About Incels

I have been following the incel question for several years now, and I find that there are some sticky points and issues worth broaching on the topic.

First of all, incels are human, okay? Treating them like subhuman female haters doesn’t help, and neither does relegating them to a basket of far-right deplorables.

Contrary to human social practices, demonisation and ridicule help no one and only serve to trigger the Pandora’s box of underlying social tensions in society.

This could lead individuals to adopt more extremist views, which could precipitate social ostracism and even more terror attacks like the ones in Plymouth, Isla Vista, or Montreal. We could even see the rise of incel terrorist groups in the worst-case scenario, which isn’t that far-fetched at this point.

There are other risk factors complementary to this social regression as well: loneliness is at an all-time high, affecting over 40 million Americans, which coincides all too well with high suicide and alcohol consumption rates among white males in particular, an ethnic demographic long overlooked for its troubles.

This rampant social isolation, coupled with high divorce rates, increased Internet usage during lockdown, and a ruthless sexual market, could have an aggravating effect on vulnerable individuals lacking romantic success, increasing the appeal of incel identification.

Simultaneously, in postmodern dating culture, rejection has arguably intensified due to unrealistic standards put on potential mates, which arguably affects males more as they are still the primary agents who approach and contact possible partners.

This unfortunately coincides with the well-documented phenomenon of deaths of despair among white Americans, which combined with inceldom could become a synergistic social pathology and a toxic talking point for the far-right.

A few months ago, I even came across an article which mentioned that a Norwegian study was to be launched to estimate the number of incels in Norway. The fact that the problem has come to invite empirical substantiation and serious research efforts indicate the severity of this predicament, as anti-feminist violence and attacks become viewed as increasingly likely culprits of terrorism.

We have gone way too far in demonizing incels, and we need to treat them better, starting now.

Indeed, we should view them with greater sympathy, as we admittedly live in a rather cold dating culture where rejection is rife, as evidenced by social phenomena such as ghosting, getting deliberately left on read, and hook-up culture, the latter of which leads women to become more wary of the intentions of suitors in general.

It’s necessary to grapple with these social phenomena and prevent them from perpetuating, as they only make us into colder and more cynical egotistical individuals in a society running on a detached market logic.

In our times, even a sexual dating market is being spoken of on dating apps like Tinder, as if humans themselves are no exception to being commodified.

No wonder that some vulnerable individuals with unhealthy coping mechanisms and thought patterns adopt the psychology of incels, which together with limited scarcity mindsets, ominous attitudes, and a lack of metacognition will foster wider social problems.

By attenuating and resolving such issues, as well as by giving the incels the human contact they so desperately crave, social culture will be moving in a better direction for the good of all of us.