The online incel community has taken a break from blaming women for their ongoing failures in life to issue a collective tantrum over Netflix’s new drama Adolescence, which dares—dares, mind you—to portray incel culture as the toxic, rage-filled echo chamber it so demonstrably is.
I dated an incel years ago for around 18 months. Dunno if anyone’s interested in that, but just a random anecdote I have
Why? How?
It was before anyone had even heard of incels. He hid his women hating side, and I thought I could help him with his issues (spoiler: I could not). His sexual dysfunction was 😳😳😳 so I’ve no doubt he was sexually abused as a child. After we broke up he showed more of his true self like hating women and he was really petty and vindictive eg spreading really private info about me to people. From what I hear now he’s drinking heavily.
Years later I read about incels online and was like “holy shit that’s him!” Explained a lot.
I’m sorry you had to deal with that, and glad it wasn’t a much worse experience.
On my side, I am an older guy now, I used to teach martial arts and volunteer coaching young men and then went on to be a mod of a big men’s subreddit for a spell, and the incel problem online is a lot worse than any of us realize. I think my peers at the time thought incels, redpill, MGTOW and all the other word-salad men’s groups online were a passing fad, a speedbumb on our path to the bright, shining future of better ideas and equality.
Holy shit were we all wrong. Humans are SO easy to exploit that I am legitimately concerned for our species’ entire future. We may not survive the internet broadly, and this is before even talking about how AI will accelerate the problem a thousand-fold.
I used to be very good at talking incels down. I had people send me follow-ups years later thanking me for saving their lives. It felt like I was doing good, but there was always more. So, so many more. I would focus on one young guy for weeks, talking and being there and listening and prying apart his world-views with gentle care, and often it would work, but that kid would be replaced by twenty more, each more obstinate and willfully ignorant than the last. They feed each other, they validate each other’s darkest feelings, and they spread because hate is contagious.
They think their “rising ranks” are some sign of truth or validity to their movement, but it’s just that simple trick that brains do, where they invent (or attach to) stories to explain their feelings. The more people feel insecure and scared, the more their brains will invent or latch onto stories to explain those feelings, and it’s created a cycle of reading/scrolling for explanations for their loneliness, connecting with dark stories about why they feel bad (“it’s the fault of THAT group!”) and then feeling worse, so digging deeper into that same narrative to guide their rumination. It’s so bad and so addictive that men and women alike are now having an impossible time breaking free from it and everyone feels horrible and nobody knows how to escape, so they invent even more stories to explain why they feel the way they do.
I don’t know the answer. I just keep telling people to get off the social internet as much as possible, every moment you’re scrolling/chatting for escape from despair is a moment you COULD be using to better yourself and your life in even the most modest ways.
I’m very moved by your post. Thanks so much for what you did not just for the incels themselves but for women who are effected by them. I wish I could guild it!
i could ‘fix’ him
Oh, the ‘I can fix him’ special. Been there, done that, good on you to leave, you are worth more than that is all I can say.
Thanks mate and right back at you
sound of bat hitting baseball
Is it actually worthwhile or just another attempt to spark more conflict between men and women?
Because honestly I can hardly see as anything more than a way to profit off demonizing men that I assume already feel abandoned and, correct me if Im wrong, are not getting much support either
May I please get a summary on their take somewhere?
Dude, how a useless piece of shit you have to be to not be able to even get a date with a woman. Dude, being ugly is not a complete excuse, ugly women have worse time in the dating scene.
Dude, how a useless piece of shit you have to be to not be able to even get a date with a man. Dude, being ugly is not a complete excuse, ugly men have worse time in dating scene.
Since you both disagree on who has it worse, I conclude that ugly non-binary people do better then both and date whomever they want.
Tomato potato… There exists ugly people.
Honestly, I would call Adolescence a very surface-level view of incel culture. It’s fairly accurate, but you’d need a much longer series to truly get the culture across. Contrapoints’ video on incels is a really good breakdown of the mindset.
Yeah this was my main problem with it was it was just very surface-level. Like I’m glad it’s being brought to the table for discussion for mainstream audiences, but it felt a bit glossed over like something I’d heard from an NPR story on video games; “did you know about this thing called incel culture? it’s all the rage with the youths.”
I don’t know what the solution is or how I want to see it conveyed, but I recall Polytechnique doing a better job at instilling horror in me from incel culture than Adolescence, albeit it was more subtle, and that was from 2009.
I think the part of the narrative, and the one-shot approach I think supports this, was to highlight how ignorant the people were to this thing that clearly has much more to it.
I’d watch Stephen Graham make tea, it was a well acted interesting show. But how they are finding enough to be angry at I dont even know, bar the obvious with the kid and the throwaway mention of algorithmic recommendations in the closing minutes of the show.
It’s not a culture. Do they have their own songs and their own food and dishes? Maybe a folk lore or art?
Anime and tendies?
Do they have their own songs
Yes. The subgenre is called epunk or incelcore depending on who you ask. Let me be real with you for a second, and please just hear me out: It is the only genuine counterculture in decades. I could explain in much greater detail how this is true but it’s not worth the effort since practically everyone has unshakeable preconceived notions which make engaging with this topic in good faith impossible. Either way, here’s a short list of songs.
- Hard Christ - Cry My Eyes Out
- Hard Christ - Miscarriage
- DethTech - how it feels to be a complete loser
- NEET - Please be patient I have autism
- NEET - Defect
- crustsox - Put Myself To Sleep
- GEZEBELLE GABURGABLY - Nothing Ever Feels Right
- GEZEBELLE GABURGABLY - What’s wrong with my love?
- Fried By Fluoride - Dead by 30
- Fried By Fluoride - why am i not enough?
- Negative XP - Life’s an RPG and I fucked up my build
- Negative XP - Mkultra Victim
- Dumb as Rocks - Low IQ
The idea that incel culture begins and ends at hating women is beyond reductive. It’s about acknowledging a sense of utter hopelessness and the feelings that come with it- despair, dejection, paranoia, hatred, etc. There is hardly any other context where raw emotions are laid so bare without it being sanitized for compatibility with the status quo. They know that it’s misdirected, but the emotions are extremely real. If you pay attention, the music and the culture are a lot more self aware than you probably think. Everyone feels these things to varying degrees and more people are feeling it more intensely with each passing day. You know what I’m talking about. It’s not just politics and economics. The social fabric of our reality is disintegrating. Inceldom is a culture of people who feel this disintegration to the most extreme, agonizing degree, and have found some small solice in each other.
I don’t know why I typed so much. Whatever. Don’t hang me.
Subculture if you will
“It’s a hit job,” said one Reddit user, who goes by the username DarkMageOfTruth99.
Oh geez I snorted so hard at the username I farted
I would have went with DarkMageOfTruth69, but maybe it was already taken
He’s such a gentleman he prefers to cuddle, hence the 99.
The world doesn’t guarantee you anything.
In the history of our species, only about 20-30% of males have managed to reproduce, so what’s with the sad face?
You’re not entitled to anything, so own your inceldom.
In a vacuum, your post implies we should stop giving birth to boys as often as girls on a pure ethical basis to minimize the amount of miserable lonely people. Like, abort 75% of all male babies or if abortion is too yucky for some of you use some kind of geneforge to make female births 5x as likely.
How on earth does that make sense? You’re just creating an extreme surplus of miserable lonely women.
Human beings have brains that were forged during hardships and ice-ages to make us inclined to form groups for survival. Those same drives make us desperate for a social identity, to the degree that we literally can die without social identity. (A fascinating field of study btw.)
This has made the internet the most dangerous tool we’ve ever created, because it has allowed people to deconstruct the very notion of group identity and exploit the drives in our own brains to connect with others. This is why we have so much absurd bullshit now, so many conspiracy theories, flat earthers, incels and redpill grifters, science-deniers and chemtrailophiles. People are finding their own, almost random group identities to connect with, groups that often have no real connection to reality, and just offer validation for people’s feelings.
Validation for feelings is the next most important thing for humans, because it reflects how our brains actually work. Most people are under the impression that the brain is the seat of intelligence, that brains are calculating machines that work out problems and come to logical conclusions. Even if you don’t think this, you have most likely at least become comfortable in trusting what you work out in your head.
But brains are not reasonable or rational, there was no such thing in the ancient world that shaped our brains. That world was just threats and signs of threats. If your ancestor had a brain that could accurately connect the sign of a threat to an actual threat, they would likely be prepared and survive. See a paw-print by the watering hole? Maybe there’s a predator around.
That same tool now functions the same way in a vastly different environment, and it tells us wild stories that aren’t even connected with reality to explain the things we feel. The brain notices you feel fear, it looks around and pieces together things to explain that fear. Feel sad? Brain digs around and starts randomly tying strings together to explain it. No reason, no logic. This is where much of our mental health epidemic is coming from, unchecked brains doing what nature intended them to do, in a world nature never intended.
I don’t think this guy has an anthropology degree
Adolescence is an incredible and immersive experience. Stephen Graham deserves to be showered with awards for this. It’s all about the micro-expressions in his performance.
Absolutely incredible show, only watched the first episode after reading your comment but wow was that ever well done all around.
And all a single shot! I was on the edge of my seat.
There’s a shot towards the end of episode 2 that had me shouting “What?!” at the TV. Absolutely remarkable stuff.
Was it “HOW DID THEY GET UP THERE?!” because friend, that sentiment is shared hahaha
Yep, exactly that.
The episode with Erin Doherty was amazing, the way her and Owen Cooper interacted was a roller coaster! And the fact they did the episodes as one continuous take blows my mind.
I’ll be honest, the acting was top-notch, but the scripting was not. The scripting for the children in episode 2 was good and believable, but Jamie’s quips and remarks were way too quick (as in witty) and unnatural sounding for a 13-year-old.
I knew a number of people back when I was 13 that were incredibly quick witted with teachers, and one who could easily manipulate the teacher and the class into not working nearly every lesson.
I’m not sure it was one take. There were a few shots that looked very useful for editing purposes. Unless they were just save points which maybe didn’t get used?
They did multiple takes yes, but each episode went with the best continuous take of the bunch, which makes that particular episode kinda insane with how much Cooper was oscillating Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
That one was disturbing. The final episode just ripped my heart out though.
That show is in my very exclusive list of “Best Things I Can Never Watch Again”.
Owen Cooper shines through for me, with an absolutely brilliant and nuanced performance. You expect Stephen Graham to be brilliant, but Owen should win an award for his work.
Incel tv show = scroll reddit
Surely Reddit would be more like a book
Maybe a magazine with an ad between every other paragraph of bot generated content.
Time for some uBlock Origin goodness
You can watch a recording of someone scrolling through it and reading out the content.
I identify as an incel. I don’t visit the incel web spaces though and I don’t blame women for it.
I’m an incel because I can’t afford to date. Like every week I’m barely able to get by living in poverty. Dating takes time and at least some money. If I got a little more of either, I’d have to use it to better my situation before dating.
I bring this point up because, as toxic as incel culture is, I rarely see it tied back to the shitty economy. Just people pointing fingers at each other as though the Male Loneliness phenomenon were entirely the result of people’s personalities.
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It’s a lot of things. It’s a measure of vulnerability, and of the social expectations and needs of men or women. It’s not exclusive to men, though I think the culture that surrounds it is certainly more outwardly destructive.
At its core, it’s a feeling of inadequacy, and that inadequacy is a vulnerability exploited by others who either feel similarly as a way to elevate themselves or just because they’re cruel enough to use it to benefit themselves. It can begin with poverty, with bad experiences, with neglect or abuse. It can begin in ignorance, or by being mislead. I think it’s also a lack of self awareness, a lack of self care, and often a lack of time or energy for either.
In the end, there’s not enough of the world that says it’s okay to fail and it’s okay to be vulnerable and that you can spend that time on yourself. People will always feel cheated, and there will always be experiences that leave you feeling alienated or hurt. What pains me is that too often it’s easier to find anger and resentment in those moments than it is to find the support you need to build yourself back up and feel okay again.
We need a tinder for poor people, those who don’t have the economic means to date, but would have their situation bettered by joining forces with one or more like-minded and equally fin-locked partners.
We could call it Prolescroll, PlentyOfRamen, Stumble, econHarmony
ok, I love this idea lol. “PlentyOfRamen”
Fumble
Edit: op already did stumble and I didn’t see it.thought Fumble was to similar, and tried to delete but I also forgot you can’t really delete your thing so the comment stays lol
Crumble - for people looking for a squad of survivors to roll with for when society collapses
Or… People looking for a nice pudding.
It would only have men.
Really nice idea in principle but will certainly be exploited by richer ppl
All the richers would troll for poor women.
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I dont think that counts my dude. You just broke. You could probably go get laid if you really wanted to. These guys online are different.
Hell yeah, the horny dudes online don’t care how broke you are. They want dick pics and good times.
You are looking at the etymology of the term “incel” and then assuming that’s the actual meaning. But it isn’t. Incel culture is not about people who are too poor to date. If it were, they’d be complaining about minimum wage in the next paragraph, right? But that is not what we see.
I see incel culture tied to sexism, selfishness, and often an willingness to try hard. Do we see it waxing and waning together with the economy? I don’t think we do, so I don’t think it’s closely connected.
Yep and a big part of it is blame shifting onto women. The running theme I find in incel subs is that they don’t actually do anything about their issues, other than maybe some appearance based work sometimes. They just wallow in blame shifting and self pity
This is the key element of incel culture - if one member of the group tries to improve themselves in anyway, it’s an attack on the whole group and they are ostracized from what feels like their only social group.
“What? You started exercising and showering? Who do you think you are? Who are you trying to kid? You’re just playing the slut’s game, man”
All social bubbles are at least a little harmful - but incel culture is more than that, it’s purposefully self-destructive. You have to be sad, miserable, and let your life fall apart to belong. It takes advantage of social instincts in the worst possible way.
Well duh, why should they do anything? The women should be coming to them!
Absolutely. But they won’t because women are selfish sluts
Tbh at this point calling yourself an incel because you’re involuntary celibate is like calling yourself a homophobe because you’re scared of gay people. technically accurate, but do you really wanna go there?
Lmao I had a hard time picturing an actual homophobe but that’s funny.
For the example to work, they’d have to be gay allies at the same time, and trying to imagine that is even funnier.
I would stop identifying yourself as an incel. It’s more than just being involuntarily celibate and you seem far too well-adjusted.
Yeah… I like words to mean what they mean. I’m also an Incel. Married with two kids; I don’t hate my wife, or any other women for that matter. I consider myself reasonably well adjusted. I hope to have a sex life again one day, but I think it’s fair to say 3 times in 8 years counts as involuntarily celibate in my scenario.
Well, unfortunately for you, the meanings of words can (and often do) shift. “Incel” may technically expand to “involuntarily celibate,” but the term now has many more connotations than just that, and trust me they are all very bad.
At the very least, you should really inform yourself about what you’re calling yourself if you’re going to continue using the word.
Every relationship is different, so I can’t speak to your situation and this may not be the root cause. This isn’t specifically for Darkmoon, but for anyone feeling the same way.
I’m male and my wife has a robust social network where I am included in some of their conversations. Most of her female friends are low-key angry at their husbands and resent how much work they (wives) do that goes unnoticed.
Make sure you are helping out in the home: obvious things like cleaning, cooking, dishes, laundry; but also kiddo maintenance like knowing what homework is needed, what they need to wear on Tuesday for spirit day, when the next dentist appointment is (or making it), etc; social maintenance like planning trips to grandparents, finding a babysitter for date night (and planning it), preparing for parties.
Take some of that work off her and she’ll have more energy for you.
steal from shitty conservative businesses and families. stop being a victim. take what you want.
I’m not sure I’d call that involuntarily celibate, rather involuntarily unsocial, as in you don’t have the time or money to hang out with people.
I’m a brokecel lmao.
That has to exist already. So after writing that last sentence I searched and it is indeed a part of the incel subculture. That was rough to look at though.
nah mate the whole “incel” deal is that they just don’t wanna face the fact that they’re undateable due to their personalities. Instead they decide it’s because women are gold digging whores, or there’s some combination of facial features that they don’t have or because they’re just too awesome and scare prospective partners away.
fact is, they’re trash. It’s not the way they look (Danny DeVito fucks). It’s not money (plenty of poor people getting mad dates). It’s the fact they’re horrible people who make bad partners, and it’s ragingly evident from any sort of conversation with them.
Your social life is being buttfucked by the cost of living crisis, but if that were not a factor, would you still pull? Do you socialise? Do you actually view women as people to get to know even if you don’t get to stick your dick in 'em? If so…then you’re not an incel.
And yet, I have seen places of abject poverty where people sing to eachother and sing together, they have joys and romance. Dirt poor people are making sweet love together and having kids and I don’t know how but they just keep on going.
So the economy is part of it, yes, but poverty isn’t a barrier to gettin some lovin, because it doesn’t cost anything to get a woman’s attention.
There must be more to the story, there is something else going on with our culture and our society that makes it seem impossible.
I agree, I think there’s more to the story.
As for the example, I agree that there are impoverished places where people get along fine in their socio-economic status, meaning wealth is not a necessary factor.
I think the key difference with what’s going on now in the western world is that young males are disproportionately being pushed to the bottom of the socio economic ladder with the cultural expectation that they have the same resource capacity as their older counter parts.
Another commenter noted the loss of third spaces and I’d add communities in general. People used to date within their communities more, I assume.
So I think it’s more to the story like you said. Probably some perfect storm, of which, the general loneliness in the world is but one expression of.
The places you talk about still have a public social life, 3rd spaces, etc. In advanced capitalist countries, there is no public space without some sort of consumption.
Yes that’s definitely an issue.
Still, it seems clear to me that for many, (like the kid in the story whose mind was poisoned even before his first attempt) the biggest barrier to achieving relationship bliss with someone special is the belief that it’s simply not possible, and all the attendant self reinforcing red pill misogynistic bullshit beliefs one finds online.
One mustn’t forget Jlo’s informative musical statement: “even if you were broke, my love don’t cost a thing”.
I’m inclined to think that these kinds of thought distortions are a product of the hyper commercialization and hyper commodification of our lives. People don’t meet other people unmediated by consumption or a screen, so the ideas of what it means to connect are distorted.
Careful, Archarnian. That sounds like anti-capitalist talk.
[and i’m tired of pretending it’s not]
There came to be an alternate term of ‘volcel’ for that, at least to the extent that you recognize that your situation isn’t conducive to a relationship even if the causes are not really voluntary. It never really caught on in popular use though.
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Is this genuinely not a thought out response.
On average women are more educated and end up with the dual income that a relationship provides. They are more likely to not die alone.
On average women date and marry hypergomous men. Another Stat that might interest you is that the more successful a women is the odds of them ending up alone go up.
So ya.
Because it is. Women aren’t magically getting rich while all the men go bankrupt.
Wouldn’t be required, so long as the social expectation is that straight dating generally requires men to spend on women over the reverse. All it requires is that the dude not have the money to spare, regardless of how women are doing. Couple that with the tendency for women to tend to strongly preference men who are wealthier or higher status than themselves, and just barely scraping by means you have a generally smaller dating pool available as a straight guy. That still generally expects you to be spending on them, rather than the reverse.
Ok, but when I was both unemployed and absolutely broke af I picked wildflowers off the railroad tracks and brought them to the woman I was into. I said, “Here’s some pretty flowers for a pretty girl”. I had no car. I had a shitty $50 hohner plywood guitar with a broken bridge that I played and sang “you are so beautiful”.
Its 12 years later and that woman still makes me the best goddamn sandwiches I have ever ate in my life.
Are people watching TV shows and old movies thinking this is real-life, and the only way to get a girl is to take her out in an expensive car for a fancy dinner because this is what “everyone” does? That’s not reality.
If we can think of racism as believing ridiculous and false stereotypes about people, this incel business seems like a similar kind of thing. Believing all this 80/20 red pill Chad/Stacey nonsense is no different from thinking Jews have infiltrated all banking and media to keep you poor and ignorant. Believing wealthy high-status men have a bigger dating pool because women prefer them is just like thinking black people can’t swim or Mexicans are lazy.
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Which I guess just further proves that this has absolutely nothing to do with “boo hoo I’m poor” and a lot more to do with having a fucked up personality.
I don’t like this tho. The hypothetical incel thinks he is the victim, and while he should take responsibility for his misogyny, this just flips all the blame onto him and say “No, it’s your fault because of your fucked up personality”. Someone still gets shot or stabbed.
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This makes sense to me in theory but it’s very black and white. How does this apply to the thirteen year old in the story? He should have known not to believe the incel bullshit fed to him on the internet? He had a mother and a sister, so he should have known it was wrong to objectify women despite the constant stream of hypersexualized content in all media everywhere all the time? If not the girl who bullied him, was it inevitable that he’d eventilually stab or shoot someone because he had a “fucked up personality”?
“…ultimately the individual needs to take presponsibility for anything to change” doesn’t make sense to me when it comes to a 13 year old alone in his bedroom with a firehose of mysogny and twisted anti-logic.
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It’s not. In the western world this is a myth based on extremely outdated gender and family stereotypes. Some women prefer to have men pay, some prefer to pay themselves, some don’t really care. It’s not a hard rule you can use as an excuse to give up.
Generally, not absolutely at all times. The woman I eventually married settled into a plan of taking turns as to who pays for dates (she literally insisted to pay for the second date since I paid for the first, and it grew into a pattern from there). From the mid 90s to the first Trump admin (the period of time in which I was dating girls/women) she was one of only 3 who suggested or encouraged splitting the costs in some fashion.
This is just straight up incel cope. You cannot put all women in a box like that and then wonder why you are struggling to meet anyone.
Who put all women in a box? It’s a tendency, a trend, not an absolute descriptor of all individuals. At the same time if you believe wealth/status indicators do not play a significant role in how attractive women perceive men to be, or at least no more so than the reverse you’re going to be very disappointed in the ladies. There is research out there to that effect, specifically that wealth indicators correlate positively with attractiveness for both men and women, but that the effect is much stronger in women considering men than the other way around.
It isn’t just your stereotypical incel who is lonely. People aren’t lonely because they suddenly just got worse at being people.
I see a lot of good, decent guys lonely who don’t hate women, it’s just that infrastructure and third places got defunded, so you’re either at home alone or at work getting told it’s only appropriate to socialise in company-approved ways.
Add in that rape somehow got politicised (mostly because we have rapists and pedophiles holding public office), so while we do fuck all for most of the victims who get raped in domestic situations, we get women and men afraid of talking to each other and also afraid of being talked to.
And people who come out and say ‘hey I feel lonely’ get told ‘it’s your fault’.
Yes I think the disappearance of third places has a lot to do with it.
Obviously a parody site but Adolescence is a powerful drama worth watching.
The life of an incel is very hard…
And to make it worse, you get no help with it
“This portrayal of the incel lifestyle and attitude is totally inaccurate! I think and act just like that guy and i’m not an incel…”
/s
She-Hulk: Attorney at Law (2022)
