Spare a thought for the two boys in the stock photo. The back of their heads will forever be associated with “incel” culture and far-right ideology…
In culture of praise and block media, economic and social upheaval all I read is some men who are looking to blame someone else.
Personal responsibility is missing.
As is some stronger parental societal modelling.
Some is social experience.
Maybe why many are ‘converted’ by figures like Jordan Peterson.
But not every thing in life is under one persons control .
I have to wonder what porn has done to the expectations vs reality internal monologue.
Misandry and Mysogyny are another form of ingroup vs outgroup human patterns.
And some are just trolling.
[removed]
Is anyone asking or answering why numbers are increasing?
Are these people we used to just call loser virgins?
Let’s just carry on not doing anything about it then eh?
Let the random dudes across the world like Peterson and Andrew Tate take the mantle.
I just think as far as incels go a lot is dudes poorly assimilated into their immediate society.
Fallen through the cracks so to speak.
It’s not an important topic to tackle right now though. just ridiculed and vilify until it reaches a higher point.
Much easier to be reactionary towards the incels that proactively fix the issue before more incels are made.
Also the term incel is too broad. Are Hikkimori incels for example?
the alternative being domestic abuse in a marriage which is not yet classified as terrorism despite being terrifying
What the fuck is “incel culture”? Not being able to get laid is not a culture
Come with solutions on how we can help hese boys instead. You can almost feel the glee these Guardian writers have for the misfortune of these boys.
You can help people by including them instead of shunning them away as loner losers.
ive seen Jordan Peterson mentioned a lot in the comments. Is he really a big problem with incel stuff?
Ive had plehty of girlfriends, a good job, responsible, hobbies, no desire to be violent to any demographic. JP stuff I think is pretty good. Am I missing something?
The social, emotional and employment needs of these people are in some sense not being met by traditional society and then they get villified and called incels, so then other less well meaning groups ( ie right wing ect) will promise them what they need and they will move further and further away from the centre.
My worst fear is that their needs are ignored for so long that they become radicalised and they vote to take away women’s rights.
We need to work out what is wrong for these people and and help them, not just judge them and ignore them.
Reminds me of how the far right has operated for years, latch onto lonely blokes then blame a foreign person for his woes. These guys blame women.
Sad really.
If a cohort of women/girls were struggling like this, there were be a huge popular movement to address the issues (think body image stuff from the 2000s).
Instead, everyone just blames it on loser men rather than seeing what societal issues need to be changed.
Large disparity in educational attainment negatively affecting boys?
Very few male role models at home or in school?
Economic pressures stopping young people from moving out, which we know particularly affects young men?
Hateful material pushed by social media algorithms?
Lack of mental health support?
Divorce and breakups discriminating against men causing them to lose access to their children and homes?
I’m not saying that men have it worse than women, nor would I ever encourage inter-gender animosity. But really there should be a serious look at the way society is structured and how some aspects are severely affecting boys and young men.
about 8 years late on this one considering Eliot Rodgers did his pussy shit in like 2014 tbf
I would urge anyone interested in the threat of incels to listen to episode 526 of the Modern Wisdom podcast. William Costello has been studying incels, and he clearly demonstrates that the terrorist threat from incels is absolutely miniscule.
If I remember correctly, there were about 10 deaths attributed to incel terrorism in the last decade or something. Obviously, that’s 10 deaths too many, but to put that in perspective, a mass grave was found in Iraqi today that contained the bodies of 150 people that were killed by ISIS. Let’s not pretend that Incel terrorism and Islamic fundamentalist terrorism are even in the same league.
I honestly don’t think the overwhelming majority of these men are beyond hope; they just need some help. They need to be told that women aren’t their enemies, and that they need to keep their chin up, work on themselves a little, and put themselves out there and they will find someone.
Articles like this serve no purpose other than to ostracise people further that are already feeling pretty ostracised by society. We need to re-introduce them into society rather than push them further away.
[removed]
The only way we can stop the grooming of boys into incel culture is to put more emphasis on teaching people how to think critically again especially when they’re young, and to teach people to be even more critical of information and people on the internet than we are currently. I know it serves our leaders to have us all thick as shit believing whatever we hear from facebook, but the result of dumbing us down has led to a situation where young boys and men fail to see they’re being groomed into incel culture via the internet.
Extreme, far right wing ideology and incel culture go hand in hand. In a society where critical thinking is valued right wing ideology doesn’t exist at the levels we see here in the west today. Smarter, better educated people are statistically more likely to be moderates or left of centre, and these people will be more capable of spotting misinformation online and dismissing it.
Sure it’s not boys fault they never were forced to train themselves in critical thinking but once these boys begin to be groomed, it is impossible to make them see they’re misguided.
Incel culture is defined by hatred, misogyny, self-pity and self-loathing, racism, a sense of entitlement to sex, and the endorsement of violence against women and sexually active people. The idea that we should change society to suit people with these opinions is bonkers. So, the only viable cure is prevention which means a complete course change and waaay more investment into education and how we raise kids in this hyper connected society.
As for the incels out there? I don’t see any way to help those who don’t want help. We have got to accept we have lost a chunk of the current generation unless we’re willing to spend a great deal of time and money educating tens of thousands of young men.
If I were to sum up most of these posts rhetoric, I’d say this.
-The fact that they blame male/women ratio (which in our case ain’t even true) is just absurd, and even if the ratio skewed more to men, that doesn’t give a bloke the right to believe he’s owed sex just cause its harder to get shagged simply because ‘am a nice guy’
– Some blame they’re looks, which I know isn’t an ideal place to be but c’mon not every woman is shallow. If anything from my experience, that factor comes so low on the list when it comes to what they want in a dude
– That any idea that contradicts their views e.g the guardian example above (which they clearly didn’t even read) must be rubbished. It’s just people who refuse to grow up and work with the elements of the real world I.e. you can’t always agree but FFS just coz something doesn’t jive with your thinking doesn’t mean it’s automatically wrong – evolution through discourse is what maturity is about.
– That stories like this shouldn’t matter and are oppressive. If the data is showing its correlated to violence, extremism and terror, then it’s something we need to look at and talk about.
– We may be suffering with other stuff as a nation, but ignoring systemic endemic issues because our brains can’t process more than one plight is ridiculous. We can care about many things & still function.
Also; it’s important that even though I stand by the above, i do empathise that some people have a tougher time making connections and we as a society need to try and bring them into the fold and help them as one should, BUT, I gotta draw the line at misogyny, hate and violence towards any gender, or any self degrading pity that manifests itself as violence or hate speech towards anyone etc.
Am not gonna sit and have a cup of tea with someone who thinks its OK to force themselves on my fellow sisters or brothers because life ain’t given them what they consider a fair shake in the bedroom. Am sorry.
**Edit: Peer reviewed scientific journals on incel culture and its relation to gender based violence & terrorism** For all those saying it misunderstood
I think the most concerning thing about this is this comments section right here, a scary proportion of them are justifying or empathising with this type of behaviour as they are “lonely young men”, “this is just isolating men even more”, “we should help the misfortune of these boys”.
Yes, young men/boys should have help if they are feeling isolated or having mental health issues. No, that does not entitle them to be fucking incels terrorising women, and if you genuinely believe that then maybe you need to look in the mirror and realise how much you are part of the problem. Because honestly, you could not be making it any clearer that you have zero understanding of what women in this world have to experience as a result of misogyny and incel culture.
It’s the Internet. These men always existed but now they’ve found each other and can organise, where previously they’d have sat around seething alone. It’s like when they tried to rehabilitate paedophiles by making them have group therapy – hearing each other’s stories only reinforced their beliefs and emboldened them. Put weirdos in touch with each other and bad things happen. I don’t have any solutions to offer, I just commiserate with everyone who has to live in this reality.
Could? Haven’t there already been mass shootings in America targeted at women for exactly this reason?
Piss poor financial prospects have been a major factor in the incel pipeline that people will just not talk about.
There was a time were even a minimum wage job you could get your own place. Now your stuck living with your parents. “No luck with women, fuck it I gave money and can afford a lot of other thing to make me happy”
Now that is no longer an option for most.
Hell a 1 bed flat often needs 2 incomes if you want anything left over to enjoy life.
A lot of lads at my daughters school are attracted to Andrew tate for some reason
It’s like Fight Club warned us this was coming. A generation of depressed men with no cause looking for someone to blame. For some they turn their anger to their lack of success with women.
Because things are really good for young women and girls already…
Fucking hell.
I’m a bit sick of the constant narrative that it’s because men are lonely and have financial pressures. Guess what so do women plus we have to defend ourselves from men that hate us constantly, except we’re not writing manifestos and shooting men to cope with it.
There have been studies conducted in China (probably due to their previous 1 child policy and lack of women that policy caused… for various reasons) and these studies found that if you *decrease* the ratio of females : males by 0.01% it leads to a *3%* increase in the murder rate.
That is *enormous*.
The murder rates are presumed to increase due to males being unable to find a girlfriend or wife, unable to have children and unable to start a family.
I *suspect* this “phenomenon” if we can call it that, probably somewhat applies to “incels”. Whilst in the cases of “incels” becoming violent it’s not due to lack of women, it’s more due to lack of women that find *them* attractive.
Perhaps, and I understand that with some this is a rather unpopular thing to do at the moment, we should invest in men. Young and old. Young men’s mental health, self image and self confidence etc. If these “incels” weren’t left to rot and become radicalised in their bedrooms all whilst letting their social skills waste away then they might actually be attractive to women, and thus the problems might be alleviated.
Despite what people think, humans aren’t generally naturally violent – even when they need to be. For example, in World War 2, many soldiers on both sides reported not being able to pull the trigger – even in cases where it might save their life or the life of a friend. The term “Trigger finger frostbite” was coined to describe the phenomenon.
Soldiers also often didn’t jump to firing their gun instantly. In some cases in close quarters there would be a lot of shouting, throwing of rocks and helmets to get the enemy to turn around etc but not the firing of weapons.
Modern militaries have actually had to *train this out of soldiers* as it was such a problem.
All this wall of text is to say that violence in humans, and “incels” isn’t something natural, and are more a symptom of something going wrong in society. It’s the symptom of a problem and one we need to address.
*sigh* and of course women and feminists are blamed for this.
It’s weird we keep pointing this out but do nothing about it but point and say “hey, those people over there are bad people” and oat ourselves on the back for recognising that fact. It’s like we feel better about ourselves for identifying a group of people we’re better than.
If this culture is increasing, what about our society is causing that increase, and how do we stem it? Nobody is asking you to sympathise with misgiynists, but if we keep ignoring a growing number of our society and remedying their behaviour by laughing at them and dehumanising them, then guess what? They get picked up by the Andrew Tate’s of this world. Its like our chosen form of remedy is actively exacerbating the problem, and the very idea of men coming together as men, for men, with the perspectives of men at the fore is seen as abhorrent.
I dont think we want a fix tbh.
In addition, there’s this lazy conflation now between people struggling to find someone to be with, and active misogynists. We’re now happily lumping people who are of good character but just struggle to find love more than others for one reason or other, with people angry and hateful towards women and looking to lash out.
It’s a pretty shirty landscape for everyone tbh and people are revelling in it because it means we get to point downawards at a group of privileged oppressors who are now not good enough for us and therefore bad people, regardless of whether they are actually bad people or not. It’s the…glee I’m seeing which annoys more than anything.
a worrying amount of people in this thread essentially doing the work for these movements: ‘well men and boys are really struggling now and nobody cares like they would if it were women; they’re discriminated in the courts, who favour women; they’re at the sharp end of capitalism, whereas women are insulated; women need to be more sympathetic’ and so on. lots of incel myths and misattributions baked right in, and this pervasive misogynistic resentment running through.
think about what you’re saying – are you maybe playing into the attack lines of this culture? are you essentially in alignment? might this passionate appeal for their humanity be helping them launder their reputation? understanding a hate group never means recasting them in the roles they want.
30 comments
Spare a thought for the two boys in the stock photo. The back of their heads will forever be associated with “incel” culture and far-right ideology…
In culture of praise and block media, economic and social upheaval all I read is some men who are looking to blame someone else.
Personal responsibility is missing.
As is some stronger parental societal modelling.
Some is social experience.
Maybe why many are ‘converted’ by figures like Jordan Peterson.
But not every thing in life is under one persons control .
I have to wonder what porn has done to the expectations vs reality internal monologue.
Misandry and Mysogyny are another form of ingroup vs outgroup human patterns.
And some are just trolling.
[removed]
Is anyone asking or answering why numbers are increasing?
Are these people we used to just call loser virgins?
Let’s just carry on not doing anything about it then eh?
Let the random dudes across the world like Peterson and Andrew Tate take the mantle.
I just think as far as incels go a lot is dudes poorly assimilated into their immediate society.
Fallen through the cracks so to speak.
It’s not an important topic to tackle right now though. just ridiculed and vilify until it reaches a higher point.
Much easier to be reactionary towards the incels that proactively fix the issue before more incels are made.
Also the term incel is too broad. Are Hikkimori incels for example?
the alternative being domestic abuse in a marriage which is not yet classified as terrorism despite being terrifying
What the fuck is “incel culture”? Not being able to get laid is not a culture
Come with solutions on how we can help hese boys instead. You can almost feel the glee these Guardian writers have for the misfortune of these boys.
You can help people by including them instead of shunning them away as loner losers.
ive seen Jordan Peterson mentioned a lot in the comments. Is he really a big problem with incel stuff?
Ive had plehty of girlfriends, a good job, responsible, hobbies, no desire to be violent to any demographic. JP stuff I think is pretty good. Am I missing something?
The social, emotional and employment needs of these people are in some sense not being met by traditional society and then they get villified and called incels, so then other less well meaning groups ( ie right wing ect) will promise them what they need and they will move further and further away from the centre.
My worst fear is that their needs are ignored for so long that they become radicalised and they vote to take away women’s rights.
We need to work out what is wrong for these people and and help them, not just judge them and ignore them.
Reminds me of how the far right has operated for years, latch onto lonely blokes then blame a foreign person for his woes. These guys blame women.
Sad really.
If a cohort of women/girls were struggling like this, there were be a huge popular movement to address the issues (think body image stuff from the 2000s).
Instead, everyone just blames it on loser men rather than seeing what societal issues need to be changed.
Large disparity in educational attainment negatively affecting boys?
Very few male role models at home or in school?
Economic pressures stopping young people from moving out, which we know particularly affects young men?
Hateful material pushed by social media algorithms?
Lack of mental health support?
Divorce and breakups discriminating against men causing them to lose access to their children and homes?
I’m not saying that men have it worse than women, nor would I ever encourage inter-gender animosity. But really there should be a serious look at the way society is structured and how some aspects are severely affecting boys and young men.
about 8 years late on this one considering Eliot Rodgers did his pussy shit in like 2014 tbf
I would urge anyone interested in the threat of incels to listen to episode 526 of the Modern Wisdom podcast. William Costello has been studying incels, and he clearly demonstrates that the terrorist threat from incels is absolutely miniscule.
[Link to episode 526 of Modern Wisdom podcast YouTube video](https://youtu.be/da_5uuOCFz8)
If I remember correctly, there were about 10 deaths attributed to incel terrorism in the last decade or something. Obviously, that’s 10 deaths too many, but to put that in perspective, a mass grave was found in Iraqi today that contained the bodies of 150 people that were killed by ISIS. Let’s not pretend that Incel terrorism and Islamic fundamentalist terrorism are even in the same league.
I honestly don’t think the overwhelming majority of these men are beyond hope; they just need some help. They need to be told that women aren’t their enemies, and that they need to keep their chin up, work on themselves a little, and put themselves out there and they will find someone.
Articles like this serve no purpose other than to ostracise people further that are already feeling pretty ostracised by society. We need to re-introduce them into society rather than push them further away.
[removed]
The only way we can stop the grooming of boys into incel culture is to put more emphasis on teaching people how to think critically again especially when they’re young, and to teach people to be even more critical of information and people on the internet than we are currently. I know it serves our leaders to have us all thick as shit believing whatever we hear from facebook, but the result of dumbing us down has led to a situation where young boys and men fail to see they’re being groomed into incel culture via the internet.
Extreme, far right wing ideology and incel culture go hand in hand. In a society where critical thinking is valued right wing ideology doesn’t exist at the levels we see here in the west today. Smarter, better educated people are statistically more likely to be moderates or left of centre, and these people will be more capable of spotting misinformation online and dismissing it.
Sure it’s not boys fault they never were forced to train themselves in critical thinking but once these boys begin to be groomed, it is impossible to make them see they’re misguided.
Incel culture is defined by hatred, misogyny, self-pity and self-loathing, racism, a sense of entitlement to sex, and the endorsement of violence against women and sexually active people. The idea that we should change society to suit people with these opinions is bonkers. So, the only viable cure is prevention which means a complete course change and waaay more investment into education and how we raise kids in this hyper connected society.
As for the incels out there? I don’t see any way to help those who don’t want help. We have got to accept we have lost a chunk of the current generation unless we’re willing to spend a great deal of time and money educating tens of thousands of young men.
If I were to sum up most of these posts rhetoric, I’d say this.
-The fact that they blame male/women ratio (which in our case ain’t even true) is just absurd, and even if the ratio skewed more to men, that doesn’t give a bloke the right to believe he’s owed sex just cause its harder to get shagged simply because ‘am a nice guy’
– Some blame they’re looks, which I know isn’t an ideal place to be but c’mon not every woman is shallow. If anything from my experience, that factor comes so low on the list when it comes to what they want in a dude
– That any idea that contradicts their views e.g the guardian example above (which they clearly didn’t even read) must be rubbished. It’s just people who refuse to grow up and work with the elements of the real world I.e. you can’t always agree but FFS just coz something doesn’t jive with your thinking doesn’t mean it’s automatically wrong – evolution through discourse is what maturity is about.
– That stories like this shouldn’t matter and are oppressive. If the data is showing its correlated to violence, extremism and terror, then it’s something we need to look at and talk about.
– We may be suffering with other stuff as a nation, but ignoring systemic endemic issues because our brains can’t process more than one plight is ridiculous. We can care about many things & still function.
Also; it’s important that even though I stand by the above, i do empathise that some people have a tougher time making connections and we as a society need to try and bring them into the fold and help them as one should, BUT, I gotta draw the line at misogyny, hate and violence towards any gender, or any self degrading pity that manifests itself as violence or hate speech towards anyone etc.
Am not gonna sit and have a cup of tea with someone who thinks its OK to force themselves on my fellow sisters or brothers because life ain’t given them what they consider a fair shake in the bedroom. Am sorry.
**Edit: Peer reviewed scientific journals on incel culture and its relation to gender based violence & terrorism** For all those saying it misunderstood
https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=incel+terrorism&oq=incel+#d=gs_qabs&t=1667180676226&u=%23p%3D292NylHOvbgJ
https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=incel+terrorism&oq=incel+#d=gs_qabs&t=1667180704991&u=%23p%3DrtlWUk1sO4wJ
https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=incel+terrorism&oq=incel+#d=gs_qabs&t=1667180728839&u=%23p%3Dtdq7uE719H8J
https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=incel+terrorism&oq=incel+#d=gs_qabs&t=1667180756412&u=%23p%3DHrRCyIs3m-4J
I think the most concerning thing about this is this comments section right here, a scary proportion of them are justifying or empathising with this type of behaviour as they are “lonely young men”, “this is just isolating men even more”, “we should help the misfortune of these boys”.
Yes, young men/boys should have help if they are feeling isolated or having mental health issues. No, that does not entitle them to be fucking incels terrorising women, and if you genuinely believe that then maybe you need to look in the mirror and realise how much you are part of the problem. Because honestly, you could not be making it any clearer that you have zero understanding of what women in this world have to experience as a result of misogyny and incel culture.
It’s the Internet. These men always existed but now they’ve found each other and can organise, where previously they’d have sat around seething alone. It’s like when they tried to rehabilitate paedophiles by making them have group therapy – hearing each other’s stories only reinforced their beliefs and emboldened them. Put weirdos in touch with each other and bad things happen. I don’t have any solutions to offer, I just commiserate with everyone who has to live in this reality.
Could? Haven’t there already been mass shootings in America targeted at women for exactly this reason?
Piss poor financial prospects have been a major factor in the incel pipeline that people will just not talk about.
There was a time were even a minimum wage job you could get your own place. Now your stuck living with your parents. “No luck with women, fuck it I gave money and can afford a lot of other thing to make me happy”
Now that is no longer an option for most.
Hell a 1 bed flat often needs 2 incomes if you want anything left over to enjoy life.
A lot of lads at my daughters school are attracted to Andrew tate for some reason
It’s like Fight Club warned us this was coming. A generation of depressed men with no cause looking for someone to blame. For some they turn their anger to their lack of success with women.
Because things are really good for young women and girls already…
Fucking hell.
I’m a bit sick of the constant narrative that it’s because men are lonely and have financial pressures. Guess what so do women plus we have to defend ourselves from men that hate us constantly, except we’re not writing manifestos and shooting men to cope with it.
There have been studies conducted in China (probably due to their previous 1 child policy and lack of women that policy caused… for various reasons) and these studies found that if you *decrease* the ratio of females : males by 0.01% it leads to a *3%* increase in the murder rate.
That is *enormous*.
The murder rates are presumed to increase due to males being unable to find a girlfriend or wife, unable to have children and unable to start a family.
I *suspect* this “phenomenon” if we can call it that, probably somewhat applies to “incels”. Whilst in the cases of “incels” becoming violent it’s not due to lack of women, it’s more due to lack of women that find *them* attractive.
Perhaps, and I understand that with some this is a rather unpopular thing to do at the moment, we should invest in men. Young and old. Young men’s mental health, self image and self confidence etc. If these “incels” weren’t left to rot and become radicalised in their bedrooms all whilst letting their social skills waste away then they might actually be attractive to women, and thus the problems might be alleviated.
Despite what people think, humans aren’t generally naturally violent – even when they need to be. For example, in World War 2, many soldiers on both sides reported not being able to pull the trigger – even in cases where it might save their life or the life of a friend. The term “Trigger finger frostbite” was coined to describe the phenomenon.
Soldiers also often didn’t jump to firing their gun instantly. In some cases in close quarters there would be a lot of shouting, throwing of rocks and helmets to get the enemy to turn around etc but not the firing of weapons.
Modern militaries have actually had to *train this out of soldiers* as it was such a problem.
All this wall of text is to say that violence in humans, and “incels” isn’t something natural, and are more a symptom of something going wrong in society. It’s the symptom of a problem and one we need to address.
*sigh* and of course women and feminists are blamed for this.
It’s weird we keep pointing this out but do nothing about it but point and say “hey, those people over there are bad people” and oat ourselves on the back for recognising that fact. It’s like we feel better about ourselves for identifying a group of people we’re better than.
If this culture is increasing, what about our society is causing that increase, and how do we stem it? Nobody is asking you to sympathise with misgiynists, but if we keep ignoring a growing number of our society and remedying their behaviour by laughing at them and dehumanising them, then guess what? They get picked up by the Andrew Tate’s of this world. Its like our chosen form of remedy is actively exacerbating the problem, and the very idea of men coming together as men, for men, with the perspectives of men at the fore is seen as abhorrent.
I dont think we want a fix tbh.
In addition, there’s this lazy conflation now between people struggling to find someone to be with, and active misogynists. We’re now happily lumping people who are of good character but just struggle to find love more than others for one reason or other, with people angry and hateful towards women and looking to lash out.
It’s a pretty shirty landscape for everyone tbh and people are revelling in it because it means we get to point downawards at a group of privileged oppressors who are now not good enough for us and therefore bad people, regardless of whether they are actually bad people or not. It’s the…glee I’m seeing which annoys more than anything.
a worrying amount of people in this thread essentially doing the work for these movements: ‘well men and boys are really struggling now and nobody cares like they would if it were women; they’re discriminated in the courts, who favour women; they’re at the sharp end of capitalism, whereas women are insulated; women need to be more sympathetic’ and so on. lots of incel myths and misattributions baked right in, and this pervasive misogynistic resentment running through.
think about what you’re saying – are you maybe playing into the attack lines of this culture? are you essentially in alignment? might this passionate appeal for their humanity be helping them launder their reputation? understanding a hate group never means recasting them in the roles they want.