- cross-posted to:
- hackernews@lemmy.bestiver.se
- cross-posted to:
- hackernews@lemmy.bestiver.se
Lmao
Raising kids these days must be a real minefield with all this toxic culture being so accessible.
Fundamentalist religion is at the top of the toxic culture, and it has been around since before the incel term.
US version of Japan’s Hikikomori?
How can we help them make more friends? How can we get them involved in real-world activities that will diminish their time spent online?
By locking them into suburban houses with no places to go without being driven by their parents, until they’re old enough to drive. 🇺🇸🇨🇦
Sooooo… when are we gonna admit that men’s mental health is unfortunaly heavily tied to their career prospects?
No, not yet?
Okay I’ll keep waiting.
sigh
…
It’s capitalism.
Men’s well being wouldn’t be tied to career prospects if it weren’t for the rat race we are all brainwashed into since birth that is capitalism.
You have worth as a human beyond your capacity to produce profit.
Yeah and the reason young men are finding it hard to have real life friends and end up on uncle forums is because we lost most of our “third spaces” thanks to them not making money and shutting down or being underfunded or closed if they were publicly owned.
Ontop of this the constant algorithms that push specific topics to people over and over due to it keeping them on the platform and therefore generates income.
It does feel like 75% of this problem could be fixed by stopping corporate greed and fixing our local communities as whole.
we lost most of our “third spaces” thanks to them not making money and shutting down or being underfunded or closed if they were publicly owned.
And also shut down by female supremacist activists.
A gym started up last decade in my town, as a men’s only gym. A place for guys to come and exercise without distraction.
It got sued within the year by a woman who tried to join. It went to court. Company ran out of money before the court case closed, went bankrupt and had to close.
The case proceeded to completion, the woman won, and all the women’s groups in the area crowed about their phyrric “victory” over misogyny.
There are three women’s-only gyms in town, six in the greater geographical region. None of these have ever had men demanding to become members, because those men would be nailed to the wall for being misogynists.
This happens eventually to all “men’s spaces” that exist long enough: they are forced to no longer be “men’s spaces”, because being a “man’s space” is misogynistic.
Women’s spaces? Totally fine. Not misandric in the least.
See how “equality” works?
Edit:
Pick any third space where women’s only spaces exist, and you will also find men’s-only spaces that were sued either into nonexistence or into opening their doors for women, which caused it to no longer be a “men’s space”. From boxing clubs to smoking clubs to the f**king Boy Scouts of America, men’s spaces everywhere are being eliminated in the drive to “combat misogyny”.
Meanwhile, the president of the Girl Scouts privately admitted (can’t recall exactly when, but it was either during or shortly after the Boy Scout’s trial) that she would rather shut down the entire org than allow a single boy to join. And she was lauded for that position.
“Rules for thee, but not for me.”
That isn’t “equality” in the least. That’s blatant gender bigotry. And that is what the “black pill” is built upon - actual real-world evidence.
You want the black pill to stop existing? QUIT SHOVELLING THEM COPIOUS AMOUNTS OF AMMUNITION, FFS.
The irony of this reply about this subject…
These third spaces don’t have to be exclusively young men lol. In fact it might be better if they aren’t given the specific topic of people we are talking about in this thread. In general an increase in community locations is a good thing, but it seemed especially so for people in the intel rabbit hole. Somewhere casual they can come out of their shells and meet people in the real world!
I honestly don’t think third spaces on their own are the answer. After all, suppose a city makes a nice park across the street from an incel’s apartment. Maybe they’ll leave their house and go there… but do you really think this socially awkward weirdo is gonna start striking up conversations with other people there? Do you think they are going to engage with others who say hello to them, if others interact with them at all? Yes, a lack of third spaces is a problem, but I don’t think it is the lynchpin. We are also less likely to visit third places when they do exist these days due to digital distractions. People seem to be more insular, less likely to introduce themselves to strangers and less likely to be open to strangers introducing themselves. And significant social anxiety and lack of social skills is seldom overcome simply by having a neutral environment.
What we really need is grassroots social movements dedicated to being friendly to strangers, reducing digital distractions, reaching out to men who feel left behind, and informing parents about the importance of proactively ensuring that their children have healthy social and emotional lives.
Holy fuck I’m glad I’m not growing up now. This whole “incel” thong just makes me so fucking mad.
We have a subset of adolescent males who are harassed amd bullied and depressed and self-destructive, and how does the rest of socirty respond? The best they can manage is to gridgingly say things like:
You can both condemn their ideology and find it abhorrent and also remember that we need to have empathy for these people."
Many people—women especially—might find that a tall order, and Beckett-Herbert understands that reluctance. “I do understand people’s hesitancy to empathize with them, because it feels like you’re giving credence to their rhetoric,” she said. “But at the end of the day, they are human, and a lot of them are really struggling, marginalized people coming from pretty sad backgrounds. When you peruse their online world, it’s the most horrifying, angering misogyny right next to some of the saddest mental health, suicidal, low self-esteem stuff you’ve ever seen. I think humanizing them and having empathy is going to be foundational to any intervention efforts to reintegrate them. But it’s something I wrestle with a lot.”
How nice. You think maybe you should try to empathize with them and remember that they are human beings, but gee… that’s a tall order. You’re not sure if you can actually do it.
And then you have the gall to wonder why they exist - how they got to be that way. You should, if you genuinely want to do something about them, be offering them help to deal with their struggles before they even get to that stage. But no - you won’t do that. Fuck them - they’re boys, so they’re on their own.
We can care about the well-being of women and girls and also acknowledge that young men are struggling, too. Those don’t have to be at odds."
So that’s the best you can do? You “care about” girls and women but can only maybe manage to “acknowleedge” boys and men? And you still don’t understand the appeal of the manosphere?
"There is evidence that men who are short or not conventionally attractive are discriminated against in hiring.
So right there - there is evidence that one of the things the incel community complains about is in fact true.
But do you even acknowledge it? Nope.
“But there’s also a lot of evidence suggesting that this actually affects women more. Women who are overweight face a greater bias against them in hiring than men do, for example.”
You just breeze right past it and dismiss their feelings entirely, because girls and women have it worse.
Seriously, you still don’t get how we ended up with a generation of boys who think the world shits on them and girls and women get preferential treatment? Even after you just shat on them and gave girls preferential treatment?
Here’s va fucking news flash, since so many people are apparentlybtoo fucking stupid to figure itvout - if you all actually cared about thecstruggles boys are going through and listened to them and took them seriously and tried to help them, they wouldn’t have to turn to the manosphere to find someone who gives a shit about them.
It’s not complicated, so you have no fucking excuse. Stop belittling boys and treating their problems as if they somehow don’t count.
If the best you can manage is to maybe “acknoeledge” boys’ problems, even as you “care about” girls’, and you can’t even mention a problem boys experience without immediately shifting your focus away from them and to girls, then the boys aren’t the real problem - you are.
They hate women, want to rape them and remove their rights, so women, utterly predictably, hate them back. It’s not complicated. Try telling black people to empathise with the poor little white supremacists more and see how far you get.
Incels aren’t new btw. I tried to read 1984 recently and had to stop because the main character is an incel.
Reading these comments makes understanding why the world is in its current state, extremely easy
Keep preaching and applying that brand of empathy guys, it will surely pay off eventually
The simple fact is no one really cares about the plight of men, and this is obvious when you look at social service funding and especially homeless shelters.
We are in a ‘bare branch’ crisis, and back when this happened in medieval China, whole gangs of angry unmarriable men would form raider bands and just pillage and rape until they were put down by the military. It happened so often that warring states would purposely stage useless battles with massive losses on both sides to keep down the ‘bare branch’ population so they didn’t get to rioting levels.
Maybe the fact that warfare is no longer culling the most desperate, lonely, and impressionable men has let to such a large population of unfocused, angry, lonely, and fundamentally unlikeable males.
It’s mainly because biologically we evolved to have kids and die on a hunt, our evolution pressures just aren’t capable of handling a male population without a certain degree of unnatural casualty.
I’m actually impressed at how ridiculous this is. But I’ll bite:
What’s the plight of men?
Is it sexual frustration?
Is the solution ensuring that young men have access to sex, regardless of the means or impact on women?
If that isn’t feasible, are we simply supposed to engage in war to cull off these sex-starved, victimized men who seemingly are incapable of contributing to society in any other way then impregnating women and waging violence?
If so, what is the benefit of living in such a world?
I’m not the guy you’re responding to but here’s my thoughts on it based off my experience.
Is it sexual frustration?
I’d wager that that’s a big part of the problem for a lot of them. I know it was for me when I was younger. Seeing your peers entering into relationships while you can’t seem to get even a second glance from a woman does a number on you. Especially when you can’t figure out what the problem is. I was fortunate that things turned around for me pretty quickly once I got out of the toxic high school environment and moved onto a different social circle in college that helped me get out of my shell. A lot of dudes aren’t that lucky and just get stuck in that bad mindset where they feel like it’s hopeless which then takes them on to all kinds of nasty places as time goes on.
Is the solution ensuring that young men have access to sex, regardless of the means or impact on women?
No, in my opinion the solution is making mental health services available to help teach them how to deal with whatever it is that’s making it hard for them to find a partner or to cope with it if it’s something that can’t be resolved. Also just having more social opportunities in general to get people offline and meeting and interacting with each other more would be nice. Women certainly aren’t responsible for making sure men are all getting laid as often as they want but sexual frustration/loneliness is a problem a lot of men struggle with coming to terms with and it does fuck up their lives sometimes.
Aren’t these guys misusing blackpilled? I thought it was specifically for suicide not just going NEET? Which like we should talk about but not through this corporate productivity-washed drivel.
If you also didn’t know
“Not in Education, Employment or Training”, its an acronym for people that don’t go to school, don’t work and are mot looking for work.
Also it’s a backronym from the similar Japanese term which refers to a growing number of people there who have abandoned society and hole themselves up in their room literally never going outside.
Wictionary says it went the other way from NEET to ニート(nīto): https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/ニート
You’re probably thinking of 引きこもり(hikikomori): https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/引きこもり#Japanese
I always found “hikikomori” very amusing, because if it was slightly different, and written “hikikomero”, it would literally mean “sweat closet” in Finnish (hiki = sweat, komero =closet) , which is a very apt concept for how lots of hikikomori live.
Sounds like another name for a sauna to me 😅
That is true as well.
But having like a few pc’s and a microgrow going in a small dark room isn’t too far from a sauna
I’m sure they expect others to take care of them though. Like giant house pets.
What a terrible article. NEETS and lie flat movement has almost no overlap with incels.
Ostensibly the whole world has been online for enough time now. Yet everyone continues to demonstrate a remarkable lack of ability to grasp internet cultures.
It makes no sense. Like trying to explain technology to my elderly grandma. Except she knows she’s very old and out of touch. What’s everyone elses excuse. It’s made even worse because everyone else thinks they are digitial culture savvy.
It’s intentional to cause infighting and and to help build the association between neets and incels.
Ars Technica is owned by Conde Nast media conglomerate, which is owned by Advanced Publications, which is owned and controlled by the billionaire Newhouse Family.
That’s why Steve Newhouse wants these types of articles to be written, because it obfuscates truth and pushes division.
Nothing will meaningfully improve until the rich fear for their lives
They overlap because they are all rejects and failures with no prospects.
Fuck these losers. Just discard them from society.
Wealth inequality is the cause of almost every single economic and social issue in existence.
If young men had the money to have agency in their lives they would be living life instead of living with their parents to save money while seeking validation through internet fascists.
If school wasn’t desigend to be a day care service for Capitalists our children would be properly socialized with the different sexes/genders before getting the chance to grow up into incels.
As always nothing will be done on a public level.
The term “incel” doesn’t really make sense. It’s not involuntary, by any definition of the word that I’ve seen.
Almost anyone can find a partner simply through effort. Diet, exercise, hygiene, etiquette, dressing nicely, socializing, actively seeking a partner. Notice something about that list? Pretty much everyone can do those things. It’s just a matter of effort.
Yes, there are some exceptions, for example from people with severe disability, but those people rarely call themselves “incels.” The majority are people who are perfectly capable of doing these things.
If you don’t practice basketball and you don’t even go to the tryouts, you don’t get to say that your not making the team was “involuntary.”
As someone who was previously involuntarily celibate, I have to say that this comment really misses the actual problem, which is mental health. I had basically been suffering from some combination of depression, social anxiety, and high functioning autism from around age 8. This didn’t leave me with much in the way of friends or social skills, but it didn’t reduce in the slightest the horniness I felt.
To me, trying to figure out how to get women to have sex with me felt like dying of thirst on a desert island covered in land mines. In my constantly precarious mental and social situations, I was always terrified of trying anything because I feared that doing the wrong thing would lose me the few friends (ie, acquaintances who tolerated me) that I had. And I feared that letting on to anyone that I had any sexual interest in anyone ever - that I had any sexual urge at all - would lead to everyone I knew immediately abandoning me. And this, I was quite sure,would result in my own death via suicide. This was the case to the point that, one time, my friends asked me if I was gay, probably assuming I was closeted. They were right. I was closeted. I just wasn’t gay.
So since I couldn’t talk to anyone in real life about my problem, I turned to the internet. I ended up in /r/seduction and… was immediately grossed out. It was weird and manipulative and unnatural and and just generally unappealing to me as someone who was committed to treating other people with basic human dignity. So instead I turned to the normal/liberal/leftist side of the internet, which was… unhelpful to say the least.
Saying that it is voluntary assumes that the steps needed are straightforward and obvious. But you might as well say that primitive tribes were voluntarily living without electricity for 200,000 years. After all, you just have to spin a magnet! Just put the work in! What’s wrong with them?
Saying that it is voluntary assumes that the steps needed are straightforward and obvious.
This is a social problem, so the solution is to look at what successful people do and copy that. If that’s not straightforward and obvious, then nothing is straightforward and obvious. This is exactly the same thing primitive tribes did, and every one of your ancestors did. It is a process of learning, which makes it similar to science, but it requires no knowledge that you can’t get from just personal observations, completely unlike electricity.
You say that you couldn’t talk to anyone IRL about your problem, because of your social anxiety and autism, but that’s also a matter of effort. Rather than working on overcoming your social anxiety first, you went straight to seduction. That’s skipping all of the groundwork, and you knew it at the time. Choosing a plan that is guaranteed to fail is a voluntary choice.
This is a social problem, so the solution is to look at what successful people do and copy that.
Then the question becomes (1) who is successful? Most people are not advertising every romantic encounter they have. Least of all to the weird kid who doesn’t talk to anyone. (2) Of the things they do, what makes them successful? Many of the black pill incels seem to have found the answer here, which is “be tall” and “have a strong jawline”. This is similar to questions about “how can I be well liked?” or “How do I make oodles of money?” There are a million possible answers, each as plausible-sounding as the last, all contradictory. And following any one line of advice requires a significant commitment of time and resources before you see results. (3) What do they actually do? It is very rare to actually see someone ask someone else out on a date, or go for a first kiss, or to hear how they flirt on a first date. These are private things, and therefore are difficult to emulate.
You say that you couldn’t talk to anyone IRL about your problem, because of your social anxiety and autism, but that’s also a matter of effort. Rather than working on overcoming your social anxiety first, you went straight to seduction. That’s skipping all of the groundwork, and you knew it at the time. Choosing a plan that is guaranteed to fail is a voluntary choice.
This very much was not obvious to me at the time. I was also working on my social anxiety and social skills, but any sort of solid framework or set of steps where one thing led to another was completely opaque to me. Meanwhile, it took me about a decade after I realized that I needed to improve the way I connected with others until I actually managed to get laid - a lot of that time I was a teenager where it was unlikely to happen anyway, so let’s cut that time in half and say 5 years. Can you really say that spending 5 years overcoming social anxiety, while agonizing over your lack of a sex life is a voluntary lack of sex? If someone spends a decade struggling with depression and couldn’t get a job, would you say they were voluntarily unemployed during that time?
Seriously, the idea that there is no such thing as “involuntary” celibacy because you can just work on yourself completely misses the fact that these people have real problems.
I was talking about effort being key, and these questions obviously come from somebody who didn’t even try. All you have to do is lift your head up and shift your eyes slightly and actually look at what other people are doing. I know this stuff doesn’t come naturally to an autistic person, and so it requires even more effort. Did you try to find a self-help book for how to improve your social skills? It’s not like this is a new problem. Dale Carnegie wrote How to Win Friends and Influence People in 1936, and I doubt you’re older than that.
Can you really say that spending 5 years overcoming social anxiety, while agonizing over your lack of a sex life is a voluntary lack of sex?
It’s not about voluntary/involuntary at that point. In my original analogy, if you practiced basketball for 3 weeks, you might not make the team, but you wouldn’t call that “involuntary”. You just hadn’t put in the required effort. Calling it “involuntary” makes it somebody else’s fault, as if it wasn’t up to you. But it’s not the basketball coach’s fault that you didn’t make the team. And it’s not women’s fault that you were unhappy with your sex life. It was your own bad previous decisions that caused it. If you failed a math test because you didn’t study, you wouldn’t say that you “involuntarily” failed it. This is true even if you didn’t understand that you needed to study. We simply don’t use the word “involuntary” in that way.
Seriously, the idea that there is no such thing as “involuntary” celibacy because you can just work on yourself completely misses the fact that these people have real problems.
The truth is the truth, whether it makes people feel bad or not. Almost everybody has problems, and they all still have to figure out how to live their own lives. Because most people realize that they need to do something themselves to achieve their goals, and they can’t simply shift the blame on to others.
Did you try to find a self-help book for how to improve your social skills? It’s not like this is a new problem. Dale Carnegie wrote How to Win Friends and Influence People in 1936
I did try that actually, and I’ve read that book several times. Each time I come back to it because “it’s a classic”, and each time I roll my eyes at how trite, unhelpful, and sometimes manipulative the advice is. It’s a parade of funny tidbits that an already social person noticed about the way they already acted. It is, quite simply, not a good book on learning social skills or overcoming social anxiety. At all. Which is kind of my point - if this is the book on the topic that everyone recommends, and it is such hot trash, then someone who doesn’t know what they are doing is gonna have a hard time figuring out what to do. Of course, there are other books - but now the floodgates are open, and you now must wade through thousands of books on social skills, social anxiety, becoming confident and charismatic, the brain chemistry that causes your depression, how a new diet can fix your mood issues, how it’s all in your head, it’s not about how you act but how you dress, about 500 different inspirational figures who overcame their own neuroticism and became captains of industry, etc. Soon you are more messed up and turned around than you were before you started.
Calling it “involuntary” makes it somebody else’s fault
If I am walking through the forest and a sink hole opens up underneath me, and I fall in and can’t get out, I am involuntarily in that hole. Not everything has to be someone’s fault. Sometimes things are just shitty.
And it’s not women’s fault that you were unhappy with your sex life.
I never blamed women for my sex life. Mostly because blaming half the human population for something is silly - there is no way that many people could effectively coordinate to conspire against me. I also never blamed any particular woman for not being interested in me - after all, there were many women I was similarly uninterested in, and though I didn’t understand exactly what was unappealing about me, I accepted that they could have their own preferences and were entitled to that.
What I did do was develop a complex about how I was fundamentally broken as a human being which led me to consistent suicidal ideation throughout my adolescence. So, I mean, that was fun.
It was your own bad previous decisions that caused it.
Ah yes, my terrible previous bad descion of being bullied and socially ostracized as a child. Thank you for telling all the 8 year olds out there that the fact that they have no one they feel they can trust in their lives is their own fault.
If you failed a math test…
A more apt analogy would be if you failed a reading test because you have dyslexia which was never diagnosed and for which you never received appropriate support. And then the school just kept pushing you through the grades as you failed every single test and fell further and further behind.
Almost everybody has problems, and they all still have to figure out how to live their own lives.
Well sure. But I’m not going to tell a subsistence farmer in Sierra Leone that they are voluntarily poor because they could just risk life and limb to illegally immigrate to Europe and then work there until they can finagle legal citizenship, get a job as a janitor and work their way up the corporate ladder until they are CEO of BMW. And I’m not going to tell someone with only one leg that they voluntarily can’t walk on two legs, since clearly they could just make their own fully functional prosthetic just like Boston Dynamics made. Yeah, everyone is living a life, and they can’t expect sweet baby Jesus to just step in and solve all their problems. But at the same time, having problems isnt the same as choosing to have those problems which is what “voluntary” means.
If I am walking through the forest and a sink hole opens up underneath me, and I fall in and can’t get out, I am involuntarily in that hole.
That’s not how we use the word, though. Nobody calls that “involuntary” if it’s just a hole that happened to be there. If somebody put you in the hole, then it’s involuntary. The way “involuntary” is used in English, there is a connotation of an entity with a will that overrides your will.
If How to Win Friends isn’t a good book, then read a different one. There are even ones about relationships for autistic people now. Don’t complain that there are too many. That’s why we have ratings. When you say “the floodgates are open”, you’re just trying to blame somebody else for your lack of effort.
But from your description of it, I can tell that you didn’t actually try How to Win Friends. IIRC, the first lesson is “smile”. Then, there are other lessons like, “practice giving genuine compliments” and “use people’s names when talking to them.” Literally, all you have to do is follow the instructions, and you’ll have better results. But it sounds like you rejected the advice without trying it. Or in other words, no effort, blame the author and the people who recommended it. It’s really the same thing over and over.
I never blamed women for my sex life.
You literally described it that way in your first comment: “trying to figure out how to get women to have sex with me”. You could have said, “trying to figure out how to have sex with women,” but you didn’t. You phrased it that way because that’s how you think about it. You blamed the women, and you still do.
But boy howdy. You really want to compare yourself to starving subsistence farmers in Africa?
Overall, there is a lot of dishonesty in your last comment. I’m trying to figure out whether it’s that you simply refuse to admit the truth to yourself, or if you’re doing it intentionally.
That’s not how we use the word, though. Nobody calls that “involuntary” if it’s just a hole that happened to be there. If somebody put you in the hole, then it’s involuntary. The way “involuntary” is used in English, there is a connotation of an entity with a will that overrides your will.
The reason the term “involuntary” is used is to differentiate from voluntary celibates, like Catholic priests, who the cultural zeitgeist most readily associates with the word “celibate”. You’re reading too much into it.
Don’t complain that there are too many. That’s why we have ratings. When you say “the floodgates are open”, you’re just trying to blame somebody else for your lack of effort.
You phrased it that way because that’s how you think about it. You blamed the women, and you still do.
So you are saying I’m lazy, and also misogynistic… Seems weirdly antagonistic for what is essentially a semantics argument. Like, seriously, I’m giving you my personal lived experience, and you’re putting words in my mouth and calling me names. You’re clearly getting way too worked up over this, so I’m gonna end this conversation before your temper tantrum gets worse.
the solution is to look at what successful people do and copy that
If you’re fat it’s your fault. Just look at thin people and do the same, it’s easy.
I said it was about effort. Do you think “effort” means “easy”?
I am not at all concerned about a group of losers crying over not getting pussy.