Incels need more mental health help, have "fundamental thinking errors"
bbc.com
bbc.com
If incels are less attractive and less well-off than the average (I don’t know if they are, but it seems plausible), then they will be more affected by women’s financial and attractiveness preferences than the average, which in turn will inform their views. So the “thinking error” might be based on actual experience.
You can be the most kind and funny person in the world, but if you don't get matches on dating apps, you're going to have a hard time.
I think it is hard to overestimate the importance of looks if they're the barrier to you simply getting started. But this is the realm of social sciences, so I guess none of this research is concrete anyway.
It's relative to what the female participants self reported as being important.
"My point in the GP post is that they may not actually be overestimating them relative to their personal experience."
Agreed.
"The article isn’t saying that attractiveness and financials aren’t important, but that incels are overestimating them,"
The actual study shows both incel and non-incel groups had similar estimation "errors" but with incels being slightly to somewhat farther from the baseline.
I would argue that the majority of people underestimate or even lie about the importance of looks.
People in you day to day life would notice you being the “most kind and funny person in the world”, you stand out in school, word would spread “you have to meet them”, you get invited to parties, events, you meet people outside of apps
It would have been nice to have a link to the study. They talk about confirmation bias on the incel side, but nothing about the biases on the non-incel or women's side. I mean, really how are you writing off the incels as thinking errors when the baseline (the other men and women) is likely to rely on self-reporting too. Perhaps this study is really about how people underestimate the things they already have (I'd like to know how the study controlled for this).
Of the two publications by the author that have "incel" in the title, it's probably this one: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00224499.2023.2...
> Furthermore, incels underestimated women’s overall minimum mate preference standards
Is it saying that things are actually worse than incels believe? Womens demands are actually higher than incels thinks and therefore things are even more hopeless for the incels than they currently think?
Hasn't it always been similar to this? The most attractive people have the most prospects. If there wasn't competition, everyone would want the top men or women. There's going to be some amount of realistic expectations causing people to "settle". The actually excluded population is not 80% but probably single digits.
I really don't think this will be a problem. Yes, you'll have some outliers doing bad things, but it's not going to become a widespread issue. Even in the article they mention that being an incel is not usually the primary reason for violence.
I think the article is right, though. To me it seems clear that incels are mostly depressed and/or socially anxious young men. Mental illness isn't an excuse for bad behavior but it's helpful to know where this behavior is coming from.
I'm not sure what you're talking about. I don't disagree about the prevalence of depression being higher for incels. I have friends who are not "Incels" but are involuntary celibate. There are definitely some negative emotional heath impacts from wanting a relationship and not being able to find one.
I don't think I was reacting negatively, just calling into question possible issues with how the study was framed. I can see how that might appear negative since it is counter to accepting it wholly.
And in some ways, just like in the original matrix, the blue pill does result in an easier steak dinner if you play your cards right (also not easy to actually do), and the red pill will get you relentlessly hunted and destroyed unless you’re pretty good at a game no one ‘in the system’ prepared you for or could even safely acknowledge ever existed.
So for incels, near as I can tell the issue isn’t so much one position or another that they are taking. But that the ‘pill’ is stuck and so they can’t actually be either one in reality.
Which makes a lot of sense if part of them knows they’ll be immediately massacred if they ‘took the pill’ because they don’t have the strength, knowledge, or support to handle it, but also have seen enough behind the societal ‘curtain’ and have suffered enough problems from normal society and interactions that they can’t just go and eat their steak like cypher either.
Maladaptive Conditioning and PTSD is a bitch.
And so that causes cognitive dissonance, pain, and all the other issues - including causing them to lash out at the thing triggering all these difficult feelings of inferiority, fear, confusion, etc. aka women
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_and_the_English_Langu...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_distortion
Basically we want our perception of the world to match reality as much as possible. If it gets distorted our actions are now not grounded on reality
We're only just recently trying to course correct for this by teaching resilience training, because of course these kids will get to the "real world" of tertiary education / careers and just completely fall apart the first time things don't work out exactly as they planned.
I would be curious to see the age ranges of self reported incels and whether this correlates to a modern generation raised like this.
2. Take a look around you. Feel the vibe. If you are not vibing with the people in the room, you're in the wrong room. How you come across to others matters. You don't want to be the loser in the room.
If you do 1. and 2. then it's just a matter of trying and failing until someone sticks around.
3. As a man you will always have to lead. That's expected of men. You have to ask her out. You have to advance the relationship forward.
4. Once you get a girl interested, threat her well, but don't put her on a pedestal. She wants to look up to you, not the other way round.
...things I wish I realized a long time ago
Contrast your model to what the article says about this.
> the study showed incels were ____, more ______ and more politically ________ than previously reported.
I have yet to see any evidence that there is any set of unified beliefs among incels whatsoever. Certainly nothing resembling an impactful call to organize or act. For the most part they’re young boys with mental illnesses, social problems, and too much time on the Internet unsupervised.
The reason that incels are presented as a movement is primarily to drive clickbait. Secondarily, to cover up the fact that nobody gives a fuck about the mental health of men, especially not in America. We would rather imagine grand conspiracies that admit to ourselves that there’s a growing mental health crisis.
> He said: "If you look at incels who have committed extreme acts of violence, a lot of the time when you scratch beneath the surface, they tend to either be pretending that they're incel, or it's not the number one factor motivating their actions."
The only chance at containing this widespread ideology is through shaming and claims of mental illness. In some sense, "slut shaming" which has somewhat disappeared, has been replaced with "incel shaming". They are diametrically opposed social strategies.
Possibly true, but at the very least you are missing a key ingredient in the loosening of sexual mores over the past 60 years. A world with today's technology but the sexual conventions of the 1950's might apply those efficiencies towards the creation of happy marriages, rather than the creation of... whatever we call the webs that we have today.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/11011072_Changes_ov...
Those all sound like positive things to me. How are you correlating marriage success to these changes? If anything I would think those who decide to marry would be less likely to encounter sexual compatibility issues if they were able to openly discuss their needs with one another.
Statistics appear to show that these changes may be leading to lower divorce rates, it also appears that divorce rates are highest among those from previous generations. The rates still seem highest among those who married early in life, but less people are marrying early now, which seems to be helping.
“Dating apps are popular in Iran, but from now on only Hamdam will be legal.
Iranian law also criminalises consensual sexual relationships outside marriage.
According to Hamdam's website, users will have to verify their identity and undergo a psychological test before they start searching for a partner.” [0]
When a match is found, the app "introduces the families together with the presence of service consultants", who will "accompany" the couple for four years after their marriage.
Weren’t many of the 1950s housewives taking amphetamines and antidepressants to cope?
Self victimization and blaming of others for a lack of skill in an area of life is problematic. Most incels have a problem with themselves that they begin to externalize in a toxic way. The internet has just provided an easy avenue for groupthink and sharing that toxicity. “Slut shaming” shamed people who were often comfortable with their lifestyle and choices, usually by people who were similarly toxic and uncomfortable with their own bodies and/or sexuality.
Incels are real and they are extremist. But in the dating game and in the world of relationships things are fundamentally unequal. Women have many many advantages and they have things a lot easier in many cases. This is real and even hinting at this gets you labeled as an incel. The current status quo of what people assume to be true as implied in the article is wrong. Incels have noticed this and taken it to the extreme.
The problem is most people really buy into this idealistic narrative of relationships and these descriptions that are flat out wrong.
Here's a common example and this will actually trigger most people because it's so unconventional:
When it comes to relationships men are the more romantic and emotional sex while women are the more logical and practical sex.
Think about it. Men do all these irrational things that are "romantic" in the form of gifts and tribute and they offer all this to a woman almost unconditionally. The women on the other hand makes a practical choice. She chooses the man based off a multitude of attributes including income which is highly, highly practical and logical.
For men, did the income of a woman ever matter? Does her job even really matter? It's illogical not to factor that in as it influenced the relationship. But as all men know, income and occupation and even status isn't even part of the criteria. Men are illogical when it comes to relationships.
Also think about it. If a man loses his job or becomes in capable of supporting a family. What does a woman with options do? She will leave. Her relationship with a man is conditioned on practicality. If It is practical for her to leave most women will. What if a woman becomes unemployed and unable to support the family? No problem there. Because the man loves her romantically, not practically.
Any man reading this will know what I'm saying is true. But this goes against the modern narrative. You can get attacked and labeled for saying such a thing. It sounds bad but it is what it is. It's just the way things are.
Overall what I'm trying to say here is that the word incel has been weaponized and over used. Incels do exist. But the worst thing that's happening here is not the concept of an incel. The status quo of what most men and women understand about male or female behavior is just fundamentally wrong and way too idealistic. There are dark truths here that we don't want to face and a lot of people who throw around the word "incel" are such people who are afraid.
This is reality: Men and women are not equal. They are different physically, mentally, intellectually, emotionally and psychologically and many of these differences are biological in nature. This unequality is not fair and balanced either... there's no black magic that says for every male weakness there's a female strength and counterpart to make up for it or vice versa. There are real reasons why there are more men in tech than women other than "oppression" and If you can't accept this and if you think this is an "incel" mentality, then I'm sorry to say you're not in touch with reality.
P.S. Thanks for going out on a limb and sharing your valid experience.
It’s just a genetic bit-flip in the womb - let’s not get carried away. We are in the same league just drafted into different teams.
Your post catastrophizes and over-generalizes to reach a worst case outcome
- Man unable to care for his family: Temporarily? Forever? How many men can’t get a job ever again ? Not many
Reality: people have ups and downs. Wherever you are in life there’s people doing fine with less than you
- Woman with “options” leaves - whatever that means - another worse case scenario thinking: oh no she leaves!
Reality: free people meet, and break up all the time for a multitude of reasons. Not the end of the world.
Sexual dimorphism within species can be extreme. See the angler fish: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/565905509399387626. The physical and behavioral differences at the macrolevel can be equivalent to different species. There is zero fundamental mechanism stopping this from happening.
>It’s just a genetic bit-flip in the womb - let’s not get carried away. We are in the same league just drafted into different teams.
It is not a genetic bit-flip. It's an entire chromosome. About 1000 genes on the X and about 50 on the Y chromosome that encode for proteins. The side effects arising from these proteins propagate exponentially into actual macro differences.
>Your post catastrophizes and over-generalizes to reach a worst case outcome >- Man unable to care for his family: Temporarily? Forever? How many men can’t get a job ever again ? Not many
There's no over generalization here. I am talking about an extreme where the man is permanently out of job. That's where the differences between male and female psychology become readily apparent. If a woman becomes incapable of getting a job ever again, the male will not leave her solely FOR that reason. If the opposing extreme happens, the female WILL leave him.
There's no point in talking about things that aren't extreme. Because our normal operating mode is in an area that isn't extreme anyway. We understand ordinary daily life because we live it everyday. We don't understand the extremities as well.
I can tell you what I brought up here is a topic that often women and men don't understand about each other. The women doesn't fully understand how impractical, deep and romantic a mans love for her is... a man often doesn't understand how practical and conditional a womens love for him is. The love is indeed one sided. It is similar to maternal/paternal love as well. If a mother has one child, she will usually love that child more then that child loves her. There are exceptions to this rule and multiple children can complicate the matter but the generality remains true.
>Reality: people have ups and downs. Wherever you are in life there’s people doing fine with less than you
Yeah so? this is orthogonal to my point. Women are the practical sex. Men are the romantic sex. Couples may never hit this extreme long enough for the differences to show and thus never fully elucidate the true inner psychology of their partners. Your point here doesn't offer anything to the argument. It's just an off topic fact. I agree with it, but so what?
>Reality: free people meet, and break up all the time for a multitude of reasons. Not the end of the world.
So? I don't disagree with this statement. How does this build on any of our respective points? All I am saying is that the man will be less likely to leave for practical reasons. Not leaving is ALSO a free market decision. If a women is out of a job, she needn't worry about the man leaving her. If a man is out of job, he's on a timer, the women will leave him eventually if he doesn't contribute anything practical. As a man, I personally would wish I were just as rational and logical as women are, but I'm not and that's just a fact of reality.
The women will usually characterize the reason for leaving as the man not doing his "fair share" of the work and just staying at home all day. Something of that nature. There are tons of relationships that end this way.
What women need to understand is that a man will not leave a women for this reason. There are other dark reasons that can cause a man to leave but THIS is not one of them.
>https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_distortion
This applies to you more than me as you have demonstrated with several orthogonal points that lend zero relevancy to your point. I actually agreed with several of those points without effecting my initial stance.
I've met people who have "taken refuge" in such communities precisely because of real life interactions. E.g., being bullied continuously through school, being rejected or laughed at by women.
Being online obviously exacerbates the issue (be it radical forums, social media, online dating), but I think saying people only believe X because they're online misses the mark.
It's not. It's a fine-line between being empathetic and enabling. Just as there's a difference between being rejected by women and using that as evidence that no women will ever love you, or that women themselves are the problem. I believe that these online communities reenforce the narrative of collective victimhood, when really it's an individual with a bad string of luck, a sensitive soul, who would do better to learn to be stoic, equanimous, and find joy in themselves and the fight. Because life is hard. We will all suffer great injustice at some point. But that doesn't mean its hopeless; it's a challenge for us to transcend. I've known very ugly men in real life who had great personalities and no problem meeting women. It would have been easy for them to grow cynical and dark, but they didn't.
But the essence of an incel is a perception of rejection by society, specifically from the sexual marketplace. There have been many many articles sourcing actual data that shows, especially with the friction reduction of dating apps, that selection pattern differences among women and men show that women reject a far far higher portion of the opposing gender than men do. The OKCupid data that was publicly released backs this up, and other articles analyzing online dating trends have also concluded this.
Male and female pairings used to be more restricted geographically and by limited social graph sizes, both of which restrictions have been removed.
Now, social evolution around apps is occurring at lightspeed compared to previous generations. So obviously the current trends may reflect a lack of awareness by women and men of the reality compared to the fantasy that the dating apps present.
So Incels are likely the extreme tail of the male side of the coin.
Of course, incels are rejected males, and then further get this compounded by their views being summarily rejected, and then further rejected as not just sexually undesirable, but socially undesirable (which are strongly correlated anyway).
So, why should we care about some sad nerds in a basement, society has always kicked dirt on them? Yes they blow up once in a while, something that America has fundamental tolerance of without the Incel angle.
No, why we should care is that Incels are a marker for general issues in overall pairing, dating, and reproduction and eventually the demographic health of a country.
Wouldn’t this have created local incel populations?
Have the geographic restrictions really been eliminated? Are people flying all over the country to find mates ?
2) the "winner" males, which are DOMINATING dating apps, would be reduced in scope of "stealing" mates, which also leads back to women "settling" more
3) the dating apps and communication that comes with the internet have increased visibility to the inequality relative to the "civilized ideal" of monogamy
A lot of incels are accused of assuming privilege that a man deserves dates, etc. And really, that does underpin a lot of the incel anger: "I followed the rules, worked hard, got job, behave, did as I was told" which is really what the bargain was with "surplus males" from the last couple hundred years: don't cause too many issues, fit in rather than rebel/usurp/raid, and your odds of mating go way up.
Women of course think this is nonsense, they were limited by the "male dominated" system.
Sociology has said for decades that being in a reasonably stable relationship is good for the male/female and civilization in general. That carnal desire to just chase the most physically attractive hunk of mean has some actual truth, but in civilization it also leads people to bad relationships and decisions more often.
"At least that's what they told us anyway."
“Once you overestimate in your mind the importance of physical attractiveness to women, and underestimate the influence of kindness, you start looking for evidence that confirms that world view," he said.”
——
Do we have strong evidence that women value kindness over attractiveness, beyond that's what they told us anyway?
Haven’t there been studies, of all sorts of species, backed by reasonable suppositions about evolutionary pressures, that kindness might not be what young fertile females are looking for in a mate?
However, getting yourself a dog and going for morning runs does get you approached by eligible women, so I guess it depends on the social context.
Women want men who are reliable, having a dog and exercising regularly signals reliability. This has nothing to do with kindness.
The biggest problem with incels is that they struggle with their life in general. Toxic guys with a well put together life doesn't have issues getting women, as you say just exercise regularly and keep a dog and have other such signals and women will come to you.
Who doesn’t want all of those traits? They’re the whole package. People have standards, and it seems so-called incels aren’t comfortable with that.
> Who doesn’t want all of those traits?
Sure, but we are talking about preferences, men prioritizes other traits even though they of course would like to have the perfect woman.
After a couple of unsuccessful committed relationships, people get their standards in place. It’s hard to imagine healthy adults want to date unreliable individuals romantically.
I don’t think it’s a gendered issue.
Ditzy women is a popular trope for a reason.
So sabotage themselves constantly and project that internalized anger into others.
From what I’ve heard, it came from a (flawed) study performed by some dating app. I don’t buy it.
Decades ago, I worked for a dating website - and it lined up with the reality in the ground based on what I saw, except the study actually seemed to be softpedaling the actual data.
And I saw the constants used to fudge the public numbers at the site I worked at, so dudes weren’t so depressed they ran away.
Something like FEMALE_COUNT_MULTIPLIER = 9 if I remember correctly.
Most sites even back then were using generated female profiles to fill things out; and bots to create some messages for male customers who were ‘not engaged enough’. None of that (or total numbers multiplication) was necessary for female members.
It seemed to get much worse after I left the industry - it was sleazy back then, and it seems to have gotten waaaay worse over time.
Not surprising really.
Like, we could probably study dating websites and conclude that having a pleasant voice isn't high on most people's wish list, but I imagine a fair fraction won't keep dating someone if they find their voice grating.
Looks become less important if you know someone through work, or your friends set you up, or you meet at an activity.
Imagine a 1-10 scale for looks, personality, and chemistry, and imagine that a person has some minimum sum that they're looking for--say they want at least a 20 across these three categories. If dating sites give you an accurate read on looks to within 2 points, personality within 4 points, and chemistry within 6 points, then the fastest and most reliable strategy to achieve the 20 would be to filter first by looks on the dating app, then filter the other qualities in person where you can get a better measure.
The gulf between what people say they want and what they actually do (whom they ask out, or from whom they will accept requests) is vast. Self-reporting is largely a matter of public relations. People who refer to evolutionary psychology as "evo psych" are dog-whistling for the tabula rasa crowd and can be safely ignored; you can't tell them anything they don't want to hear anyway.
In any case, your worst suspicions are likely to be true. Men did the asking out, by and large. Men were bigger on the shotgun approach, also no surprise. We asked people to rate each preference as to how important it was to them ("do you really need blue eyes?") and women, on average, rated all of their preferences as more important than the men did. Height was almost always in the top three for women, in terms of preferences, in terms of whom they asked out if that did happen, and from whom they would accept requests. That and income.
I've seen other studies, later, which bore all of this out, but if you want the true dirt, you go look at what people actually do, not what they want someone to think they do.
If you went up to them on the street and asked, "Hey, how important is it that a guy be tall?" you would get a response that would sound a lot better than what they fill out with nobody looking. You have to take it out of a public context and also bury it along with a bunch of other things to de-emphasize it. Meanwhile, at one point Tumblr, Twitter had a run of women pulling faces of disappointment and/or disgust with the caption "When his height starts with a 5." And that's an in-group thing, neither private nor public.
People have a lot of different facets of themselves -- something that Zuckerberg really didn't get -- each shown to a different audience. If you've ever watched a bunch of women do this "performative disdain" routine, wherein they make displays to other women that they, too, have high standards, that's definitely a facet that is neither entirely public nor completely private. I recall a recent car commercial to that effect, where women were inferring something about a man due to his choice of vehicle, and were doing performative disdain based on that.
I think your claim has merit. But I want to see studies that bypass the psychological bias. Are there any? What did you see with your data? Not just the divide in general but actual trends and actual examples.
It looks bad if she cares about height if you just flat up ask her, alone, without peers.
It does not look as bad if she admits to it with and to her peers. You get to see mate pre-selection in action! There's a lot of chiming in. This is where the performative disdain appears. Disdain, because you will see expressions and utterances of distaste or even disgust; performative, because she is communicating this preference with her peers, partially for validation. You can catch women and even girls doing this. There's a hint of social jockeying in there. After all, by rejecting (or even pre-rejecting) someone, you're ranking them lower than you in some fashion. And there's really only two ways to increase your relative status: bring yourself up or tear someone else is down. Which is easier?
It also doesn't look that bad if the height question is mixed in with tons of other questions, and she isn't looking anyone in the eye when answering. This is the private milieu. Here, it's a questionnaire. She's at least taking a swing at being honest with her preferences.
Well, it's been a few decades, so my memory is limited. "Attractiveness" was a general self-reported category and women rated themselves higher. Interestingly, attractiveness and height overruled religion for women, even those who reported the religion answer as being at the highest rating on the scale.
We did have some psych tests besides the "barely above astrology" MBTI, namely the Taylor-Johnson.
I don't think you're going to see a lot of hardcore studies. Even OKCupid redacted their conclusions. It's really one of those areas where average people aren't ready to hear the results. The results would be unpleasant for the tabula rasa crowd and their buddies, the people who are against gender essentialism. And if it might present women in a less than brilliant light, consider the "Women Are Wonderful" effect.
There are ways around it. Not all studies are done by asking women and men questions about their own behavior. Psychologists are certainly aware of the biases when doing that.
For example: https://psmag.com/environment/17-to-1-reproductive-success
Of course the logical implication of the above where 17 women reproduce for every 1 man means that 1 man sires 17 children (or more) with 17 women.
Do female preferences cause this where they seek a single alpha? Or is it forced? One thing is for sure though. This outcome certainly does align with theory where the "performative disdain" by a number of women isn't actually a performance. Nothing conclusive here.
Additionally your theory here implies imitation via actual existence. Women and men create such performances to be put on display for "someone" or what's the point of the performance? Therefore enough "someones" with those preferences actually exist for such performances to become widespread.
I definitely think your theory is real. I think it's wide spread too. But I do think the performance only influences the general result by something like 30%. Roughly 30% of women are putting on a performance for the majority who do have these darker desires.
Additionally here's an interesting thing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rs_zs8qQGXk&t=185s
are these answers a performance? Certainly a portion. I would say though as a man if the reverse question was asked whether or not it was cheating if a woman used a male prostitute, almost every man would call it cheating and that answer is NOT a performance.
Especially if you consider how much of what is being said is projection. Every accusation is a confession, etc.
Especially if the things people really want to believe but struggle to are protective delusions.
Incels attack women because their rational mind is attempting to cope with a truth it can’t handle - they are afraid of what they would need to know and be to be in a relationship with a woman, and who they have been. And they project their own issues onto them in many cases. It’s a fear of failure, rejection, etc.
Similar with female incels. Which do very much exist.
And most of what you hear women say they want, is them trying to convince themselves that is what they want. Not what they actually want. And attempting to project their fears and failures onto others so the other party is the one to blame.
Same with incels.
If you look at actions and situations, not words, it’s a lot more obvious.
Which is why so many people go to such lengths to hide those too, to stop the cognitive dissonance and/or societal rejection from people who figure it out instead of going along with the delusion.
The widespread use of social media and the internet has made it easier to sustain these kinds of bubbles, obviously.
Spend a bit of time with someone and you learn whether they’re sweet or sickly sweet….
I’m not sure what “studies” you mean, but the applicability of animal mating behaviors to people is pretty bad for a lot of reasons. The range of behaviors is incredibly varied, from straight sperm competition, to being able to beat another animal in a fight, to gift giving, to singing, and so on.
Even if women were solely interested in how their partner would help their reproductive chances (they aren’t), humans are also massive outliers in terms of how much effort we spend on our kids so “is loyal and a good parent” is way more important than physical attractiveness.
A simple example demonstrates the case. It's unlikely for your partner to be your top choice. It's just a statistical given... But you can never reveal that. That's where the dishonesty and "pretend" comes in. And this is just one example of many.
There is always going to be an aspect of "pretend" in every relationship.
Sure Incels are extreme in one end of the spectrum. But the status quo is also a bit extreme in the sense that its description of relationships is a little too idealistic.
Another possibility is to have a shared understanding of your relationship that isn't based on this deception/omission/pretense. I'd say that's the norm in stable long-term relationships, from those that I know.
Far-reaching conclusions based on self-reported surveys are worth less than nothing. It's a great tool to be used as propaganda for either side, but it doesn't really solve the underlying mental health issues of vulnerable demographics.
Also, incels are always male and cis, by definition. You would be cancelled if you dared call a non-male non-cis person person an incel.