While there’s a truth component to this, the complaint that “society is cruel and unfair” shouldn’t be dismissed out of hand. This sounds similar to the whitesplaining talk about “Sure, minority people have it tough, but some minority people succeed, so you are responsible for your own happiness” etc.
Somewhat defeats the point of having a society.
I could be called an involuntary celibate, and have spent over half of my life friendzoned hard, if it still counts as friendzoning if you tell her you love her and she turns you down but still wants to be friends for the next couple of decades and you accept because it’s better than nothing.
The sense that it’s not fair is hard to resist, and the thought that it’s her fault for unfairly rejecting you is insidiously appealing. Of course I had a specific ‘her’ to concern myself about, whereas the average incel-type can’t tighten the focus more than ‘all of womankind’, but it’s the same principle. And it very much doesn’t help that the whole complete entirety of pop culture tells us that the man gets the girl. “Gets the girl” - as a prize. Generally without doing a damn thing to earn her interest, and very likely by being creepy or even rapey. So watch too much pop culture and you find that the message is that you are single because you’re flawed, broken, or unmanly - or those narsty womenses are breaking the rules!
At some point I saw where this was going and chose to internalize the fact that I’m worthless and awful - and thus my solitude makes narrative sense. Twas a huge load off my mind and I definitely dodged the bullet of getting bitter and angry about it. Way easier to be calm and accepting now; it’s pretty much the natural state. Incel types don’t know what they’re missing.
I see what you’re saying but that has very little relation to guys who complain about being short. Yeah, it sucks for a while when you’re a kid and you realize you suck at basketball and all your friends can reach up and touch a certain spot on the wall or ceiling at school or something…I remember being, like, 12 or 13 and being pissed off about it and jealous of the taller guys.
I quickly got over that when 1. someone (maybe my parents) pointed out that Tom Cruise was short (and he is, indeed, the exact same height as me), and 2. I realized that my height did not prevent me from tackling guys (in fact, in some ways it made it easier.)
There’s no fucking excuse, I don’t give a shit how short you are, your height is not gonna make it harder for you to get laid unless you’re literally like a midget or dwarf or something. And even in that case, it’s still possible, or the genes for it would have been eliminated through natural selection a long time ago. One of the biggest and most beloved stars in pop culture right now (Peter Dinklage) is a tiny little dude. Actually I would bet every dollar I have that Dinklage’s success has made it much easier for guys like that to get laid.
A piece I read yesterday in the Daily Beast on this subject: Sympathy for the Incel
The writer interviews one self-described incel who was willing to go public, and it is a little more illuminating on this particular group.
and
I don’t identify with these folks, and from what I can tell my sons don’t fall into that category either. Instead, I think what we are seeing is that while in the past the occasional outcast was just that - an outcast. Now they can band together with other outcasts and instead of seeing themselves as something that needs to change, they instead enter an echo chamber of supporters.
I think I’m dating one of your kind. He says he’s ugly.
So, not to read to much into it, but science sez yer wrong. Just like a short-armed woman can still learn to be a good rock-climber but has to work a little harder at it, a short dude can still get laid but starts with a numbers disadvantage.
I’m a short dude. This isn’t something I whine about. But I’m not gonna pretend like it’s not true. Science, bitches!
Nothing screams this is about maturity quite as much as, ‘But in the movies, the guy always gets the girl!’
It’s incredibly hard to take this shit serious.
Wait. Are you talking about socialized sex? Purchase a woman’s time with some sort of EBT card? Gives another meaning to tramp stamps.
This incel thing is fascinating though. It’s a strange level of entitlement but not actually an unexpected level.
In the movies, guns fire hundreds of bullets and magically bounce off cars.
On TV and in the movies, people have apartments and houses they could never possibly afford if they had the jobs they’re shown having.
In movies, the ugly girl is a model with glasses.
If you’re jealous of stuff that happens in movies, you’re seriously disconnected from reality.
And people fail to move on all the time, too. Just saying that people should move on when they don’t seem able to move on doesn’t help them move on. It’s like telling people with depression to just snap out of it. If they could just snap out of it, they would.
There are tools people use to overcome problems. Some people seem to have them without knowingly acquiring them. Others have to work at it. Still others will never have them.
If we make feeling good a bootstrapping thing, we are taking credit for something that may not be our doing at all.
So when women starve themselves to look like Jennifer Lawrence, it’s all their own fault, nothing to do with Hollywood promoting an unhealthy and unrealistic body image?
It’s my understanding that the incels spun off from the pick-up artist community, or at least that many incels are former members of that community who turned against it when they realized the “PUA” method wasn’t working. Elliot Rodger was a member of an incel forum called PUAHate.
I saw that same Daily Beast article, and something that struck me about it was that even by their own twisted standards the incels aren’t very good at actually supporting each other. The young man you quoted, who condemned violence and misogyny and spoke of the incel community as a place where men could speak about their feelings openly, was branded a “fakecel” and banned from the incel forum he’d been participating in.
All of us, whether consciously or not, have our beliefs about the world informed by TV, movies, and books. The media relies on cultural tropes and in doing so perpetuates those tropes.
This conversation has been interesting. I keep vacillating between wanting to join the “personal responsibility” chorus and wanting to foster understanding, if not a little compassion, for the hated Incel.
But if we were talking about other “bad guys”, I wouldn’t be so stuck. And I don’t think a lot of posters here would be either. If we were talking about urban gang members, we’d be talking about the misery of living in concentrated poverty, surrounded by violence and bad role models. If we were talking about the hikkomori, we’d point to the hypercompetitiveness of Japan society, its heavy emphasis on familial honor above individualism, and the sluggishness of the Japanese economy. ISIS terrorists? Well, if Muslim societies weren’t so backwards and impoverished, maybe their young people would be celebrating life and creation rather than death and destruction. Indian males are raping all the girls and women? Well, what do you expect from cultures that don’t value girls/women and that are run by corrupt governments?
But we think Incels are the product of only themselves, not the society they are born and raised into. In the US (and other Western countries), we all endowed with free will and fully governed by our choices. Not upbringing or education. Not the things we’re exposed to. Not our life experiences. We are governed by the thoughts and feelings we have willed ourselves to have at any particular moment in time. So if we aren’t happy, then it is ultimately our fault for not thinking happy enough thoughts. Doesn’t matter if we have some really good reasons for being unhappy. In America at least, only losers are unhappy with their lot.
It will probably take a while for social psychologists/sociologists to fully understand the root of the Incel phenomenon. I’m not guessing they are going to conclude these guys are being assholes just because they like being assholes.
Is that what you read into what I said?
He also completely ignored (or flat out said we were lying) the women who showed up in that thread to say either they were OK with short guys or actually liked short guys.
Which just goes to show how fixed his mindset was.
Sort of like some of the incels.
Either people are influenced by the things they see in popular culture, or they’re not. Which is it?
Like everything dealing with behaviors of organisms, it’s in part environment and in part genetics.
So let me ask something here.
Are Incels responsible for what they draw from modern media?
Are women responsible for what they draw from modern media?
Is your answer the same for both? If not, why not?
I’m not saying women aren’t subject to horrible body image crap from movies. One of my examples was ‘the ugly girl who is a model with glasses’. Not a lot of normal looking women in movies, but then I don’t think it’s fair to focus on that and ignore that it ain’t all fat guys and diversity on the male side either. Again, movies and media aren’t realistic depictions of society. If you’re not teaching your angst ridden teens this fact, you probably should.
The answer is the same for both.
I would say it’s the same for all of us. We’re influenced by all kinds of things we see; movies, TV, commercials, books, news, strangers, co-workers, friends, family. Some of the messages are blatant and some are subtle. Some individuals are able to shrug of the damaging, unrealistic ideas (of which there are many), and some are not.
My objection is to the idea that different groups are held to different levels of responsibility. Time for you to answer the question. Do unhappy virgins deserve any sympathy for being influenced by modern media, do anorexics? Is your answer the same for both?