By David Futrelle
Check out my piece at the Globe and Mail today about shutting incel forums the hell down. Here’s a snippet:
[I]f appeals to shared humanity are out, is there anything else we can do? We may not be able to win back those who have plunged too deeply into the incel rabbit hole, but we can take steps to limit their ability to recruit new members. Incels aren’t born; they’re made. Sure, most new incel recruits start out embittered and lonely. But they are radicalized by their incel peers on a relatively small number of message boards devoted to the incel ideology.
So we should take a page from the anti-fascist activists who’ve done so much to kick back against the so-called “alt-right” over the last year – not only by confronting the fascists in the streets but also working diligently behind the scenes to take away their platforms online.
You can find the piece here.
Jesus motherfucking Christ, no. I still have PTSD from the severe bullying I received in middle school. It did not, in fact, stop me from being a chubby nerdy autistic girl with bipolar disorder and ADD and a propensity for maladaptive daydreaming.
@Yutolia
Yes, exactly. I was bullied for being “weird” (I have brain damage that causes all kinds of weird quirks for me; none of them negatively impact others, they just make me do things like suddenly laugh at a memory or be unable to respond immediately to social situations) and I have had to work through a lot of issues as a result. Being bullied only taught me that people will attack you for arbitrary bullshit. The people who expressed violence, which is the behavior you seem to think will be solved by bullying were not the targets of bullying and they were never put in their place. They *were* the bullies.
Also, congrats David! You are a fantastic writer and your success is well-deserved.
The incompatable Alexandra Erin claps back on the Hanson “incels should be given cash” Twitter thread:
https://twitter.com/alexandraerin/status/989966735771099136?s=19
So aging Chad is both saying “Maybe Bullying is a good thing” and “China’s control over what people are allowed to say online and ability to stop social movements from forming is a good thing”
Deliberate troll or just a terrible person? You be the judge!
Shadowplay
April 27, 2018 at 4:44 pm
Oh gods, that thread.
Anyone else getting a governmentgotgirlfriends dolt vibe there
Well wait til you read the comments below the actual article he wrote;
http://www.overcomingbias.com/2018/04/two-types-of-envy.html
@PeeVee
Why did I go read the original thread?
@kupo, @LindsayIrene, @everyone else who has been bullied
I’m so sorry that this happened to you too. I was a smart nerdy girl with ADD, sensory integration disorder, and reading issues, plus because of the abuse at home, I just gave off signals that “we can do whatever to this person and nothing will happen to us because she has no one to go to.”
My bullies didn’t seem to suffer from low-self esteem. They were spoiled and used to getting whatever they wanted, and didn’t see the violence they inflicted on others as a problem. They hurt me because they thought it was fun, not because they were hurting themselves.
If it were truly the case that bullies have low-self esteem and a tough home life, then I and my friends would have been more likely to be the bullies, but we weren’t.
@Zatar: I’m still trying to decide between those options or also maybe “severely misguided” or “former bully”.
Great article, David. I’m really glad you got a piece in a place as prominent as the Globe, and it’s well-deserved.
So aging Chad is both saying “Maybe Bullying is a good thing” and “China’s control over what people are allowed to say online and ability to stop social movements from forming is a good thing”
Well “shutting incels down online” is considered a good idea (and why not?)
I think Chad is thinking the incels are obviously arrogant, proud dudes who are very publically spouting violent ideaologies at school, work, etc and that if the people around them made it clear to them that “this will not be tolerated here”, instead of tolerating their *free speech* and putting up with them, that it might help to socialize them in a positive way.
But there’s another argument that says, no, these incel dudes are not coming across as socially arrogant, proud and spouting hateful ideas publicly, but rather they are quiet and awkward and being bullied by the “cool, popular chads and staceys” for not fitting in. Years of this builds up inside them until one day they blow up like a pressure cooker and commit violence. So the violence is a reaction against the bullying, not a result of being “that asshole bully guy” at school, work, etc.
Of course at some point it is theorized that these otherwise quiet, awkward, trademarked nice guys go online and get radicalized into become an *online* bully (but they never display it openly at school, work, etc.
Either way it seems bullying is never the answer, from any side. But someone somewhere needs to call them out on their bullshit nonetheless.
Yutolia:
Honestly putting “Former” in front of bully might be overly generous.
Oh, hell no. There are a lot of dudes in that comment section saying the government could subsidize the services of sex workers instead of providing sex slaves. Totally glosses over the fact that sex workers can still say no to a man. Because, shock! they are also human beings with agency.
@Zatar: I agree, I was just rethinking that statement. Bullies generally don’t change. Their terrible behavior works for them, why should they?
Re: that comments section
Omg, I’m so sorry I clicked there. Ick, ick, ick!!!!!
idli sambar revolution:
There is a difference between saying that we need stronger hate speech laws and saying that China having a giant firewall and being able to shut down any speech they see fit is a good thing.
Similarly there is a difference between saying “We need to call out sexism when we see it.” and “Maybe this generations problem is it wasn’t bullied enough.”
Kupo,
I KNOW, right?!?
sometimes bullying behavior is just a stage someone goes through in their youth and they outgrow it as they age and mature, gaining more experience in life, and hence perspective and empathy.
“Oh, hell no. There are a lot of dudes in that comment section saying the government could subsidize the services of sex workers instead of providing sex slaves. Totally glosses over the fact that sex workers can still say no to a man. Because, shock! they are also human beings with agency.”
Sexual Communism is an idea that was discussed years ago in the Manosphere and no, according to them, sex workers could not be allowed to say no because its their job, just like I can’t say no to my boss with regards to daily work tasks without risking losing my job. So in their fantasy Sextopia, sex workers who said no would be fired and their government subsidy withdrawn.
Anyway, curious how nobody brought up the subject of arranged marriage, which is a form of traditional sexual distribution.
From the comments;
jimpliciter • a day ago
Why not establish a “one, bi-weekly government funded trip to the brothel (*conditions apply*)” as an addendum to the existing welfare system? The politicians already have their own. However, proving a lack of ‘gett’n some’ mightn’t be as easy as proving a lack of income. You can penalize a welfare cheat, by demanding they return the money owed. How would you go about penalizing a sex welfare cheat? Interesting stuff.
Sid • a day ago
Maybe folks who aren’t getting enough sex aren’t getting enough sex because they’re socially unsavvy and so they’re unable to come together and organize.
RobinHanson Mod Sid • a day ago
People have made similar arguments about the poor
@idli
Someone else can take that hit – my tolerance for their crap is lower than usual today. 😛
One more thought about bullying– I’ve only seen it used to reinforce misogyny, not punish it.
You say this after defending Aging Chads previous comments about bullying. Are you just saying random contrarian things at this point?
Wasn’t this the original conclusion of “A Clockwork Orange”? You know, the book?
@Zatar
Probably. Strikes me as one of those who package problematic shit in with effusively agreeing with us, for later gotcha purposes.
Aging Chad is just a perfectly ordinary ‘moderate’ manospherian.
“One more thought about bullying– I’ve only seen it used to reinforce misogyny, not punish it.”
Right. Especially now in the age of twitter, reddit, trump, milo, nationalism, female youtuber anti-feminists, alt-right/lite where misogyny and racism are considered “edgy” and “counter cultural”. You’re more likely to be bullied for being a “cuck” than a backward, out of touch, caveman sexist.
Also, technically nobody is completely celibate if they masturbate, right? So why aren’t these guys satisfied with masturbation. A study was done that showed single women have more orgasms than coupled-up women. Masturbation could be the reason for that.
So here the issue appears to be numbers, not access to sex from one partner. The matt6666 guy believes that all men should have equal access to the same quantity of partners. But I’m going to presume that he believes women should have just 1 partner. Notice how big brain and author Robin Hanson pretends he doesn’t understand the point Daniel makes in the comment above him.
Jonathan Graehl • a day ago
Sure, sex slavery is really just a kind of slavery, as is being forced to perform work for others in exchange for nothing.
TGGP Jonathan Graehl • a day ago
Bryan Caplan made a similar point when imagining redistribution in a pure service economy:
http://econfaculty.gmu.edu/…
His example involved a surgeon, since surgery is a good example of a scarce/expensive service.
Daniel • a day ago
To make this work 1% of the population would have to be having 38% of all the sex, largely through structural strategies that actively restrict sex from others, like zoning, sex education, sex rate fixing…
Basically this is a superficially clever conceit that gets dumber the more you think about it. But thanks for conflating rape violence with discussions about equitable societies. Makes you look great.
matt6666 Daniel • a day ago
The top 5% of men are reporting 50+ partners.
https://journals.lww.com/st…
The median number of partners is 1 for most groups of men. You could actually calculate a gini coefficient. If that was higher than the economic one, how would you feel about this thought experiment?
Curt Adams matt6666 • 13 hours ago
Number of partners != amount of sex. On average, people in monogamous couples have more sex, not less.
Daniel O’Neil matt6666 • a day ago
I feel fine. Two things:
1) You skipped the second half of my first sentence where I listed potential causal reasons that would have to exist to explain the correlation between the two systems.
2) Sexual access is not the same as sequestering or retention. Statistically speaking the 50+ partners are not exclusive; they are serially matched with little overlap. Those partners are also, statistically speaking, going find longer-term ties in the rest of the population over time.
In other words its a transient pairing model, not a capture model. This is dramatically different from income inequality, which relies heavily on revenue capture and rentier strategies to obtain and retain the winnings.
To sum up, they’re not the same thing.
RobinHanson Mod Daniel • a day ago
This is too terse for me to follow your argument.