The regulars at PUAhate.com – we’ve met them before — are a strange and bitter bunch. Most seem to be self-loathing so-called “incels” who blame their lack of romantic and sexual success on their average or below-average looks. Rejecting the basic premise of the pickup artist crowd – that average guys can transform themselves into suave lotharios by mastering manipulative pickup formulas – the PUAhate regulars tend to be true believers in what they somewhat pretentiously call “looks theory,” the odd and obviously untrue notion that women only date men with “male model” looks.
As one PUAhater put it recently:
PUA makes you think that all your problems are because of your personality/behaviour – i.e. things you can control. So when you keep failing, it means that YOU are fucking up and doing things wrong
the reality is that many of us just lost the genetic lottery. we are ugly, the wrong race, the wrong height etc, and that fucked us up. there is NOTHING we can do about it
So, naturally, the PUAhaters spend a lot of their time jealous of tall, good-looking men for their supposed monopoly on the women of the world — whom they also hate.
But the strange thing is that the PUAhaters pretty much hate everyone else as well. They get angry when guys they consider ugly score “hot chicks.” They get angry when guys who are good-looking but not male models get attention from “really hot girls.” And so on, and so on, and so on.
Indeed, many of the regulars seem to walk around in a perpetual state of rage, angry at each and every man who’s managed to pair up with a woman, not to mention the women as well.
One regular recently described his “day from hell” to his comrades:
To start the day I saw a couple where it was an average White guy with an OBESE Asian girl. They were walking around acting like they were trying to prove shit. LMAO. I wanted to kick the guy in the fucking nuts for dating that landwhale. If you’re going to use the racial advantage, at least date a girl who is under 300lbs. Later I go to the gym and see the same tall guys I usually do. Even if I had a good face, how the fuck do you compete with guys who are fucking 6’4”?
Then at the gym there’s this good looking White guy there talking to this Asian dude about how Asian girls are easy and how they approach him. To make things worse after that these fucking frat douchebags come in with their girlfriends to show off . Then to cap off the day a girl I used to know from freshman year walks right past me without even saying anything. I used to fucking live next door to this bitch and now she doesn’t even say anything and acts like a pretentious cunt. She’s an Indian girl dating a White dude lmao. Days like today make you wonder why you even still try in the first place.
Of course, as I’ve mentioned before, most of those posting on PUAhate don’t actually seem to be ugly by anyone’s standards but their own, at least judging from the pictures of themselves they sometimes post to the site, which reveal them to be mostly average-looking guys, with some of the regulars even quite conventionally handsome.
But evidently they would rather believe that they have “lost the genetic lottery” rather than face a more obvious explanation for why the girls don’t like them: because they’re shallow, self-obsessed assholes who hate themselves and hate women and radiate their bitterness from every pore. (And some are even creepier than this, like this pedophile – sorry, ephebophile – who’s angry at me personally because unlike him I don’t chase after 15-year-olds. Link NSFW.)
The PUAhaters often talk about getting surgeries to “correct” their supposed genetic flaws. They would do far better to spend that money on therapy.
I think I met one of these guys online a few weeks ago. Some guy on OKCupid messaged me, and when I saw his pictures I thought he was really cute. Then I read his profile. Wow, complete and utter asshole. I responded back “No.”, only to have him respond with some rant about how I was shallow and only cared about looks and wouldn’t talk to him because he was ugly. It was so weird because he was really cute, like “damn!” cute. It was his personality that made him disgusting. He actually argued with me later that I couldn’t possibly dislike him based on his personality because all women only care about looks. Wut?
It is mesmerizing – so much “wrong” gathered in one place. I can’t stop reading it. I mean, it’s an incredibly slow day at work but still.
Shit. I think I did backwards.
Good work agent Nobinayamu, keep them confused.
It’s amazing how such a simple idea like “maybe that (one) person didn’t want to date me because of my (below average) looks”, which really should be a passing thought before moving on to less shallow people, can get warped and stretched until men of all levels of attractiveness can comfortably fit their self-righteous indignation under the same umbrella to the point that the only men this doesn’t apply to don’t really exist outside of glossy magazines.
The “incel” page on wikipedia is…. interesting. Not dating for awhile can be really lonely and depressing, but I worry about the mind-set of people who would declare that being “incel” is totes a real, serious, and totally mysterious-not-my-fault-ever kind of thing. I mean, what other warped beliefs are these people walking around with and unleashing on the world?
@AWorldAnonymous
I thought you meant the shared showers were a popular meeting place…
*is having a stupid evening*
Have these guys never seen Steve Buscemi?
Scanning over it again, I’m also left wondering what exactly “walking around acting like they were trying to prove shit” means. Is it simply walking around in public while obviously being a couple, like maybe holding hands? I’m guessing it is.
Oh dang, I checked out the pedophile link; that dude is in so much denial it’s mind boggling.
Emmy, I read the Wiki page, and it seems to have been written by someone who tries to stay, well, neutral, rather than some raving MRA type “incel”…
I bet there are totally perfectly fine individuals out there who just never find someone, because, well, the world isn’t fair, one can be unfortunate, and some people can be very unfortunate. So if someone thinks to zirself that zie’s involuntarily celibate and lonely due to no fault of zir own, that’s not necessarily untrue, and sure, that could be depressing as hell. But saying that it’s no one’s fault that one is “incel” is pretty different from saying that it’s the FAULT OF DA EVOL WOMENZ, as self-proclaimed incels who post here and the one making that Urban Dictionary entry seem to claim.
@Emmy, I had to go check out the incel page on wikipedia and I just can’t get over the amount of [citation needed] and similar notations on it. I do actually feel sorry for people who are that lonely and who actually can’t get dates through no fault of their own, but that really made me laugh.
It’s a bit weird in itself to make an honest attempt to write something neutral and scientific about the term “incel” (as seems to have been the intent).
You know, I used to think sort of like this. I mean, sans the racial stuff, but a lot of very petty “how is THAT girl with HIM? She’s such a butterface” or “ugh, god, she’s so pretty, what the hell is she doing with him?” or “she’s so fat, how does she have someone like him?” and “I will be alone FOREVAH because I am not a Victoria’s secret model!!!11!” etc, etc, etc. Eventually I realized that this thinking a) wasn’t helpful to me and was pretty mean to other people, b) wasn’t true (I mean, yes, there’s a huge culture of fat hatred very well intertwined with misogyny, but there are still all kinds of people in all kinds of bodies who date and fuck and find love) and c) was probably part of my problem with dating. Bitterness and resentment is not a good look on anyone. Not to mention this kind of thinking really limited me. Assuming I couldn’t go talk to any guys because I didn’t have a chance just gave me an excuse to not bite the bullet and go talk to someone.
Oh, and apparently we “girls” are “lying skanks” and “cunt commentators” for indicating a preference for personality, intelligence and social engagement (David) over male models (PARKER HURLEY, y’all!!!).
You know, it would be funny if it were not so very pathetically sad.
Puey T. Hater: “Women hate me and no one will date me because I am physically hideous!”
Random woman: “You aren’t hideous, really. Just try being relaxed and asking a girl out.”
PTH: “Hideous! Children run away from me in the street! Grandmothers try to beat me with their canes!”
Random woman: “No, really. You’re being too hard on yourself. Women aren’t a monolith and if you just tried…”
PTH: “I’m completely horrific! I work out at the gym three hours a day and women who live by me won’t evey say hello to me as they walk by!!”
Random woman: “Seriously, look at that guy over there. He’s no more attractive than you are and he has a girlfriend…”
PTH: “Look at HIM?!? He’s a dickwad and she’s totally not worth someone like him!!”
Random woman: “Okay, I think I’m beginning to get a sense of what your problem might be.”
PTH: “What the fuck do you know, you lying, skanky status whore?!”
Random woman: “Wow, you really are a dick, aren’t you?” Turns away and pretends PTH doesn’t exist.
PTH: “See, I’m so physically horrible!! Women won’t even talk to me!! Woe! WOE!!”
The mind just boggles, I swear. It’s like these guys have never set foot in the real world, where unattractive women date and marry attractive men, unattractive men date and marry attractive women, and really people on all levels of “rating” hook up and fall in love with each other.
I find it ironic, because a guy I know who is a male model (and damn, the man is heartbreak pretty) complains all the time about how he can’t get a date. I point out that is because he never tries to meet women or talk to them (preferring to hang out with his twin brother and our surrounding gay social group), so the only women he meets are through his work, and he complains that model women are vacuous and shallow.
Male models – still not getting sex through the universe just somehow making women hop on his dick.
I tried to find my old post on Asshole(tm) since it seemed relevant here, but it seems like I can’t use the search function right (I’m clearly an idiot). Anyway, the idea (not my idea, stole it from feminist blogger Tania Suhinina) being that just like there are Nice Guys(tm) who can’t get a girl but aren’t actually nice, there are also lots of Assholes(tm) who are popular with girls but aren’t actually Assholes.
I don’t know what CBT means to you, but in this context with what it means to me, it’s hilarious.
Let’s just say that when it comes to the whining incel crowd, if their insurance doesn’t cover what *I* understand CBT as an acronym to mean, they just need to whine around me enough to annoy me and I’ll give them some of that for free.
Hint: I understand CBT as a kink term and not a therapy term.
I think an attitude of “but I’m not good enough” also makes it hard to see when others *are* flirting with you. It happened to me in high school. I had kind of a dorky friend that I thought was seriously cute and was interested in, and I flirted with him. We even started hanging out regularly alone because I literally asked him out on a date…that he didn’t realize was a date. He shut down all of my attempts to flirt with him and even laughed at me when I told him I wanted to kiss him (not in a mean way, he thought I was joking). I honestly thought he didn’t like me.
We lost contact during college but later reconnected on facebook and were chatting, and it came up that he’d had a huge crush on me the whole time…he just thought I could never be interested in him so he interpreted all my flirtation as jokes, and that gave me the impression that he wasn’t interested so I didn’t get more blunt about it. I think that kind of miscommunication happens fairly often when people have low self-esteem or inflated ideas of what you need in order to attract someone.
I… what? Is he aware that in order for people of a certain race to exist, at least two people from that race had to bone, and one of them probably identified as a woman? If no women ever had children with anyone of a certain race, that race would not exist. The existence of children of every color all over the planet invalidates this kooky idea. Was he raised by wolves, without access to media featuring children of multiple races? How does he get internet in his cave?
@AK: Well, my fairly geeky and, as young, socially awkward husband was flirted with in high school by a girl who’s name I can’t remember right now but who was nicknamed Barbie because she had endless legs, big boobs, doll face and shampoo commercial-style blond hair. He was completely oblivious to the fact and punched himself over being an idiot when he was explicitly told this years later.
@Dvärghundspossen You know, that’s the best reason I can think of to have as many casual friends of the opposite sex as you can manage. The more you hang around with them and watch them with other people, the more likely you are to understand how others think and operate, what their signals are, what the range of behaviors is that you can interpret as interest. And the more they hang around with you, the more opportunities there are for all your female friends to turn to you and say, “What the hell, guyfriend? She is totally into you. No really, she’s putting out all the signs, so go for it!”
Okay, the best reason other than, you know, just having friends to hang with. I assumed that one went without saying, but given who we’re talking about…
@ostara321: Yeah, me too. I may well have believed these guys if I’d found them in high school or early in college. Fortunately I didn’t, I stopped obsessing over looks, dropped that narcissistic notion of the world being against me, and I’ve had a much healthier love life since.
A lot of it’s due to a stubborn belief that attractiveness is objective. Sometimes you learn the falseness of this first-hand. In conversations with my then-girlfriend, I learned that both of us thought we were dating “up” in terms of looks. We had very different standards of beauty, as it turns out. If guys like the one @socialrants encountered ever figure that out, they might actually get to go on some dates.
Another consequence of obsession with conventionally attractive looks is that some male acquaintances have refused to believe me when I’ve said that I couldn’t possibly get a date as a teen since everyone knew I was mentally ill and considered me a freak. They’ve been like “no, that can’t possibly be true, because you’re conventionally attractive and men are shallow and only care about that”. WTF? So much wrong there…
Yeah. I remember what it felt like when my last girlfriend called me a pretty boy. I’d been called cute before, but “pretty boy” during a make-out session was really nice.
That said, it’s not really a common term used to describe someone who could cosplay as Hagrid.