Why do almost all 'incels' blame their situation on looks?

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My best guess with him on the later is that being in an information void he can fall into the trap of over-extrapolating, and while from my own experience some degree of the black-pill observations about humanity are true I think taking them as absolutes often amounts to an internal curving of statistics, like for example the idea that you can be - in very subtle ways without any actual social failure - exiled for a few degrees of difference from total conformity, I've seen this in my own life and I can understand the temptation to think that it will be always, forever, and you fall down the tunnel of absolutes.

Another guy who makes worthwhile observarions but who I think falls down the tunnel of absolutes harder than Monday is ThinkingApe. As human beings unfortunately we're trying to frame our lives to have as much certainty in our paths forward as we can, it's part of why so many people tend toward either very strong theism or very strong atheism, and in this area when some people are sizing up the dating market and they see all of the carnage around them as well as a constant rinse and repeat they stop seeing people as individuals and something closer to things that are all reliably the same and in the case of black-pill thinking reliably broken machines that will reliably make bad choices or refuse to think about their own behavior as weighed against their own long-term good or that of society. From that standpoint the rare moral and decent person to be found here and there gets ignored for the Hieronymus Bosch painting that they're perceiving around them.

All of this really tells the story that you have to be very careful about swallowing statistics whole, ie. even if 95% of people were awful it would still mean 5% weren't. Similarly I think the black pill bin is just as often a mix of unfortunately real observations no one wants to touch as it is cognitive distortions of one form or another and I think our culture's eventually going to have to come to terms with the pain it inflicts on itself and sincerely ask the question whether or not it wants a better world to live and (and who knows - the answer may be no, that petty egotism is far more important, but even then it would still be far better for everyone not to do that blinkered).

Not to mention that all of these are based on NT needs, and not necessarily ND needs. Especially self-actualization is strongly tied to NT social preferences to identify with various "subcultures" and to build an identity based on social position. I strongly doubt this is natural for NDs.



So, you want a model based on NT friendships that would fix our cravings for a partner? Many NDs already go about finding a partner through friendship, but I think the evidence that this actually works is lacking. My guess is that it doesn't work because NT friendships are not natural for NDs, and friendships actually interfere with the natural bonding process through the extensive use of talking & conversation.



If there exists such a thing, I don't think it should be called "friendship". It's more likely to be related to group wandering than typical get-togethers that always are heavy on sitting at a table chatting. Actually, my impression always was that ideal "Aspie" get-togethers are not static with people sitting somewhere, rather dynamic as walking around somewhere.

One thing I'd add here - for self actualization in the spiritual, mystical, or religious sense, or reifying that - aiming for self-integration from something like the Jungian standpoint - IMHO it's as critical for anyone who wants to make it through life in one piece and who has and will be reliably going through hard times. It's wonderful that people like Sam Harris have been actually trying to proliferate such things for atheists as well, ie. everyone needs as healthy a relationship with their own mind as they can obtain if they want to have their best shot at getting through this with their sanity intact.

I think Peterson is quite right that nearly all human life is marred by tragedy in some particular way, for example one could have great relationships with friends and long-term partners, have kids, etc. but be struggling with severe diabetes and live with one foot in the hospital, or know that they're going to die young from some congenital ailment, or they could have one or even both parents wasting away from things like Alzheimers or other related issues.

From that perspective it seems like most people's pyramids are cut up, and when I think about current economic realities if one's an incel or FA with the bottom two rungs of their pyramid intact they're in a lot of ways luckier than many or even most people who can't secure the food, water, and shelter layer or people who can't keep jobs, or live in gang-ridden places where they'll live to see tomorrow based on all the gang activity around them is something like a daily lottery.

I don't know why your picture of "friendship" is so static.
All my social life is about doing things together. This includes work, sports, hobbies, philosophical discurses, studying, singing, watching movies, cooking, camping in wilderness, stargazing, making mechanical contraptions... this is how I meet people I over time begin to call my friends. This is how I met and got to know the man who is my husband now.
If you prefer to call it "group wandering" instead of "friendship", then all my friendships are actually group wanderings.

Certainly. Not to mention that it is atheist vs religious denomination, and not atheist vs the spiritual & mystical.

I think the best way for NDs to have a healthy relationship with their own mind is to know their own quirks and accept them. So, I believe self actualization for NDs is more to accept your differences and learn to live with them than belonging to various subcultures. Exploring spiritual & mystical issues could actually help in that process, even if you are a dedicated atheist.

I do not usually browse in this area but someone pointed it out to me as an interesting thread and my goodness it sure is. I took notes as I was going along.

I do have a question before I offer any comments. Can someone give me a short definition of an “incel” that people can agree upon? I have seen the term a lot but always used in a derogatory way. This mention of an “incel community” interested me. Is this a label that we use from the outside looking in, or would they call themselves that as well?

For example- Neo nazis do not call themselves neo nazis or even white supremicists. “White separatist” is the term I usually see. Communities usually use a different term for themselves on the inside once they know the greater community is using a term for them in a negative way. Is this true for incels? Do they even see themselves as a community? Does anyone know? I am very interested in this part of the discussion.

There are essentially two definitions of "incel", and depending on who you're talking to and how it's used will depend on the relevant definition.

The first definition is a literal interpretation of the portmanteau "incel". Someone who is literally involuntarily celibate. Who cannot find a sexual (or romantic) partner despite having longed for one for a long time.

The second and more common definition is people who frequent incel forums and subscribe to the culture. These people tend to blame their lack of good looks and women for their problems as an incel, and tend to be filled with rage and bitterness. Have their own jargon, for instance a "Chad" is a physically attractive male who makes women swoon and gets relationships and sex with ease.

Incels, particularly those on the forums, do self-identify as incels.

The word "incel" is a portmanteau of the words "involuntary" and "celibate". Thus, the word implies that someone's celibacy is not of his or her own choice, nothing more.

However, the label has been taken on by a community of men who are not only involuntarily celibate, but who seem to believe that they are being purposely denied their right to have sex. They blame women, their genes, their canthal tilts, their parents, romantically successful men, feminism (incl., "The Pill" and "Freedom of Choice"), modern technology, and ultimately all of society for their own failure to attract a woman for sex. In this sense, "Incel" (note the capitalization) is a label applied to any man who can't "get laid", and who blames anyone and anything except himself. The typical "Incel" stereotype involves an obese, unemployed or underemployed man who still lives with his parents long after other men his age have graduated college, married, and started their own families and careers. Thus, Incels are objects of scorn and derision from people who have been at least moderately successful in dating and maintaining relationships. Many consider them worthless losers who have little to say unless it's to spew hate-filled language at the "Brads" and "Staceys" who comprise seemingly happy couples everywhere, or to whine and complain about their own lonely lives.

Does that answer your question?

Last edited by Fnord on 06 Aug 2019, 8:45 am, edited 1 time in total.

Not all of them. Apply that label to some men who can't "get laid" and they will likely deny it in a very angry way.

Last edited by Fnord on 06 Aug 2019, 8:45 am, edited 1 time in total.

Seems a bit inconsistent. I never had a date, but I cannot say I ever had any problems with women and relationships. Does that make me an Incel?

Thank you for the correction.

There's a lot of critical information about life and why we do what we do that's tucked away back there that society can't directly teach you.

One of my more recent insights is why human beings constantly lie. A quick and dirty answer - it's how we pad a rather harsh and severe environment by taking things that would otherwise, if approached directly and weighed motivationally, would be unsustainable/unsurvivable by direct approaches hence we chop the intolerable up with fantasies and create a stream of something like Wall Street derivatives that we swim in all day. A naturally occurring analogy of something like this is the oceanic cold-water conveyor belt where if we didn't have it we'd have frozen north and south poles, a scorched equator, and very little temperate zone inbetween, but by having something that acts as a global radiator the temperate zones are greatly expanded.

While some parts of the above might seem like plane common sense I got hit with a much stronger visual analogy and got much farther under it as a system and I think those insights were incredibly useful both in understanding the problem and how to approach the problem. Understanding problems as side-effects to critical solutions quite often is needed if we don't want to stumble as a society from one new blunder to the next.

Yes, and what is typically taught is NT related stuff. Some of our behavioral preferences, and especially in the romantic relationship area, would need to be taught, but knowledge about them has since long ceased to exist in society. So, everybody needs to use trial-and-error to try to figure it out, instead of getting some general plan for how things are supposed to work. This should be a task of the autistic community, but they are still in deep darkness even for the existence of this stuff. Instead, there is a belief that dating can be used as a replacement for natural preferences, but this is only true for NTs.

I like to keep the term "friendship" more strict. It's a kind of emotional gossip connection where NTs exchange information about others. They will meet (hang out) regularly to keep updated, often as part of eating. If they meet in activities, then the gossip is more important than the actual activity. Talking about feelings is important in this context. I'd like to say that I absolutely despise this kind of "friendship".

The things I call friendships are nothing like this. I have some "friends" that I cooperate with professionally, and we only meet / discuss things when we have some particular issue to talk about. We typically will not talk about feelings, and we don't need to meet/talk regularly. We almost never talk about other people (gossip). Most of them are women in the 30s.

When NDs talk about friendships it's often the second variant, even if some try to incorporate the first as well.

This is another place where some of the 'shoulds' that Monday has observed himself to be falling outside of are to some degree questionable, and I made a comment in the video thread that quite often what the NT world tells you is boiler-plate minimum behavior, for us to engage in it we feel like we're carving up and jettisoning some of the best part of ourselves.

His example was not immediately telling women who sent pictures that they look beautiful, IMHO if that's already Weymar or Zimbabwe wallpaper money to the point where it's even seen as a bit creepy why demand it? I've very rarely had good experiences conveying such things and when I have had good experiences it seems like it lifted her self-esteem for all of ten seconds.

An example of my own is a priest/pastor in my martial arts class whose a super-rote and form-based socializer, enough to where when we exchanged minor 'how are you' pleasantries he interjected something else on my behalf as if his assumption was 'It's gratis that you'll follow that up with Y, you didn't so I'll say it for you, all the while carrying the observation that something went horribly wrong from your side - BUT - I'll respect at the same time that your one of the instructors here and outrank me in belt'. I really think this is a 100-105 IQ modality where if you aren't reading every word from the cheat sheet you've blown social contract. It might very well be that more intelligent people need to be a lot more compassionate to less intelligent people than they are, and high IQ can very well lead to a Machiavellian ethos, but at the same time any deviance from perfect conformity being a sign that there's something profoundly wrong with someone or worse, getting interpreted as 'you're either a serial killer, a pedophile, or a cannibal and if you're not one of the three you're two out of three of all of the above' (I've worked with those types before - its awful) - if we're all trying to kill each other and take each other's stuff and that's precisely the point of life, not progress, then okay - it's at least pragmatic, but outside of that context it's regressive to the point of being monstrous.

Or course, it’s like calling any Muslim an Isis.