I’m an ex incel myself, but I’ve been seeing a few users here exhibiting the tell tale signs. “I’m not attractive enough”, “I don’t socialize correctly”, “I’ll never find a woman” - all extremely unhealthy attitudes.
Personally I burned through many friendships and ruined a lot of chances with women because I was in the incel community. The community warped my view of women so much that I made it even harder to meet women, I became my own worst enemy. I lost friends because all I could think of was how horrible it was that they had girlfriends.
I have a friend who helped me out of it. She was the one who started calling out my bad behavior for what it was, and I started on the long uphill path out of it. I’m now married and stable for well over a decade, but I still think back to those days, and it depresses me seeing other people causing this themselves and not being aware of it.
So, Lemmy, for those who have clawed out of it, what’s your story?
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I took estrogen.
I was like fuck them they are so pretty 😭 Now I am pretty yayI read the last line in Mysticats voice lol
I feel that “I’m not pretty” stuff too!
But wary of taking estrogen and going with transitioning for social reasons and also because I kinda want to remain sexually active and keep a solid dick lol
So, crossdressing and some makeup it is!
I’d kill myself sooner than see myself in the mirror as an old man one day. It’s pretty easy indicator. Old woman - yeah whatever could be nice, old man - no fucking way brr
And social things, yeah well this is admittedly something that is problematic but I am a firm believer that if you are confident enough, you can get away with just about anything.
I am just me, Emmie, hello. Nothing less or more and the rest anyone can make up in their heads as they see fit. Not my business
Cool!
In any case, I admire your bravery and the firm dedication to be yourself. I wish you the best of luck!
Hell yeah! Be pretty!
No but seriously I was kinda incel once. I barely can remember that time but it involved lots of substances, clubs and things that were supposed to make you manly. Other people enjoyed them, me? I only wanted these things to make me more manly. I thought it can be learned or acquired with enough cigarettes, beer and calling people names and doing stupid ‘acts of masculinity’. I mistook antisocial for masculine I think in this pursuit.
When I felt empathy? again at 27 years old it was amazing. Like a blind person who has seen colours first time since losing them at the young age.It’s truly amazing that we are capable of caring and this deep connection as humans and I don’t think there’s anything more worthwhile.
I was like that for a long time. I think I solved my problem by mostly thinking about my situation and the reasons for it and managed to separate fact from fiction. Something that also played a role was to - for a while - literally giving up. For a while I thought I would stay alone forever. For a while I was able to relax a little and not be that desparate, stressed guy who thought his time was running out. Who had to always think about opportunities to meet someone. I could just be myself. Desparation isn’t a very attractive trait. I realized that there actually where quite a few women who seemed to show interest in me, but I never was able to see it, because I felt so beneath them. Them showing interest in me was unbelievable. In times where I didn’t try to desparately meet women or get them to be interested in me I was much better at talking and being interested.
I think I was lucky in having a rather rational way of thinking about problems. That’s how i was able to understand myself and find a way out of this whole. What were the things that (I think) got me out of it:
- I was able to think of women as just other humans.
- They are not automatically miles above me and i would have to hope to get their attention out of luck
- They sometimes are as desparate or unsure of themselves as I was. They were actually pretty glad if I was showing interest in them (previously I never dared to talk to them just for the sake of it, because I feared they would be annoyed as they would always be talked to by idiots like me).
- I remembered something someone said to me as a teenager: " You will make 10 times as many friends in the time you try to get people to be interested in you If you instead show interest in other people". I realized that for a long while I had the mindset of “please pick me!” when i thought about women. I was the low being who would have to hope to be chosen. I was thinking about wearing interesting shirts, or doing interesting things so that someone of the “upper class” would find me worthy enough and talk to me. Only late in life I realized that other people - especially women - weren’t some higher level being - some mythical alien creatures. They were a lot like myself, yearning to be recognized by other human beings. And that I wasn’t that low as well and a lot of other people - especially ( again:) women - were quite happy if I showed interest in them. So for anyone reading this: It might be strange to ask other people their name or from where they are, what they do, what they like. what problems they have. But after a while your thinking changes. Then you might actually genuinely be interested in them. And a lot of them greatly appreaciates it. So: try to be for other people what you want them to be to you. And don’t only talk to people who you want to get into bed. Just expand your perspective. talk to people.
It’s mostly just the mindset. If you’re thinking your worthless and other people are unreachable, then your behavior will mirror this thinking.
Another thing: I am quite glad that when I had this phase in my life “incel” culture wasn’t a thing. At least there were no dark corners in the Internet offering me easy explanations for my problems. I came from a strange place, believing that women where heavenly creatures miles above my sorry existence, so maybe not that typical incel-vibe, but I am still not 100% sure that these women-hating incel-idiots would have turned me against 50% of the population.
Still trying to find that out. A harsh lesson I learned a while ago is to not open up about your frustrations because you’re only going to make yourself a target.
I recently paid £90 for a three month Hinge X subscription and even after two weeks of near-constant use, I’ve had zero new matches. I’m starting to think that my Hinge profile may be shadowbanned and that Match Group actually scammed me.
On two online dating subreddits I posted screenshots of my profile and asked for advice. One was given a very harsh and rude response by a power tripping cuck of a moderator and was swiftly removed for reasons I don’t understand. Apparently I didn’t fully read the Great Text Wall of China he erected on the stickied thread. No use arguing with him because I feel like he’s one of those pricks who will just ban and modmail mute me. The other one got downvoted with no reply whatsoever.
Bad experiences with the Reddit community aside, I’ve been frustrated with women and how they treated me, but even I look at a lot of incel forums and their misogynist rhetoric with disgust.
The most I got involved with the manosphere was posting in r/TheRedPill a decade ago. I left that community because it was becoming increasingly toxic, and when I found out about the beliefs of some of their biggest influencers (i.e. Roosh V being an advocate for legalizing spousal rape), I felt like I wanted nothing more to do with them.
You raised a very important point, as I see it.
One thing we should remember is that incels become so not through the evil hearts, but through disappointment in society in general and women in particular.
Blaming incels only makes it worse, in a way.
Calling out? Good, especially in private. Going hostile? No, thanks. While incel mentality may often make a person aggressive, this is absolutely the case when return aggression is more of a reinforcement than anything.
For you personally I wish to find the person who fits and likes you. I would warn against dating services, though, as they are known drivers of frustration - and they are designed to keep you hooked, which means not actually giving you the person you’ll love (and leave the service for good). Communities around common interests seem to me like the best place to find both friends and lovers.
Vulnerability is attractive. But not trauma dumping.
There’s a time and a place. So don’t be afraid of opening up, you just have to do it in an attempt to connect with people. Not to try and abuse their attention for validation.
Secondly, never pay for an app membership. It’s not worth it and you’re getting the wrong idea how it works.
Make a casual profile with some good pictures and send casual messages. Try to be light hearted and show a little bit of personality.
That’s all you need. Anything more is a red flag to most women. Realize they are trying to sift through hundreds of people. They maybe have a few seconds to look through your profile.
Also stop using the word cuck. Don’t be terminally online and read some books. Expand your perspective. Women are attracted to empathetic and intelligent men. Someone who pays attention and listens. They will give you a lot if you give it back.
Not an Incel, usually I have great interactions with women IRL and it more often than not lead to dates and relationships. What I absolutely suck at is meeting people.
I’m currently desperately trying to figure out how to meet more people kinda in general. I have a solid friend group a mix of married, single, and in-relationship people but all our hobbies usually aren’t conducive to meeting people. I’ve recently joined a 20s & 30s meet up group for random activities to hopefully meet some people and I’ve been trying to casually read or stuff in local places like Barnes and Nobel. It just feels hard to interact with strangers nowadays if there’s no medium to start the conversation.
I’ve looked into volunteering but all the opportunities are during my work hours so that’s out unfortunately. I’m an introvert so usually bars and the like are out of the question for me. Kinda just stuck. My life otherwise is actually in a pretty decent spot overall
A lot of lonely days and nights where I was forced to do a lot of self introspection. I also had to be very honest with myself. I started to recognize bad behaviors, and how they impacted both myself and other people. I started therapy and taking depression medication, which helped out tremendously. I also had a wife who would challenge my behavior. Then I had two boys, and I swore that they’d never grow up to be like me; they’d be better than I ever was. That’s been my guiding light ever since.
It’s a struggle, especially now that I’m back to being single, and trying to date again. I catch myself from dwelling in old behaviors - the self pity and loathing, jealousy of what others have. I no longer project blame onto other people. I admit my mistakes more readily, and I also ask forgiveness when I can.
While I am not having much luck finding a woman to go out with, I am not upset about it. I am practicing patience, and using the time to better myself and my surroundings. I am looking for ways to make friends in my new community. It’s not very successful so far, but I’m sure over time that will change. In the meantime, I’ll keep putting I the effort.
I’m sorry you went through that, but I’m happy you are keeping your head through it. It sounds like you’re keeping a healthy outlook
I was never full-on incel, but I was definitely headed down that path. I was a late-20’s fat guy with severe acne all over my upper body, and I’d obviously never had a girlfriend. I looked ahead in life and just saw it going further and further downhill. I tried dieting, working out, etc, but none of my attempts at making a change ever lasted.
One day I saw a facebook post that one of my old highschool classmates had gotten married. The guy looked a lot like me, and at first I was mad - I had that classic incel thought of “why is he successful and not me?” But after sitting in that dark place for awhile, I realized that the answer to that question is that I can be successful! I realized that I’d never tried to put myself out there because I always viewed myself as not being worthy - I needed to be fitter, more attractive, better at talking to people, etc - but did I really? I wanted to find out, so I made an online dating account, cleaned myself up, got a friend to take some nice pictures of me doing things I enjoyed, and put myself out there.
I made a goal for myself to never start a conversation with “Hey” or something similar - I went through every profile I found and picked something specific to talk about. It took a while, and I missed a lot of opportunities by being awkward, but eventually I got good enough at holding a conversation to secure a few dates, and in only a few months of that, I found the woman who is now my wife!
I’m still fat, but having someone to look good for was at least enough for me to shower more regularly, which cleared up a lot of my acne. I’m still pretty awkward, but so is my wife, and we both find it endearing. Life’s not perfect - there are still issues - but I’m no longer looking ahead at my life and seeing only downhill trajectory; I have a sense of optimism I didn’t have before, and it mostly came from me accepting myself. I’m not sure if other incels are the same as I was - not realizing that the one they actually hate is themselves - but I hope that if they are, they eventually come to the same realization that I did: that they are worthy.
In my very limited experience, the one characteristic that seems pretty universal to incels is the inability to have casual, no pressure small talk with anyone, especially with those of the opposite gender (or whatever gender you like).
Small talk is a skill like anything else. It must be practiced and honed. The easiest way to do this is just by being interested in what the person is saying. You don’t have to be funny or quippy. Just be curious about their life and you’ll find that most of small talk is just being able to go back and forth about a topic.
It seems like incels, or at least Tate-holes, treat every conversation as a challenge with the reward being sex.
Just be friends with people. Who fucking cares if you end up in a romantic relationship, allow yourself to form close intimate friendships that aren’t physical.
Awesome! I scored 6 conversation points, I can redeem my punch card for sex now!
Oh you didn’t hear about the pricing update… Sex costs 15 now, but you can redeem 6 for a hug if you ask nicely.
What if you don’t want to be friends with people though?
Any sexual relationship will rely on a foundation of some amount of friendship. A human connection, if you will. There’s a reason the terms are “fuckbuddy” and “friends with benefits” and not just “sex toy”
If you want a sex toy just go buy a sex toy from the shop
My father and mother weren’t friends.
Mine weren’t either. Unbearably miserable for everyone until they got divorced, then it was just regular miserable. Would not recommend.
What about hookups though? I’d say there isn’t much human connection there, and certainly not friendship.
Realistically, in order to hook up you need the social skills that come from forming and maintaining human connections in order to not immediately make your perspective partner run for the hills the moment you open your mouth. Sure one might be able to get lucky in spite of a lack of any social experience, but that’s about as likely as winning it big in lottery
I thought you meant friendship with the sexual partner, not as a skill / attitude with anyone. Nevermind then
A good relationship is founded on friendship in one way or another.
Can’t tell if trolling, quipping, or honestly asking…
I feel like some people who don’t want friends are often people with low self esteem who have decided their hypothetical future friends will abandon them, or not like them, or whatever, and so they convince themselves that they “don’t want that anyway” as a way of protecting themselves from future pain or embarrassment. In those cases, dating aside, the person should work on their self esteem.
If it’s not that, one could try casual hookup apps. These rely on a certain amount of work, and there’s no guarantee, especially if one lives in a less populated area, but it’s possible.
And the third option for someone who doesn’t want anything social and just wants sex, is sex work. This is exactly what it can be for! The only trouble is that in most places it’s illegal, which pushes it underground, making it both difficult to find and potentially dangerous… but this is the niche it’s meant to occupy.
But honestly… at least consider that it may be the first case, and see if you can search your feelings to figure out “why”.
Perfect way to put it - this is how I’ve felt about Tate, etc, but couldn’t describe it. This is so spot on.
Small talk is a skill like anything else. It must be practiced and honed. The easiest way to do this is just by being interested in what the person is saying. You don’t have to be funny or quippy. Just be curious about their life and you’ll find that most of small talk is just being able to go back and forth about a topic.
Key here is that anyone can do small talk. You have to have ZERO knowledge about the subject matter. You can just ask questions. Anyone interested in a topic will usually be happy to answer them. This works on anything from sports to cooking to blacksmithing topics. The wonderful thing you find out is: PEOPLE ARE INTERESTING!
Admit your ignorance on the subject and have them walk through explanations. Engage in the conversation by connecting it to any tangential knowledge you have on the subject.
“Ocean kayaking? I’ve never done that. That sounds exhilarating. The closest thing I’ve ever done to that was a canoe on a river when I was 12. I’m sure its different but how different is it?”
“How did you get into that hobby?”
“Where in the world have you done it?”
“Any close calls?”
“How important is the right gear/boat?”
“Where would you like to do that in the future?”
See? Zero knowledge about ocean kayaking, but infinite conversation that the other person is engaged with you in. Congratulations you’re small talking!
Key here is that anyone can do small talk. You have to have ZERO knowledge about the subject matter. You can just ask questions. Anyone interested in a topic will usually be happy to answer them
Fucking hell. I needed that. I’ve somehow never put that all together by this point
The tips here for small conversation here are spot on. Most people want to talk about themselves and stuff they enjoy, I know I do (but I’m also aware not everything I want to say is what people want to listen to, I love history but it’s rare for me to find “openings” to share some of it and people often try to change topics soon after). Give them a bit of room and, if it’s something you really want to know more about, ask further.
The best advice I’ve heard along those lines is: “It’s more important to be interested than interesting”
Ironically, I reckon the more interested you are in people and things, the more interesting you become, because you learn and gain a more diverse understanding of the world, and then you are able to interact with more depth with more people.
It is also okay not to be good a “small talk”. I quite frankly hate it and for the most part i tend to overwhelm people in conversations. Now i am happily married and we still sometimes end up just talking all night, because we engage in conversations we both find meaningful.
Weirdly enough and quite annoyingly now that i am married and built some confidence, a lot of women are hitting on me, and seemingly unfazed by me stating the fact that i am married. Had to cut out a few people from my life because of that.
This is a great story. I’m so happy for you and your wife!
Just another thing. Working out, not to look good but to build some muscle (whether it’s seen or not), makes a great improvement in the bedroom!
I made a goal for myself to never start a conversation with “Hey” or something similar - I went through every profile I found and picked something specific to talk about.
This is a good strategy. It’s surprising how many people (of all genders) match on dating apps and think “hey” is a strong opener.
Also surprising is how many people think a longer message they send to every match (eg: “what do you think defines art?”) is a good move.
Asking people about their profile stuff is the way to go. People like talking about themselves. People are (hopefully) putting things on their profile their way to talk about.
Honestly… Two years in prison. Made me grow up and see how shitty I was as a person.
Mind if I ask you more? What was the nature of crime? How do you feel it changed you? It’s very rare nowadays to see stories of people who feel prison actually helped them becoming better people, and I’d love to know more.
Of course, only if you feel like talking about it; if not, this is alright!
Not an incel but someone on the trans-and-women-hating pick me pipeline: Got into a fight with a Reddit mod about autism. I’m autistic and ended up arguing with a sub’s mod about how not all autistic people are special snowflake tumblerinas. Left such a bad taste in my mouth that I stopped going to the sub, which was my main source of hate content. Let me get exposed to other viewpoints and ultimately I came out as nonbinary after previously saying nonbinary people weren’t real.
Denial is a common way to cope with all sorts of dysphoria when societal pressure is applied and can influence your decisions.
Congrats on coming out and coming to terms with yourself!
I thought to myself “no cap this kinda mid fr fr on… ratio” and pussy appeared.
I changed my gender.
Femcel now then?
That’s cheating! (Just joking, good for you, I wish all the happiness to you, seriously!)
“If you can’t beat 'em, join 'em.”
Couldn’t get a girlfriend so I became the girlfriend
“If you can’t convince them, confuse them” also kinda works here…
Escape incel culture with this one simple trick! ™
How the turntables
I had two sisters and I was the only brother. If there is any way to tell you that you don’t have any right, it’s that. Trust me. They know more and they will fuck you up if you even try it.
People have their own choices. Seeing it as a quest in a video game isn’t a reality. It’s a shared experience and they need to share it with you. If they don’t, then it ain’t right.
We didn’t have the term incel when I was a young adult, but at 25 I had an experience that allowed me to realize I wasn’t too far off from my peers, and decided to brute force my way to learning to socialize. My therapist suggested hunting down the local recovery community (which meant going to AA groups even though I wasn’t an alcoholic) which got me to CoDependents Anonymous.
As a note CoDA and SLAA (Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous) are full of people glad to fall off the wagon, which is a major plot point in Choke by Chuck Palahniuk. Before I got too involved, a very nice person yanked me from CoDA into the local kink community, who were the advanced class of consent, limits and boundaries training. This isn’t to say they’re perfect at it, but they get more into the nitty, especially those who engage in edge play. (Not to be confused with knife play, though there’s some intersection.)
That said, I became sexually active at 26, which is pretty late in the game, but a far leap from world records. Sir Isaac Newton died sexless and was obnoxious and proud of the fact. Incels often have nothing on the mathematics sector.
< rant >
The current state of how we regard our teens remains an issue to me, and at one point while Microsoft was fantasizing on how to get Cortana to fend off unwanted advances (Google’s LLM would just ignore them and turn a come-on into a web-search), I was thinking of how a simulated girlfriend might teach incels how to engage others without scaring them off through trial and error and sheer practice. But now we have scary data-stealing e-girlfriends that prey on the lonely.
Then with the rise of abstinence-only education, the alt-right and the eagerness of the Republican party to keep their War Boys ( witness me! ) as a voting bloc and recruitment pool for their militant wing, I realized US society doesn’t have a strong interest in making things better for our newly-sex-starved teens since, as George Orwell observed, sexual frustration + three minutes of hate turns into a powerful tool for fascism-style civil wrangling, at least of the lumpinproletariat (the people who can’t civics very well). Kids developing a healthy sexuality doesn’t serve to turn the population into devout workers / soldiers glad to serve the ownership class.
It also may be that we just don’t like our own teens, and want to evict them (which might be a hunter-gatherer means to stir the gene pool. Gorillas do a similar thing) and the thinking ape actually sucks a thinking past some of our presupposed values like dominance hierarchy. Hence we worship athletes and fear smart, less physical guys will turn into supervillains, and this informs our incapacity to do anything about schoolyard bullying, or workplace bullying, or gunboat diplomacy.
So, when it comes to my fellow incels, I’ll borrow from Red Dragon (The Harris novel and two movies)
I couldn’t help feeling sorry for him. He wasn’t born a monster; he was made one through years of abuse.
< /rant >
I’m not an incel. But according to modern internet I am because I’m virgin and I’m aware that no women would want to fuck me plus being a loser. I never clawed. There’s your answer.
Took a flight overseas.
Thailand? Japan?
Missouri 🤣
So you’re saying he has cousins there?
'Nam.
Any introverts here? or ex introverts that would like to do an AMA come on over to https://lemmy.world/c/amarequests
