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.
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?
The life of an incel is very hard…
And to make it worse, you get no help with it
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.
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.
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
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.
Obviously a parody site but Adolescence is a powerful drama worth watching.
Incel tv show = scroll reddit
Surely Reddit would be more like a book
You can watch a recording of someone scrolling through it and reading out the content.
isnt that tictock?
Maybe a magazine with an ad between every other paragraph of bot generated content.
Time for some uBlock Origin goodness
“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.
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!
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
i could ‘fix’ him
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.
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.
I would stop identifying yourself as an incel. It’s more than just being involuntarily celibate and you seem far too well-adjusted.
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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.
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 support the gays as long as they don’t come near me 'cos then I shriek and jump on a chair”
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.
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!
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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”
Really nice idea in principle but will certainly be exploited by richer ppl
All the richers would troll for poor women.
Not sure why you are getting downvoted that would absolutely be something that happens on an app that advertises as being for poor people. Rich men would join and try and get women too hook up with them for a meal or similar.
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.
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.
Because it is. Women aren’t magically getting rich while all the men go bankrupt. Thinking you are lonely because you are poor is a cope fantasy that is 100% due to some kind of personality flaw you are harbouring.
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.
so long as the social expectation is that straight dating generally requires men to spend on women over the reverse.
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.
All it requires is that the dude not have the money to spare, regardless of how women are doing.
Even if you actually have to spend money on the date, which is not guaranteed, how much do you think you need to be spending? Why do you think dating needs to be expensive? Again, you are living by these weird rules you’ve invented that make dating seem far more difficult than it is in reality.
Couple that with the tendency for women to tend to strongly preference men who are wealthier or higher status than themselves
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. Again, it is a fantasy you have invented so that you don’t have to try. Try not making massive assumptions about people you literally know nothing about and you might actually have some success.
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.
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.
Judging by some of the responses in this thread, yes it seems like younger generations of men have completely warped ideas and expectations when it comes to dating and relationships. 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. Like you, I am in a 12 year relationship and almost all of my “dates” (and I use that word in quotations because I think people have a weird misconception that a date needs to be something expensive and unique) with my partner were just walks along the beach where we talked a lot. We also went to a movie one time and ate some cheap takeaway (we both paid). That’s literally it.
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.
It’s objectively true. Why their personality has developed in that way could be down to any number of things, many of which should be examined more closely, but ultimately the individual needs to take responsibility for anything to change. Everyone has personality flaws, everyone can work on them over time. I have zero tolerance or sympathy for people suffering from a loser/victim mentality, it’s pathetic and cowardly behaviour.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Yes it’s very much about the economy which is why we should have elected the party that isn’t going to give more of your money to the rich, and isn’t blaming problems on immigrants and minorities to draw attention away from the rich having all your money.
However, and I’m not saying you’re in this category, men have free will and if any of them take the bait and start aiming their frustration and hate at women, they’re still responsible for that.
steal from shitty conservative businesses and families. stop being a victim. take what you want.
Incel is such an oddly self reinforcing thing. As I recall it the term started as a self identification (I can’t get laid, there for am an involuntary-celibate), which ended up with these self ID people declaring someone else is at fault for their situation, then that attitude got so pervasive it became a given term (you can’t get laid BECAUSE you’re an incel).
Morphing of language and all, similar happened with ‘woke’. Either way, if these folks could comprehend a simple fact that the one person you can demand change of is yourself then maybe they could get out of that cycle.
it wasnt even hidden it happened real time on the front page of reddit everyone once ina while ppl would crusade their sub and youd watch their opinions morph, they like banned woman and said femcels arent real the first time I saw it I think
It is a sad story:
When Alana started a website for lonely people struggling to find love, she had no idea it would become linked to a community of hate and anger directed at women, which would ultimately lead to the deaths of several innocent people in her home city.
I first heard of it with the 4chan R9K board, but I guess it goes back even further than that. I suppose it’s quite possible that by the time 4chan got a hold of the term that was at least the beginning of it becoming poisoned, or it may have already been taken over by that point.
I had no idea that incel was a term that people used to self-identify.
I thought it was only a slur.
When the term was first coined, it was not an insult. It was from a support group for people who had trouble finding a partner.
The ultimate irony is that the first popular incel support community was started by a woman.
Also a great demonstration of how thin the wall between support group and cult is.
Well, no. It got toxic because the people the group helped didn’t need to go to the group anymore. So the only people left were the ones too toxic to find a partner which led to even more toxic people getting involved
Damn that’s a pretty logical process to explain the decay of Internet self help groups
Yeah for an opposite example, I take part in a support group for a certain form of alternative relationships and you have the opposite pressures. People who are well respected in long lasting relationships stay, and people who can’t make it work flit out fairly quickly. What this means is the advice is pretty good for those who listen to it.
Yeah, if you don’t have a greater community surrounding the support one, there’s just no reason for people to stick around once their problem is solved.
“I am Jack’s self hatred directed at women.”
It became an insult as a direct consequence of the incel community being as hateful and toxic as it is. As an insult term it doesn’t actually have anything to do with not getting sex at all
As an insult term it doesn’t actually have anything to do with not getting sex at all
Ehh some definitely use it to insult those who aren’t getting laid
It is a slur in some context. Like when you suggest that we take men’s issues seriously. For fucks sakes its 2025 and the producer of The Boys talks about men being raped is funny. I am tired of hearing about there not being any good male role models when they are there, but liberals only ever talk about the Andrew Tates of the word and refuse to grasp that they are popular because they one of the few places that won’t tell you horrible men are.
I hate myself for being a man. All I feel anymore is guilt and shame. And there is nothing that can be done.
I hate myself for being a man. All I feel anymore is guilt and shame. And there is nothing that can be done.
Um, that’s not healthy there…
I mean, I’m a dude, and I realize most dudes suck… But that doesn’t make me hate myself. It just makes me want to be “better” so I’m not “one of those men” or one of the dudes who when women are bitching about shitty men, they turn and say,“Well, not you, of course!”
I think this is where Reich Wingers distort the message: The message shouldn’t make you hate yourself for being a dude, but should make you hate the toxic masculinity you were taught, and for you to rise above that.
That sounds like continuing to ignore these issues.
Hell, you even admit being shit is the default for men.
That sounds like continuing to ignore these issues.
Ignoring what issues? That men, quite often, due to what adults teach kids, are shitty people? Or that it takes a bit of deprogramming oneself to start treating women like equal humans, rather than objects to be won?
Yes, it is the default in our society, for men to be shitty. Because we are still teaching our kids toxic masculinity, rather than healthy masculinity.
With no real alternatives suggested.
The alternative is to learn to not be a shitass… This is another part of toxic masculinity: Demanding to be spoonfed every single thing they have to do, rather than perform the emotional labor themselves of self-introspection.
So, go learn how to not be a shitass, and strive to be the one dude in the room that women tend to say,“… but not you, of course!” when bitching about toxic masculinity.
Don’t take it personal, because well, you’re doing exactly what misogynist claim women do: Being irrational and emotional over a set of facts.
If you have kids? Don’t teach them that the default acceptable behavior is toxic masculinity. For example, don’t be a bully, and don’t be afraid to stand up for others who may be weaker than yourself against bullies. Abhor violence, but accept sometimes the threat of violence is a deterrent to toxic behavior. etc etc.
Its not complicated, but it can be difficult to start down the track of that self-introspection.
I dont have kids. But i imagine my hypothetical son would be better off if there was a community he could talk to. But as it stands you can’t even get support of you where, say, sexually assaulted.
Seriously, though, the toxic incel subculture didn’t just happen all on its own. It had a lot of help from the other side (which I can’t in good conscience categorize as either liberal or feminist, though it had some of those elements), and developed iteratively over the course of years. I’ve been online a long time, and remember when it started out as the gender-neutral “invcel.” But our culture’s black-and-white, polarized thinking couldn’t handle the concept that there was a whole range of invcel men, from unattractive dorks at one end of the spectrum to raging misogynists at the other end.
Like, for example, if we complained that we treat women as people, with respect and kindness, but none of them want to date us, clearly we were self-entitled Nice Guys™ who felt that women were vending machines that you put in kindness and sex falls out. Never mind that “being ourselves” and treating women with respect and kindness was exactly what we were told to do to find a relationship, by parents, teachers, friends, and popular culture. And never mind that an alternate mental model exists to explain our expectations, one in which women like men, and want to be in relationships with men, and all else being equal, would choose to be in relationships with men that were nice to them.
But, of course, if we tried to talk about the shock of realizing that lots of what we’d been taught about women and relationships was just plain incorrect, obviously we were raging misogynists and should be shunned. Meanwhile, the actual raging misogynists were waiting with open arms to offer incel men a community with a sense of belonging, validation, and a coherent theory to explain their problems. (A theory, I must point out, bolstered by the hate-filled reaction to them from outside of the community. It’s a dynamic that cults exploit to keep their members disconnected from the wider world.) Bam, that’s how today’s incel subculture was made, in a mutually-reinforcing cycle.
Maybe if I were younger, I would’ve fallen into it. I don’t know. I know that I did end up in some of the online spaces that tried to address men’s problems without telling us we’re horrible, and it’s all our fault. It was wonderful while it lasted, but outrage and self-righteousness give people a much better emotional high, while nuance and empathy are passé, so those spaces are gone AFAICT.
“I hate myself for being a man” you know what is the worse about this? not the idiot saying it but the feminazis giving like.
Just like the n-word
Yeah, IIRC it was a reddit thing for awhile. Never really got into it myself since by the time I bumped into them they’d already gotten big into blaming women for not sleeping with them.
Not the onion. Check any of the forums on reddit, like r/mensrights, and they’re furious indeed.
I had to explain to someone what the manosphere is, as a result of watching this show together. She had no idea that men were getting radicalized like this.
what the manosphere is
Literally coined by one person who wanted to lump all men’s spaces online together to sell a book. Later used to equate the worst incel, PUA, and redpill spaces with people who oppose circumcision, separated fathers who want to see their kids more, people who call out law or policy that’s biased against men either explicitly or in practice, etc in order to use the former to spite the latter by putting them in the same box.
You know, basically the thing that if you try to do with women’s groups you get responded to with “feminism is not a monolith.”
Manosphere is bullshit the same way sorority is.
Jesus, wtf is this subreddit yikes
Imagine if the “manosphere” actually did things like raising awareness for testicular and prostate cancer, teaching men how to be good dads/husbands/sons, how to be financially sensible, how to build a career, etc. instead of blaming all their problems and all the world’s problems on women and feminists lmao
instead of blaming all their problems and all the world’s problems on women and feminists
Sometimes it is their fault. Protests against equal custody laws, for example. Kentucky was the first state to pass one that required the judge in contested custody cases to start from the position that equal custody is best for the child unless there is a reason it might not be. The closest other states had gotten before that were laws that required judges “consider” equal custody as a possibility, as opposed to having to work from it as a starting point.
Ever seen the Big Red angry feminist meme? She’s a real person from Toronto and the meme started because she was protesting a talk on suicide in men at the University of Toronto by shouting a Jezebel article at the crowd, and if anyone tried to engage with her yelling “shut up fuckface!” or similar at them. A few different phrasings but she was fond of “fuckface” as an insult in particular. If you check out The Red Pill documentary (it’s creator did a Kickstarter to fund finishing it) one of the interviews is of Big Red herself.
The organization behind that talk on suicide in men later went on to found what at the time (and possibly still is though I haven’t checked) the only shelter for male victims of abuse in Canada.
Not the first such shelter, as that was Men’s Alternative Safe Housing which was founded by Earl Silverman and had to be run entirely on his own resources and private donations because he couldn’t get government funding for it because it was a men’s shelter and not a women’s shelter. Eventually he couldn’t afford to keep it going, and when he had to shut it down hung himself in the garage of his now-defunct shelter the day after he sold it.
The current manosphere is basically a pipeline to the alt-right and additional radicalization. The distance between incel to proud boys is quite small.
The problem is that any attempt to make a pro-men group with any of the positive agendas you list will attract the same people as an audience that are already in the manosphere. And then you have the Nazi bar problem.
Yes, theres a massive link between incels and all kinds of hate. It’s horrible.
This. The right owns men. Even if you are a liberal they basic decide how the word views you because that is the only group of men that ever get talked about.
They have won on this front and there is no hope of turning it around. All we got now is to hope measles takes out most the population
Ironically feminism gets you closer to this than anything they’ve cooked up over a very long period of time
I think there’s been a lot of room for this incel type stuff because not enough attention has been paid to the welfare of boys. It’s very common to hear how it started from the feeling that nobody cares.
It’s exactly why reactionaries have spent decades demonizing feminism: it keeps men defending the patriarchy that damages them too (although not as much as other people).
I’d argue patriarchy is a bad model for the social dynamics regarding sex. It’s just another rebranding of Marxist class conflict onto something other than economic class, and as a consequence it works about as well as that something actually resembles (or alternately is a proxy for) economic class. This means it works OK for race in the US (except for Asians, who get to be functionally white in some cases) but it it’s a bad fit for sex.
It’s why there are so many apologetics around patriarchy for all the myriad cases where reality just doesn’t seem to align with what you would expect based on it a priori. “The patriarchy hurts men too” is probably the most common, though you’d be hard pressed to argue “Capitalism hurts billionaires too” or “white supremacy hurts whites too” in the same kind of fashion. Because the moment you stop looking at the fraction of a percent of the top performers the idea that society was created by and for men to benefit men above women first and foremost just doesn’t align with observation.
What seems to be a more fitting model to me is malagency, the idea that agency is inappropriately assigned based on the sex of the party in question. Specifically that in general women are assumed to have less agency than they otherwise might while men are assumed to have more agency than they otherwise might. This fits neatly with lots of observations - ideas presented by a man being given extra credit or consideration than the same coming from a woman (because he’s seen as more responsible for his ideas than a woman might be), the very highest tiers of things having over-representation by men but also when men are also over-represented at the bottom (for example, rough sleeping homeless) because they are seen as more responsible for their own successes and failures as well, or why the criminal justice system treats men much worse than women (women are seen as less responsible for their transgressions). Etc, etc.
I take your point, but look at the way power is arranged in our society from the makeup of the ownership class to the way unpaid labor usually falls to women.
I do like the framing, but I see it as evidence of the patriarchy and how it damages men too and I don’t think it’s a difficult argument to make. Women have only recently, within my mother’s lifetime, been able to get their own credit lines separately from their husband. They recently lost their hard-won reproductive freedoms. They are far more likely to be killed by their long-term partners than are men. Furthermore, the issues that you bring up where men are worse off is also due to the expectations this system puts onto men, and who is worthy of charity & support.
There has been a long and sustained project to keep women from the levers of power through subjegation, and the perpetrators are the reactionary men who vote, terrorize, and argue that women shouldn’t be the equal of a man. Their ideology comes from a long western tradition that is thousands of years old. It seems in my mind incongruous to suggest that there was not a patriarchy in Roman times, when a paterfamilias could legally kill anyone in his family (including his wife), or during the middle ages or Renaissance when women were kept from political or religious offices (with minimal exceptions), or today when women are legally restricted from moving between States due to pregnancy. There is certainly a continuum between what constitutes patriarchy or not, but I don’t think it’s time to slide over to the “not” side yet, especially as the hits keep coming.
I do appreciate your well-thought out post though, and will certainly incorporate your points into my position in the future.
We need another big wave of feminism, this time learning all the mistakes from previous decades
The rising movement of questioning gender identity from and alongside the queer folk might hopefully be another nail in patriarchy’s coffin
Tbh, I think it’s the opposite. The focus is - ultimately - on individual outcomes rather than substantial societal changes. I think it’s the Zion in Matrix at the moment: the way the status quo has designed its own opposition should look like.
I remember back when no shave November was kind of a meme thing and it was used for mens health awareness. It was so wholesome and awesome! But yeah the closest we have now is that guy on YouTube who does the Dad videos.
Yep! And notice how you’ve been downvoted for saying that.
Wouldn’t know, my instance doesn’t show downvotes 😄
Well.
Manchildren.
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.
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.
I don’t have much free time to watch TV, but I’ll check it out.
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.
Were those the kids that would normally be incels though? When I was growing up, the ‘incel’ kids weren’t the witty class clowns, they were the quiet ones, usually with a bit of the 'tism in them.
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”.
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.
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.
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.
They should be more mad at The Residence using ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’ for the first episode instead of one of Poe’s actual mysteries.
