I think the internet plays a fairly significant role. It really increases people’s ability to cocoon themselves away from physical life, exacerbates social anxieties and building up of social memes, and allows people to find like-minded individuals who will echo and reinforce negative ideas.
People are fragile. I think the internet increases that fragility to an alarming degree while also opening up exciting vistas for those who have greater resilience.
The forum I visited has some pic threads to prove that cases users are really Incel. And frankly, some of the men are attractive, some are just average, yet they’re posting these pics and pointing out that their maxillas aren’t many enough, or their frames are too small, etc. I think body dysmorphia is a good explanation.
The internet also makes it really easy to find your tribe and live in an echo chamber where everyone thinks fairly much like you do. And it doesn’t matter if you hang out on an incel board or over at the Daily Kos or a board where people believe vaccination is bad, or one dedicated to Kim Kardashian or gun ownership. Your social media feed will reinforce what you show interest in.
(Which is one of the reasons - fitting the current board ‘theme’ - we should be taking care women participate here - and that we don’t chase away people who are religious or have some other profile that is different than the majority of the board. This place is a much broader echo chamber than most of the internet).
I don’t have any experience with such fora, so this might be a stupid question. Is there any chance any of this is humble bragging? “Oh, look at me, I’m soooooo ugly…”
It’s really just the opposite side of the same coin that lets enthusiasts of whatever stripe gather together and share information, praise, constructive criticism, tricks, tips, etc…
I can honestly say that having a lot of internet access makes me a much better cook than I’d have been, if I only had cooking TV shows and cookbooks. Same for my ability to garden, work on my computer itself, repair home stuff, and talk intelligently about a wide range of topics (thanks SDMB!). All because I can research it on line, ask questions, get answers, and probably most importantly, be inspired by concepts and ideas I’d never considered, and be able to synthesize those things with what I already know.
But I can entirely see how if I somehow had got hooked by stuff that was less savory, it would work the same for that as well, and I believe that’s what’s going on here.
You might get a kid who thinks he’s a loser for making it to 19(!) as a virgin, without realizing that in all likelihood, a large proportion, if not most of his classmates are also in the same boat. In my day, that would be fairly quickly dispelled when he got out of high school and got exposed (hopefully) to a wider world, and either hearing stories of recent virginity loss by similarly aged people, or by losing it himself through effects of changing your milieu. Or not… but regardless it would pretty much be a personal feeling without external reinforcement beyond the background buzz of virgin-shaming/mockery.
Cut forward a quarter century or so, and a similar 19 year old kid in the same situation finds some of this incel garbage on the Internet. He finds a set of more or less kindred spirits. He gets a sort of group indoctrination that tells him it’s not his fault, and that espouses a doctrine of misogyny, objectification of women, entitlement, victimization, and skewed gender roles, all spiced with hostility.
Not only does this mess up the way he thinks about his situation, but worse, it more or less destroys hope, as he may take up that identity as an “incel” and in a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy, becomes exactly that, not because of any inherent physical issues or pre-existing personality problems, but because he’s bought into this ideology.
I think the internet (esp. social media) increases feelings of inadequecy and deviancy. If your friends and associates flash highlight reels that make yours look like shit in comparison, then you will probably feel like shit. But avoiding social media means cutting yourself off from friends and family. So it is tricky.
And with regards to deviancy, there is a message board for every disorder and dysfunction out there. This is great for breaking down feelings of loneliness and marginalization, but I gotta wonder if these places entrench special snowflakedom in some way. Kind of like “I don’t want to practice my social skills. Because if I do, that means I will be more like a normie. And if I can become a normie through practice, then all my angst up to this point as been all for naught.”
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Careful with that. Much of it is limitations, much is indoctrination, and a big chunk is how you count (support personnel).
A lot of the people in this thread seem to think that the only people subject to virgin-shaming are men. Definitely not. If female, you can be called narrow or a square or whatever local equivalent if you lost your virginity “too late” (where sometimes the limit would still be jailbait), but a slut if you lost it too early, and selfish if you haven’t gotten married but Og help you if you have more children than someone considers you should… it’s like the virgin-or-whore thing has exploded, sometimes. And sometimes, in the same day, or the same magazine, or even the same supposedly serious newspaper.
In my experience/research, sometimes this is the case. If they were to have one of their own, or a normie, suggest that they are indeed not terrible to look upon, they will then be able to further externalize their “problems.” See, they can say, I’m not a complete uggo, so it must be women/alphas/society that’s to blame. More, it helps reinforce the idea that appearance (or stance, or build, or maxillae, or whatever physicality du jour) is at the core of their lack of sex and relationships.
Because, as monstro just touched upon, if it’s actually more subtle than that–if it’s actually more about personality, or behaviors, or (worse) contains an element of just stupid chance–the situation becomes more complicated, and requires more effort, self-examination, and self-awareness.
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I wouldn’t doubt that describes some. In my experience, though, that sort of argument is met with a brick wall of utter denial:
“People like me are so completely ugly that we are unlovable. No one would ever even think of dating a man who’s short / is overweight / has pock marks. We have been rejected by society.”
“Uh, I know plenty of short / overweight / pock marked men who have found happy, long term relationships. Having a better, friendlier demeanor helps, as does not suggesting women should be compelled to have sex with you by law or force.”
“… People like me are so completely ugly that we are unlovable. No one would ever even think of dating a man who’s short / is overweight / has pock marks. We have been rejected by society.”
(why are they so obsessed with height anyway? My grandpa was 5’5" and he managed to have 9 kids. Needless to say, it doesn’t seem to have botbered grandma.)
Truth. I’ve seen some pat responses there. Money is a big one: “Women are greedy and will condescend to fuck an ugly guy if he’s rich, even though they’re not really attracted to him.” Utility is another: “She’s not attracted to him, she just wants something out of him and will leave him as soon as she gets it.”
Anything to continue to paint women (and society) as the problem.
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FWIW, incel women also do the “I am so ugly!” thing and I don’t think all of them are humble-bragging. They are simply comparing themselves to Instagram models and girls who spend hours practicing their best selfie poses. They see people like this accumulating a million likes and think they 1) they need to look the same way to garner that kind of attention 2) that kind of attention is what you have to have to “compete”.
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I wouldn’t call that scientific. Incel forums and reddits are filled to the brim with racism (especially toward blacks and Hispanics). Went to the incel.me forums and picked the first sticked post (Blackpill: she is not your friend - https://incels.me/threads/she-is-not-your-friend.46764/); Pepe the Frog - a symbol co-opted by white supremacists - is seen in posts #8 and #18. You don’t have to even have to look very far for the racism.
This is a wypipo issue, not a minority issue. I’ll repeat that. This is a wypipo issue, not a minority issue. It is a wypipo issue because wymales have done this before. Wymales came up with all sorts of theories that blacks were genetically inferior, stupid, and deliberately separated them from their families. Just recently, wypipo decided to deliberately separate Hispanic children - no matter the age - from their families again. I guess we’re back to separating families like it’s 1818. Wypipo are addicted to dehumanizing people who don’t look like them.
[QUOTE=Dr. Colleen Craft ]
I’ve been a pediatrician for 30 years. I’ve cared for thousands of children, providing support for parents to encourage their babies’ development, and recommendations to guide them through the joys and challenges of parenting. I’ve helped navigate children and families through illness, developmental disabilities and life-threatening conditions. Recently though, I met a little girl in a border town in Texas who will forever stand out in my mind. Unlike the patients I’ve treated in my exam room, I was helpless to comfort her.
The little girl was a toddler, her face splotched red from crying, her fists balled up in frustration, pounding on a play mat in the shelter for unaccompanied children run by the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement. No parent was there to scoop her up, no known and trusted adult to rub her back and soothe her sobs. The staff members at the center tried their best, and shared my heartbreak while** watching this child writhe on the floor, alone **.
[/QUOTE]
(emphasis mine)
Similar to wypipo, Incels view women as genetically inferior, manipulative, and reduces a woman’s worth to her reproductive or sexual function. Same song, different dance. If wypipo history is any indicator, the fact we have a group of men who openly embrace misogyny, rape, violence against women, and racism should leave women very worried. First they came for the immigrants, and you said nothing. Hope you ladies like red. Blessed Be the Fruit.
It’s like asking why women are so obsessed with dieting and being thin - they’ve internalized a societal message that isn’t exactly the healthiest.
There is a meme out there that men are tall, heroes are tall, and being sexy as a male involves height as well as a six-pick of abs. Nevermind that there are Hollywood leading men like Tom Cruise that spend most of their professional lives standing on boxes so their leading ladies don’t tower over them (Tom is 5 foot 7 inches, or around 170 cm, and his ex wife Nicole Kidman stands 5 foot 11, or four inches/10 cm taller than him). The fact that Hollywood DOES put those short guys on boxes maintains the illusion that the hero is always taller than the girl.
These guys are not the deepest thinkers. I can see them focusing on the illusion and not really grokking that Tom Cruise is shorter than average. For that matter, here’s a list of some successful celebrity guys who are all shorter than the US male average:
5 foot 8 - Mark Wahlberg, Ben Stiller
5 foot 7 - Robert Downey, Jr., Tom Cruise, Jet Li, Martin Freeman, James McAvoy, Martin Short, David Spade
5 foot 6 - Jack Black, Elijah Wood, Jon Stewart, Danny Trejo
5 foot 5 - Daniel Radcliffe, Dustin Hoffman, Bruno Mars
5 foot 4 - Michael J. Fox, Seth Green
5 foot 2 - Kevin Hart, Prince
5 foot 0 - Danny DeVito
4 foot 5 - Peter Dinklage
In some cases, Hollywood uses various tricks to make these guys look taller. Sometimes it doesn’t matter. For the Hobbit movies they cast actors for the Dwarf characters that were all taller than Martin Freeman, so Freeman’s shorter height meant they didn’t need visual tricks to portray him as a shorter-than-Dwarf hobbit. With Dinklage, either they ignore his lack of height, he’s playing a little person character, or, most recently, they have fun with the concept and he appears as an alien 10 foot tall “Dwarf” that towards over 6 foot 3 Chris Hemsworth. While I’m sure every single one of those guys has had to deal with some crap for being shorter than average, some of them a LOT of crap, clearly a man can be short (even severely short) and be very successful and get laid by women.
But tell that to a self-obsessed incel they’ll either ignore you, or come up with some other excuse why all those “chads” have relationships and the incels don’t. It will always be some excuse, and that excuse will be external to the incel.
Rinse and repeat for almost anything other than the fact that the incel has a loathesome personality.
What the hell is a “wypipo” or “wymale”? I can not keep up with the various slang terms for this or that group of people anymore. Also, please clarify whether or not this term is supposed to be insulting or whatever. Is it supposed to refer to “white people”? If so, why can’t you say “white people”? It’s like referring to women as “wymyn”.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/wypipo
Now, I’m not a wypipologist. And the immigration issue seems to be somewhat afield of the incel issue. And it’s impossible to deny that misogyny exists in force among Black men as well as among Mayo-Americans.
But there’s truth there. The incel community certainly seems to be derived from maladaptive behaviors driven by the dominant (White) culture. Not all self-described incels are White–very many are not. And not all incels are racist. But the overlap between incels, redpillers, and pepes is pretty damn big. And the entire incel phenomenon exists in the confluence of cultural pressures and entitlement.
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You can see one example here, where a woman who is probably a 7/10 at least, thinks she is only “3/10.”
I’d like to expand on that a bit. When you say loathsome, are you being disparaging towards them as a full blown misogynist incel, or are you insulting them for not having a personalty that connects with women on a romantic level?
I’ve plenty of friends, and people seem to enjoy my presence and company quite a bit, but when it comes to romance, I just don’t click with anyone. Part of it is that I’m just actually a really boring person when left to my own devices. I don’t know what the rest of it is. I’ve had women ask me out, then after a date or two, say that there just wasn’t any “chemistry.”
The only times I ever really got accused of being creepy or otherwise off putting on the behavior front is when I was trying too hard. Trying to anticipate their needs or otherwise following the advice of others on how to interact with someone for whom I feel attraction. That never turned out well.
But, being myself, while not being as off putting as trying to be someone I’m not, wasn’t something that was a real winner of a personality either in dating.
So, I guess I am asking, do you consider someone to have a loathsome personality if they cannot attract women, or do they only have a loathsome personality if they have externalized this into blaming others?
Speaking for myself, I can’t imaging using the term “loathsome” for someone bland or boring or innocuous or even odd or creepy. For me, it would take active aggression, nasty behavior, virulent racism or sexism, etc.
What makes them loathesome to me is not their sex life or lack of it. Frankly, I couldn’t care less what other people do or don’t get up to.
What makes them loathesome are the following, any one or more:
I trust this clarifies matters
The latter.
Yes. They are ALL trolling. None of them would ever be in this nonexistent situation, and they won’t do anything. Except call the police on the down low and hope the victim is very very grateful to them.