How two British orthodontists became celebrities to incels
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
The forum regulars were mostly self-proclaimed incels. They'd analyze "chads" to the most microscopic detail, and draw conclusions - to them, if there was a correlation, then that implied causation, because in the end, they were desperately looking for answers which they had no control over.
Things they could change, such as social skills, attire, and what not were usually the laughing stock. No way were women interested in any of those aspects - women were, in their eyes, attracted to some male because his inherent facial features - again, often to the microscopic details.
These guys were obsessed with the immutable (or near immutable), and would daydream about spending hundreds of thousands to alter their faces and bodies, to meet their own perceived beauty standards - which was always a beauty typical to masculine male models.
But, yes, it became too much. These guys would practically do nothing but post sob stories, detailed analysis of male faces, and rants on women. It became one nasty echo-chamber where top posters were just feeding each others misery.
If you were an incel, you were so simply because of your genes. There was nothing that could be done, other than very expensive and extensive surgeries.
And then you had the extremists. Those that would idolize mass murderers, perceived or self-confessed incels. They'd start catfishing girls on dating apps, stalk people, all that. It was extremely toxic.
Truly a bizarre, but sad community. I can def. see some normal kids joining just for the laughs, then slowly get normalized and radicalized, starting to both doubt themselves, and believing the propaganda.
This is exactly the view of Canadian woman "Alana" who initially coined the respectful, non-perjorative term "incel" as part of a self help group for people who had reached college+ age but, for one reason or another, not entered the dating world. They were not "losers" or "virgins"; they were "involuntarily celibate".
The term started off as "invcel" (for Alana's Involuntary Celibacy Project) but was shortened to "incel" for aesthetic reasons. She was a closted, queer, academic, socially-awkward woman who eventually made the transition from "awkwardly not dating, to awkwardly dating", and having made that transition, identified with others who had not, and wanted to help others still in that situation. It wasn't until later that the whole thing got taken over by weird misogynist extremists.
Alana says the big mistake she made, back when she started a movement in her 20s, was that she overlooked what she now calls the "student government problem": You can’t build a movement of people whose whole reason for joining the movement is to leave it. It’s not just that the people who find love then go disappear. It’s that you don’t get to have what every other movement takes for granted — the old guard.
Instead, the people who stayed in Incel were the ones who got stuck — the people who felt the most bitter, the most abandoned. When young people showed up with questions, the people who should’ve been there to give them hope they’d moved on. Even, eventually, Alana.
I highly recommend the following podcast interview with Alana: https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/76h59o
They would come to the forum and share their success stories and advice (and in most cases it was the common sense generic advice you would expect) and in every case the poster would be ridiculed in one of two ways. Either they were never an incel to begin with, just a Chad who had a prolonged dry spell and who had been an imposter or interlocutor (regardless of their tenure on the forum, often of several years) or they were just a flat out liar and imposter who had just come to give the same trite, cookie-cutter advice that they hear from every Chad and Stacey every day.
The success stories only reinforced their toxic ideology.
This is a bit of a blanket statement. I am pretty certain there were also a lot of guys who learned something useful from those stories.
Okay, in theory, the members that solve their problems and leave could be gradually replaced by new members, so the group could exist for a long time. But in practice, it would be unlikely to have the members sufficiently balanced, so the evaporation of the most successful ones would increase the fraction of the ones who are unusuccessful for all kinds of reasons. Also, trying to grow a group is in tension with vetting the potential members.
Unfortunately the pickup artist scene seems to have ended up overlapping with / feeding into even more toxic communities like incels and gamergate, and I don't fully understand why. I guess because at its core pickup artistry was also founded on misogyny, using women as objects and conquests to be won.
EDIT: I guess reminiscing about pickup artists is a little like being nostalgic for Dubya in the era of Trump. The horrifying awfulness of today doesn't excuse the people who sucked in the past, and their past awfulness laid the groundwork for the even more awful people to come.
And then he makes up rules of female attraction. Fullfills them, nothing and the conclusion is not "maybe my rules are bad". The conclusion is "it is unfair cause I did everything". And it almost does not matter even, because if he tried to tweak on rules, he would still had no success.
But he ended up building ideology in his head that lead to him killing multiple people which was basically failed plan to kill even more.
His entire strategy was whining: "Hey, I am so awesome, why don't the attractive girls approach me?!" I don't remember hearing about any specific step he made to approach girls, not even saying "hello". He was just a guy addressing other guys, expecting that he should somehow magically obtain a girlfriend without even trying, insisting that he deserves it.
I strongly suspect he was a gay in denial. Before anyone gets performatively offended, no, this isn't a statement about gays in general, this is a statement about Elliot Roger specifically. Watch the videos to understand what I mean. His only reason to get a girlfriend was to impress other guys. Incels are bitter about not being attractive and not having sex. Elliot Roger was bitter about being so awesome and yet not having any girlfriend; there was never a hint of any sexual desire towards the hypothetical girlfriend or women in general, no hint of any specific activity he would want to do with the hypothetical girlfriend.
It is not just that he had no way to approach women. He had no friends either, neither males nor females. He did not talked to anyone except parents and 1-2 friends his mom found him when he was preschooler. (Third refused to associate with him anymore.) And the two treated it as chore. He was profoundly alone, except like minded people on Internet where he had a lot of contact.
And it was like that for years, because he refused to go to school after one day and was learning from home - visiting once in a while for contact with teachers. He socialized on Internet and world of warcraft. Literally.
It is just that. His inability to have girlfriend was extension of him being profoundly alone and profoundly incapable of any relationship.
But, he was not gay. Homosexuals have nothing to do with any of this.
It's not that mutable attributes do not matter, but sexual selection is more a like a sales funnel than a breakdown of pros and cons. If you are very short, your attire can not make up for it. If you have an ugly face, muscle mass isn't going to revert that. Very high earning potential can make up for these shortcomings, but at that point you might question the motivation of the potential partner. See Table 5.4 (looks) and 5.5 (height):
http://home.uchicago.edu/~hortacsu/onlinedating.pdf
We'd all like to live in a world where we can tell everyone "If only you work hard enough, you will find success in the end". We like to believe in cosmic justice.
Unfortunately, that's not how nature works. Evolution works by discarding the weakest contenders from the gene pool. That ungrateful job is performed by the females, and it's unsurprising that those rejected males would harbor resentment, power fantasies and other moral delusions.
E.g. being short is certainly a disadvantage when dating, that's obviously true - but it's just as obviously true that being short does not mean you will be an incel for life - how can you possibly think that it does, given the myriad short people who are doing just fine. Can they date literally any partner they want? No, no one can. But can they date someone, can they be non-celibate? Yes, demonstrably so.
It's certainly true that everyone is a mix of more desirable attributes and of less desirable attributes, and some people get a bigger mix than others. Some are mutable, some are immutable.
The big problem with the incel worldview (as I understand it) is that it's completely binary - you are either capable of finding a sexual partner, or not, and some traits (that they believe they have) mean that they are on the wrong side. But that's just utterly unfounded, again, because take any trait that is supposedly disqualifying, and you'll find someone (plenty of someones) with those traits that are in sexual relationships.
Serial killers get marriage proposals from behind bars. Ugly men, including men with physical deformities, find partners. Men without working penises still have sexual relationships. Even if there were such a thing as "basically [not] fucked from the start," the vast majority of incels would be nowhere near that extreme.
I mean, look at the patron saint of incels (canonized as such by the incel community itself) Elliot Rodger. Did life deal him such a terrible hand that dating was impossible, or was the only thing standing in his way himself and his own twisted, hateful and false view of women and the world around him?
I suspect if somebody is hideously deformed and does not have a working penis, they're going to have a lot of difficulty finding a romantic partner. Presumably there are large numbers of people who have those and similar issues. I think they should be allowed to talk about that, and not have people respond by comparing them to Elliot Rodger.
That these things didn't (Ok I don't know about the penis thing) apply to Elliot Rodger doesn't mean they don't apply to anybody.
Yes, you are correct that the fact serial killers get marriage proposals does not mean that people who are not serial killers necessarily get marriage proposals, however that was not the argument that I was making. Serial killers have extremely undesirable personality traits which, typically, one would assume should exclude them from the dating pool. Despite these traits, however serial killers manage to be attractive to people. The conclusion to be reached here is that there is a wide range of personality traits, including negative and antisocial traits, which women can find attractive.
>I suspect if somebody is hideously deformed and does not have a working penis, they're going to have a lot of difficulty finding a romantic partner.
Again, yes, you are correct. But I was not arguing that it was common, rather, I was arguing that there is a wide range of physical attributes which women find attractive, and including deformity implicitly includes the entire range range of attributes one would consider non-traditionally attractive as well, and again (refer to the previous argument) most incels likely do not fall outside of this range in terms of their physical appearance.
Therefore, the argument that every incel is somehow undateable due to immutable and innate characteristics is demonstrated to be false when the variety of physical, psychological and social traits of the entire population which is dating is considered. Edanm's comment above is correct - there are very few, if any, incels for whom a person with practically the same physical and psychological circumstances couldn't be found, but with a partner.
>Presumably there are large numbers of people who have those and similar issues. I think they should be allowed to talk about that, and not have people respond by comparing them to Elliot Rodger.
If they don't want to be associated with people like him, they shouldn't self-identify with a community that considers him a hero and a martyr for their beliefs.
Basically, I think people should try to have some empathy for people who are having a bad time. I don't really get why so many people are so adamant that that should not happen. But I get that I'm not likely to change your mind about anything at this point.
I completely agree, and I have a lot of empathy for people who are unable to find a partner. I was a very geeky "late bloomer" myself, and went through a luckily small period where everyone around me was able to find relationships, and I wasn't.
So when I say I think incels are wrong in their view of the world, it's not out of a lack of empathy - it's because I think the most important thing to tell incels is that they are wrong. I have no idea how to make this a message that will actually resonate with them, but I wish I could. The cure to believing you will never be able to get something that you desperately want, and that you actually can get with >99% certainty, is to learn that your belief is wrong.
But to be clear, I agree that there is a point at which you're basically unable to find sexual relationships - clearly there is such a point. But I'm willing to bet that no one, not one person on the incel Reddit, is unable to find a sexual relationship, at least not because of the so-called "immutable characteristics". There is no one there who is so physically unattractive (or who has whatever other traits are talked about) that they can't find a relationship.
I say this with having known many people who in their late teeanager/adult years, were unattractive, "undateable", etc, who believed that they wouldn't ever find a relationship, and who grew up to be in great relationships.
It's like those old commercials for closeted homosexual teenagers - "it gets better". That's a message that is really the same - it does get better, and it's super easy to confirm, because so many older people in happy relationships were once young incels.
Can I take the other side of that bet?
But were we able to test it (and feel free to suggest something), I would take that bet, yes. My position being roughly that anyone capable of posting to an incel forum, is capable enough to make the kinds of changes in their life that would "overcome" whatever other physical characteristics they have, and therefore be able to find a sexual partner. Although not necessarily quickly - it might only be later in their adulthood.
(And ok, to be more realistic, I'd only bet on 99.5% of people on incel forums - not 100%. Though I'd probably take the bet at 100% anyway.)
> [...] you are willing to bet that somehow none of these individuals are also active on some incel subreddit.
Yes. I believe the base rate of people who never find a sexual relationship in their entire lives (assuming they want it) is miniscule. Some quick searching puts it at around 0.5% by age 40. I believe that those are mostly unfortunate extreme cases. I believe that even some of these people could conceivably still make changes that would lead to them having a sexual relationship.
The odds of someone on an incel forum being one of the probably-less-than-0.5% of people who by age 40 have not had a sexual relationship is pretty small.
[1] puts it at 1.2%, which would be about two million American men.
[1] https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/mar/3/government-s...
Edit: Arguably fairer to just divide by the number of over-40s in America, which would make it only about half a million.
To that end, I would count an incel not as "someone who can't have sex" but someone fertile who involuntarily fails to sexually reproduce.
Research suggests that historically, the ratio of females to males that reproduced is 1.1 (Asia) to 1.4 (West Africa)[1]. Of course that doesn't prove all of these male individuals were incels, but we're not a naturally monogamous species, so you would have to explain why a female would not choose only the best males for reproduction and ignore the rest.
Many (if not most) societies have historically suppressed female mate choice, likely as a measure for maintaining social order. This would suggest that as females are able to be more picky, the number of incels should rise.
I believe that's exactly what we can observe right now in affluent western societies: Women have been financially independent from males for decades, and now that online dating shows women the abundance of mate choices they never knew they had, less attractive males suddenly appear much less desirable. Consequently, the threshold for successful reproduction rises.
If there are more short men than women that are willing to date short men, some short men will still be able to find partners, but not all of them.
More generally speaking, some men have so many unfavorable traits that no female would accept them, because females almost always have more and better options. Those unfortunate individuals are discarded from the gene pool.
I'm not saying that every self-described incel is actually in that set of unfortunate individuals, but this is how sexual selection works in lots of species, including our own.
Firstly, I didn't say they have to lower their standards.
> It's poor reasoning to conclude that because some (for example) short men find a mate than all short men can find a mate [...]
I agree that that would be faulty reasoning. I was combatting the opposite reasoning, which is that some traits or combinations of traits (like being short) are disqualifying. E.g. your parent comment in which you wrote: "If you are very short, your attire can not make up for it."
I could totally be misunderstanding your meaning or the incel worldview, but as I said, it comes off to me as very binary - there is some "threshold" of attractiveness/traits, which if you are under, you are therefore unable to find a sexual partner. My contention is that almost every one of these traits or combinatios-of-traits can be found in someone who is in a sexual relationship, and therefore that can't be true.
> More generally speaking, some men have so many unfavorable traits that no female would accept them, because females almost always have more and better options. Those unfortunate individuals are discarded from the gene pool.
This is in incorrect view of the world (barring extreme examples like severe physical deformities or mental issues).
People aren't ranked in some kind of linear way from "more attractive" to "less attractive", lined up, and then can only find partners who agree with their level. There are many reasons:
- People are varied and have different preferences - some women like short men, etc.
- The same person has different preferences at different times.
- Most people will have more than one sexual partner.
All of these combine to make it so that effectively, almost everyone can find a sexual partner.
And this is not just a theroetical idea either - as I posted in another comment, according to some random studies I just Googled, <0.5% of people have never had a sexual experience by age 40.
Moreover, I can tell you that almost everyone I know, including some fairly odd, nerdy, shy, introverted people who had had no dates by the time they were 25, still ended up in happy relationships. (And I say almost mostly because I lost touch with some people and don't know how their story turned out).
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Let me just close by saying that if you truly believe you (or some/most people posting on incel forums) are incapable of ever having a sexual relationship, I empathize with you - it must be very unhappy to believe you will never have something that you want and see so many other people enjoying.
But based on my own life experience, and where the people around me are at at age 35, I can tell you that I absolutely believe that almost everyone (>99.5% of people) posting on HN is able to find a sexual partner.
I mean, they could maybe hit the gym, or get rich, or read The Game, or become ardent feminists, or buy Thai brides online (after getting rich). I'm sure the options have not been exhausted. But I think at some point you have to admit that these people were just dealt a shit hand and there's probably not much they can do about it.
Or, if you think they should just work to fix the problem, you have to understand that it's not at all obvious how to do that. I mean honestly, I don't understand why serial killers can find partners and the people I'm thinking about can't. I've no idea what they ought to do about it.
Being short is in fact a huge disadvantage for dating, this is well established, for example in the study I gave you. Most females will indeed disqualify a short male from consideration.
Of course every dating pool is different and it might contain the odd exception where a female prefers to date a short guy, but then she will still prefer the affluent or handsome short guy over the other short guys, which are now out of mates.
> People aren't ranked in some kind of linear way from "more attractive" to "less attractive", lined up, and then can only find partners who agree with their level. There are many reasons...
I'll call this the "cosmic justice fantasy". In reality, attractiveness is fairly objective and measurable, with fairly low variance across individuals. There are of course always exceptions at the tail ends, but it doesn't make much of a difference.
> All of these combine to make it so that effectively, almost everyone can find a sexual partner.
At this point, I think we should differentiate between finding a a partner and having a sexual encounter at least once in your life.
> And this is not just a theroetical idea either - as I posted in another comment, according to some random studies I just Googled, <0.5% of people have never had a sexual experience by age 40
What this actually says is that less than 0.5% of people admit to never having had a sexual experience, which also would include an encounter with a prostitute.
Even at that low-ball rate, we'd be talking about millions of people in the US.
> Let me just close by saying that if you truly believe you (or some/most people posting on incel forums) are incapable of ever having a sexual relationship, I empathize with you - it must be very unhappy to believe you will never have something that you want and see so many other people enjoying.
To be clear: I'm neither short, nor bad-looking, nor do I lack sexual experience. I'm neither an incel, nor incel-affiliated, nor do I personally know any actual (self-identified) incels. I don't read discussions on incel forums. You may well be right in that a large amount of incel forum dwellers really only look blame personal failures on some immutable characteristic, because that's just what people like to do.
I happen to be interested in the some of the science that an incel might be interested in, because I prefer to know what's real, as opposed to what people would like to be real.
To be clear myself, I agree with this attitude and goal completely.
> Being short is in fact a huge disadvantage for dating, this is well established, for example in the study I gave you. Most females will indeed disqualify a short male from consideration.
The study you linked is about online dating. While that is clearly important, it's also an arena in which you are basically forced to quantify and pick thresholds for various attributes (and in which it is much easier to just "disqualify" people based on attributes).
This is important, and arguably will get more important as reliance on online dating becomes ever more prevalent. But it is still not everything, there are still some places in which potential partners will have a chance to get to know each other without the initial choice to disqualify someone based on height, and through which other attributes might win out.
> I'll call this the "cosmic justice fantasy". In reality, attractiveness is fairly objective and measurable, with fairly low variance across individuals. There are of course always exceptions at the tail ends, but it doesn't make much of a difference.
I don't know, on reading this I was inclined to agree. But on further reflection, speaking as a man, I know there are plenty of other men who have differences of opinion with me about what they care about in a woman - height, body type, etc. There are the endless discussions of "are you a chest man or a butt man". And the answers really do vary! A woman who is objectively very pretty (and who I can objectively say is very pretty), might still not be the best match for me, because she is e.g. too thin or too tall. Whereas other men might want a thin, tall woman.
That said, you're also making another mistake in your reasoning IMO - you're assuming attractiveness is the only thing that matters in finding a mate. That is simply not true - both in what people say they care about, and by simple observation of actual people.
Put another way, let's do this experiment: someone takes a hundred couples (let's assume straight couples), takes a picture of the man and the woman separately, then mixes up the pictures. Do you think you'll be able to match the couples based on attractiveness alone? I'm sure there's some correlations here, and you'll be able to do it to some extent, but certainly nowhere near 100%.
> What this actually says is that less than 0.5% of people admit to never having had a sexual experience, which also would include an encounter with a prostitute.
Even at that low-ball rate, we'd be talking about millions of people in the US.
By age 40, and that also includes people who are not actively looking for sex. But yes, that is a lot of people, probably around a million (assuming an over-40 population of around 110 million in the US, which I'm kind of guessing at).
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I'm not sure what our point of disagreement is at this point. I'm not saying that there are literally no people who are able to find a sexual partner despite wanting one. I'm saying:
1. It's very rare to be unable to find a sexual partner.
2. Physical attractiveness and other physical (immutable) attributes, while certainly mattering a lot, will almost certainly not preclude anyone from being able to find a sexual partner.
3. If you're an around-20-year-old incel, the chance that you will never be able to find a sexual partner, assuming you make some steps to change things you can change for the better, is incredibly tiny. Most people posting in incel forums are not in that situation, and if they think they are, they are mistaken.
Of course in reality women aren't going to reject males on arbitrary and exact thresholds, but on what they consider "too short", which is also related to their own height.
I would agree that online dating is a very tough dating pool and that many other pools exist and that those thresholds are always relative to who is in the pool.
> I don't know, on reading this I was inclined to agree. But on further reflection, speaking as a man, I know there are plenty of other men who have differences of opinion with me about what they care about in a woman - height, body type, etc. There are the endless discussions of "are you a chest man or a butt man".
That's another point I keep making: Men's preferences generally don't matter to the outcome. Average men have far lower standards and are willing so settle for less, because the pool is far smaller. Beggars can't be choosers.
Women have higher standards not only because it's their biological imperative, but because they generally can afford to, at least in a free sexual marketplace.
> That said, you're also making another mistake in your reasoning IMO - you're assuming attractiveness is the only thing that matters in finding a mate. That is simply not true - both in what people say they care about, and by simple observation of actual people.
I'm not exactly saying that. The evidence shows that - absent any societal or economical pressures - attractiveness is the overwhelmingly important factor in mate choice. What people say is irrelevant, studies show that people are not honest about this. People don't want to be seen as "shallow" or "superficial", they also want to believe in a just world.
> Put another way, let's do this experiment: someone takes a hundred couples (let's assume straight couples), takes a picture of the man and the woman separately, then mixes up the pictures. Do you think you'll be able to match the couples based on attractiveness alone? I'm sure there's some correlations here, and you'll be able to do it to some extent, but certainly nowhere near 100%.
Looking at couples is "survivorship bias". You would have to be taking into account the population that fails to find a mate.
Again, just because you can find a short guy with a mate doesn't mean there's mate for every short guy.
> I'm not sure what our point of disagreement is at this point.
I guess you're being "too optimistic".
> 1. It's very rare to be unable to find a sexual partner.
Finding sex - if we were to include prostitution - is very easy. Finding a sexual partner with which to produce offspring is another matter. I would suggest that the number of males that fail at this, particularly in a free sexual marketplace, would be relatively high, perhaps in the double-digits percentages.
> 2. Physical attractiveness and other physical (immutable) attributes, while certainly mattering a lot, will almost certainly not preclude anyone from being able to find a sexual partner.
I disagree with this, at least if we exclude prostitution.
> 3. If you're an around-20-year-old incel, the chance that you will never be able to find a sexual partner, assuming you make some steps to change things you can change for the better, is incredibly tiny. Most people posting in incel forums are not in that situation, and if they think they are, they are mistaken.
I'm not interested in the question of "how many self-described incels on the forums are real incels?", because it's just not measurable. Like I said, people are dishonest in what they say, people like to harbor victim identities, and so on.
At the very least, I doubt only a "incredibly tiny" amount these people couldn't be turned into a reproductive success, because I already ballparked the amount of reproductive failures at over 10% and it makes sense that these would be overrepresented in an incel community.
That might actually be an odd but perfectly rational dating strategy for females that want to make absolutely sure they are not being cheated on, to be in a relationship where they have all the power, because they damn well know how hard it would be for that guy to find another partner.
Of course you have exceptions like this, for all kinds of reasons. There are people who fetishize morbid obesity or amputation. That doesn't mean that for every morbidly obese amputee there's a matching partner.
Anecdotally, as a virginal twentysomething, long before incels were a thing, I had the idea that I might be better off targeting the lower end of the beauty spectrum. I don't think it makes much difference to your chances of success. Women don't generally think "well seeing as I'm physically hideous, I'd better accept this unappealing romantic offer". I eventually ended up having some totally hot partners, as well as rejections from less conventionally beautiful people.
There's also the issue that you probably wouldn't have a very active or joyous sex life, which your partner will probably have a problem with even if you don't.
The issue here is not so much that men do not find women taller than themselves attractive, but the second-order concern about drawing attention to their own height.
I have the impression that it is typical that men usually become less distressed by such stigma when they get older.
Generally, the preferences and concerns of disadvantaged males do not matter. Females choose the males, and they almost universally choose taller males.
"In western postindustrial cultures, taller women tend to have less reproductive success (RS) defined as number of children surviving to reproductive age, than women 0.7–1.7 standard deviations below average height"
Tall women have trouble finding partners because women not just want a tall man, they almost universally want a man who is taller than them. It's the same for high-earning women, they almost universally want a man that earns more than them. The same is true for education or job status and many other factors, and they compound.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypergamy
Women who are exceptional in one or more of these traits face a commensurately smaller pool of men that are acceptable to her, whereas every man in that pool is attractive to a commensurately larger pool of other women. However, men are not hypergamous, they do not care about earnings or education and they prefer shorter mates. Therefore, the males in that pool are more likely to end up with another female than the exceptional one.
Unable to find an acceptable partner and absent societal pressure in western societies, those exceptional females may defer or give up on reproduction.
A lot of them would, or couldn't even imagine, settling with anyone under some arbitrary "score".
I do recall that many posters would post about "hunting" girls that they deemed ugly, on dating sites, just to get laid. Then they'd come back lamenting over the fact that even these "ugly" chicks seemed to have standards, and continued to bemoan that regular guys were inflating these girls egos, due to matching with them on Tinder, etc.
I'd say that some of these guys, absolutely showed signs of narcissism, along with extreme victim mentality.
Ugh. Hope you picked up a gallon of eye bleach on your way out.
That feels mostly like a distraction to me. Here are some related HN links, nothing to do with "incels".
I recommend reading "Jaws" by Kahn and "Breath" by Nestor. Both of them mention John Mew. He was an early advocate of the harmful effects of certain orthodontic practices on breathing. Sometimes the problem doesn't show up for decades.
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Breathing habits are related to physical and mental health (wsj.com) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23271572
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23434377 - Fitful nightly sleep linked to chronic inflammation, hardened arteries
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24012001 - Book recommendation
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23665164 - Has anyone fixed their own bruxism?
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I'm thinking of starting a blog on this subject, after mostly fixing my own breathing, with a lot of help... If anyone is interested feel free to mail me (e-mail in profile)
However its fine to mention it. If his work was made popular by angry men trying to get laid then that's how it happened.
I did think he sounded exactly like the type Joe Rogan would go off the deep end with, sure enough half way through he says he is going to California to try and get on Joe's podcast, lol.
Reading it there is something to underlying premise that how the jaw is used is reflected in how it develops physically. That makes logical sense. Whether any of treatments he recommends work seems to be very much unproven.
So skeletal records show that malocclusion wasn't regularly observed before around the time of the industrial revolution. Why not? I presume that mainstream orthodontics is evidence-based and that these guys are either deluded or charlatans, but on the other hand, they at least had the scientific curiosity to challenge the status quo. I don't buy their conclusion -- and the incel/alt right/whatever weirdness doesn't help -- but how does mainstream dentistry account for the sudden physiological change?
That is, often outsiders accurately identify problems and gaps and anomalies that the insiders prefer to paper over (sometimes because the outsiders used to be insiders and know where the bodies are buried). But, when they propose their own constructive theories, they are no better than anyone else and their proposals may be as bad as their criticisms are good.
So it sounds like the journalist came away convinced that orthodontists etc have quietly papered over their lack of a real theory as to where all orthodontic problems come from, why they are such a peculiarly modern problem, and why braces are only temporary solutions, and the Mews have done a service in showing that the emperor has no clothes, - but also that they are doing everyone a disservice in that their own suggested interventions are unproven and likely pseudoscience.
1. This applies ongoing pressure to fix the hole.
2. It is an incentive to find a hole.
It's possible to find significant problems not spoken about in most current fields. But there is no system to reward and then fix this.
Bug bounties came about because the alternate was selling to BlackHats or extra Karma for non-disclosed releases.
Correct, they are the heretics. Very true in science ( slightly less so in technology), religion or any establishment really. Perhaps medicine is the most affected, and the price paid is enormous.
It does seem rather strange that nearly be 100% of parents are told that their kids' mouths are terribly messed up and need expensive procedures. Never are parents offered any convincing scientific explanation for why everyone's mouth seems to go counter to all the usual biological rules of evolutionary adaptation.
Another thing told to me by a mechanical engineer who is the son of a dentist: people from different countries can have different characteristics and inter-breeding may cause problems. He said oh, German teeth in an Irish mouth - the kid in question is indeed a mix from those two places. My kids ortho said they do things differently depending on race too. Example they gave was that Chinese teeth tend to be more straight across the front as opposed to more arched, so they take that into account when doing braces.
Fine in moderation IMO, but I wouldn't prescribe it for daily use.
https://www.uicc.org/news/how-interpret-iarc-findings-red-an...
> The 18% increase means the risk of developing bowel cancer is 1.18 times higher for those who eat 50 grams of processed meat per day compared to those who eat none. The figure 1.18 is known as “relative risk”.
> Put this way, the increase is quite small. By contrast, men who smoke cigarettes have about 20 times the risk of developing lung cancer as men who do not smoke. Expressed as a percentage, the increase in risk due to smoking is 1,900%
[...]
> Cancer Research UK (link is external) presented the risks (link is external) in this way: "Out of every 1,000 people in the UK, about 61 will develop bowel cancer at some point in their lives. Those who eat the lowest amount of processed meat are likely to have a lower lifetime risk than the rest of the population (about 56 cases per 1,000 low meat-eaters)."
Dentists (like medical doctors) generally aren't evolutionary biologists, and even if they were that also, we (humanity collectively) know a lot more about function than the evolutionary pressures that produce it.
That said, the contribution, the contribution of optimum tooth alignment over a modern lifespan to reproductive fitness is probably very low over most of human evolution.
My dentist referred me to the same orthodontist my sister went to, I was evaluated and the orthodontist determined that I needed braces too. Only, having witnessed my sister's unpleasant experience, I steadfastly refused and eventually persuaded my parents to wait until there were signs visible to us that I needed braces. The orthodontist assured us this was a terrible idea and we should act now to solve the problem early. Instead, we went with my plan and my teeth were fine and I never had braces or saw an orthodontist again.
I gather this isn't acceptable any more, and all kids (even British ones) get braces. The cynic in me wonders if this is because dentistry is no longer covered by the NHS and can therefore be profitable.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24247066
And this one about the book "Jaws" by Kahn:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23435964
The short answer is that two big changes in human history led to this problem:
1. Agriculture. Our diets drastically changed when we started growing food, and that had enormous impact on our jaw, breathing, and facial structure.
If you've read Jared Diamond (Guns, Germs and Steel) or more recently Sapiens, you'll understand this. They describe agriculture as an advance for the human race, but a setback for individual humans!
2. The industrial revolution. There was a huge population explosion, and we fed all those mouths with even more monotonous diets (more bread, rice, corn, factory farms, etc.) This is taking agriculture to the next level. We replaced animal power with machines in many cases.
-----
If you want a visual, the book "Jaws" tells about Europeans who came to the Americas in ~1600. The Europeans had the benefits of technology that let them travel across the sea, but were closer to 5 feet tall, and they had terrible teeth, and malnutrition.
There was a dentist by the name of Price who observed the Native Americans. Basically he was like "WOW they are 6 feet tall and they have beautiful jaws! They breathe through their nose and not their mouth. They don't sleep with their mouths wide open, and they don't snore."
Mouth breathing is a sign of poor breathing. Just like a boxer knows to breathe through his nose, but when he gets hit too much and tired, he starts breathing through his mouth.
When you're sleeping, you're supposed to breathe through your nose as well (because the organ is made for it), but many people breathe through their mouths due to having obstructed airways. Which are result of diet, weight, and lifestyle.
I was disappointed the article didn’t engage more with the prospect that Mews is simply (or additionally) a grifter, though.
His very own claim seems to be that you cannot treat adults with his techniques, yet he appears to accept money from adults for treatment nonetheless.
Were the article primarily about the scientific claims, it could have used a more empirical approach. As a profile of a potentially dishonest subject, it also failed to dig deep enough, and Mews’ patients—who have their own psychological issues—may well be the victims.
This seems as credible as Mews’ hypothesis. Neither seems sufficiently validated to be the basis for clinical treatment, from what little I understand.
It is also pretty known that a loss of tooth is with time followed by a local bone loss.
To me, this is the gist. Obviously there's not infinite resources to research all theories, and one needs to make educated guess into where to best put the funds for which theory to research. That said, I do believe we're realizing that a lot of sciences have gotten a bit in a state of complacency, in some ways, the job is a job, you learn and apply. True curiosity and breakthrough is hard and rare, but it seems the institutions have also lost a drive towards them.
Unless the article is missing other factual information, like hard overwhelming evidence of the genetics theory for example. But still, as a truth seeker.
So it leaves me wondering, what else is being researched in orthodontistry? Where's the fund going? What theories are considered worth investigating? Or is the whole field just stale?
The claim was that while genetics determine the ultimate form a jaw will take, its complete growth requires stimulation from resistance and usage during the formative years.
So if you have kids, I guess feed them ribs to gnaw on instead of spoon-delivered goop and give them chew toys instead of pacifiers?
I've had two of my wisdom teeth removed. One was impacted and the removal was a quite unpleasant ordeal over 45 minutes. At one point the (female) nurse put me in a hold that I (male) can only describe as a bit of a highlight but it was needed because breaking my tooth took a lot of grunt. The other was whipped out 20 years later before I even knew the dentist had got a grip on it. The pain relief from that extraction is nearly indescribable.
I don't think that dentistry is quite as simple as we think. My problems seem to stem from when I was a toddler and cracked a baby incisor on a step. The tooth eventually "died" and went a bit weird. When it finally came out it had a huge root with a small hook on the end compared to the one next door to it. My teeth also seem to be too big for my jaw size.
Incidentally my mum never used a dummy (pacifier) on her children. Ever.
Of course there's debate both ways and lots of people trying to tease out the parts that are representative, but it's unsettled enough that I recommend just thinking of them as wholly unrepresentative.
(Except for the ones foraging a lot of honey)
What I wasn't sure about was (A) whether craniofacial morphology changes with diet/economic mode and (B) whether that transition is also associated with disorders. I'm not remotely qualified to evaluate the latter, but the former is apparently true. A quick spin through Google pulled up a bunch of well-known papers I've encountered before that pointed it out. Must have just forgotten that detail.
Not sure how representative they are (in this aspect) of hunter-gatherers these days though.
Don't think you're supposed to say that bit out loud....
Pretty shitty, given that the title 'incel' is rarely self-appointed in comparison to the amount that its' bandied about by those who seek to insult by mockery or phrase.
This points to an over-simplifying of the language.
People who have poor romantic luck and charisma ARE NOT ALWAYS THE SAME as people who gather around social outlets online in order to share 'toxic and misogynistic' opinions -- but public opinion and media are referring to both parties as 'incels'.
This means that the simply unlucky and uncharismatic folks are being pigeon-holed by society and the media to get out of the 'incel' title simply to stave off comparison between themselves and the bad incels.
It's weird that a pro-sex movement finally won over the hearts of the public by demonizing and chastising those unfortunate enough to not have found a sexual partner.
I wish people (and the media at large) would make a larger effort to mention that someone can be involuntarily celibate and mentally stable and balanced.
The momentum lately to paint all involuntarily celibate people as mentally unstable and angry is a trend that will force a lot of people into life-changing mistakes more promptly than they would have been before the social pressure that equated routine sex with a partner as an indicator of mental stability and trustworthiness.
Even back then, there was differentiation between people who are just involuntarily celibate and those that identified themselves as part of the 'incel' community. The easiest way to tell is to ask why they think they're involuntarily celibate: the 'incels' typically blamed outside societal forces (see above), while non-'incels' talked about their own issues ("I'm shy", "I have social anxiety", "talking to women scares me", "I'm not good at talking to people", etc...).
I can totally see why some guys become radicalized when a good portion of society DGAF.
There are lots of pressures on people to conform in one way or another to goals and ideals that are largely unachievable - none of them are an excuse for driving cars into crowds.
From the limited interactions I've seen online most incels don't realise they aren't unattractive physically but by nature of their personality which causes a vicious feedback loop.
When I was younger I didn't have a huge amount of success with women (I was by nature shy and introverted, still am to an extent) but I realised early that was my issue and no-one elses, things improved as I matured and became more confident in who and what I am but had they not I'd still have been happy enough - I was for years after all.
Some people are going to be without a partner for life, despite their desire for one. Maybe they are profoundly ugly, or not very smart, just kind of a boring (or annoying) personality, or a mix of the above... It's not always going to be an issue that they can fix. And as a result, they feel unloved and alone, sometimes worthless. It seems pretty obvious to me why society should care about this in more than just the supremely selfish "how does this hurt me" way.
I'm all for sympathy and understanding. But what kind of sympathy can regular people give without falling into the logic that everyone is entitled to a partner? How should we prevent that sympathy from turning into pity, which feeds the narrative that there is necessarily something wrong with not having a partner?
As a society we are able to do various things that go beyond sympathy for a wide range of individual misfortunes - we can assist the poor (throgh welfare programs and charity), and we can anonymize university applications and make buildings and media accessible to those with physical problems. I think part of why incels don't get much sympathy is because there's nothing society can do about that problem to help any particular individual. It can also be hard to empathise with; everyone has been single at some point, and on the whole, most peoples' experiences dictate that it's probably not as bad as being poor or disabled.
Yeah but has everyone been single _all of the time_? Your reasoning reminds me of the "suck it up, we all have been bummed out before" mentality toward depressed people.
> most peoples' experiences dictate that it's probably not as bad as being poor or disabled.
Empathy isn't soap, it won't be spent. You can feel empathy for the poor, the disabled, _and_ the chronically alone.
In general, this is less true than it often seems. It won't be possible to reach every individual, but I can think of some things that would help a lot of individuals who find themselves excluded.
For example, sociologists (or even just friends) identifying traits that lead to exclusion, and then others developing and incorporating antidotes to those traits in media and relationships.
If it's people being unfit, find ways to make fitness more culturally appealing to more people (disassociating fitness with "jockness" would be one way to help e.g. nerds want to be more fit). If it's smell, find a way to make soaps or dietary changes or microbiome therapies or whatever more available and appealing.
If it's specific behaviors, find ways to show those behaviors and non-pejoratively show narratives in popular shows of people freeing themselves from those unappealing behaviors.
If there's some missing adaptation to society's norms and unspoken means of communication due to being excluded at very a young age, maybe someone can create a LARP that teaches those. If it's just being in the wrong place, make it easier for people to move and reinvent themselves in a new place with a culture that fits them better.
Ah, let's just go ahead and "dismantle" one of the most basic psychological needs, that's a great solution.
>Ah, let's just go ahead and "dismantle" one of the most basic psychological needs, that's a great solution.
Sex itself may be a basic psychological and physiological need (for most people, not for everyone,) but "the idea that one's worth is determined by having sexual partners" is not. The latter is entirely a cultural and social construct.
Why would you literally quote one fragment of one sentence from claudiawerner's comment just to misconstrue it entirely in rebuttal?
I was referring to companionship rather than sex.
> "the idea that one's worth is determined by having sexual partners" is not. The latter is entirely a cultural and social construct
I think claudiawerner is making an extremely uncharitable assumption in the first place that the primary complaint is about ego rather than loneliness.
But, even granting that point: it does not seem, to me, like a "cultural and social construct" that one's self-esteem would be affected by this type of loneliness. I find that claim self-evidently absurd, to be honest.
> Why would you literally quote one fragment of one sentence from claudiawerner's comment
Because that's the point that I wanted to reply to.
> just to misconstrue it entirely in rebuttal?
I think you are the one misconstruing my argument.
That wasn't my assumption at all. Ego is irrelevant to feelings of self-worth, which is a basic psychological need, as is togetherness. It's not self-serving the ego to want to feel like one has some worth. My point was only that the idea of a man's worth being in the number of sexual partners he has had is harmful to men overall, and places undue pressure and causes doubts about self-worth.
I think you’re equivocating between two extremely different things. I would actually agree it’s not necessary or good for men to derive any self-worth from the difference between, say, 5 or 15. But it’s probably unavoidable for men to derive some degree of self-worth or self-esteem from the difference between zero and non-zero, which is the situation under discussion.
I don't see why that's unavoidable. Humans have shown tremendous development in overcoming their (what was assumed to be insurmountable) biology and associated reponses, and of course the cultural factors which influence responses through upbringing. Perhaps we should feel empathy for those people, but I think it's a mistake to think it is immutable. Most Buddhist monks, for example, do not consider being or not being a virgin, much less having an active partner recently, to be worth of much status.
I think it is a leap to assume sympathy would escalate to entitlement. As deeply social species, it is in everyone to need love, both receiving and giving it, to have intimacy. Entitlement is a value judgment that should not be relevant to have empathy for this; when people's deep needs are unmet permanently, they hurt, and in turn that hurt can turn back to society. (Not talking about anything extremist just to be clear, I mean it clearly shows in our mundane daily lives if the people we interact are healthy, content, loved people vs not.)
I agree that having a romantic partner is often touted as an absolute normativity, and people often make the mistake that a romantic partner can fulfill all of their affiliative needs, but I think it is an artifact of our hyper-individualistic settings where there is rarely an alternative, rather than mere entitlement.
And assuming therapists can contain and heal this "hurt-payload" of the entire society is naive IMHO. There is a better, peer-to-peer topology that scales and to me it is best expressed in words "Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another" (I am not even Christian and not trying to invoke religion here, just really like how this particular expression captures the idea). This agapic love (as opposed to consumptive, erotic love) might be the cure. To answer your question, I think the best we can do is "We are sorry you are hurting in loneliness, while we hope you find love in whatever form you need, don't forget we also love you in our own, fellow human way, why don't you come over for board games and dinner because we enjoy your company?"
In my experience, it's not remotely close, been poor is far worse than been single.
What I find most interesting about this reaction is that it often comes from people who wholeheartedly believe in kindness, compassion, and empathy. In almost every other context.
Yet for these people, they're told that their feelings don't matter while everyone else's does. No wonder they sometimes react poorly. Perhaps if we want to avert their radicalization, we could consider the possibility of treating them with the same sensitivity we readily offer others when they express subjective pain and suffering.
I'm very ugly, I'm very single. I don't expect anyone to do anything about it for me. You just have to get on with life and make the best of it. Be a nice person and try to enjoy yourself.
If the worst thing you have to deal with in life is having a sub-optimal face then you're probably pretty luck! Act like it.
As you say, there often isn't anything obviously actionable. It's just that in some cases, for some people, going from nothing actionable to dismissive can be a good way to convince them to find people who at least offer a hint of empathy.
Again, you're completely right. There's absolutely nothing anyone can do for them. Except, I think it might be the case that listening with sincerity might be an option.
Equality of outcome for all animals, but some animals are more equal than others.
It's like long-term bullying at school. Ninety-nine percent of the time, the "worst" that happens is that someone is broken and their self-esteem is permanently damaged and everyone else moves on with their lives. But then there is that one percent (or whatever fraction you choose) who snaps and you get some serious carnage out of it.
And nobody cared until the lowest-ranked monkey killed a few other monkeys. Then, suddenly, caring.
The answer is: not a single one. Literally all of them, if your read their stories in detail, have history of serious mental health and behavioral issues, have history of violence. The have either history of inability to communicate with anyone (as in avoiding people and not talking - and not because they were bullied) or history of mistreating people who try.
The nice bullied lonely guy suddenly snapping into carnage is a myth. It does not happen. The nice bullied lonely guy may end up with ptsd and low self esteem and issues, but they don't end up suddenly killing bunch of people.
It's not a myth.
https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/08/31/radicalizing-the-roman...
I was however attracted to her because she filled her profile in properly describing her outlook and the things she found interesting and it was grammatically correct (somewhat ironically given she is Hungarian and English is her third language).
We should care because one of the most basic needs is not met for these people. They also don't get much sympathy or help.
But more importantly, basic needs of those who would actually end up in these partnerships - many of those guys throw so many red flags and are so clueless about human communication/relationships, that I just dont see potential for healthy relationship.
I am not saying that is reason for lack of partners, there are plenty on dysfunctional relationships out there. But that the prognosis is another hellish relationship.
This carries the implication that some people are just losers in life, so their happiness and welfare should be dismissed as unimportant. This isn't a popular idea in modern Western society, but it's perfectly valid and I would much rather resolve this cultural hypocrisy the other way around.
Certainly but why the generalization? You could not say "none of them are an excuse for bombing people" when talking about discrimination against muslims or would you?
> but I realised early that was my issue and no-one elses
They issue arises when people are bullied or considered inferior for that.
It's not really a problem society can solve for them. Plenty of people have shitty lives, either they can't find a partner because they had the misfortune to be born ugly or maybe they were born with some awful disability, maybe they live in constant physical pain... Most of these people don't become angry bitter sociopaths.
What would you expect society to do for them? Is it just sympathy they want?
Within every Incel is someone who's life has gone down a dark path. I bet a lot of them are doing it just to belong - having no friends hurts a lot more when you're young, schoolchildren can be really horrible to eachother.
Or maybe men don’t have a need to be as emotional as women? After all, you could easily justify committing suicide as a rational solution to “my life is shit and will never get better”.
The fact that women attempt more suicides (plea for help / attention => emotional) whereas men commit more suicides (they’re actually serious in their assessment that living is pointless) also suggests this. Happy to hear opposing arguments / data.
Why should it give a fuck if instead of hungry for love, they're just hungry. Or sick. Or anything other than fine, really.
> Most of these people don't become angry bitter sociopaths.
Citation needed. The amount of angry bitter sociopaths ranting about all kinds of things suggests that many are.
> What would you expect society to do for them?
The same society would do for any health issue, be it mental of physical. Help fix it, not belittle, mock and ostracize.
I believe that the issue lies in a) not feeling desired and b) the way to deal with that. There are people who share their fate but suffer far less. I'm sure it's not enough to drop some self-help blurp and "wow, why didn't I think of that", but I believe that therapy can help. I have no idea what kind of therapy is most effective though. But I'm sure even just handing out pamphlets will be much more effective than mocking and dehumanizing them and asking for their removal from society.
The momentum is driven largely by the 'incel' online movement, and the large proportion of the world's population that isn't sexually or romantically active in the way they'd like to be but isn't interested in their nonsense can happily not associate with that movement and not be associated with that movement. The only way you start getting pigeonholed as angry is if you start imagining a 'pro-sex movement' that inexplicably hates you... (I'm not even sure what the 'pro-sex movement' is. Evolutionary biology? The traditional family? The 1960s? The current emphasis on genderfluidity and consent? none of those seem particularly hostile to the idea that people might be involuntarily celibate.)
But I think that change in definition has been harmful to those covered by the original definition, who are now denied the possibility of a positive identity and supportive community that Alana's original vision offered them. Indeed, any attempts today to found such an identity or community, especially one which is inclusive of heterosexual men, are going to be very quickly tarred by association with the new definition of "incel".
[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/amp/world-us-canada-45284455 but also I remember some of this: I was never actively involved in Alana's website, but I can definitely remember stumbling across it in the 1990s
But all of the self-improvement stuff doesn't help if you, say, have Goldenhar Syndrome, or a major handicap, or perhaps you have some very unfortunate facial features, or you have to care for an elderly parent, or any number of things.
It isn't always as simple as "people who haven't been trying hard enough."
Sounds like the sort of people that those who are worried about their lifelong lack of intimacy should be meeting!
There are plenty of people who can deal with finding sex and romantic relationships hard who are not incels.
I really wish society had more sympathy for people who don't fit in socially. With all the progress we are tying make not demeaning people for their race or sexuality it still seems OK to bash socially awkward people.
It seems to span the full spread of social awkwardness - all the way from just being weird, down to being a jerk. I've seen people who are jerks not because they want to be, but because they can't help but run their mouth when they're in the wrong emotional state. I've also had at least one friend who'd frequently do really rude things like suddenly walking away mid-conversation, and it wasn't because he wanted to insult us, but it was because his ADHD was redlining so badly that he had to seek any other available stimulation, even if there wasn't any available.
At this point, I'm honestly convinced most human malfeasance is just manifestations of various mental illnesses, and I really wish we'd approach it with a therapeutic, rather than punitive, approach. We might actually fix things, if we did.
I don't know where the actual incel community hides now that Reddit banned pretty much all of their incarnations. 4chan relentlessly mocks them, Tumblr won't tolerate them, Facebook's real-name policy surely scares them away, and Twitter is just... Twitter. It was easier to define what an "incel" was when there was a big group of people rallying under the term "incel". The /r9k/-misogyny ideology lives on among people who reject the term, but the keyword is a ghost town, like Gamergate before it.
If we want to consistently refer to this group of people, the name should probably come from outside, since they recycle names so often.
>Like the movements against vaccines or circumcision or GMOs, orthotropics spoke to its newfound adherents’ reactionary desires, affirming their skepticism of authority and faceless establishments; promising to restore a stolen masculinity; and recounting a simple but exhilarating narrative that pitted modernity against the best interests of the human race.
Does it make any sense for opposition to circumcision at birth in the absence of complications to be compared to anti-vaccination and anti-GMOs? It seems as though the sentence is written to say that all of these are 'promising to restore a stolen masculinity', but I can't see how anti-GMO ideology works in that framework, and I'm not entirely convinced the anti-circumcision argument is all about that.
"Incel" is probably a debatable term that's thrown around a lot; while there is undeniably a community of misogynistic men who blame their misfortune in the dating world on modern society and its women, there are also those who are simply involuntarily celibate - no further qualification needed. Perhaps they accept that the problem is themselves, or they think it lies elsewhere - but neither of those necessitate the description of all 'involuntarily celibate' people as misogynists who are mad about 'Stacy' and 'Chad'. Worse still, to say you want to be in a relationship but are not, or you'd like to have sex but can't, thanks to the toxic online 'incel' community, certain connotations will be attached - whether you're an a male ('incel') or female (the less commonly used term, 'femcel').
America has this peculiar custom of always circumcising by default regardless of religion, though it's been fading a bit over time. My kids were both girls but we did talk about it and the hospital told us we would have to elect to circumcise rather than electing not to. That's apparently a change.
If someone (especially the downvoters) could explain what the advantage of circumcision is, I'd be at least interested to hear it.
More likely the Judeo-Christian influence lead some to justify the practice when it come under scrutiny.
EDIT: research not reach
Ironically, unlike other religion laws which non practicing Jews are not following, circumcision is almost universally practiced. I think the reason is that it is a bit of an identity thing, like Maori tattoos or something like that.
What's this?
Anti-shame, in other words.
I don't understand, it sounds like they explain it with being ugly and try to fix it? But why do they go to this fringe science instead of proven solutions like plastic surgery?
If you want to get more psychological about it, perhaps there's a difference in attitude between surgery, which could be said to be constructing a falsehood to cover up the (literally) ugly truth of your own relative inferiority, versus Mewing, which is pitched as more akin to a workout regime to fix something that was unwittingly done to you by modern living. As such, your current face becomes the falsehood, and Mewing is how you reveal the real truth of how you should look.
This might seem to be over-analysis, but I think, in these kinds of communities, narratives matter just as much, perhaps more, than actions. The problem these people have isn't just their situation, but how they feel about the situation. The depression, sense of inadequacy, etc. These feelings can be relieved by explanations that say it isn't you that's wrong, it's the world that's wrong, but that you retain control enough to fix things through the application of will.
Other way round: the problem itself is fringe pseudo science. The solution needs to be marketed, so people must be convinced that there is something wrong with them.
People love pseudo science these days.
I had a BM moment of my own. I recently heard a theory on censorship. It is most commonly exercised by powerful groups that are at risk of losing their power (example, Catholic church vs Galileo). And now I see it everywhere, including in the examples of quoted orthodontists who want to shut down discussion even though (or because) they don't have the answers.
Ultimately the burden of proof is on him as he is the one proposing an alternative hypothesis. He is free to meticulously document his work, propose studies, etc. It should also be possible to investigate his hypothesis by studying cultures that still do consume harder foods vs. individuals of the same genetic background who have migrated into the modern world and now consume softer stuff.
I agree it should be easily provable or disprovable. Since it makes people so angry, and still hasn't been disproven, I'm inclined to think this hypothesis is worth more investigation.
> The Mews have enraged the orthodontic community with the caustic, uncompromising way they’ve promoted their theories. They and the coterie of nontraditional practitioners who follow them often occupy the furthest reaches of the orthodontic fringe, written off for decades as a small but troublesome band of cranks and kooks. They almost never speak at mainstream conferences. Their papers, if they publish them, tend to appear in obscure, fourth-rate journals or profit-driven industry magazines. British and American orthodontic researchers told me that nearly every claim the Mews have put forth is wrong. Kevin O’Brien, a leading academic orthodontist in the U.K., described their work to me as “mostly discredited.” When I mentioned Mew to a prominent American orthodontist, he cut me off. “John Mew is an idiot,” he said. “A total idiot.”
If you bring up Andrew Wakefield with a doctor, they may well be annoyed, but it's very much not because they think he's right.
Note that the offending orthodontist is treating adults even though he claims his treatment only works on kids. That this is happening at all actually seems to speak to surprisingly poor regulation of dentistry; if you were a surgeon who was selling a treatment which was not generally regarded as safe or effective, and _you yourself_ claimed it probably wouldn't work for the patients you were providing it to, you would have issues.
He may not be right, but that doesn't mean he's not on to something.
The subsequent online behavior of people who so self-identified is what has given it a bad reputation. But no matter how clearly they demonstrate the reasons why they remain celibate, the incels seem to remain proud of their label.
Normal people, of course, see "incel" as a slur.
Is it though? You sometimes see people in the "woke" crowd call someone an incel without them self-identifying as one.
The etymology here is muddled... as etymology almost always is. It's also pretty interesting.
The Wikipedia article has a really (surprisingly) good rundown on the history of the term: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incel
So, yes, it was originally a term of self-identification dating all the way back to the 1990s.
Usage as an insult began after self-identified incels began making headlines by murdering people. After that, "incel" became shorthand for men who were bitter, alienated, misogynistic, and potentially violent.
A very similar thing happened in the 1990s, after a string of workplace killings by postal workers in the U.S. -- the phrase "going postal" entered the vernacular for a time.
When "incel" is used as an insult like this, I don't believe it is ever meant as a literal reference to the subject's sexual activity or lack thereof; only as a reference to their bitter attitude.
I had to repost it because https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24250085 does not appear when viewing it outside of my account.
"Incel" was a term of self-identification chosen by a subculture of people and refers to a specific set of beliefs they subscribe to.
It is not even remotely equivalent to the slurs you mentioned in your original comment. One of those slurs is based on the color of one's skin. Another one is based on one's sexual orientation.
(I can see your original post because I have "showdead" turned on in my HN prefs)
And [censored] was originally a unit of measurement, while a variant of [censored] is commonly used between members of the african-american community to self-identify/refer to each other.
Regardless, we are talking about the use of incel to refer to someone who does not identify as part of said community.
> One of those slurs is based on the color of one's skin. Another one is based on one's sexual orientation.
And the other is based on whether they are virgins or not.
A common argument is "but this is given based on behavior". It's a bad argument, because the same is true for most usages of any slur.
- One is a slur based on one's sexual preferences
- One is a slur based on a self-applied label some have chosen for themselves and represents (and I am phrasing this as neutrally as possible) a very specific set of beliefs
Which one of these is not like the others?
You've badly missed the point.
Intrinsic properties like a person's skin color are not even remotely comparable to an misogynistic ideology they have chosen. To do so is to embarrass yourself and convince nobody.
I've talked to far-right people who would dispute that. They'd say there's a difference between a black man and a n., and you can be a n. if you're white, because it's the behavior that defines it.
> - One is a slur based on one's sexual preferences
That one is even more questionable, I believe. Effeminate men are called f., especially homosexuals. Nobody calls a bear that. Sissy would be a similar term, and it's used in similar ways as a pejorative towards heterosexual men when they act "unmanly" in the same way.
> One is a slur based on a self-applied label
As was mentioned: it is not always self-applied, especially not when used as a slur, where the usage has reached inflationary levels on e.g. imgur.
You are correct that they do this. I've heard it for decades.
The primary problem with this is that people don't get to make up their own definitions for words, and force those definitions on the rest of society.
A secondary reason is that it's a BS cop-out. They know what they mean when they use the word. We know what they mean when they use the word. Lying about it when they get called on exposes them as the hateful cowards that they are.
Do you think that certain communities should not have their own dialect? Or do you think that if a member of such a community happens to use said dialect outside of the community and later clarified the specific definitions of the words that they used, they should not be given the benefit of the doubt?
> that it's a BS cop-out. They know what they mean when they use the word. We know what they mean when they use the word. Lying about it when they get called on exposes them as the hateful cowards that they are.
I am not black and I have been called a [censored] in the past, quite a few times in fact. It used to be quite common in multiplayer games and certain online communities around a decade ago, it still is but less so. If you know what they meant when they used that word then please do tell me, because I seriously doubt that they believed that I was an african american.
That's not to say that it hasn't been used as an insult -- it has -- but as far as I know, it's the preferred term. More background:
https://incels.wiki/w/Etymology
I'll mention that the current obsession with which words are used is not actually culturally sensitive. Words vary in meaning based on culture, and being exclusive on what words one can and cannot say isn't helpful. What's important is the meaning behind the word. The same word can be a nasty slur when used by one person, a term of endearment by another, a word of praise by a third, and academically neutral by a fourth. Policing words is the opposite of cultural competency.
There are some forums where you can find (I assume some are playing along but clearly some believe) people with, I'll just summarise as , worrying views about women.
The term doesn't really refer to unattractive people as much as people who clearly have a chip on their shoulder and believe they are entitled to a woman (or man, but nearly always women).
It is a slur but some of "them" do use it to refer to themselves.
I am no longer sure what the word “slur” means.
My best guesses are “a pejorative which morally should not be used”, “a pejorative which social consensus has condemned the use of”, “a pejorative against a class which social consensus has decided should be a protected class”, but I’m not sure.
Is “truescum” a slur? Idk.
Let's just associate something that might take away a lot of income and tie it with a derogatory label.
Paid for by the Dentist Association of America.
One thing that I noticed traipsing around German castles in my youth was how ugly, to my eyes, the portraits of medieval castle denizens were. It could well have been that poor diet, lack of antibiotics and similar were the reasons for this.
Writing this, I recall an essay, sadly I can’t remember the writer, who said that adult beauty is really a function of exposure to parasites in childhood.
Final point: I thought big jaws were a result of exposure to testosterone. As is clearly the case when you see the before/after pics or steroid users.
Imagine this in a non-dental medical setting. Worst of all, imagine it in the context of fashion! You’d have untested quack treatments being prescribed to make people bulky now and skinny in a few years. Complete madness.
But I imagine progress in medical practices will increase the numbers of patients undergoing this sort of treatment making it progressively more viable...
Seems that non surgical options exist, but require a significant investment in time: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3700158/
1. Choosing the angle of emphasising a (fairly recent in origin) connection to a maligned fringe group. Great way to taint a theory and practice that is not the current paradigm, and implicitly associating anyone who takes an interest in it with a community of people few want to be associated with
2. “Many self-identified incels have a highly mechanistic understanding of human relationships and believe they can improve their station in the sexual hierarchy through a practice called ‘looksmaxxing’: enhancing one’s sex appeal through weight lifting, skin and hair treatments, and even plastic surgery” – Try replacing ‘self-identified incels’ with ‘self-identified women’. Hardly controversial that getting in shape and grooming oneself increases one’s chances of finding a romantic partner, even if might be neither sufficient nor necessary.
3. “I already knew how I felt about some of the Mews’ claims – John’s absurd belief, for instance, that unattractive criminals are less likely to reoffend if their faces are made more beautiful” – Ok, so say you have two job applicants for the position you’re trying to fill for a customer-facing job. One applicant, though in all other ways a seemingly good candidate, has terrible teeth - think ‘faces of meth’ bad - the other, equal in all other respects has a mouth full of perfect glistening teeth and a winning smile. Who do you honestly think you’re more likely to pick? If you think the first, you’re most likely fooling yourself, and you’re also not good at your job, being to find the person most suited for interacting with your customers and making them feel at ease. Which of the candidates do you think is more likely to stumble down a path of criminality due to lack of good job opportunities?
4. Yup, the Mews are definitely odd characters, that in no way invalidates their theories, and apart from some representatives of the current paradigm in orthodontics expressing their disdain for the Mews and their theories, there’s no substantial evidence given for why they are so wrong – so wrong as to be villainous in the eyes of their critics it seems. The article ends with a cliff hanger with the perfect teethed skulls of yore. This is in fact very strong evidence that the heredity argument is plainly wrong. To argue that the crooked teeth and underdeveloped mouths that appear quite suddenly in conjunction with the industrial revolution are due to genetics is like ripping off your shirt to show the massive tattoo on your chest that says, “I know nothing about the timescales of evolution”
5. “This emphasis on compliance irks the Mews’ critics almost more than anything, because it allows them to blame their patients for any failures” – replace ‘the Mews’’ with ‘the sports coaches’ and *patients’ with ‘athletes’. All treatments that are not surgical require compliance to some extent to work. Changing your body through behavioural changes is obviously possible, but often requires more diligence and discipline than many are ready for. On a personal level, I fixed a massive overbite and a terrible posture as a teenager by consciously pushing my jaw forward all waking hours and straightening my back and paying attention to my posture while walking and standing. It takes time, but it generally works
6. What is the actual, real scandal exposed in this article? A couple of dentists who believe strongly in a theory and practice based on fairly good evolutionary reasoning and some obviously positive results? The fact that a community of bitter young men who deem themselves undateable and ugly are looking to these dentists ideas to improve aspects of themselves? Or maybe the fact that our current paradigm has no good explanation for why our collective mouths have on average degraded in modernity, and the standard treatments – that are both invasive and painful – apparently don’t fix the underlying problems.
7. From my own experience with everything from teeth issues to asthma, eczema and allergies, I know that the current paradigm of healthcare for all those problems is stuck on a track of symptom suppression via medication, with practitioners in general knowing nothing to very little about how things like breathing, nutrition, gut flora and many other things affect these conditions. Scientific and medical paradigms are always tough to change, and there’s a plethora of examples of mainstream practices and accepted truths that in hindsight appear absurd – such as the belief that hand washing was unnecessary for doctors between attending to patients that was dogma before Semmelweis – that are defended tooth and claw by the establishment, while detractors like Semmelweis are shunned and vilified.
8. Among the comments on NYT and here, many of which gleefully or dramatically jump straight at the incel angle and join in the hate and ridicule chorus (it’s apparently ok to hate and ridicule disillusioned, often autism spectrum young men who can’t find girlfriends. How sweet…), I see comments from dentists and individuals who testify to the problems of the current paradigm, and share stories of positive and negative change that lends credence to the Mews’ theories. How would the comments section have looked with another angle to the article? Are there examples of people who have started practicing these methods and have documented their results? Wouldn’t that be more interesting to look into? Oh well.
edit: paragraph separation edit 2: spell check and specifying comments on NYT and here in point 8
Same thing with Jordan Peterson and other examples.
These are character assassination attempts. And I am extremely sad to see this on front page.