Ex-incel demands compensation for the years society “conspired” to keep him a virgin

By David Futrelle

You might not think there would be much of an ideological overlap between dateless incels (so-called “involuntary celibates”) and swashbuckling pickup artists who claim to bed hot babes with alacrity. But they’re really two sides of the same shitty coin.

Both are suffused with an overblown sense of sexual entitlement — a feeling that they not only deserve sex but deserve it with virginal or near-virginal hotties who will have few former partners to compare them to, if any at all. (Many of even the most self-pitying and sexually pessimistic incels will turn up their noses at the thought of having sex with fat girls and/or “sluts.”)

But they’re also convinced that they won’t be able to score the women they see as their due without, well, a bit of trickery or force.

That’s why pickup guides like Roosh Valizadeh’s Bang books so often read like date rape manuals, with Roosh himself cheerfully admitting not only to deception but also to using “muscle” to get what he wants from women.

And that’s why incels so often appeal to a sort of deus ex machina solution to their ongoing celibacy, fantasizing about a world in which some unfortunate women would be more or less forced to have sex with them. (You remember the Government Get Girlfriends guy, right?)

This is all a somewhat long-winded preface to a discussion of a truly frightening post  (archived here) that I was recently alerted to on Roosh V’s forum. It’s by a regular commenter there who calls himself Mercenary — a (de facto) incel turned pickup artist who still feels not only bitterness but rage over the years he spent as a virgin.

In a lengthy comment in a thread on the sadness of sexual “dry spells,” he makes clear he’s still hanging on to the central tenets of incel ideology. It’s scary stuff:

[T]he many years I spent as a virgin seem like a real and true CRIME against my happiness and sexuality. I say the word CRIME in the most literal sense. I feel like the whole system or society or way of life needs to be put on trial for making me frustrated and angry and miserable for so many years, and I should be paid compensation for all the years I missed on sexual experiences because I intentionally kept a clueless beta by everyone and everything.

That is not how the world works, dude. This is the sort of thing you go to therapy to process, not the sort of thing the government sends you a check for.

Everyone and everything was conspiring against me getting any sex or female affection, and only teaching me things that were always leading me to failure over and over. I’m talking about movies, television, books, my elders, my parents, teachers, school, university, work colleagues, government legislation, law courts, the police, male friends, and especially girls all giving misleading, totally false and downright dangerous information on interacting with women.

This is essentially a conspirified reworking of the standard pickup artist pitch: Society tells guys that the way to a woman’s heart is to be a “nice guy,” but being nice doesn’t work; you can only “get laid” by projecting a flawless, aloof “alpha” vibe.

The pickup artists are right that “nice guys” finish last, but only because the “niceness” in question is fundamentally manipulative and off-putting to most women. (See here for my numerous previous takes on the notorious “nice guy,” or start with one or two of these posts. Or this Nice Guy primer from Dr. Nerdlove ) The real solution for straight guys isn’t to learn to act like an alpha — and to turn your whole life into a performance — but to, you know, develop some genuine confidence in yourself that’s not dependent on manipulative PUA garbage.

But, alas, Mercenary’s rant gets darker.

I’m not just thinking of myself, but of all you guys here and I’m also thinking of every frustrated virgin who has never been laid, every man who has spent years as an incel, every man who has been cheated on, and every man whose wife left him, destroyed all he built, and took his money and children. If you really think about it, how many male suicides worldwide, or murders across the globe could have been prevented just from teaching men game and getting them laid with some female affection ? Contemplated this way what we have had for the last 50 to 80 years is a crime of epic proportions.

To Mercenary, what’s happening is a virtual Virgin-ocaust. And he believes this quite sincerely. In his mind, the people who criticize pickup artistry are basically guilty of mass murder. (Unfortunately, he’s hardly the first guy to compare his lack of sex to literal genocide.)

And now we come to the Very Bad History portion of Mercenary’s rant.

In my grandfathers time every man was guaranteed at least 1 virgin woman in his life and some sex and affection from her provided he got married to her. Back then, even if your if your wife eventually became a total cold bitch or got fat, you still had a family, a home and affection from your children. The men who didn’t get married became monks or priests…this is how old society dealt with the MGTOWS and few gays back in the day. Sluts who had children out of wedlock usually were reformed by … putting them into convents and making them nuns.

Literally none of this is true.

Yes, in midcentury America, people tended to get married earlier than they do today, when more people wait to get married or don’t get married at all. And yes, given the youth of many of those getting married and the endless strictures against premarital sex in those days, men were more likely to marry virgins than they are now (and more likely to be virgins themselves). But no man was “guaranteed at least 1 virgin woman in his life.”

Also: WHO FUCKING CARES IF YOUR WIFE IS A VIRGIN, ESPECIALLY IF YOU’RE NOT ONE YOURSELF? Why are supposed PICKUP ARTISTS so obsessed with MARRYING VIRGINS I mean don’t they usually get mad at women who don’t want to have sex with them, do they even know what virgins are? 

But here’s the thing: when people get married very young, their marriages tend to be shitty. A lot of those who married young in the 1950s got divorced in the 1960s and 1970s, Not that Mercenary cares: he seems to think a shitty marriage isn’t a big deal so long as your wife started her life with you as a virgin bride.

Also, though I hardly need to say this, the stuff about monks and nuns is just plain delusional, and not just because only about a fifth of Americans at midcentury were Catholic. It’s true that “sluts who had children out of wedlock” were often sent away against their will to live in “maternity homes” until they gave birth and surrendered their babies for adoption, but they weren’t forced to become nuns.

Even more appalling than Mercenary’s historical ignorance on this issue, of course, is his belief that forcing “sluts” to become nuns would be a good thing for them.

Society was stable, families were strong, children were plentiful, divorce was rare. Being single and living alone was really frowned upon. The old system ensured that in one way or another, both men and women had some form of company and satisfaction in their lives.

But society wasn’t stable. The 50s were a historical aberration, and led directly to the cultural explosion of the 1960s as those who chafed at the restrictiveness of 50s roles and 50s rules tried to figure out more authentic ways of living their lives.

Nowadays the only thing keeping men “sane” is endless online porn.

Speak for yourself, buddy.

Except that it isn’t really….it’s just keeping them weak and demotivated. In those countries where porn is still banned men act very, very differently.

Probably because they live in theocracies and totalitarian regimes?

I wish I could pin the blame on all my sexless years on one group of people or one thing….but the endless cockblocking information was coming from so many different angles and sources that all I can call it is “the system” or “modern society”.

I think this is the reason so many of us get deeply political once we start to master game. We see that the way the world around us has been structured since we got our first boners has been always been totally against our happiness and satisfaction, and also taking most of our money in the process.

Yes, he thinks the world is a vast conspiracy against his boner.

This is the real reason we have the system we have now….it simply produces more much money at the expense of everything else, while keeping most men physically and mentally weak and frustrated & unhappy at the same time.

This is also the reason why today we are considered politically subversive and dangerous by those who want to keep the current system in place at all costs.

No, it’s because you’re raging misogynists who think women exist only for your pleasure.

Game makes men feel and act like real men.
Game keeps your body and mind satisfied, healthy and strong

Game saves lives.
Game is power.

Literally none of this is true. Incel is poison. “Game” is poison too.