By David Futrelle
On Monday, I wrote about the gleeful reaction some commenters on the Incels.me forum had to news that one of the victims in Sunday’s mass shooting in Toronto was a ten-year-old girl.
Yesterday, I found a lengthy comment in the We Hunted the Mammoth moderation queue from a gentleman who thought that the “virtue signaling” commenters here were being too harsh towards the incels celebrating this girl’s death.
I didn’t let the comment through, but I thought I would share it here as a kind of extreme example of an argument a lot of people have been making about incels.
The would-be commenter, calling himself Skynet0225, began by accusing the commenters here of self-righteous cruelty:
Interesting responses on this subject, mostly by those who identify themselves as leftist on the political/social spectrum. A handicap I shed many years ago. The liberals of old would have sought to understand what could possibly drive a human being to express such shockingly hateful ideations. But they all died long ago I suppose, supplanted by the self righteousness of the modern SJW.
As you read the rest of his comment, you may notice just a teensy bit of self-righteousness from Mr. Skynet0225 himself.
Most of those spouting this nonsense, at least 95% are being extremely provocative to garner attention. They damn well know what they’re saying is disgusting, maybe even to themselves as the words escape their fingertips and into the great interube void. Raging silently they listen for an echo, either approbation or repudiation will suffice. Any human contact, repugnant hatred or a questioning curiosity will do.
There are several problems with this rather ancient “just kidding” argument, For one thing, I’m not quite sure there is much of a moral or practical distinction between someone who responds with glee to the news of a ten-year-old being murdered and someone who pretends to feel glee because he knows it will disturb people; in either case he is a moral monster and is making the world a worse place for everyone.
Second of all, these guys have been making these same arguments for years in forums mostly read by others who agree with them, none of whom are particularly shocked (or impressed) to see one of their compatriots say something like this. And many of the commenters I quote in these sorts of articles have posted hundreds or even thousands of comments to Incels.me and other forums. My guess is that very few of them can be considered trolls in any meaningful sense. This is quite likely what they honestly believe.
None of you have experienced life in their skin, but you see fit to pass judgement, which is not really surprising because that’s what most of you empty heads do 24/7.
Not true. Incels see themselves as special snowflakes of suffering, dealing with problems no one else has faced. But it’s not true. Hundreds of millions of people — including many of those commenting here — have deal with depression and anxiety bad enough to be diagnosed as such, and every single person who has ever lived has felt loneliness. I’ve been dealing with chronic, sometimes quite severe, depression and anxiety for most of my life; during one particularly bad year in grad school I felt so fragile and empty that any slightly awkward conversation would send me rushing home fighting back tears. Many of the commenters here — and many other people in my life — have dealt with worse.
Yes, most incels are dealing with serious shit. That does not excuse their abhorrent views.
Virtue signalling on cue, forever seeking the next oppressed class or cause to champion, no matter how banal or venal.
Feeling sad or angry about the murder of a ten-year-old isn’t “virtue signaling” nor is it “banal or venal.” It’s a basic human reaction to a genuine tragedy.
Which is not to say that some of these guys are not truly dangerous. They surely are, as I’ve little doubt that 5% are the pool that school shooters are drafted from, and some times monsters of an even worse nature.
I suspect it is quite a bit higher than 5%. Anyone who willingly steeps themselves in incel culture has the potential to turn violent. Some regulars on the forum brag about groping and otherwise assaulting random women. Already at least two men heavily influenced by incel culture have gone on mass killing sprees.
The weakest of their number are the most vulnerable, and the most dangerous. Seems to me that maybe reaching out to these guys would be the prudent course, the most humane to someone who as of yet has done no harm, but is a deeply wounded creature trying to make sense out of the world around them and experiencing ever diminishing results. You never know the power of a kind word, a voice from the darkness to hang on, that it will get better, maybe even a reference to someone who could help.
People have been “reaching out” to incels for years. They’ve invariably been met with hostility and sometimes harassment. One of the basic tenets of incel ideology is that nothing — not therapy, not medication, not even the most basic self-help techniques — can help incels at all. When the topic comes up on incel forums, the response is generally something like this comment, found on the Braincels subreddit:
A few have gone further; I ran across one commenter on the now-banned Incels subreddit who thought that “conning [incels] into “therapy” should also be a stoneable offense.”
Still others have argued against medication because in their mind it is “too fucking effective,” threatening “to turn even the most suicidally depressed men into tax contributing good goys [sic].”
This is a bad thing, this particular incel argued, because
Depression like all other state of minds has a purpose. It is meant to hurt, weaken, and ultimately kill you. Trimming the fat from society so to speak. It is in the benefit of all to let the weak and disabled die off.
Only a small fraction of incels are open to help, and none of them hang out on Icels.me. As for the rest, I honestly have no idea how to reach these people. If you know some magic way that allows you to somehow get past this huge mountain of toxic bullshit, by all means go ahead and minister to them. I’m going to devote my attention to others who are more open to, and frankly, more deserving of, help.
Perhaps not as satisfying as a good old fashioned public denouncement, but maybe more productive. Even humane.
Mr. Skynet0225, I eagerly await your forthcoming report on all the incels you have saved from themselves.
@DrThang:
Yeah, that’s a great point Dr. Thang! How do we know Skynet doesn’t just want people to think he helps incels? Total virtue signaler!
Dear Skynet,
Calling out is different than virtue signaling
Sincerly,
Fluffy Spider
(Ps find a better cause to support like cats)
If I never hear the alt-right buzzterm “virtue signaling” again, it will be too many times.
Mish,
That’s a creep. A stalky creep. Who would feel “sorry” for him?
Hehehhehehehehehhehe, Meetup … I just checked there again on the off chance things had improved since my last visit. Nope. It finds one single thing within 25km of where I live. Which is, according to Google Maps, a 31.4km drive away (aka over $200 round trip by taxi and no-freaking-way within walking range). Obviously Meetup is going by as-the-crow-flies distance. On Google Maps a straight line between the two points crosses a river, a lake, and then the same river as before some distance downstream but might actually be a bit under 25km.
I don’t see any information about membership fees for this group, but I think that’s moot since the de facto cost of membership would run into the thousands of dollars a year range, i.e. exceeding 10% of my annual income.
On the other hand, the topic of this group is one I would actually not be bored by! So score it one point there. It’s not quite as completely useless as it theoretically might have been.
I expect the same situation would obtain for anyone else not presently living in a megalopolis. I’m not even in a small town; I’m in a city with a five-figure population. I think it’s a fair bet that either Dr. Thang is in a megalopolis or it wasn’t Meetup that helped him. 🙂
Oh, and do note that, thanks to the land speculators (a species who should wind up having to spend the afterlife cheek-by-jowl with the incels, IMO), living in any city of a million or more population now requires a “bourgeoisie” level of income, unless you don’t mind your home being constructed from cardboard. So, Meetup appears to be incompatible with being below middle class, too, because it’s useless unless you’re either in a zipcode that pays upwards of $2000 a month just on rent, or else you own a car, or else you can afford to spend hundreds of bucks on long taxi rides into the country, or else you can afford to spend … well, whatever it would cost to organize something yourself and add it there. (You will need: a space, which means paying more rent to someone for somewhere; probably equipment of some kind; if you rent halls or suchlike for a day for each get-together you’ll also need to rent a self-storage unit to keep that stuff in the rest of the time; transportation capable of moving said equipment back and forth; and a lot more mobile minutes and other expenses related to communication. At a minimum. $200 taxi rides start to look cheap by comparison. I can see why these sorts of things mostly charge tens of bucks a month membership fees!)
(It’s starting to look like what a poor person most needs to have the opportunity to do much of anything beyond sleep, eat, work, do stuff alone at home, and do stuff on the internet, is to have a rich friend with a cottage they leave unused much of the time that you can borrow and a car they’ll lend you at the drop of a hat, fully fueled and everything. And now it’s starting to make sense why all these things always seem to be located at some random cottage in the middle of nowhere instead of a short walk away inside the city limits…)
(…and then you’re to some extent becoming part of the problem, since those cottages sitting unused so much of the time while thousands sleep on the streets in the nearest major city is part of that whole wealth and housing inequality thing.)
@Surplus to Requirements
That’s…not what I was talking about, I only meant improving myself as a person so I don’t feel so worthless, rather than wallowing in self-pity like incels. Most of what I did was just attempting to overcome issues I have stemming from autism, can’t say I’m completely over it now but I’ve definitely made a lot of progress, I can even make eye contact with people now. It didn’t cost me anything, I just had some help with my disability for the first time in my life. I probably wouldn’t have turned out to be such a circus fire of a person if I had any help earlier in life, but it is what it is.
But none of that really had anything to do with me losing my virginity, I just happened to get really lucky, and then really unlucky, but that’s a long story.
Frankly, judging by their online behavior as chronicled here (and elsewhere), I think the incels are actually the bullies, not the bullied. Who spends more time on hate and rage-wanking and trying to out-asshole everybody else than they do?
Also, remember, the Capital Gazette shooter was an incel, and what did he do to the one woman who was nice to him? Stalked her ten years after she saw him last, harassed her, made her life miserable…and then, when her plight finally made it to a police blotter, he also stalked, harassed, and ultimately shot up the offices of the newspaper that merely reported his crimes. If this piece of shit is in any way representative of what we’re supposed to be nice to, it’s a hard NO from me.
In short, Luke Skywanker can just take all his faux-intellectual right-wing virtue-signalling and fuck right off. And keep fucking off till he gets back here, and then fuck off some more. And keep fucking off from there.
@Skynet
Like incels, you’re doing your own virtue signaling. It’s just that your “virtues” are different from decent people’s. In your (morally bankrupt) case, you defend the indefensible, thus letting incels know what a great guy you are.
Also, “venal”? If there’s money to be made from verbally attacking incels, I need to know the details. I’ve been virtue signaling for free for years now, damn it. Yeah, it’s fun — absolutely it’s fun — but it would be even more fun if I got paid. Looking forward to your response.
Surplus to Requirements:
Hi! Fairly recent WHTM reader (post-Alex-Minassian), first-time poster. I’m not sure what my ideal first post would be and this surely isn’t it, but I’ve recommended Dr. Nerdlove (Harris O’Malley) to enough of my very-low-income friends that I wish to respond.
I’m a 40-something single dad; I was a sub-poverty-level never-been-kissed virgin through 24 but have since done fine; and much of Dr. Nerdlove’s advice is something I figured out on my own or was trained into by girlfriends/ wife. “Dress better”, he explains, starts with “find clothes that fit well”, “don’t clash colors hideously”, and “figure out a look that suits your personality”; I can and do achieve this through cheap used clothes, but my parents had no clue about any of it. “Smell better”, O’Malley explains, starts with “bathe or shower regularly”, something many nerds do not, including me as a depressed college student.
He’s firmly in favor of activity dates, preferring them to dinner dates; this can include parks, hiking, karaoke, free/ cheap museums, etc. As for Meetup.com, I’ve rarely been able to schedule use of it around my parenting, but living in a mid-sized city (our baseball team is four levels below the major leagues), I’ve found appealing groups for hiking/ climbing, for board games, and for hanging around a coffee shop talking about science fiction.
Beyond that, he talks over and over about attitude: how to look approachable, be a good listener, flirt, know and keep your boundaries, negotiate and respect others’ needs, and apologize and mean it.
I’m as prone to class resentment as anyone. But I hate to see “look and smell your best, do fun things, be open to new people, and be trustworthy company if you want people to like you” tarred as a capitalist agenda. It is, in fact, true self-improvement (for those to whom some of it is difficult or new, e.g., me in my 20s).
Anyway, rant over. Pleased to meet y’all! I loved the group responses on the recent thread about the Toronto shootings — both the directly relevant ones, and everything I learned about the history of fire-fighting.
“I lured a woman to a restaurant, then walked up to her filming the encounter with my camera, and rather than open with “Hi, I’m Tom from Tindr, are you Emily?” start with that classic ‘I’m a fucking creep’ opener, ‘Do you have a boyfriend?’
When she walks out, determine it’s because you’re not hot enough.
Riiiiiiiiight.
Wow I think I did that before. With my former best friend who turned out to be an Incel. All I got was burned, a complete hatred of Incels, depression from losing my one long lasting friendship, and flashbacks of hatred over seeing someone I care about betray me and my beliefs in every way possible.
Boi was I the fool for giving that rat fuck the time of day.
Like others has said it was all about them and their stupid fucking egos. Because frankly everything I did from losing on purpose, negotiations, appeals to logic and reason, and appeals to humanity have all proven it meant jack and shit if it didn’t sate their addiction to self hatred.
Nym,
I have run into this several times myself. What sometimes amuses me is when they’ve been in their echo chamber so long that they forget the rest of the human race doesn’t speak the way they do.
A few days ago, I was commenting on a topic of sexual assault, and there was this guy responding to a few people. Then, in the middle of one of his posts, he suddenly starting talking about the victim using the word “roastie,” and I thought, “There it is!”
I think most people there were hip to it, though, since basically everyone disengaged with him immediately after that.
@Alan
Of course (with the exception of the characters on Friends and Seinfeld).
Those of us who lived IRL — and not on a screen — were all married.
Those were the days.
@Ooglyboggles
Damn dude, that sounds rough, I’m sorry you had to go through that. What did he do anyway? And did he start off a decent person but slowly get poisoned by incel beliefs?
Narcissist bully 101: any pushback on your hateful spewings, go all wet-eyed and try to claim victimhood. We’ve all seen this and know how contemptible it is.
So, no, Skynet, I didn’t just fall of the back of the stupid truck, and I see through your self-obsessed faux-victim shit. Change the script.
I haven’t caught up with the whole thread yet but damn that catfish video was creepy. Yes, dude she rejected you because of your looks not because you’re a fucking lying creepazoid oozing resentment and cruelty.
Do any of the old school commenters here remember our endless attempts to convince MRAL that his highly incel-ish paranoia about his alleged physical defects was unfounded? We literally spent years reaching out to him and he would always end up lashing out at people in nasty ways. I gave him so many second chances here, and for what?
@David Futrelle:
Well, from my perspective, it was for the sheer entertainment value he provided.
@ Surplus to Requirements, Observer of the Vast Blight-Wing Enstupidation
I dunno dude. While you’ve pointed out an interesting privilege blind spot for people like me who are middle class… the fact that you’re main take away from self-grooming advice is that at its core: What is being communicated to the women (per the hypothetical you are using) and what the woman herself would see is centered on money.
It seems to me that you yourself have some unchecked internalization of the gold digger trope as well?
From a woman’s perspective (well, 1 woman only granted X’D), the fact that men show their work in self-grooming (like just simple stuff i.e. showering before dates) is more an act of sincerity in a society where women are constantly held to a higher grooming standard regardless of class (like there are cheap drugstore makeup products courting women of lower classes). Like, when men exert even just some semblance of care in their appearance regardless of their natural looks it feels like they’re trying to match the effort woman are expected to put in and can come off as a show of sincerity.
You do have a point in that most self-improvement articles are made with a middle-class audience and that’s classist. But from my perspective, it’s kinda hard to tell from your writing whether you’re blasting the idea of self-improvement itself or blasting the the fact that there is a lack of articles that write with intersectional consideration for men of lower classes.
Also the part where you bring up ‘women who fall for misogynistic charmers’. Well, two things:
1) “Charmers” actively hide their misogyny (the threat they pose to women they’re courting) so that in the perspective of a woman, a deceptive charmer is indistinguishable from an HNM (“honest non-misogynist”). Basically a “Charmer” cheats by acting like an HNM.
2) The misogynist “charmers” themselves are probably using ‘self-improvement’ techniques. Like AFAIK the term self-improvement tends to get thrown a lot in content (whether articles or just forum comments) made by PUAs/misogynistic body-building online communities.
Heck people like Dr Nerdlove used to be part of the PUA community. What Dr NL is trying to do is to reappropriate the ‘self-improvement’ techniques that do make sense and work into a more feminist framing, especially considering the source material’s primary problem is that it, to recontextualise your own words,
So that’s what people like Dr. Nerdlove would focus on.
The source material is definitely also classist, as has been pointed out in this HBomberguy’s vid (basically PUAs market their ‘self-improvement’ material to the lonely men with disposable income). And racist. I’m not surprised these aspects can be hard to pick up on if you have privilege blind spots. So yeah, do critique on Dr NL’s unchecked classism. Like yeah, he probably should have guest posts from men of lower class, men of color, men with disabilities, etc to cover the various blindspots he has.
But I feel what you’ve listed here… those are flaws that the non-misogynistic self-improvement genre can feasibly improve on (even starting from now!) without need to resort to the slippery slope of “WE REVOLUTION NOW!”
Also, to me, your writing comes off as very brocialist? But I’ll admit, I’m not edumacated enough to really break it down with accuracy and nuance, but I have to say that’s just the feeling I get and it kinda bothers me? (Less ‘red flag’ and more ‘induces side-eye’)
I think I read the best description of virtue signaling on Vox.com:
The core argument of Gamergate, and of the alt-right more generally, has always been that caring is hypocritical. Deep down, both movements believe that everybody is racist and sexist and homophobic, that the left, especially, is simply trying to lord a moral superiority over everybody else when, in secret cabals, they kidnap babies and run child molestation rings out of the basements of pizza restaurants. This idea is referred to as “virtue signaling,” meaning that there is no such thing as real virtue, only a pretend virtue that people deploy to try to win points with mainstream society, when everybody would be better off dropping the pretense and letting their most offensive freak flags fly.
Full article (mainly dealing with Gamergate, but I’m sure there’s a big overlap between incels and gamergators): https://www.vox.com/culture/2018/7/24/17599132/james-gunn-fired-gamergate-guardians-of-the-galaxy
I really fail to see how being unhappy, or messed up, or feeling inadequate or whatever has to do with being as vile as you possibly can about people who have died or been badly injured.
If they are
then why the hell are they being HEARD on a forum where they KNOW they will be applauded?!
LOTS of people have been unhappy and lonely – feeling that we do not fit in. Are we supposed to expect others to come and rescue us? Finding a suitable peer group obviously helps, but what is obviously NOT helping is a peer group who offer NO support, NO sympathy, NO compassion, just continued oneupmanship on how disgusting they can be about people who NEVER caused them any harm.
I remember MRAL quite well.
The cycle got to be one of his tells as he popped back under other screen names and personas.
He’d make his entrance and swear he was here in good faith but get caught in lies and contradictions, get out-argued and rage out.
He’d apologize and explain his abject misery and failure as a human being. (Sometimes simultaneously bragging about his extraordinary accomplishments as a man who’s left women out of his life)
He’d be met with various reactions, some of which were beyond understanding and kind, giving thoughtful advice, empathy for his stated loneliness, and even compliments. Some people, already sick of his shit, would just tell him to fuck off elsewhere.
He’d reject every single thing intended to help or show empathy with multiple reasons why he couldn’t possibly be understood, least of all by the WHTM commentariat. He’d sometimes focus on one or two regulars who were blunt and unsympathetic to him with frightening tenacity.
He’d become more heated, eventually devolving into unfettered abuse and get himself banned.
Rinse, lather, repeat.
Ad nauseam.
Sound familiar?
– he did have other traits and tells, but those are the broad strokes
.
@Surplus
Personally, I feel it comes down to “accept what you can’t change.” I myself find it very difficult to get dates (I’m a cis woman, 41, white, middle class, UK size 18 but fit, working and with plenty of money for good grooming)
For a long time, I was very bitter and angry about the fact no-one wanted to have sex with me. I felt it was terribly unfair. I hated seeing happy couples. I hated it when my friends got together. I would cry and cry when I matched with some guy on Tinder and then we’d meet up and I would see the utter horror in his face and then he’d make an excuse halfway through the date.
But the thing is, the only person I was hurting was myself, and I was also making myself (even more) unattractive than I already was. It’s the way it is; you can either accept it or not.
For me, getting out there and joining a martial arts class, learning pottery, making friends, wasn’t about meeting potential partners. It was about learning to enjoy my life as a single person. To accept that sometimes people don’t always get everything they want, and sometimes some of us don’t get to meet a partner or have as much sex as we’d like, but it’s still possible to have an amazing life where you achieve and enjoy all the things which don’t depend on romance. I can’t get a date, but I can still get a life.
I binned all my dating site accounts in the end, they just made me miserable. I’m happier for it.
When I read a lot of the advice to people who can’t get dates, this is sometimes what I think of. That it’s designed to help them move out of that depression step by step, even if they can’t find anyone to love. Washing your hair and wearing clothes that fit make you feel like you’re worth something, even if no-one else notices, so I think it’s as much about helping people feel happier as it is about getting them dates.
I do have to take issue with some of your comments about grooming. You do not need to spend a lot of money on products and clothes to look and smell nice. No-one can tell your shampoo cost 99p.
And as long as your clothes are clean, the right size, they don’t have holes and the colour/fit suits you, you can look ok on very little cash. Fabulous is not impossible, in fact. I should know, I lived in poverty for years, I used thrift shops, amazon, tailors, everythingfivepounds.com, thinking about what I bought and saving up – I had a small wardrobe, but a good one.
Re: incels – see above.
They choose this. They don’t have to.
They could say “Well, I’m deeply sad that I find it difficult to get dates and sometimes I’m so down about it I want to die. But sometimes people don’t get what they want and I can’t change this. Tonight I’m going to go out and play card games and look people in the eye and then come home and realise I have spent an entire hour not thinking about how I don’t have a girlfriend.”
But instead they actively choose to stew in their own depression and anger, and they won’t even take one step to improve their lives. Not even in the tiniest way.
I feel somewhat sorry for them – having been there – but not anywhere near as sorry as I feel for the people they hurt and victimise, and I would feel sorrier for them if I thought it was truly out of their control.
Yes, we have. We just didn’t use it as an excuse to turn into raging assholes.
Yanno, when I was young and immature, I spent many a miserable night crying in my drink to anyone who would listen about how the Universe was doing me dirty by not sending me a fine and righteous dude. I was probably pretty annoying. But I never thought that anyone owed it to me to have sex with me, and I certainly never would have celebrated the murder of a ten-year-old boy, not even in my moments of thinking all men suck because I didn’t have a boyfriend.
These poor wittle Incels not only lack emotional maturity, their entitlement and misogyny are a toxic combination.