If anything the impression I get is that these guys would prefer to be “pick up artists” if they could, but that doing that requires some “theory of the mind”, some ability to view the circumstance from the other’s POV if only to be able to manipulate them, and that they lack that.
Your assistance is appreciated. 
Yep it does. I know people who have met the physical contact need with pets. But the point is that there are ways outside of sex to meet the need for touch. Sex may be a lot of people’s preferred means to meet that need, but it can be met through working with children, living with goats, or getting a massage.
No one dies from lack of touch either, so I’m not sure what the difference is.
One problem with using Elliot Rodger as a case example is that he had so much fucked up stuff in his life that he is something of a Blind Man’s Elephant - people can pick and choose any of which variables they like to choose from as the culprit for his woes. Bullying/mockery victim? Yes. A bully himself? Arguably. Racist? Yes. Mental issues? Yes. Lack of friends? Yes. Toxic masculinity? Yes. Lack of social understanding? Yes. The only thing lacking might be a radical Islamic background or autism or a childhood of poverty, but other than that there is already so much stuff in there that everyone can shoehorn and angle in whichever cause they see out of it.
They will find men ranting about women being stupid sluts, upset that the femshit whores won’t touch them when they find themselves actually needing one of the dumb cumbuckets, and the bitches don’t even care. And they will think “ah, someone finally understands.” Or will they? That is the question.
Actually, they do. Babies in orphanages will die from lack of human contact. Its called failure to thrive, and it was a huge issue in Romanian orphanages in the late 1980s.
I hate to sound like Mr. Elliot Rodger Expert, it’s just that his crazy manifesto really stuck with me in how fucked up it is. There’s more:
Spoiled entitled little shithead whose parents never made him get a job or do anything for himself? Check.
Delusional narcissist who literally thought he would win the lottery just because he wished for it very hard? Check.
Instigator of random violence (long before the shooting) - including repeatedly throwing drinks in peoples’ faces whenever he got pissed off at them, and shooting a crowd of people with a Super Soaker filled with orange juice (I swear to God, he actually did that) - Check.
Convinced that he would write an “epic adventure story” like Game of Thrones and make millions of dollars, even though he had no writing ability? Check.
Obsessed with the idea of flaying people alive (clearly inspired by Game of Thrones) - Check.
As I have said, this guy could have had a wife and 5 side pieces and he’d still be fucked up psycho. Remember everyone that there is no shortage of serial killers and general whackos who are profilgate womanizers, or “happily” married, or both.
If I was involuntarily celibate, I don’t know that I’d identify with this “movement” , if they worshipped a psycho. (are they a legitimate movement? do they have a mission statement that everybody agrees on? do they have a leader?)
But, if there just happened to be a psycho in this movement, (as there are psychos in ANY movement once it reaches a sizable amount), I don’t know if I’d distance myself just for that.
My twenties included a long, involuntary dry spell (I mentally described myself something like “involuntarily celibate”), and it was super lonely and depressing and discouraging. But I blamed myself, not women, which was exactly the right thing to do IMO.
No, sex and physical contact are not needs in the way that food and air are. But neither are they luxuries in the way that videogames and caviar are. For the majority of people, physical intimacy–and I think for the majority of people, sexual intimacy–are necessary for psychological and emotional health. It’s perfectly understandable that if someone desires sexual intimacy and isn’t getting any, they’re gonna be frustrated and sad and discouraged
In general, I feel pity for folks who want sex and aren’t having it; I remember how shitty that felt. But that pity doesn’t translate in any way at all to patience with anyone who turns hostile about it. I can be sad someone isn’t having sex without thinking that they’re owed sex.
I do wish that more people recognized flirting and dating as comprising a distinct set of social skills that not everyone knows intuitively, and that can be taught in a respectful, psychologically healthy way. It seems that the main folks who teach sad dudes how to get sex is pickup artists and the like, and what they teach is scummy bullshit. Ideally there’d be a clear alternative to these fools, an alternative that would teach incels how to behave in an attractive manner (like, specifically, not just general ideology) while not being misogynistic jackasses.
Incels aren’t nice guys. In those threads I saw a lack of confidence and a lack of understanding of women, but seldom the kind of hatred the incels show.
People complaining about being confined to the friend zone at least have friends, and more than just online ones.
Incels seem to have neither friends nor romantic partners.
People with high sex drives often don’t understand those with low sex drives, but the reverse is also true.
Some people, sure, but I’ve got a Golden Retriever and it isn’t the same thing.
Ways you shouldn’t touch your GR:
Another issue - not about Rodger, but about incels and frustrated people in general - is that desperation is generally punished by rejection in society, which only leads to more desperation. It’s an extraordinarily cruel Catch-22. A desperate person not being able to find love or companionship because of desperation is akin to a starving person being told, “We’ll give you food when you stop being so *hungry *all the time.”
No it’s not. We all face disappointments in life, we all feel short changed. Some people are enormously shortchanged, they have longed their whole lives to have a child and now find they cannot. They are widowed with two kids at twenty six. They can’t secure a position in the field they adore. Life is filled with grievous shortfalls for everyone.
We get past it, and find our way to some kind of happiness, by maturing, and looking past those things we lack to enjoy the things we do possess.
They live in a hell of their own creation, certain it’s never gonna change. That is the hell part. But that is total horseshit. Things change, people find love late in life, and in unexpected places, all the freaking time. This bunch accept it’s never gonna change, and blame everything external to them because otherwise, they might be the part of the problem that needs working on.
(And I seriously question that anyone, anywhere, ever mocked someone by calling them ‘incel’, unless they have already self identified as such.)
The same with the long-time unemployed. It is tough to not look desparate when you are indeed desparate.
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That’s true, but not all shortfalls have the same sort of reinforcing feedback loops that Velocity was describing. A widow with two kids who gets sad about it doesn’t suddenly have three kids.
“We” do not all get past life’s disappointments. Healthy people who are operating with a full complement of emotional and intellectual and support resources do. But lots of people–not just Incels–are on self-detructive paths because they cannot cope.
The whole “I am okay so why aren’t you okay?!” is a stupid way to knock sense into an Incel. It is stupid for Incels because their whole thing is that of course life is okay for the the top 50th percentile of the social hierarchy, which is where the “we” you are referencing live.
I hang out at the r/lostgeneration subreddit, where some Incels occasionally post. A lot of unemployed and underemployed 20- and 30-somethings hang out there. These folks are fed up with the “I am okay with life’s disappointments so why aren’t you okay with yours?!” line they hear from parents and other Boomers. Could it possibly be that carrying a heavy student loan burden while working a minimum wage job is a different kind of disappointment than getting past over for a promotion? Could it possibly be that being unable to make enough money to move out of your childhood bedroom is a different kind of disappointment than being turned down for a home loan?
Not all blues are the same. And the way that blues are framed by the people around us help to shape how intensely we feel about them. It is easier to cope psychologically with poverty when everyone you know is poor. But if you are the only person you know who is poor, it will be harder to cope…to not feel like you aren’t being ripped off. Incels see everyone else finding success and the advice that seems to work everyone else failing for them. Yes, this is crazy since obviously not everyone finds success. But if I had the same mindset, I would be angry too.
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They died?
We were told about the Romanian orphanage tendency to ignore babies crying in ante-natal classes but I thought it was that they eventually stopped crying and grew up all sociopathic. Maybe dead babies is a bad thing to bring up in a room full of pregnant women.
Non hijack: these analogies to food and employment are flawed, if the hungry and unemployed people viscerally hated food, jobs, chefs and employed people they would be apt.
It’s like complaining that you don’t have any black friends at a Klan rally.
The point isn’t that all crushing disappointments are equatable, it’s that people move on to happy productive lives after devastating blows all the time. But it takes a maturity beyond stamping your foot and lamenting your lot in life.
They remind me of that fellow who was around for a while that never stopped raging about how unfair it was tall guys got all the chicks and he couldn’t get any. Lots of women prefer tall men. But lots of short guys make out okay every day. But that guy wasn’t having it! He’d built his own little hell where society was cruel and unjust and life unfair. Yeah, focusing on your shortcomings and blaming society for an inability and/or refusal to grow up, move on, and get right with however it is, (short, fat, bald, unemployed, whatever!), is gonna lead to anything but happiness.
We are all responsible for our own happiness, not society. Finding a path to being happy while facing your challenges in life, IS maturity, in my opinion.