By David Futrelle
On Reddit’s IncelTears — a subreddit devoted to mocking and critiquing the toxic incel subculture — someone claiming to be a former incel has posted an account of their escape from inceldom. It’s a throwaway account, but the story he tells seems pretty convincingly true to me.
“In the wake of the horrific events in Toronto,” he begins,
I wanted to share some of my experiences as a former incel, and how I eventually changed my behaviors to become a better person.
Being an incel is awful, it’s an awful predicament, with an unhelpful community to back it up. Often when people describe an incel, the general description is “Involunaty Celebate”, someone who can’t get girls, etc. This is the most glaring issue and the one bought up by the community but it isn’t the only issue in most cases.
When a guy can’t get a girl to save his life there’s usually some undelying social issue at play and that issue has an affect on that individuals entire social life, not just the intimate aspect. You don’t feel important, you don’t feel valued. This starts to play on your self esteem and is partially to explain for the very self-hate low IQ trodding nature of the community.
Unfortunately, the incel “community” only makes this self-hate worse.
The community’s biggest problem is that it does nothing to fix the problem and only goes to reinforce ones already held beliefs. So you’re someone who can’t get a girl, shunned from society (to various degrees) and you go online to find people like you, and when you get there you find false explanations for your problems and an echo chamber of your ideas.
You confide in this group and as a result, you start to inherit some of that group think and ideas. These ideas don’t help you in the real world but rather make things worse, it’s a downward spiral.
So what was it that led him to start questioning incel dogma — and eventually extract himself from this morass? As he explained in a followup comment, he literally got off of incel forums and into the real world, where he quickly found that most of what the incels say about men and women and dating and pretty much everything is just plain wrong.
One of the things I did was get out there, almost in a literal sense.
When I was an incel I never went out. I had never been in a bar, never been to a club, I didn’t know that life in the slightest. So when I went online it was very easy to believe the things you read about bars/clubs/women/chads/stacies/etc because I had no comparison in the real world to call bullshit on one way of the other. The first time I went out to a bar, 20 minutes in and getting a drink I saw a guy, probably 3 inches shorter and twice as round sitting in the VIP section with a bunch of hot girls nearby. Seeing that shattered by worldview because according to the incel community, that guy was doing something that was fucking impossible in their eyes.
I’m not sure that the VIP section of a nightclub is what I’d call a representative sample of reality, but it’s certainly the case that the easiest way to challenge many of the central myths of incel is to simply open your eyes to the evidence all around you in the real world, where you’ll find men of all sizes, shapes, heights, and ages happily paired off with women of all sizes, shapes, heights and ages. You have to be willfully blind to believe that women won’t date short men, or men with improperly angled eyebrows, or men with inappropriately sized wrists (and yes, these are real incel beliefs).
The former incel continues:
After that I kept going out and every time I went out there was always something different, not a single night was the same. Always different characters, different situations, different interactions. I started to see that there wasn’t just one pre-disposed type of person to get a particular girl and I learned that anything could happen, literally anything.
Yep.
I’ve been thrown out of a bar on to the street only to be invited to an afterparty 5 minutes later, I’ve gotten harshly rejected by a girl in front of her boyfriend only for her to run back to me before the bar closes and give me her number. I was in the corner of a bar talking to a girl telling her about where I was from before some drunk guy decided to roundhouse kick me because he thought I was lying about my nationality (that a was fun night). Countless upon countless situations where I’ve walked out of it going “what the fuck just happened”
I guess this is one possible escape from incel. But you don’t have to get into bar fights or get invited to any afterparties — or even set foot in a nightclub at all — to see that incels live inside a collective delusion that only vaguely resembles life on this planet.
Overall, it was just replacing the knowledge I had acquired from places like incel subreddits and forums with real-world experience. You can read PUA and incel forums all day long and get two totally different ideas of nightlife, or you can go out and get another idea entirely.
Yep. All it requires is that you just GET OUT of the incel subculture for a short time — whether you literally start going to nightclubs or simply free yourself from incel thinking long enough to see that what the incels are telling you is wrong, wrong, wrong.
Our former incel admits that this can be more difficult than it sounds.
When I finally came to my senses it involved me throwing out all of my previously held beliefs and ideologies. In theory, it sounds easy but if you’re a Democrat or Republican, imagine making the intellectual leap from one side to the other, it’s like doing that. Here you’ve been told to despise women, despite attractive guys that get those women, despise pop-culture and the things around it, now you have take all that and conclude that it was all wrong and you need to listen to the other side. And all the while you are trying to do this the community that you had around you is pointing to reasons why you shouldn’t make that ideological leap.
Nonetheless, it is possible. This guy did it. Others have done it.
The former incel ends his post with some words for those still caught up in the incel cult:
From this I want to leave a bit of advice for Incels that might read this. It can be hard to embrace advice from a side of society that has ostrizied you. But at the of the day what side do you want ot be on. Give whatever excuse you want but at the end of the day you know where you want to be. My journey from that community took years of standing the corner at parties, getting rejected by girls, getting into fights, it was painful. But from my experience, the pain is worth it.
I’d be curious to hear more stories from former incels who got out. If you’re someone who was once (but no more) under the sway of incel ideas — whether you were a regular on some incel forum or just someone who found themselves being drawn in by their rhetoric, please drop me a note (dfutrelle at gmail) or post your story in the comments below. Tell us what drew you to incel in the first place, how you got pulled in, and how and why you ultimately rejected that way of life.
If true, definite props to him for doing the hard work and changing; too many people don’t.
I was never an incel, but I did have a massive amount of self-defeating baggage as a teenager, and it crippled my ability to interact with other people effectively. Moving back to the Bay Area right after high school gave me the opportunity to redefine myself, and my cousin was able to convince me that my problem was primarily one of attitude. I didn’t change overnight, but I still remember that conversation because it marked a shift from downward to upward; my attitude about myself and consequently my ability to socialize increased consistently for many years after that talk, and I finally understood that self loathing is essentially a choice.
FWIW
Not a former incel, but I loved this article anyway.
I wish I knew exactly what this meant, although I do get the gist of it.
My own experience dating is similar to this guy’s, not because I got into bar fights or got thrown out of venues, but because I told myself that I was opening myself up to rejection by putting myself out there. I just had to be okay with that, painful as that rejection can be.
Rejection? C’est la vie.
Glad to hear that this person managed to escape it. I wish my former best friend was able to do the same.
Hope this spreads. If for no other reason than to let some people see the lengths this guy went thru to get out. Best case scenario, some young assholes in training conclude that an ideology that makes you so miserable and insufferable to yourself and others that you need to spend years getting roundhoused in order to escape may not be the best ethos to get into to begin with
That’s a really interesting post; and I do find it quite plausible. It does have a ring of authenticity about it. I’ve read accounts from deradicalised nazis and terrorists; and it follows a similar pattern.
I’m glad he was able to escape.
However just because we’ve got one example of ‘Bub’ I’m still not of the opinion that incels generally can be reformed or that they’re potentially ok people underneath.
If they can make that journey on their own that’s great; but I don’t think they’re entitled to any help on the way, certainly not from their victims, or that they should get a medal just for achieving basic competence in human decency.
(But willing to be proved wrong, so would encourage any lurking ex, or trying to be ex, incels to take up David’s invitation)
“Welcome to the world of the real.” Morpheus.
Sorry, couldn’t help myself. Still, kudos to the guy for making the effort and rejoining the human race.
One problem with an incel realizing that they have a problem and need to improve themselves is that they might just end up jumping ship to the Jordan B. Peterson cult, which blends misogyny and exhortations towards self-improvement into an easy-to-swallow gruel.
Not to be a cynic, but it kind of sounds like this dude went from inceldom to just the more traditional toxic masculinity. He calls grown women “girls.” He talks about hitting on a “girl” in the presence of her boyfriend. He boasts of bar fights.
I mean, it’s a step up from incel because well, anything is a step up. But it doesn’t sound like he regrets the misogyny and it doesn’t sound like he really views women as fully human. It just sounds like he regrets the incel lifestyle because it kept him from having fun and getting laid.
As someone who has never had good luck with women (outside of one great 6 month relationship) I’m so so so happy I never fell down the incel hole. In high school I thought that kind of defining yourself by having sex or not was dumb and haven’t changed my mind much since. and I got a lot of social anxiety and problems caused by late capitalism fucking my life up. It’s enough without blaming half the people on Earth for everything.
That said I cannot get my mind around going to bar/nightclub and trying to chat up a random person at all. Maybe it’s just being in a small rural area. probably some unexamined subconscious misogyny in “Oh I’m just not attracted to any women I’ve met/seen around here” too. hell if I could get to the level of making and keeping friends i’m be happy
apologies for half cocked rantings.
That concerns me, too. I don’t want this fella going one step forward, two steps back, you know?
Slightly OT, but when I read the title of this, I immediately thought of the theme to Escape From New York.
Good for him. He didn’t like the place he was in and he got out of it. May we all take inspiration from his courage. We need more men like him. Glad he’s now out in the world.
One potential unintended consequence is that as the shock of atrocities like Toronto encourage people like this guy to leave, the Incel community is going to get more radicalised.
As the victims/survivors of incel brainwashing break away and leave, mostly perpetrators will be left. That’s a frightening thought.
I saw one last week where the guy left because he’d considered himself a mental health advocate and he was attacking a woman, saying that her mental illness was made up, simply because she was a woman. That’s when he realized that he’d swallowed the red pill far too deeply.
I wish that I could find it now.
Here’s what I don’t understand. He hadn’t been in a bar or a club. I’ve never been in a club and I’ve been in bars maybe half a dozen times, but only with friends. Nonetheless, by the time I started dating I had been out: in school, in malls, in church, in grocery stores, on the streets of the closest city (population 50,000). In addition, I had read newspapers and magazines, seen a few movies and TV shows, talked with friends, talked with my mother, had neighbors. There was no way I would have thought that most women dated a few gorgeous, cruel hunks.
I don’t think that this guy was raised by wolves who were unable to communicate even their (necessarily) limited knowledge about human dating. (No offense to wolves. You rock!)
My conclusion is that most incels are talking trash they don’t actually 100 percent believe 100 percent of the time. To do so would be to reject a vast body of information about how the world works.
I think that some of them are jokers, some of them try to believe what they want to believe despite what they observe with their own eyes, and some of them are provocateurs. Maybe most of them are all three, jockeying for position as the baddest guy of all on 4chan.
I’m not trying to say that these guys aren’t dangerous. They certainly are. But dogmatic? That would mean suspending pretty much all belief in their own experiences.
@Kat, ambassador of the feminist government in exile
From what we’ve seen, and from other fringe groups, I think we can say for certain they’re buying their own stuff.
@Kat
Which makes them different from other dogmatic extremists how? That’s kind of the distinguishing characteristic of a fanatic.
Obsessive thinking and poor emotion regulation can trap some people in a whirlwind of hot shit that’s hard to see out of or ignore. For someone who has self-isolated for years, the idea that these newfangled dating apps have upended everything and created a new polygynous order can seem plausible; the little observation of the real world that they manage to have gets discounted because of confirmation bias.
Going to agree with WWTH on this one, this guy may have improved a little but he’s got a long way to go. The impression I kept getting while reading this was that he’s essentially saying “incel culture was wrong that I was incapable of getting laid, I figured that out and managed to get laid therefore I reject incel culture”. I don’t see any real understanding of the misogynistic aspect, nor any rejection thereof.
If this pathway gets him out, that’s great (and if publicising it helps bring others with him, even better), but I hope he continues to reflect.
Really, though, I think what they need is to break the homosocial cycle. As long as they’re only looking to other men for validation, and discount anything women say out of a belief that women are fundamentally dishonest, they’re going to inevitably end up in these kind of self-perpetuating fact-free death spirals.
@Kat, ambassador of the feminist government in exile
Actually, I think people who want desperately to believe in their own superiority/inferiority are very able to disbelieve their own lived experiences, or at least craft a narrative that supports their ideology despite the empirical evidence around them. Not so much confirmation bias as confirmation blinders.
Think about all the mediocre white men out there who are convinced, convinced! of their inherent superiority compared to white women and people of color of all genders. Despite all the evidence that maybe they aren’t particularly gifted, smart, hard-working, dedicated, what-have-you, they are still convinced that they deserve that job/promotion/bonus, that they keep civilization going, yadda yadda. Or maybe I am completely wrong, and they’re protesting too much per Shakespeare.
But I can’t help thinking of Derek Black’s experience growing up in the white supremacy movement, deciding to study medieval European history in college to prove white superiority, and discovering everything he thought he understood about the world was bullshit, then switching to studying Arabic and the origins of Islam. Or all the home-schooled Christian fundamentalists who go to college and confront all sorts of new things that challenge their narrow worldview. Of course, in these examples, the worldview was imposed by parents not self-chosen in adulthood (or near adulthood in the case of teenage incels). So then it becomes about rejecting parents more than self-identity, maybe.
Either way, I applaud people who choose to reinvent themselves instead of doubling-down on awfulness and denying the reality all around them. Reinvention is work; altering course is work; self-examination is work. All work worth doing in the end.
So some of the incels have actually not interracted with reality. I mean if this account is true, and I have no strong reason to doubt it; it gives context to some of the wild claims they make.
@Kat, ambassador of the feminist government in exile
Having spent some time interacting with them under a throwaway Reddit account, these guys will straight-up disregard reality to confirm their beliefs. No matter how many in their own words “sub-optimal” men in relationships you show them, they’ll just create another justification as to why this one person is the exception to the rule. (Mostly money. They also think all women are golddiggers. Go figure.)
I agree with WWTH and mcbender that it seems like the guy has a long way to go. However, it’s also worth pointing out that we are probably not the intended audience.
He seems to be addressing would-be incels and current incels specifically. The point he’s specifically making is that incels are not a self-help group, they are a self-loathing and, ultimately, self-destruction group, and that getting out is hard but worth it. That, I have to assume, is the message that he thinks that audience needs to hear.
If you read it that way, and not as a self-reflective piece about his journey back into the world of reality and decent humanity, it makes a lot more sense.
I have a link, if you’re interested:
I Was a Men’s Rights Activist
However just because we’ve got one example of ‘Bub’ I’m still not of the opinion that incels generally can be reformed or that they’re potentially ok people underneath.
I like to believe that all people can grow and change, and become better people.
However, just because people can change doesn’t mean that they will change, alas.
Back when I was a closeted/in-denial asexual teenager and had several… odd… views on sex, I came across the loveshy forum and was perplexed. How could anyone think of nobody wanting to have sex with you as a BAD thing? Sex is terrible and gross! People not wanting to have sex with you means you have so much more free time for actual fun things! These guys clearly don’t know how lucky they have it, I should go to them and attempt to communicate how wrong their worldview is (I mean, I wasn’t wrong about that- just wrong about how allosexual people tend to view sex). Learned pretty quick that the incels would be having none of my, hm, what was the term, ‘volcel bullshit’ or something like that.
So I guess I never really had any chance of falling in with them (especially since I’m not a dude), but there was a brief (and in retrospect, revolting) moment where I felt kinship with fellow non-sex-havers. And, yeah, getting out into the world, experiencing new things and listening to a wide variety of other people’s lived experiences helped me to have a better understanding of the world and re-evaluate my own weird worldview. So I’d say it’s not only beneficial for incels, though they’re definitely some of the most in need of pulling their heads out of their asses.
Incoming article https://theestablishment.co/the-media-must-stop-taking-incel-agitprop-seriously-9c64be0464f5