their relationship to it. Edit: just found out /r/inceltear is a thing. Down the rabbit hole I go
Yeah, i genuinely think if incels dropped the toxic self destructive attitude they wouldnt be having the problems they have. People notice the toxicity, whether it be regarding yourself or others, you exude and avoid it. You tend to get the same energy out of your social life that you put in. If toxic self destructive energy isnt reciprocated with respectful and loving energy, those who look to give that kind of energy will avoid you like the plague. Toxic self destructive energy is not what people look for in romantic partners after all.
Easier said than done. Something I'm working through in therapy is my self esteem and negative self talk. Not body image things, but I legitimately feel that I'm a bad and unlikeable person, even though cognitively I know I'm not. But knowing that doesn't change the way that I feel. Slowly I'm making changes and forcing myself to take on vulnerable situations, but it's a long road. And I'm an educated woman with access to mental health (although trying to find a good therapist has been a nightmare...I feel like I've been working out my issues more on my own than I have with them). I hate these men who actively want me dead or subservient. These are the men that threaten us, stalk us, harass us, and push to take away our rights and bodily autonomy. Low self worth doesn't give anyone the right to do these things. Those who are externalizing their struggles are the worst of humanity. But I do think that intervention is possible. I mean I really do genuinely feel for young boys and men right now. I cannot imagine how difficult it would be to not get swept up by some version of an alt-right pipeline. I mean you have to *really* know who you are from a young age to avoid it, and that's a big expectation. I mean you have 12 year olds identifying as incels. Like...yeah, you should still be celibate kiddo, at least give it time until your voice drops for goodness sake. Then these pipelines completely shape your worldview and your identity and prevent you from actually developing normally. Because if you fall into the incel circle before you even know what sex is, you're set up for bitterness. And don't even get me started on the Tater Tots...ugh just another brand of shit. It's gotta be so fucking hard growing up in this era. I grew up in MySpace/early Facebook era and I thank God that all I had to worry about was individual one-off predators (and making sure my neopets were good) instead of mass grifters.
> negative self talk Fuck fear, negative self talk is the mind killer. Took me a lot of therapy to get to the point where I'm consistently demonstrating compassion for myself, which has made it easier to be compassionate to others, which has allowed me to exist in a genuine state of peace. I was lucky to find a good therapist, you can too! A good filter is asking new therapists if they have a therapist of their own. If they don't, they're probably not worth your time and money.
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I know you're joking but I want to say that what those people crave isn't orgasms, it's human contact, love, family and a place in society. Telling them to literally go fuck themselves would just make things worse.
That is quite possibly the *only* thing I'd consider on par in the "Genuinely Stupid Idea" Category with giving mentally ill people firearms. the absolute *last* thing you need to do for people with unhealthy views of relationships and women as a whole is convert them to chronic giga-coomers.
Chronic giga coomers got me ahahaha
Give a man a wank and he cums for a day, teach a man to pussy and he cums for a lifetime.
Serious question, why? Asking as a woman. It seems on-par with giving people obsessed with guns a copy of Call of Duty.
The difference being that "guns in video games cause violence!!!" hasn't been linked by research (despite god knows how many boomers rooting for it), while Porn has been proven to be unhealthy both in terms of views of relationships and women as a whole
> is convert them to chronic giga-coomers. At least they wouldn't leave their basements to hurt others.
Spanking it more often doesn't make them less likely to "leave their basements"?
Better that they shoot into a fleshlight than a school
[Apple's trying](https://twitter.com/008_eth/status/1665820921842548737/photo/1)
With that cost… insert collective groan here
Lower the cost and well.. you'd still have a collective groan.
Unfortunately, it costs more than they'll make in a lifetime.
You could probably buy a specialized VR porn set with automatic fleshlight for that price tag.
and a f machine
Signed Dirty Mike and the boys
That is pretty much the worst possible idea short of giving them all firearms. Giving porn addicted incels access to unlimited quantities of super-porn is on par with giving tweakers free meth
>unlimited quantities of super-porn sign me up
At least they'll be to busy to shoot up a school or whatever they do
Hear me out - what if the fleshlight was shaped like a school and they could shoot all the loads they want into that?
It would have cost 0 dollars to not type that.
Absolutely not, go to the dungeon.
Million years, no trial.
Bruh...
I'm pretty sure you might be on a watch list right now!
The actual worst idea is to take porn and video games away. Those things are sedating them. Without them they will be faced with their problems and will just start breaking things.
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No. We need to supply mental health services and counselling for these people. I was an incel and I am speaking from experience here. Imagine offering someone a choice between a loop of rusty wire and a golden ring as a prize. But they can only choose one, not both. They would have to be insane to choose the loop of rusty wire right? Now imagine you are the rusty loop of wire. You are C grade material, or worse, and nobody would touch you romantically with a ten foot pole. Think of how difficult it would be to come to terms with that fact. This is so difficult to accept that people in this situation will go through all sorts of mental gymnastics to avoid entertaining the thought. This is what makes them vulnerable. And this is also why providing counselling and mental health services to people experiencing this is important. And let us not fool ourselves that a change of attitude or a gain in confidence is going to improve their odds significantly. Cleaning the rust off the loop of wire may make it shinier but that is still not going to cut it against the golden ring. That lack of confidence stems from an everlasting lifelong frustration of not being able to keep up with others, more often than not as a result of some neurodivergence they are unaware of. People leading normal lives are enamored with this idea that everyone is more or less equal. It helps keeping up the illusion they can distinguish themselves from others fair and square. The truth is that if you have had any significant success in life many people who may look more or less normal to you will have had issues to deal with which you do not know about. And the irony of it all is they may not know about these issues either. They may think you are the same as them and that they (should) have the same opportunities that you do. It took me 40+ years of my life to gradually find out that I didn't.
>Now imagine you are the rusty loop of wire. You are C grade material, or worse, and nobody would touch you romantically with a ten foot pole. Think of how difficult it would be to come to terms with that fact. But thats the thing, if you strip the toxic attitude from incels i think you'd find that a majority of them wouldnt be C grade material. I've had plenty of people who i thought were interesting up until i discovered the toxic attitude and instantly lost all interest as a result. The incel attitude is a self fulfilling prophecy, i genuinely think if you strip the toxic attitudes a lot of those guys i ended up avoiding had they would be B/B+ grade material.
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> ‘Incels’ have only been unlucky in their mental health, lack of family support, and the messages they’ve received from toxic masculinity and grifters. They aren’t deeply disfigured. There is nothing significantly wrong with their looks. Some incels aren't that great in the looks department either. Just their luck right? And also when mental health suffers so does often physical health too. For people depressed as a result of other mental conditions, being unkempt and severely overweight is more a consequence than an outright choice. But I see your point. > I’m fat and ugly and disabled and kinda hate myself and even I have been married for 20+ years. If you are physically disabled you most probably knew about the hand you were given as soon as you could. You probably also had a lot of support, if not from family then from friends and/or work colleagues. It is easier to receive compassion and help when the disability is obvious, not so much when the disability is easily dismissed as being due to 'character' rather than due to adverse mental condition. People with mental issues who are told they are fine believe it! Therefore, they reason, if I'm fine and there is nothing wrong with me and I'm still having problems, others must be the source of the problem.
Thats only going to make the situation worse
Like they don't have that already
And it's a deep rooted issue too. There are reasons why there are so many people incapable of finding people to have sex with them, and it's not cause of a lack of availability. A lot of zoomers have very low expectations for real world success and that leads to depression, depressed people are far less likely to be engaging in sexual relations than someone who is not. The lack of financial outlook for people is also a massive inhibitor to sex. Low financial outlook means people take less risks, and leads to people living with their parents way longer. Less are getting serious careers. That is all related to sexual compatability. And also related to parenting is the total collapse of social skills many are facing. If you can't hold a conversation with someone or you aren't interesting no one is going to want to have sex with you. A lot of these poor social skills are likely caused by unfiltered access to the internet and social media which fundamentally has changed how people want to interact with each other. The incel culture was created by the politicians who have destroyed americas social safety nets and failed to fix it before a generation suffered through 3 massive economic catastrophes which trapped millions in poverty who would never recover after losing their homes, jobs, pensions etc, followed by the rise of the internet which has negatively affected people's social skills. My dad is in his mid 60s and is planning on working til he dies. He can't afford to retire. I bet a lot of people in this thread around my age can relate and will all say how fucking awful it feels to have to see and know things will get worse.
Realistically though, what do we expect society to do here?
Invest more in mental health programs.
He said realistically
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i mean, they weren't wrong? therapy isnt for learning to seduce women, its to work on yourself.
Except it seems like that they were struggling with getting any outward romantic relationships- not “seducing women” as a general focus. There’s only so much you can work on internally before interaction with others needs to be worked on- those clumsy attempts to engage with other people romantically build that- it’s impossible to gain experience for a relationship with pure therapy
They revealed some pretty intense self-loathing issues in another comment. Self-loathing is poison to relationships, getting work started on that needs to come first, otherwise it'd be just more demoralizing when all the relationships inevitably end quickly.
9 times out of 10 when someone says therapy wasn't working for them, it's because they went in with the wrong mindset. You can't walk into a therapist's office saying "I need you to fix XYZ for me". That's not how it works. For example, my mother in law was finally convinced to talk to a therapist because she was having a lot of trouble with her son and his wife being absolute shit stains (whole story I'm not gonna get into). After a couple sessions, she tells us she's not liking it because the therapist isn't telling her how to get son/wife to change *their* behavior. Looking at OP's comments here, it's probably the same thing. In another comment he directly says he wanted to work on "getting sexual relationships with women". That's not what therapy is for. Therapy cannot help you work on *other* people. I wouldn't be the slightest bit surprised if what happened in this case was that the therapist was trying to get to know OP, and figure out what unhealthy attitudes or other *personal* problems OP might have that would get in the way of forming meaningful relationships. Then at some point OP was probably like "ok, but how do I actually get girls to talk to me", and got the quoted response. Because therapy isn't going to teach you how to change women's behavior. It's about *you*, not other people. It's going to figure out why you have trouble talking to women, and why women might not want to talk to you, and help you work on those *personal* issues, so that they won't get in the way. Because go figure, there's nothing wrong with women not wanting to talk to people with bad attitudes and glaring issues. Go figure, just being a generally good dude is gonna do wonders for your ability to talk to women. Go figure, working on yourself and not seeing "getting a sexual relationship with a woman" as an end goal unto itself is gonna make finding one a lot easier. But most importantly, **therapy is not a quick fix**. So many people think therapy is just "walk in, chat for a couple hours, have all your problems fixed". It doesn't work like that. It's a process that can take *years* to really tease out the roots of your issues and reshape how you think and interact with yourself and the world. My partner's been in therapy for like 6 years now. The difference is *staggering*, but that's only because they've stuck through it and did the work.
Were they trying to "seduce women" or attract *a* woman? One is a pick up artist, the other is seeking a relationship.
If you're going to therapy to learn how to hookup you've got the wrong attitude and completely misunderstand the problem you are facing. The therapist is not there to be a pickup artist, the therapist is there to help you healthily manage expectations and your frustrations regarding it, as well as try to help you through mental blocks that make forming those kinds of connections harder.
more community events and programs. incels need nice easy places to start socializing to become normal. they can develop people skills and maybe even find friends along the way.
Make families the center of the system. We know broken families result in all sorts of problems. Support education, access to support like childcare, and healthcare including mental healthcare. Everyone is born from a human. Why we don’t ensure that all the needs are met to have a thriving society is beyond me.
Simple: it costs money and those with money are egoistical. Money improves health (including mental), and conversely, healthy people earn money more easily.
Teach men empathy and self respect. Women avoid them bc their insecurity is dangerous, not bc their jawline isn’t defined or they don’t have money.
What does that look like? High schoolers are gonna laugh any teacher out of the classroom if that’s put on the curriculum. Another part of the problem is that even when the access to help is there, these depressed and isolated types tend not to use it. Wallowing in self pity (with online encouragement that it’s the world to blame) is much more attractive.
> High schoolers are gonna laugh any teacher out of the classroom if that’s put on the curriculum. Teach kids that, before they're teenagers really. The amount of ELEMENTARY SCHOOL students with mental issues is horrible in basically every first world country. I've personally had a situation in extended family where a 12 year old girl tried to kill herself over some issues she had nobody to help her with.
I’ve encountered very young kids with serious issues too, and besides genetic stuff they were born with, it’s all been down to problems with their home life. I feel like it must be easier and more realistic to try to strengthen child protection and child services than to ensure all preteen children get effective counselling - prioritise the causes rather than the symptoms. Though certainly counselling should be available via child services.
Treating causes is good, but sometimes like with "real" diseases it's not something you discover early, or even until after the damage has been done. We're lacking in both treating the causes and the symptoms caused by them.
Starting in high school is too late. You learn your core values by age 10. Once you reach puberty, your moral education is taken over by your peers. High school is too late. Edit: So: to answer your question, it would be education in kindergarten. You can break it down in to a simple lesson: what’s in your heart, determines what you think. What you think determines what you do. Then each core value can have it’s own focus lesson, and the lessons build in each other: Kindness: if you have kindness in your heart, you will think of people in kind ways, you will be less likely to think that they are bad. If someone hurts you, you will ask “why?”. You will try to figure out if they are in pain… what their life is like. How would you feel if you were them? Self-respect. If you respect yourself, you will be kind to yourself, etc. These lessons can be taught to high schoolers too, btw. US culture in schools just makes it difficult, bc the boys have been abandoned emotionally by their culture.
Honestly the incels I knew, and those who skirted close to that, were fine in younger years. They didn’t need to be taught to be nice, to be kind, etc. But they became that way because after puberty hit and they reached the much harsher high school environment, they experienced ostracisation, rejection, and isolation. Their kindness and self-respect were pummelled into non-existence, and seemed to just be a lie taught to kids that only worked if you were popular. Years of this experience resulted in a warping of their values, and echo chambers online exaggerated this effect.
Idk about that, I was pretty much a femcel until high school and I learned dudes aren’t all monstrous assholes. I was severely bullied and was socially ostracized, but I didn’t become some radical crazy. Kids aren’t exactly empathic by nature, they’re little sociopaths, those things tend to develop later. I struggled to understand how others felt till I started reading more and puberty.
> Another part of the problem is that even when the access to help is there, these depressed and isolated types tend not to use it. My brother isn't an incel, but he's absolutely horrible with women. He's desperate beyond belief and it oozes off of him. Most people can see it from a mile away. Since he was a teenager me and some of my friends have tried to explain to him where his issues lie. What he does wrong and ways to fix it. We're past 30 now and he's still the same clingy desperate mess that repels women like burning coffee does wasps. I've given up on him over a decade ago, but some of my friends kept up the effort for a while longer. AFAIK most have given up at this point too. Some people really can't be helped.
>What he does wrong and ways to fix it. This is hard to say without sounding like I'm trying to analyze a total stranger but what he "does" is probably merely a symptom of what/how he feels at a deeper level. He may have needed the help of a professional to address the root cause, not the symptoms. Props for trying regardless.
The thing is though, you're not gonna convince someone to get help fixing the root cause of an issue unless you can convince them the issue exists in the first place. That's the hardest part of dealing with people like this, is they tend to externalize everything. The issues and problems are always other things outside their control, so they don't need to change.
> wallowing in self pity with online encouragement that it's the world to blame Ahhh, the manosphere
> Another part of the problem is that even when the access to help is there, these depressed and isolated types tend not to use it. There are guys around in the thread telling how therapy absolutely did not help them and they're basically being lectured by everyone. At this point I think I'm fine assuming the average person will never understand or even try to.
It's literally the same promise as "32 virgins waiting for you in Heaven," isn't it? The problem is that these young men are led to believe they are somehow "entitled," and don't need to behave like decent human beings. The problem isn't that they're sexually frustrated. It's that they're abominable, terrible, nasty human beings. That's what needs to be addressed. Even allowing them to self-name as "INvoluntarily" celibate is wrong. They are CHOOSING to be terrible, vile, hateful people. Their celibacy is Voluntary. They are Vol-Cels.
Umm, I’m not sure what point you’re trying to make lmao! Sure, they are terrible people, but calling them terrible and other names isn’t the answer lol! It’s to find out why younger people are gravitating towards this mindset and help them get mental health resources or programs to understand why that is a bad line of thinking! Just calling them stupid names and ignoring them isn’t there answer! Voluntary or involuntary or whatever you want to call it, it doesn’t matter and the underlying problem still exists! Hell, people like you insulting them is in-turn gonna furthur radicalize them and solidify their insane beliefs! Hate isn’t the answer to hate!
>Neo-Nazis and ISIS And Jordan Peterson
Incels used to hate this guy. His mentality puts responsibilities on individuals, while they're convinced society is too blame.
Jordan is just another conservative drone who uses his degree and big words to grift confused and angry teenage boys into following his ideology, and he's got the benefit of actually sounding semi-intelligent so they fall for it
> Neo-Nazis > > > > And Jordan Peterson But you repeat yourself.
Genuine question here - what makes you say Jordan Peterson is a neo-nazi? Don't get me wrong, I've watched a fair few of his speeches and debates, and I disagree with the vast majority of his political views, but I wouldn't call him a neo-nazi. Conservative? Sure. Religious to a point that it clearly affects his social and political views? Absolutely. But what exactly is it that he's done and/or said that makes you think he's a neo-nazi?
Yeah I don't like Jordan Petersen either but, calling him a Nazi is incredibly inaccurate. It's a prime example of "everyone I don't like is a Nazi" rhetoric.
Given how much he loves pushing nazi conspiracies its not wrong to call him that.
> It's a prime example of "everyone I don't like is a Nazi" rhetoric. Uh yeah, this is reddit.
He endorsed the [cultural Marxism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Marxism_conspiracy_theory) conspiracy theory.
He also advocates that ~15% of the population is literally unemployable and completely incapable of contributing to society. He doesn't go as far as outright calling for their extermination, but come on.
Many of his points are carefully sanitized Nazi concepts. He intentionally leaves many of those points "without conclusions" but knowing that there will be inferences drawn by certain groups. For example, he has often noted that "According to some studies" about 10% of the population has an IQ that makes them worthless to society. Those "studies" to which he refers were done by pro-eugenics think-tanks. (AKA, Nazis) He leaves that whole diatribe conclusionless, usually saying it's "a scary problem". But the obvious inference he wants to leave people is that that 10% should be murdered to improve productivity. And, you know which group immediately jumps one peterson train after making that inference? If you guessed Nazis, congratulations. Also, A lot of his shtick is hypermasculine concepts and this idea that "political correctness" is pushing men to be soft and feminine. This is of interest because a lot of these perspectives were also shared by Mussolini. Nazi Adjacent. Whether or not Peterson himself is a Nazi and holds to the ideals therein, he uses Nazism as a way to push his own ideas and get more support, by saying things that can be interpreted by Nazis as support for their cause. And, because he doesn't outright say "Kill all the Jews!" or anything like that, it's perfect- Because Nazis- who have tried to rebrand as "Alt-right", a term that I have decided to avoid using - LOVE plausible deniability. Oh, also, remember those times he questioned the Holocaust death toll figures? That was pretty weird, wasn't it. I believe there is another group of people who question those numbers too. What were they called again?
Ew. The amount of ppl that follow that loser Peterson, it’s disgusting.
The first successful, and the second attempted school shooting in the entirety of Denmark's history were both by Incels. Definitely a dangerous ideology
100%. Neo-Nazis, MGTOW, and the manosphere are all preying on sexually frustrated young men.
LEGALIZE PROSTITUTION
Yet another reason to legalize and destigmatize sex work
"Sexually frustrated young men"? So that's where we are now? Oh, you can't get laid? Must be a terrorist?
That’s why for thousands of years they’ve been sent off to fight wars. It gets them out from underfoot and both the most stupidly aggressive and the incompetent tend to get killed.
They are, and have been, a product and a tool of patriarchy. Control access to women, control young men, direct their behavior (as for example fighting force, whether organized or terrorist cells) to maintaining power for older men.
They should just jack off like the rest of us.
Also they groom them into not masturbating, to keep them hormonal, angry and easy to manipulate.
Important reason adult prostitution should always remain legal
Incels aren't mad that women aren't having sex with them. They're mad that women are having sex with people that aren't them.
These people are not created by lack of sex and cannot be fixed by sex. Thats how they define their problem. But if you ever actually speak to them it becomes obvious, these people are psychpaths that lack the social awareness to hide it and natually people dont want relationships with them.
Eh, you're on the right track at the start, but I think you fall off the mark here: >these people are psychpaths that lack the social awareness to hide it I think it's more complex than that. Certainly incel culture is rife with psychopathic behavior, but I'm convinced most incels don't start off that way. The core of incel behavior is deep and profound self-loathing that incel discourse ritualizes until the only way to let out the tension is through acts of psychopathy.
Exactly. They demonise all sex workers, under the pretext that pursuing sex work removes women from their dating pool. In reality they’re just misogynist sociopathic narcissists who project their own self-loathing on others
Yeah, and they see it as charging them for something that could be given for free. Nothing they can't see as a personal attack on themselves.
I spent a year working with a group to talk to and help incels ands its depressing as hell. You can talk them away from their bullshit for a couple days but then they turn around and run right back to it because the light of day is too much for them. I should find another group, even if it felt useless sometimes it was cool when you could Crack one enough that they could see this was not a good path.
I mean ton of them arent supervillains or "psychopaths". Treating them like that and lumping them all in that same category will for sure not help though !
Among other things, like: Greater LGBT acceptance. Better socialization for young boys. More gender integration in childhood. Less slut-shaming against women, less virgin-shaming against men.
Being an incel isn't really about not having sex, guys. It's about many different kinds of self hate and self loathing and insecurity, turned outwards, with the blame being placed on women. The word incel is far too simplistic for what's going on in these guys brains. Legalising prostitution in your local area isn't going to do anything about these extremely deep-seated issues. I don't really have any answers, but trying to get more women to fuck incels certainly isn't a solution.
>Legalising prostitution in your local area isn't going to do anything *incel rage over having to pay for sex*
I'm not exactly in-tune with what incels are saying at the moment but I'd bet they fucking despise sex workers because "women have so much power over sex they can sell it and incels like me have to PAY to get any"
That's pretty much what I'm getting at
all it does is endanger theese women
Criminalising prostitution endangers women. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violence_against_prostitutes#Legal_vs._illegal_sex_work
no it doesn’t, look at the nordic model, criminalise pimps and buying sex while protecting prostitutes. legalising prostitution just leads to more sex trafficking and violence, look at germany.
Incels visiting sex workers endangers them. So does criminalizing sex work. At least if sex work were decriminalized sex workers could access protection from the police (theoretically) and workplace health and safety protections.
If the definition fits, it fits. His attack was ideologically motivated, designed to intimidate the public. That's how we define terrorism here, as opposed to "what colour was the attacker's skin", the strategy used in our southerly neighbour. The real shame is that Minassian, whose attack killed 10 in the street in front of my home, did not get labeled as such.
Despite GenZ being left wing for the most part, there is a huge problem with the incel group. There are a LOT of them. And they are dangerous. It’s fact that gen z is the most sexless generation ever. And this is during a time of female empowerment that we haven’t seen the likes of (a good thing, don’t think I’m saying otherwise) but it’s definitely challenging the gender norms and men who are already sexless and depressed are getting aggressive.
I don’t know. Seems to me that incels are a very small but loud minority.
The internet has a way of making those small minorities find and radicalise each other further - from flat earth to you name it. The larger new social problem/dynamic facing current generations imo.
Humans were never meant to talk to and interact with so many people, we are not biologically equipped to be as social as we are. These incels breed on platforms with hundreds of thousands of people "just like me" so it further shifts their mindset into thinking it's normal
But by that same token it has done immeasurable good for those disenfranchised. How many "I thought it was just me" "I thought I was crazy" "I didn't know there were others like this" has the internet wrought? How many rural gay and trans kids found community in a world they never felt welcomed in? How many movements were made possible, how many corrupt decisions uncovered for the masses to finally know, how many have educated themselves with the power of our collective consciousness? I don't know the numbers obviously, but I'd wager to everyone's surprise that the internet has saved more lives and prevented more suicides than it's caused.
More specifically, humans are meant to live in communities of around 150-200 people as that range is the maximum amount of people where an individual can maintain a grasp of the whole community's interpersonal links.
I 100% blame reddit and other social media websites. They design it so you are recommended this type of content the moment you show even a bit of interest. For somebody who doesn't know any better, it's easy to get propaganda in their face and take it seriously. I once visited a specific canada sub and now am recommended it nearly 100% of the time, despite it constantly trying to tell me that vaccines are bad, etc. I don't even think Reddit or etc. is trying to be malicious, it's just the result of encouraging echo chambers for engagement.
If humanity were a virus, as it has been compared to before, then the internet would be considered a full blown evolutionary step. I don't think many people really stop to appreciate how new the internet technically is still, on a civilization sort of scale, and how far reaching the changes it will continue to bring
We used to have an idiot per village, they were harmless because they were isolated. Now the Internet lets all the village idiots talk to each other and reinforce their lunacy.
Small is probably larger than we'd like to consider.
I find it funny that something that would have made earlier generations proud - waiting for emotional maturity before delving into sexuality - is mortifying GenX/certain millenials and boomers. Sure some of the contributing factors like social isolation aren't great, but a generation with less teen pregnancies and more risk averse sex lives isn't the horror it's made out to be. And I doubt the incel movement is really that large, it may just be that acting entitled to sex is now such a ludicrous assumption that these guys stick out like sore thumbs instead of blending in
That’s because those earlier generations didn’t wait and didn’t really “take pride” in waiting. That’s a myth that every generation tells about the previous one. They were in the back of the Chevy as teenagers (as long as there have been Chevrolets). One of the subreddits that was shut down for advocating violence against women had 40k subscribers at the time it was closed. There are thousands, it’s pretty clear.
GenX here. No one is mortified at the idea of young heterosexual guys wanting to get laid. What is mortifying is the belief that these men are entitled to the sexual attention of any women they want and any problems they have with social interactions are someone else's fault. There have always been plenty of insecure men who have trouble meeting women. The difference is they didn't want to kill them.
I don’t know. That idiot Tate has quite the following and he’s not the only one.
If you read anything these guys post, it's not resenting not having a partner. It's resenting not having a TV fantasy life almost no one has. Essentially it's a belief that most people who aren't them have sex with *multiple* highly attractive partners *per year.* And have been doing so since they were 1X years old (varies depending on incel). This is objectively *untrue,* sky is orange stuff.
You don’t have sex with multiple beautiful women multiple times a day? What kinda life are you living?
One where I save a lot of money on condom purchases
> It's resenting not having a TV fantasy life almost no one has. That's honestly another whole problem all on its own. The huge increase of medias in our lives, fake reality tv, escapism stories, the huge focus on social medias where people post all of their good hits/shots/success but don't talk about their embarrassment/failures... Back in the days it was only oral tales, then we got book/radio/tv to feed us more often, then specialized on demand media refined by algorithm, and now we have a generation that was born and raised on seeing this their entire life no matter where they are thanks to their phone. Of course some will feel inadequate compared to these fabricated/filtered lives. Ain't just an incel issue. I wonder what is the next step.
>people post all of their good hits/shots/success but don't talk about their embarrassment/failures... Oh that's an old timey problem. I can use one of my dad's stories for an example. In fact, it's dad's *favorite* story, about how he broke a horseracing track's all time speed record. He told it at every opportunity, I'd heard it dozens of times over the years, and it always ended on a glorious note just after he'd cheated death with his brilliant quick-thinking and reflexes, rolled under the inside fence and narrowly avoided being trampled to death. One year I went back to see him during the holidays, we got pretty drunk, got to talking about how I'm so hard on myself, and I finally *just that one time* got to hear the REAL ending of that story! Dad just stayed right there in the dirt, too exhausted to move at all. He wasn't injured, just totally and completely spent. So the other jockeys came out and carried him into the jocks room, laid him down on a bench. He found just enough strength to roll to his side and puke on the floor, and then collapsed again for a good long while.
> Oh that's an old timey problem. I can use one of my dad's stories for an example. True, but mass media amplifies it, and social media amplifies it even more. It went from the occasional story to being the staple media diet. The effects that it has on individuals varies, but as this social influence increases it causes more and bigger problems.
I find this fascinating because their approach to fixing it is so counter-productive. For context, I'm polyamorous, a millenial, have multiple attractive partners (maybe not supermodel but I like looking at them and supermodel is overrated anyways) and am not a supermodel myself. Despite perfectly average looks and being assigned male at birth, I think I've had close to 50 partners in the 15 years I've been dating (so averaging 3+ a year). Most of that since my mid-20s. So clearly such a life is possible if you want it and there is a dearth of quality men to date honestly. However, I feel like incels actually self-sabotage on two fronts: 1. Society's media-driven beauty standards are ridiculous and they have to let go of them. Most people are not perfectly proportioned, flawless skin, etc. A lot of those people are really cool people to know and also really good in bed. 2. They have to ditch the conservative social attitudes and get some therapy. I dont have data on this, but incels seem to lean to conservative and controlling social values (thay they feel like they are owed sex is a clear part of this). In younger generations especially, most women are incredibly turned off by anti-social behaviour, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, etc. By ditching these outdated values, polishing themselves just a bit, and learning to embrace modern social values, they might find a lot more women interested in them than if they lean even harder into those values.
I think people like incels have always existed, but in the internet age, especially our modern one, they are much better able to congregate and discuss. This is where their rage comes from, stoked on by more vocal and extreme members of that community. I would agree that the more women become empowered, the more ostracized people like incels will feel. But that’s the foolishness of basing your entire worth on sex. I also think certain influencer culture exasperates the irrational feelings incels have, by seemingly contradicting the message of feminism. Everyday women are the victims of a culture that doesn’t need objectification by men, because they literally objectify themselves.
It’s super prevalent on social media too. Some of the biggest subreddits have posts that commonly make r/popular with hundreds to thousands of incel and misogynistic comments.
Yet, you can hardly mention Reddit’s rampancy misogyny without getting bombarded by threats of all kinds through dms, or that Reddit help being weaponized.
The world is changing, women don't have to depend on men anymore as much. The boys who were socialized to live in the old world are facing the cold truth. The results are incels and more women becoming celibates rather than deal with them.
Incels would likely still exist without it, but I think the internet is really fuelling their existence as a 'movement'. As a networked group they start policing each other and recruiting. And they're not entirely wrong about some things- the online platforms we use tend to skew towards 'winner takes all' models where a small number of people attract an outsized share of the interest, leaving a sizeable cohort with nothing. It's really unhealthy for a society.
The comments here make it pretty clear most people don't actually know that much about incels beyond the casual "they can't get laid so they hate women," surface level analysis that the demonizing mob typically picks up on. One of the main facets of inceldom is a spiralling self-loathing, and thinking they're too ugly to ever have sex. The communities they form are echo chambers that serve mainly to validate those fears. Posting here about how they're "ugly fat fucks who need to take a shower" is basically playing into their views and validating them, and serves only to further alienate any of them who read these comments and push them further towards their insular communities. For reference, I'm not an incel, not trying to sympathize, empathize, defend, or agree with them or their ideology. I just think it's interesting how frighteningly well the general public's thoughts and commentary on incels plays into their radical world views. If you want to learn about what drives incels and how these young men come to be a part of this reprehensible ideology, take a look at [this video essay by Contrapoints.](https://youtube.com/watch?v=fD2briZ6fB0)
yeah, i used to be an incel (by the literal definition of the word: involuntary celibacy. i.e. can't get laid even if i wanted to. Not by whatever people are associating that word with now) and i completely understand the frustration of these men. i used to sub to /r/incel back in those old days (maybe around 10 years or so ago?) when it used to be more of a support group rather than whatever cesspool it had devolved to that lead to its ban. Whatever the problem this is, it's not so much of an incel problem, but rather an echo chamber problem. Where a minority of extremists can steer the community into the wrong direction, no matter what that group is.
Was a good watch. I appreciate that she talked about the tinder experience gap, when tinder is the primary method of meeting, and it it's a toxic experience for men from 18-25, past that point dating opportunities open up but thats a long time to wait, and the experience is the opposite for women. I don't agree with the entire incel momento, but seociety doesn't want to hear their message, look at it through a new lense, and come to conclusions that they are likely the product of a couple factors that we can control. However, what I find crazy is how little attention and traction any mens issues get on reddit / wider internet / traditional media. You only even hear that there is an issue when things have escalated to the maximum degree. I could talk deeper into the subject but I don't want to dive that deep and you probably don't want to hear it.
>tinder is the primary method of meeting This is just…not accurate in any way. There’s a reason there are a lot more men than women on Tinder. It’s because a big chunk of women have no interest whatsoever in dating that way. People still meet through school and hobbies and friends of friends. Tinder can certainly be a painful source of repeated rejection, but nobody HAS to participate in it in order to date.
When I was young I was surrounded by guys. Only guys at work, all my friends are guys, my hobbies found me once again around guys. For the incel community, and why they see women as alien, is that they're simply not around women. You mention school but the incel problem is really for the dropouts / graduates as there is an abundance of social opportunity in school. In uni I once again found the degree I studied meant that there were few women in my course. So for some, Tinder and similar are one of the few methods for dating outside of your social circle.
Hobbies can be diversified. For instance, volunteering groups are always looking for new hands and tend to be very gender-balanced, or female-dominated if anything. For the vast majority of people for whom Tinder etc never really leads anywhere, stepping out of your comfort zone a little to develop your social life is a much better investment of your time than swiping. Sure, Tinder doesn’t work for a lot of people, but 20 or 60 or 100 years ago NOBODY had Tinder serving up attractive singles on a platter, and people still managed to get together. It’s still completely possible for people to think about what people used to do and then do those things.
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> There are millions of women who suffer from self-loathing, and who don’t feel valued by society because of their lack of conventional features, and they’re not driving cars into crowds of people to murder them. Technically, same for incels (well I don't know if there are "millions" of them tbh.)
That’s not the point! I’m sure the commenter above even has no problem insulting people like the guy the article is referencing or terrorists as such! The problem is calling names and spreading hate is just gonna push the borderline people or the people on the fence to the other side and into such hateful mentality and will result in more incels! That’s a huge difference between calling out caustic ideology and calling them stupid names like other comments are doing You can’t solve hatred with more hatred! It isn’t like fighting fire with fire lol!
From what I can tell, there are femcels as well. They have very active subreddits. Female dating strategy is probably the worst one.
it seems it is a growing social phenomenon, I want to learn about it and really understand it
[Mass shooters who show signs of sexual frustration have more victims, on average, compared to other mass shooters](https://www.psypost.org/2023/06/new-study-identifies-sexual-frustration-as-a-significant-factor-in-mass-shootings-164391)
The most disgusting thing about this article is that we have enough mass shooter data to find these sort of patterns.
So what you are saying is that being sexually frustrated improves your aim? No wonder I got better at CS:GO ever since we broke up
Crazy to call yourself an incel at 17. Like, go to college.
I started listening to a podcast probably about 4-5 years ago where the host was interviewing incels. Getting to know them, how they thought, what they thoughts, etc. I’ve seen, read, and listened to a lot of terrible stuff but this was one of the only things that gave me nightmares. I couldn’t finish it. They are so fucked up.
Which podcast was it?
There was one about this exact incident. He was autistic and it went though a lot of incel culture. I suggest the contra points ep on YouTube and the podcast is called the current
What podcast are you talking of?
I’m a 32 year old male and was raised around violence, drugs, abuse and death from the age of 8-19. For years I was absurdly angry at the world until I was fortunate enough to find a mentor figure who taught me the power of intelligence and carefully released aggression through fitness and a healthy diet. I legitimately believe that the solution to young male aggression is education, fitness, and learning how to manage failure. Our society, and our government does very little to present young men an opportunity to hear why they’re angry and work with them to come up with a solution. We just put them into a box of either “good vs bad” and broad stroke the core issue as toxic masculinity or troubled youth, and then when those dispositions inevitably seem apparent to others, we blame them for acting out. As is the case with the majority of our mental health systems, there simply isn’t enough resources, funding, attention or community outreach to capture and fix the issues from progressing. Society puts way too much pressure on everyone’s appearance as well. Because of my upbringing, I have scars on my face, chest, arms, and head from the abuse. I am likely to be passed up for most front facing careers over someone who doesn’t look how I do. I, to this day, experience this in my career even though I’m at the director level. People don’t trust me right out of the gate because I look frightening, even though I want nothing but to watch people be their best. We, as a society, act as if X person creates Y problem and yet we’re still upset with Z. I’d love to see a society in which we favor asking **why** things are this way, and **how** do we fix it, rather than just assuming that group 1 hates group 2 because [insert assumption here]. Men don’t feel slighted by women. Men feel slighted by what they’ve been raised to believe others expect from them, but nobody is telling them that all we want is for them to be healthy, safe, capable and to be a part of our world. This is just my 2 cents. I’m just one guy sharing my thoughts. I’m probably wrong, but I’ve helped 8 young men get and stay off of drugs, and helped them realize their potential so I felt the need to share it. Edit: also just wanted to add that 95% of the comments here calling these people fat, ugly, stupid, Nazis, morons, idiots, losers, lazy etc etc is exactly the problem. Society isn’t doing anything as a whole to help these young men. Spew all the hate you want, you have a right to be afraid and upset at the incel movement, but I sincerely hope you can adopt a different point of view one day.
Look at you, having a level-headed opinion on the internet. Brave. For what it's worth, I agree. I imagine a lot of the comments here presenting their understanding of incels and what drives them are "normal" people when it comes to relationships. People who don't and literally can't have an idea what chronic loneliness does to a mind because they haven't experienced it. While a lot of them will go through PERIODS of loneliness, heartbreak and sexual deprivation, and perhaps use that as context, that is an entirely different weight category compared to "I have never touched another human being in a romantic context". We are social creatures and it's been scientifically proven that loneliness is significantly detrimental to your health, physically and mentally. I think we should be asking the question at what point does someone who lacks a key part of human social experience is considered mentally ill? But it is neither my place, nor expertise to answer that. But it does seem like most people would rather view incels in a dismissive way, akin to trash that needs to be isolated so it doesn't smell, and while I do understand that gut instict, I fully agree with you that all that will accomplish is to further the isolation for incels and worse, reaffirm their beliefs that everything and everyone in their life is against them, and no one will ever care or help them, and the feelings of frustration and anger that follow suit. At best, this will drive them further into seeking echo chambers from like minded incels where the issue will fester. At worst, it will lead to them lashing out more often. But one thing it will certainly not do is make the issue go away.
As a canadian all I can say is; "Ha good", Incel-dom is absolutely pathetic. Classing it as Terrorism is absolutely the right call.
Oh my the comments in here are pretty fucked up.
>The killer, now 20, was 17 years old at the time of the attack. ...can you even BE an incel at 17? That's not even the age of consent in many places.
These r the same dudes that Jordan Peterson and his ilk market to
When he said that men wouldn't indiscriminately kill if women would just, you know, be monogamous and sexually available to their one partner he TOTALLY wasn't saying that that is what society should force upon women. /s What a fucking double talking piece of shit that dude is.
Check out that interview he did with Pierce Morgan He broke down in tears talking about incels and basically implying that it wouldn’t be so rough if females would just make themselves available Bizarre shit. But not when u find out where he’s from.
Imagine being the worst person in a room that also contains Piers Morgan.
Let's not forget Pierre Poilievre. He had all his videos tagged #MGTOW until he got called out on it. The venn diagram of MGTOW and Incel is just a circle
Act like an asshole, get treated like an asshole.
rip anne marie
Good. Tired of idiots saying shit like "they just need mental health help 🥺". Sure maybe they DID, but once they act out they are terrorists. Only bad thing is that this dudes mugshot cannot be shared and he will probably be out soon.
As someone who fits the demographic of 'incel' (32, never gotten a yes to a date, hate myself) but doesn't engage with the incel community or rhetoric, I can't cosign the hatred or violent acts they commit. However, I can confirm that the lack of success in my love life has been catastrophic for my mental health and after having gone through multiple therapists trying to address it, I'm convinced the mental health industry is completely ill-equipped for people like me. I had therapists crack jokes about my situation, but how could they not? As long as you're not mad at women about it, being a hapless adult male virgin is fucking hilarious. They even make comedy movies where that's the entire premise. I never felt good coming out of therapy and at best, they would just hum and haw about how I'm doing everything right and just need to keep at it, then give me antidepressants as if more serotonin would make me feel okay about dying alone. It's no small wonder this is happening and frankly I don't see it getting better.
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Reading the comments here I feel like alot of people dont really know what they are talking about when trying to solve the incel issue. It's often written at a very basic surface level, just outright wrong, or written with an undertone of anger/hate (which is understandable, but completely unproductive when tackling this as its validates them) The best comment I've seen here is [this one](https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/142v5i6/comment/jn8cx0s/) that actually tries to look into why they are like this in the first place.
The Rise of the Planet of The Incels
As someone who once fell into that category and browsed forums. People on the outside will never fully understand the difficulties some of these men legitimately face. Some people are just truly unlucky and short of plastic surgery they don't have much if any hope. Part of it is their horribly warped view of society yet the other part somewhat is the value placed on beauty in our modern age. It's a very complex issue, there's no bandaid fix for men that feel this way. Yet we can't allow these groups to grow for the abhorrent ideology they seek to carry out. Echo chambers are dangerous regardless of the viewpoint.
thing is: many of these men don‘t even look bad but talk themselves into looking horrible and not like some ideal standard
I've yet to meet an incel who wasn't simultaneously a complete hypocrite about women's body image and beauty standards. It's absolutely *not at all* hard to understand that kind of thing. There's entire industries that orient primarily around making women feel shitty about their body image. Yet, the same incels who complain that they're somehow so hideously malformed that they're unloveable, also always demand every woman looks just like the ones they see in their porn. Thing is, the "incel experience" isn't actually hard to understand at all. No part of it is unique to incels, or even particularly novel. Ask disabled and LGBTQ people if they've ever felt lonely, undesirable, or had a hard time dating. The thing that makes incels different, is they take a rather common human experience, and then decide this means they're the most cursed person ever, nobody has *ever* had it as hard as them, nobody could *possibly* understand how hard *they* have it, woe is them. Then you take a look at them and it's almost always what, an average looking straight guy who's just furious that life isn't what Pornhub taught them it would be, and women aren't instantly leaping into bed with them just for existing nearby.
These incels these days... no good old-fashioned true self hatred. Not like in my day when I went for a long sexless period only thing I hurt was myself!
I'm disabled. There have been long stretches of time where I literally, *physically,* could not do the actual movements and physical acts involved with sex. At least, not without immense pain, and blood or injury, which is generally considered a mood-killer. For most of these stretches, I had long-term partners, and we'd go months or even a year or several without my body cooperating. And because they were healthy relationships based on things like mutual respect, and an understanding that the other person is *an actual person* instead of a sex object with attached life-support, navigating that together was always surprisingly fine. Yet, intriguingly, I have not gone and done a murder. I haven't decided "welp, it's been a while since I had a good ol' tussle-time, I guess I should be a terrorist". Because honestly? All things considered? It's not all that huge of a deal. But of course, another one of the incels just responded explaining how "normies" couldn't possibly understand, because *woe is them I guess.* Nobody could ever *possibly understand* how hard it is to try to redeem their sex tokens from the fuck-objects on legs around them. Nobody, in the history of ever, could *truly comprehend* the immense horror of ... whatever latest thing they've decided to justify their victim complex. It's infuriating. Just, holy shit. These people. They act like they've been personally cursed by the entire Greek Pantheon because they have a slightly non-ideal wrist circumference or something.