5 ms·

Complaining about the dating scene does not make you an incel. You're being condescending for no reason at all. Nothing he said is related to the usual talking

by ulucs 7y ago

Complaining about the dating scene does not make you an incel. You're being condescending for no reason at all. Nothing he said is related to the usual talking points of incels. Also, men are lonely and this reflects heavily in suicide rates by gender. If someone is lonely, they should be allowed to complain. Casting them away with a label only makes things worse for them. Don't you have empathy? Can't you garner sympathy for a person who is missing out on one of the basic human needs (emotional connection)?

frostburg 7y ago
The "dating market" observation is straight out of incel dogma. I have significant sympathy for him missing out on sight (he's probably american, but if he lived in a country with working healthcare I would say that I'm glad that taxes would go towards whatever treatment might help him).
- throwno 7y ago
  Are you seriously bullying lonely disabled men on a programming forum?
  - frostburg 7y ago
    I don't see how I'm bullying him. I told him that he should not resign himself to being lonely due to his disability, because I think that his understandable distress about his issues might lead him to perceive his situation as bleaker that it is from that standpoint.
    - dang 7y ago
      Telling someone that their situation isn't how they think it is, unless you've taken the time first to establish a real connection with that person—one that they can feel—is likely to come across as a dismissal of their experience and a putdown. I'm sure your intention is to help, but this is a way to hurt rather than help. Bluntly firing facts at someone, assuming they are facts, is definitely not going to do it. The truer the information, the worse the effect: in order to shield themselves from the blow, they will defend against the truth, which moves them further away from a solution. If you want to help, the first question is how to create a felt connection with the other person, which will give them some reason to be open to what you're saying. That's not so easy to do on the internet, though maybe sometimes possible. Words like "I have significant sympathy for him" and "his understandable distress" aren't sufficient though.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - fsiefken 7y ago
    fwiw i don't see it either
  - dang 7y ago
    "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- hombre_fatal 7y ago
  Eh, you don't need to get zero ass to make observations about the "dating market". If you can't acknowledge that dating definitely is a crapshoot and can't enumerate some reasons why, then you simply haven't tried. But there's this meme that any time you lament a negative experience about dating as a man, you're called an incel, an epithet that comes with so much baggage it has no place for HN, imo. Just speak to their points independently. Being disabled sucks pretty bad. Here's a paraplegic justifying his suicide at the end of his essay: http://www.2arms1head.com/ http://www.2arms1head.com/ -- I think stepping in to call someone an incel is just some weird shaming. I'd attract a minuscule fraction of the women I currently if I were a blind guy assuming I even hold it together enough to remain positive. I completely sympathize with their catharsis.
  - TurkishPoptart 7y ago
    Thanks for introducing me to 2arms1head...I've never read anything like this before.
- michalu 7y ago
  No it's not, he's speaking experience backed by both evolutionary science and statistics, you're speaking politics: http://i.imgur.com/L9Vu4Zo.png http://i.imgur.com/L9Vu4Zo.png
  - ceejayoz 7y ago
    As with most context-free statistics, this seems to be more complicated that it initially appears. https://www.reddit.com/r/OkCupid/comments/a6e5mm/and_women_call_men_choosy_lol_what_reason_does/ebuvqrf/ https://www.reddit.com/r/OkCupid/comments/a6e5mm/and_women_c... > Men used it a ton more and women didn’t because they didn’t have to since men mostly did the reaching out. Basically men and women used the rating system differently. > Also the study the data came from stated that despite the ratings, women consistently messaged both guys they ranked attractive and guys they ranked below average, while men consistently ONLY messaged the women they ranked absolutely topmost. Thus demonstrating that the messaging habits of the sexes are the reverse of the rating data.
    - michalu 7y ago
      whether there are flaws in the analysis or not, every reasonable person knows that if you go to a social setting like club for example, a woman can get laid pretty much anytime as long as she's willing, she only has to signal she is down to it and there will be plenty of men who will jump on board ... now try to go to club as a man and signal your willingness to get laid ... you'll get zero ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QBtF3I7fDfU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QBtF3I7fDfU there's many such videos ... is anyone surprised by the results a great deal of men say yes, when reversed, and a jacked model looking guys asked women for sex guess the results 0. The reality is that men are willing to have sex with broader range of women while most women want the same guys as all other women ... this is evolutionary as for a guy to reproduce bears no risk so he wants quantity while a woman is incapacitated for 9 months minimum, therefore the choices. The above guy who called the poor dude an incel just acted like an idiot.
      - dang 7y ago
        Please don't take HN threads further into generic flamewar. Would you mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and sticking to the rules when posting here?
kick 7y ago
The rate of attempted suicide is largely equal, it's just that men are more successful at it. I don't believe it's the smoking gun you think it is. Proof: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5492308/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5492308/ "For suicide attempts, for which the rate is estimated to be 20 times higher than that of suicides , the gender gap is less pronounced, with females demonstrating a disproportionately higher rate of suicide attempts compared to males ."
- watwut 7y ago
  Men are more likely to shoot themselves or use other violent method. That is more effective and makes it harder to save the person then trying to poison yourself and such (female choice).
  - kick 7y ago
    Correct!
- scarmig 7y ago
  It's not random, though, that men choose different methods for attempting suicide than women. This isn't merely about access to guns--people in countries with few gun suicides also show a substantial gendered difference in success rate. And if women account for 3/4 of suicide attempts, but men account for 3/4 of completed suicides, that means that men are choosing methods that are almost 10x deadlier than women, which does demand explanation. One theory is that things we code as suicide attempts are instead acts of self-harm intended to act as a cry for help instead of a genuine attempts to end your life. In which case, if women do have stronger social support networks that would respond to these cries for help, you'd expect exactly that kind of weird imbalance and difference in success rates. I believe this accounts for part of the difference. Another element is that someone who attempts suicide and fails is likely to attempt to commit suicide repeatedly. If the average man attempts suicide once before succeeding, and the average woman attempts suicide three times before succeeding, even assuming equal propensities to suicide women will show up in the statistics as attempting it three times as often as men.
StuffedParrot 7y ago
> Nothing he said is related to the usual talking points of incels. From my understanding, explicit, fatalist despairing of your sex life is the red/black pills to which incels refer. It is definitely an attitude to be concerned about, regardless of what labels you want to use, because it's a worldview that will reproduce itself without intervention. > Can't you garner sympathy for a person who is missing out on one of the basic human needs (emotional connection)? Do you think the advice to lose the incel angle (i.e. and actually admit the possibility of future relationships) was bad advice? That strikes me as more helpful than pitying him.
watwut 7y ago
That is however not just about partners, but also about having good friends that count. About having meaningful relationships with all kinds of people, not just partner. The amount of women in stable heterosexual relationship is the same as amount of males in heterosexual relationship. If you talk about people having one night stands randomly, there is no connection except sex there. The most lonely isolating experience I ever had was being at home with children. It may just be that this gives one training for how to deal with being alone and tilts female culture towards behavior that prevents loneliness. Plus it makes it more acceptable for woman to display behavior that prevents loneliness in long term.
- ulucs 7y ago
  Yes, of course. But I think people usually consider romance to be more important than friendships. I don't know if it's because of evolutionary reasons, or cultural reasons; just that it happens that way. Of course, my knowledge is mostly limited to men's opinions and it's also possible women have a different perspective on this. Which leads to the following: > The amount of women in stable heterosexual relationship is the same as amount of males in heterosexual relationship. Yes, you're completely right. However (in the culture I'm in) men usually take action to ask out/talk to women. This asymmetry theoretically leads to men getting rejected until they're not, and women meeting unworthy men until they don't. So each gender has an entirely different perspective on the same dating market. Personally speaking, it is hard for me to fully understand my female friends' difficulties with dating (or friendships) because I've only experienced it as a male, so many things they have difficulty with are things I take for granted (this usually goes the other way too). Unless there's a huge cultural shift, men and women will keep having completely orthogonal experiences and until then, empathy remains the biggest asset for us to treat each other with.
  - watwut 7y ago
    > But I think people usually consider romance to be more important than friendships. It is not binary either choice. And ideally partners have shared friends. One of the things you learn when being in situation I describes is value of causual connections and friends. And the need to work for them in various ways.

by ulucs 7y ago

frostburg 7y ago

The "dating market" observation is straight out of incel dogma. I have significant sympathy for him missing out on sight (he's probably american, but if he lived in a country with working healthcare I would say that I'm glad that taxes would go towards whatever treatment might help him).

throwno 7y ago
Are you seriously bullying lonely disabled men on a programming forum?
- frostburg 7y ago
  I don't see how I'm bullying him. I told him that he should not resign himself to being lonely due to his disability, because I think that his understandable distress about his issues might lead him to perceive his situation as bleaker that it is from that standpoint.
  - dang 7y ago
    Telling someone that their situation isn't how they think it is, unless you've taken the time first to establish a real connection with that person—one that they can feel—is likely to come across as a dismissal of their experience and a putdown. I'm sure your intention is to help, but this is a way to hurt rather than help. Bluntly firing facts at someone, assuming they are facts, is definitely not going to do it. The truer the information, the worse the effect: in order to shield themselves from the blow, they will defend against the truth, which moves them further away from a solution. If you want to help, the first question is how to create a felt connection with the other person, which will give them some reason to be open to what you're saying. That's not so easy to do on the internet, though maybe sometimes possible. Words like "I have significant sympathy for him" and "his understandable distress" aren't sufficient though.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- fsiefken 7y ago
  fwiw i don't see it either
- dang 7y ago
  "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
hombre_fatal 7y ago
Eh, you don't need to get zero ass to make observations about the "dating market". If you can't acknowledge that dating definitely is a crapshoot and can't enumerate some reasons why, then you simply haven't tried. But there's this meme that any time you lament a negative experience about dating as a man, you're called an incel, an epithet that comes with so much baggage it has no place for HN, imo. Just speak to their points independently. Being disabled sucks pretty bad. Here's a paraplegic justifying his suicide at the end of his essay: http://www.2arms1head.com/ http://www.2arms1head.com/ -- I think stepping in to call someone an incel is just some weird shaming. I'd attract a minuscule fraction of the women I currently if I were a blind guy assuming I even hold it together enough to remain positive. I completely sympathize with their catharsis.
- TurkishPoptart 7y ago
  Thanks for introducing me to 2arms1head...I've never read anything like this before.
michalu 7y ago
No it's not, he's speaking experience backed by both evolutionary science and statistics, you're speaking politics: http://i.imgur.com/L9Vu4Zo.png http://i.imgur.com/L9Vu4Zo.png
- ceejayoz 7y ago
  As with most context-free statistics, this seems to be more complicated that it initially appears. https://www.reddit.com/r/OkCupid/comments/a6e5mm/and_women_call_men_choosy_lol_what_reason_does/ebuvqrf/ https://www.reddit.com/r/OkCupid/comments/a6e5mm/and_women_c... > Men used it a ton more and women didn’t because they didn’t have to since men mostly did the reaching out. Basically men and women used the rating system differently. > Also the study the data came from stated that despite the ratings, women consistently messaged both guys they ranked attractive and guys they ranked below average, while men consistently ONLY messaged the women they ranked absolutely topmost. Thus demonstrating that the messaging habits of the sexes are the reverse of the rating data.
  - michalu 7y ago
    whether there are flaws in the analysis or not, every reasonable person knows that if you go to a social setting like club for example, a woman can get laid pretty much anytime as long as she's willing, she only has to signal she is down to it and there will be plenty of men who will jump on board ... now try to go to club as a man and signal your willingness to get laid ... you'll get zero ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QBtF3I7fDfU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QBtF3I7fDfU there's many such videos ... is anyone surprised by the results a great deal of men say yes, when reversed, and a jacked model looking guys asked women for sex guess the results 0. The reality is that men are willing to have sex with broader range of women while most women want the same guys as all other women ... this is evolutionary as for a guy to reproduce bears no risk so he wants quantity while a woman is incapacitated for 9 months minimum, therefore the choices. The above guy who called the poor dude an incel just acted like an idiot.
    - dang 7y ago
      Please don't take HN threads further into generic flamewar. Would you mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and sticking to the rules when posting here?

kick 7y ago

The rate of attempted suicide is largely equal, it's just that men are more successful at it. I don't believe it's the smoking gun you think it is. Proof: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5492308/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5492308/ "For suicide attempts, for which the rate is estimated to be 20 times higher than that of suicides , the gender gap is less pronounced, with females demonstrating a disproportionately higher rate of suicide attempts compared to males ."

watwut 7y ago
Men are more likely to shoot themselves or use other violent method. That is more effective and makes it harder to save the person then trying to poison yourself and such (female choice).
- kick 7y ago
  Correct!
scarmig 7y ago
It's not random, though, that men choose different methods for attempting suicide than women. This isn't merely about access to guns--people in countries with few gun suicides also show a substantial gendered difference in success rate. And if women account for 3/4 of suicide attempts, but men account for 3/4 of completed suicides, that means that men are choosing methods that are almost 10x deadlier than women, which does demand explanation. One theory is that things we code as suicide attempts are instead acts of self-harm intended to act as a cry for help instead of a genuine attempts to end your life. In which case, if women do have stronger social support networks that would respond to these cries for help, you'd expect exactly that kind of weird imbalance and difference in success rates. I believe this accounts for part of the difference. Another element is that someone who attempts suicide and fails is likely to attempt to commit suicide repeatedly. If the average man attempts suicide once before succeeding, and the average woman attempts suicide three times before succeeding, even assuming equal propensities to suicide women will show up in the statistics as attempting it three times as often as men.

StuffedParrot 7y ago

> Nothing he said is related to the usual talking points of incels. From my understanding, explicit, fatalist despairing of your sex life is the red/black pills to which incels refer. It is definitely an attitude to be concerned about, regardless of what labels you want to use, because it's a worldview that will reproduce itself without intervention. > Can't you garner sympathy for a person who is missing out on one of the basic human needs (emotional connection)? Do you think the advice to lose the incel angle (i.e. and actually admit the possibility of future relationships) was bad advice? That strikes me as more helpful than pitying him.

watwut 7y ago

That is however not just about partners, but also about having good friends that count. About having meaningful relationships with all kinds of people, not just partner. The amount of women in stable heterosexual relationship is the same as amount of males in heterosexual relationship. If you talk about people having one night stands randomly, there is no connection except sex there. The most lonely isolating experience I ever had was being at home with children. It may just be that this gives one training for how to deal with being alone and tilts female culture towards behavior that prevents loneliness. Plus it makes it more acceptable for woman to display behavior that prevents loneliness in long term.

ulucs 7y ago
Yes, of course. But I think people usually consider romance to be more important than friendships. I don't know if it's because of evolutionary reasons, or cultural reasons; just that it happens that way. Of course, my knowledge is mostly limited to men's opinions and it's also possible women have a different perspective on this. Which leads to the following: > The amount of women in stable heterosexual relationship is the same as amount of males in heterosexual relationship. Yes, you're completely right. However (in the culture I'm in) men usually take action to ask out/talk to women. This asymmetry theoretically leads to men getting rejected until they're not, and women meeting unworthy men until they don't. So each gender has an entirely different perspective on the same dating market. Personally speaking, it is hard for me to fully understand my female friends' difficulties with dating (or friendships) because I've only experienced it as a male, so many things they have difficulty with are things I take for granted (this usually goes the other way too). Unless there's a huge cultural shift, men and women will keep having completely orthogonal experiences and until then, empathy remains the biggest asset for us to treat each other with.
- watwut 7y ago
  > But I think people usually consider romance to be more important than friendships. It is not binary either choice. And ideally partners have shared friends. One of the things you learn when being in situation I describes is value of causual connections and friends. And the need to work for them in various ways.