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I feel like this is the most obvious answer and most in line with everyday experience. I've interacted with some incels online and their intricate rationa

I feel like this is the most obvious answer and most in line with everyday experience. I've interacted with some incels online and their intricate rationalizations are just wild, about how only the top N% of men (in terms of looks and/or sexual prowess and/or money) are monopolizing all the women. And I'm just like.... Forget all of that. Just step outside and go literally anywhere where families or couples go. Look around. Look at all these men who have partners! Most of these men are not exactly models and/or dripping with cash! Clearly it is possible. (I am one of these people...) But you can't reason with incels, obviously. It's like trying to reason with somebody who has an eating disorder and thinks they're fat even though they're dangerously underweight. They are in a dark, damaged place and pointing to objective facts is not going to lead them out of that place.

spacemadness 3y ago
I also don’t think dating apps help the situation at all. You can find enough people obsessed with characteristics like height on them to give you further evidence for your wacky theories, especially if you have a cognitive bias to look for behavior you find unjust. Just go outside once to see all straight men don’t have to be 6’ or above to find a partner. Apps like Tinder have probably caused a lot of harm to mental health for its most frequent users.
- JohnBooty 3y ago
  Apps like Tinder have probably caused a lot of harm to mental health for its most frequent users. Yeah. And there are good reasons why women can be picky on dating apps and such. Unless you are a female, or you have female friends explaining it to you, you have no idea what it's like to be a woman on a dating site. The deluge of dudes expressing interest is massive. You've got to narrow it down somehow. It's honestly kind of like when companies get hundreds of applicants for a single job. They have to cut down the pool somehow. Also, what people are looking for on Tinder is not necessarily what they want in a longer term partner. A woman on Tinder looking for a fling might have some pretty specific physical attributes in mind. That is not representative of what that same woman might want to actually partner with. (Same is true for men, obviously) It's easy to see why an incel, without somebody to explain a woman's perspective to him, could get completely the wrong idea.
sublinear 3y ago
My fault for not elaborating much on this point, but there is some blame to be given to the environment around these men. It's not entirely their fault and it's not fair they have to undo a lot of it, but... well they do for themselves at least. One of the most common environments is poverty. Their parents tell them to work hard and everything else hopefully falls into place. In this environment they grew up never having good examples or knowing the kindness expected from them as adults. They were often surrounded by selfish people and had to look over their shoulder constantly. Their social value was based entirely on their looks, skills, and/or money. Really what else can you expect? With this I also claim there is some merit to the idea that at least part of modern feminism really is just classist misandry rebranded for a new era. I want to reiterate that this is beginning to affect women too. Absent any good examples of how to live better they react to the same situation by taking advantage of men with the same or worse self-esteem issues as themselves. These women are not happy. They care more about impressing their peers and the man is just an accessory. I hope my explanations distinguish my perspective from the usual "red pill" nonsense. There's something here, but I'm just a dude so idk.
- JohnBooty 3y ago
  I definitely think that a lot of incel- and incel-adjacent behavior comes from a person's environment, and as such is not necessarily the incel's fault. (As they say, things may not be one's fault but they are one's responsibility...) These women are not happy. They care more about impressing their peers and the man is just an accessory. I've had a decent number of female friends over the years while I know that there are all kinds of toxic people out there, I don't really see women acting this way in general especially as they progress into adulthood. Of course plenty of toxic counterexamples exist, I'm just talking about in general. There's something here I think that any time some kind of movement or thought paradigm gets traction, it's because there are some grains of truth there. I think a lot of men fall through the cracks in society in one way or another, and have trouble finding partners, and often it's not their "fault" per se, and I think those are some of the grains of truth here. I don't agree with the "red pill" sort of conclusion, but I definitely think there's something there in terms of what they are experiencing.

spacemadness 3y ago

I also don’t think dating apps help the situation at all. You can find enough people obsessed with characteristics like height on them to give you further evidence for your wacky theories, especially if you have a cognitive bias to look for behavior you find unjust. Just go outside once to see all straight men don’t have to be 6’ or above to find a partner. Apps like Tinder have probably caused a lot of harm to mental health for its most frequent users.

JohnBooty 3y ago
Apps like Tinder have probably caused a lot of harm to mental health for its most frequent users. Yeah. And there are good reasons why women can be picky on dating apps and such. Unless you are a female, or you have female friends explaining it to you, you have no idea what it's like to be a woman on a dating site. The deluge of dudes expressing interest is massive. You've got to narrow it down somehow. It's honestly kind of like when companies get hundreds of applicants for a single job. They have to cut down the pool somehow. Also, what people are looking for on Tinder is not necessarily what they want in a longer term partner. A woman on Tinder looking for a fling might have some pretty specific physical attributes in mind. That is not representative of what that same woman might want to actually partner with. (Same is true for men, obviously) It's easy to see why an incel, without somebody to explain a woman's perspective to him, could get completely the wrong idea.

sublinear 3y ago

My fault for not elaborating much on this point, but there is some blame to be given to the environment around these men. It's not entirely their fault and it's not fair they have to undo a lot of it, but... well they do for themselves at least. One of the most common environments is poverty. Their parents tell them to work hard and everything else hopefully falls into place. In this environment they grew up never having good examples or knowing the kindness expected from them as adults. They were often surrounded by selfish people and had to look over their shoulder constantly. Their social value was based entirely on their looks, skills, and/or money. Really what else can you expect? With this I also claim there is some merit to the idea that at least part of modern feminism really is just classist misandry rebranded for a new era. I want to reiterate that this is beginning to affect women too. Absent any good examples of how to live better they react to the same situation by taking advantage of men with the same or worse self-esteem issues as themselves. These women are not happy. They care more about impressing their peers and the man is just an accessory. I hope my explanations distinguish my perspective from the usual "red pill" nonsense. There's something here, but I'm just a dude so idk.

JohnBooty 3y ago
I definitely think that a lot of incel- and incel-adjacent behavior comes from a person's environment, and as such is not necessarily the incel's fault. (As they say, things may not be one's fault but they are one's responsibility...) These women are not happy. They care more about impressing their peers and the man is just an accessory. I've had a decent number of female friends over the years while I know that there are all kinds of toxic people out there, I don't really see women acting this way in general especially as they progress into adulthood. Of course plenty of toxic counterexamples exist, I'm just talking about in general. There's something here I think that any time some kind of movement or thought paradigm gets traction, it's because there are some grains of truth there. I think a lot of men fall through the cracks in society in one way or another, and have trouble finding partners, and often it's not their "fault" per se, and I think those are some of the grains of truth here. I don't agree with the "red pill" sort of conclusion, but I definitely think there's something there in terms of what they are experiencing.