• UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      It’s rough to be an awkward teenager, struggling to find the kind of mutual affection that you’re biologically programmed to crave. Like, bares mentioning that the OG incel was a woman complaining how much difficulty she had getting laid. And one of her primary complaints was how clumsy, prudish, and superficial her male peers proved themselves to be.

      The 4chan crowd decided to Rule 30 her blog and insist this was an exclusively cis-het male problem. And then the right-wing outrage machine keyed in on it and decided this was a problem caused by the villanious cartel of liberal feminists, who were all trying to groom eligible bachelorettes into man-hating lesbians with hairy legs and pink hair. And now we’ve got an entire industry dedicated to telling men “Go to the gym, eat meat, be extremely misogynist, and vote for Donald Trump so you can have your dream of a 10/10 stacked Tradwife hottie in the suburbs with 12 kids”.

      “Incel” has gone from a feminist critique of unrealistic expectations of teen dating into a reactionary consumerist fantasy.

      • captainlezbian@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        Yeah and this is where I fall into the "listen if you’re someone who can’t get laid that hates that these reactionary assholes have made difficulty getting laid into “this” I’m sympathetic. But incels as they actually are have no sympathy from me.

        Touch grass, work on your mental health, get a hobby, start participating in society in a constructive manner and start showering.

        One of the things that gets to me is how often they mock the advice that actually helps. And I get it, I’ve struggled with mental illness and mocked helpful advice. But fucking hell dude so often the reason they can’t get laid is that nobody wants to spend time with them in any capacity.

        • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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          1 day ago

          Touch grass, work on your mental health, get a hobby, start participating in society in a constructive manner and start showering.

          All good advice on its face. But they do call it “Getting Lucky” for a reason. You can be the perfect specimen and still strike out (with people you’re attracted to in kind). Past that, celibacy and the resulting depression/insecurity has an impact on your mental health even if you’re getting all the other boxes checked. “Don’t be a fucking sad sack if you want to get laid!” is easy advice to give and hard advice to live. Doubly so when you’re a moody anxious teenager, already.

          And it is this hyper-individualist “fuck you, I’ve got mine” attitude is a big part of what drives people off the deep end. The Mean Girls tier prejudice stretching to naked hostility that single people experience - particularly as they get older - is just the other side to the incel coin.

          One of the things that gets to me is how often they mock the advice that actually helps.

          There’s a degree of selection bias. The loudest, proud-boy-est incels are inevitably the ones that have made a brand of the identity and are trying to sell PUA bullshit. There are plenty of people who struggle with “good advice” in silence. And plenty more who take it, improve, start meeting people, and stop being incels.

          But the Self-Help industrialization of dating is often flooded with the same simple “Why can’t you just be normal?” tips and tricks that seem ignore how many perfectly normal people are still incredibly lonely. Meeting new people can be scary, putting yourself out on an emotional line is emotionally taxing, finding the time and money to date is often a luxury, and plenty of people who initially fall for one another discover - sometimes painfully - that they aren’t compatible.

          When you trivialize love, you aren’t being helpful. Your cavalier attitude towards other people’s pain can even be abusive. Is it any surprise that a person who feels mocked and insulted isn’t fun to be around?