Edit: I’ve started a podcast which deals with stuff like this — incels episode is coming up soon! Check it out at www.redcircle.com/tcrp
Sgt. Prendergast: Let’s meet a couple of police officers. They are all good guys.
D-Fens: I’m the bad guy?
Sgt. Prendergast: Yeah.
D-Fens: How did that happen?
Falling down, 1993.
The hardest thing for me to figure out regarding incels is the extent of which I feel for these people. My immediate feeling is a deep sympathy. And, quite selfishly, that comes from an internal place. While I’ve never suffered any of the standard building blocks of inceldom (hideous looks, awful upbringing, severe bullying, social anxiety and bad education) I sometimes think ‘what if’. What if I were born with an awful face. What if I were 5'6" and felt like less of a man. What if I, for some reason or another, just wasn’t very bright. What if looking people in the eye made me anxious. What if two hundred tinder swipes yielded no matches. What about two thousand. Would I be an incel? Would I be angry?
But then you delve into the ‘blackpill’ and you see the horror that comes from it. The happiness people express when they talk about awful things happening to women. The fact that their ‘life fuel’ comes mostly from the misery of others. The way in which they torment each other into accepting their place as incels — a place you can never leave. While lost souls looking for a place to belong may see these forums as their only comrades, they can often find a pretty counter productive set of mates.
Where our sympathies lie is a tricky one. A lot of people could say that their sympathies lie elsewhere. I don’t see my sympathies as a finite resource. But I do, for some reason, have a special place for these guys. I think it’s because it seems nobody else does.
Not only is it rare to find people sympathetic toward incels, but it’s common to find people that enthusiastically bully them. Like as if these guys haven’t had enough bullies in life and school. The cycle continues online. There are entire groups devoted to bullying incels. They are quite proud of the fact that they bully incels. They encourage people struggling with suicidal thoughts to kill themselves. The vitriol can be as despicable as the worst of the incels themselves.
Here is an example.
“Nope it’s natural selection you have inferior genes and or mating strategies so you don’t get to breed. You’re like the deformed Cub that the mother kills to feed the stronger cubs except culling off your kids is illegal so we get to see through you what a deformed Cub might say if they had a voice And it’s hilariously pathetic and articles and videos about you guys are getting so much revenue.lol it’s glorious so truly thank you for being you it really gave me a running head start on my blog.$ 3500 last month”
I hope their blog has better punctuation than that. I also don’t think cubs eat each other. Do they?
This is just one example of many that incels share with each other of messages they receive from online bullies. It’s almost like a competition to see who is more awful. The toxic incel culture or their detractors. The incels put up strong competition, but it’s a steady race to the bottom.
People that don’t fit the mould can find themselves bullied. This bullying can lead to further problems, including a full psychotic break. This is well covered in a conversation between Richard Fidler and Jordan B. Peterson (yes, I know — divisive figure but he outlines this well). Skip to 11:08 if you want to hear the section on bullying.
My point here is that — while incel culture is toxic and insane, I believe bullying would have a huge input into why they end up where they do. Some kid with a funny looking face gets tormented by kids at school and may never get beyond that feeling of rage and exclusion. A common response to this is ‘well, I was bullied at school and I don’t act like this’. Well, congratulations. That is great. But not everyone ends up in the same place. But well done for overcoming your adversity. Also, don’t arbitrarily extend expectation for the world to follow in your footsteps.
When it comes to discussions on incels, it seems like the first thing to come up is ‘well, I know someone that…’ which obfuscates the point. These people have their own stories. Any parallel you make is a false equivalence — everyone is different. Your mate is wonderful. Women don’t do this. I know. It comes up a lot.
What we do face, is a portion of society that feels that they are worthless and are better off dead. The majority of the response I see to these people is ridicule and bullying. Surely this isn’t the best we have to offer. What happened to the higher ground?
From the huge level of attention incels are getting right now, I really do hope that the response is less toward bullying and more toward a constructive approach. Maybe a few community support groups will pop up. Maybe the church will try and save a few souls. But nothing good will come from shouting these people down. I have seen it — it only galvanises them as outcasts and proves to them that society will never accept them. While it’s difficult to overcome the extreme language and misogyny thrown around these dark corners of the internet, pushing them further away isn’t going to help them come out from the shadows.