Hey Incels & Looksmaxers

[Initech]

Listen up! If you hate yourself enough to post on a Looksmax or Incel forum, you might have hit rock bottom as an individual. It's time to face that fact.

See here's the thing - we know that rejection does weird things to people. But it's part of life. You're not going to get your dream job on the first interview. It'll take years and you get put through a lot of shit but it's worth it.

There's things that you can do to fix this problem though. But you must accept a harsh reality. The real thing you must face in order to be a male in 2018 is two things:

1. You're not entitled to anything.
2. Women don't owe you anything.

The sooner you face this, the better. Look you can blow thousands and hundreds of thousands on unnecessary plastic surgery. That's ok but it's not going to fix your inner ugly.

And you know why successful people are successful? Because they don't give a shit what other people think about them. You do and that's why you have a problem.

Here's the thing - it's not them. It's you. It's absolutely you. No amount of plastic surgery is going to fix how ugly you are on the inside. You really think that a career woman who makes 5 or 6 figures is going to be impressed by some dolt who works the late shift at a Carl's Jr. drive thru? Hell no!

And you think they're going to be impressed by someone who hasn't left the house in 5 years? Hell no. Get out there. Learn a skill. Have some adventures. Listen to some new music. Watch some new movies. Meet some new people. Maybe even drink a beer or smoke some weed if you're so inclined.

But one thing that you should definitely not do - don't take your anger out on an internet message board populated by other angry individuals like yourself. And definitely don't take your anger out on someone else. That's unattractive no matter what you look like.

[yonder]

1. On the spot! I'm sick of chest-thumping macho bullshit.

Look inward you needy souls.

[Initech]

4. Seriously, it only works in Black Panther.

Doesn't really work any other time in life!

[Glamrock]

2. Intentionally celibate my ass.

They need to be calling themselves no-game boys.

[Ms. Toad]

7. The "I" is for involuntarily - not intentionally -

thats why they kill people - they believe women have an obligation to provide sexual service to them, and that refusal is a hate crime against them that justifies murder.

[Glamrock]

9. Duh.

My mistake. Knew that. Mistype. Rest of my statement stands.

[safeinOhio]

3. beautiful Russian women want to meet you.

Check em out on the Internets.

[dalton99a]

15. They should deport themselves to Russia

[Sherman A1]

5. I agree with most of your post

up to the point where you added "You really think that a career woman who makes 5 or 6 figures is going to be impressed by some dolt who works the late shift at a Carl's Jr. drive thru? Hell no!"

While your argument is generally spot on, denigration and stereotyping of a group of people who work as fast food servers and likely work very hard for pay that is not nearly sufficient in my opinion detracts from your position. There is no need to criticize people working in fast food, who show up, do their job and serve the public. The work certainly is not glorious, but it is honest and all work has honor.

[FreepFryer]

6. And Love is Love... far stranger things have happened than a cross-class romance. (n/t)

[Tipperary]

8. I know. I hate that kind of thing, but I see it here pretty frequently.

We have snobbery even here on du.

[Jim Lane]

12. I agree that all honest work has honor -- BUT...

There are a couple of stereotypes here (both in the context of opposite-sex romance) that I believe to be true. One is that women are more likely than men to be superficial about a prospective partner's socioeconomic status. The other is that men are more likely than women to be superficial about a prospective partner's physical appearance.

To acknowledge those facts is not to denigrate men who work at Carl's Jr. or women who are overweight. It also doesn't mean that these people are doomed to a loveless life. It just means that some members of the opposite sex will rule them out on the basis of that one factor.

As applied to the incels, I don't know enough about that community to know if they have a big problem with nonprestigious employment. From the little I've read, I 'd hazard a guess that their personalities are a much bigger problem. Nevertheless, the harsh reality is that, if a single man works at Carl's Jr., he would have more romantic options if he could find a better job.

[Initech]

17. Again take a look at what happened in Charlottesville.

The people who attended all were white. They all were under 30. They all worked low wage jobs. The guy that ran over Heather Hayer was a pizza delivery driver. And one of the speakers was a bus boy at a restaurant. That is why I've come to that conclusion. And that's just a small sample set.

[kcr]

18. Your point of view assumes all incels have low pay/low status jobs.

and also reinforces the classist, snobbish stereotype. You claim you don't know enough about the group to say, but that didn't stop you from leaping to that conclusion, and it's probably the reason you fall apart there in your last paragraph. You seem to have a real problem deciding the reason. Is the real problem their personality or isn't it? Oooh, that harsh reality! So hard to tell.

[Jim Lane]

19. You say I assume something that I expressly disclaimed.

I made a generalization, not limited to incels, that a heterosexual man with a low pay/low status job will find that some women rule him out on that basis, or at least are less likely to be interested in him than they would be if he had higher SES.

You write:

You seem to have a real problem deciding the reason. Is the real problem their personality or isn't it? Oooh, that harsh reality! So hard to tell.

I have what you call a "problem" of being suspicious of binary thinking. It must be the case that either personality is the real problem for every incel, or it isn't? Well, no. That's a false dichotomy. For any one person, there are multiple factors affecting his or her romantic success. If you take a large group of people, individual members of the group will differ in the importance of each factor, even if there are some group similarities. That's why my post used phrases like "more likely", "some members of the opposite sex", and "bigger problem" (not "sole problem" ).

It's complicated, with the result that, yeah, it is hard to tell.

[Sherman A1]

21. The problem is using stereotypes

Points can easily be made without perpetuating useless, snobbish and what are essentially mean-spirited stereotypes. Most folks in fast food work hard and they deserve respect for their work (and probably a lot more money, but that is another argument).

[Jim Lane]

23. Well, call them generalizations, then.

Do you denounce stereotypes when someone posts that many Trump voters are racists? It's a generalization, meaning that it doesn't purport to apply to everyone in the group being described, but rather that members of the group are more likely than are other people to fit the description.

Anyway, you seem to be responding to a particular stereotype that I didn't endorse, and that I thought I expressly disclaimed. I'm not saying that fast-food employees don't work hard. I'm not saying that they don't deserve respect. I'm not even saying that their socioeconomic status should affect their romantic prospects. I'm saying only that, in practice, it often does. How hard these folks work, as compared with people in other fields, is something I don't know, and it wouldn't be relevant to this discussion of incels even if we had absolutely solid data on the subject.

By way of analogy, among men who are particularly short or women who are particularly tall, many find that their height is a problem if they're looking for an opposite-sex partner. We can recognize that fact without criticizing short men or tall women.

[Sherman A1]

24. No, I will call them what they are

Stereotypes and really just not needed to make the point. As to those who did vote for Mr. Trump, I disagree with their choice, but see no need for any name calling. One, it is simply wrong and Two it will not further the conversation with them which at some point does need to happen.

[Initech]

14. No there really isn't.

I base that off of most of the articles I've read about the the people who are most likely to be white supremacists. The fact is that the people who are, are usually young (say less than 30). They usually don't have a degree, and most work generally low income jobs. Look at the people who attended Charlottesville - most of them fit this profile. Is that not true?

[Sherman A1]

22. See post #12

That sums up my point and at this juncture, I’m done.

[Snarkoleptic]

10. Here's an interesting look at these incels-

https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/evqy3j/what-are-incels-redistributing-sex-new-york-times-ross-douthat

As a woman online (and I mean deep in the bowels of Discord and 8chan levels of online), watching the rest of the world Google “what is an incel” in real-time has been a weeks-long atomic cringe. While the topic has been newly mainstreamed for the first time since Rodger’s mass shooting, the incel ideology has been incubating on forums like 4chan and 8chan and “Men’s Rights” message boards for years. “Incels” (short for “involuntary celibate”) are a deeply chauvinistic group of people whose common bond is that they don’t have sex and are incredibly, violently mad about it.

Incel thinking is based on the idea that women are commodities—that they are objects that owe men sex. For many who identify as “incels,” their celibacy is self-imposed. “When they say they can’t find anyone to have sex with them, they mean they can’t find anyone who they consider adequately ‘high value,’” Jaclyn Friedman, feminist writer, activist, and author of Unscrewed, told me in a phone call, “which is an odious enough phrase that I hate saying it.”

[Snarkoleptic]

11. Then there's the particularly odious incel practice of 'stealthing', which is arguably rape.

https://www.seventeen.com/health/sex-health/a46679/what-you-need-to-know-about-stealthing/

A new study explores "stealthing," a disturbing practice in which men poke holes in or remove a condom during sex without their partner's consent or knowledge.

The study, published by Alexandra Brodsky in the Columbia Journal of Gender and Law, explains that "nonconsensual condom removal during sexual intercourse exposes victims to physical risks of pregnancy and disease and, interviews make clear, is experienced by many as a grave violation of dignity and autonomy." The study also highlighted online communities that defend stealthing as a male "right" and allow men to trade tips and advice.

Brodsky told HuffPost she was inspired to study the practice in 2013 when she saw how many of her female friends were "struggling with forms of mistreatment by sexual partners that weren't considered part of the recognized repertoire of gender based violence ― but that seemed rooted in the same misogyny and lack of respect."

One victim Brodsky spoke to described the incident as "rape-adjacent." Indeed, in January, a Swiss court decided that a 47-year-old man who removed a condom without consent during sex was guilty of rape.

[LuckyCharms]

16. I don't get why a man would expose himself to a paternity situation.

Men who do this are criminally insane (maybe not that, but terminally evil and stupid). What's the point? To somehow "get back" at the woman?

[smirkymonkey]

13. K&R