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Comment by jstarfish | Hacker News Reader

The number of incels out there speaks for itself.

What's wrong with incels? are they bad people because they can't find a relationship? what?

They aren't bad people because they can't find a relationship.

But a lot of them act in bad ways because they believe/have been told to believe that their difficulty in finding a relationship is someone else's fault.

This often makes them utterly insufferable to be around, which is a positive feedback loop.

And then, hey, look, here's a disaffected community of angry young men, all feeling that society has taken a great big dump on them, all ripe for radicalization by some cynical ideologue.

As with all groups, the loudest are the least well-adjusted.

Thus, while it may linguistically be the western version of some exotic-sounding Japanese word that translates as "single adult", the implication is the exact opposite causality of your question: they are single because they are bad, not vice-versa.

And yet it applies to everyone who is without a partner. Not just to the loud ones. Your supposed implication seems to be something that another certain loud group desires. Not something that can be inferred by any interpretation of the English language that I was ever able to discern.

Absolutely not. When I was single and looking but not finding I was not 'involuntarily celibate', thats a designation you self select into.

Being an incel is something you choose. Everyone else just isn't having sex.

People who havent found a relationship are just people. People that base their identity on being an incel, in which celibacy is a status that is inflicted on them, tend to hold a cluster of beliefs that express as anger towards women as a class (for withholding sex from them) and an unwillingness to engage in honest self reflection and growth.

It is common to see some one with that mindset to see outcomes as inevitable or as a function of things wholly out of their control such as looks or a perceived social dynamic involving 'chads' and 'staceys' that they are ineluctably locked out of.

Just some real bad vibes.

>are they bad people because they can't find a relationship?

They are bad people because incel forums are normally filled with crab-bucket mentality users who regurgitate highly misogynistic tropes up until the edge of being openly violent to women.

If you are unable to see the misogyny towards woman in many incel communities for whatever reason, at the very least I would say that they are bad for men because they tend to grow by reinforcing the idea that their community will never be good enough, that there is nothing that they can do, and it is the fault of society for all their problems.

Incels have killed more men than women, look up Elliot Rodger among others. I don't think anyone's a misogynist.

This may not be the solid defense you think it is.

Why isn't it a solid defense?

"They don't seem that bad, they've murdered more men than women"

Because killing isn't a zero sum game.

I don't know why you think this is a good response. I'm familiar with his manifesto. They were "bad guys" who girls liked instead of him "nice guys" like him. It's the same crab bucket mentality all incels have that isn't healthy - instead of introspection, it's blaming other people for your own personality traits. The assumption that woman only like "mean, bad men" is misogynistic in it's own right.

If you are going to sit here and pretend Elliot's manfesto wasn't misogynist, then so be it, there's no point to carry water for these guys.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incel

The first paragraph speaks for itself. The whole "involuntary" part of "incel" implies that your celibacy - the fact that people don't want you as a partner - is totally out of your control. Incels are the epitome of "nice guys".

Our looks and society's beauty standards are not in our hands. Seems like they're right.

If beauty was the only metric of attractiveness or likeability, sure. Except that incels are not celibate because they're ugly, they're celibate because they're convinced that women don't want them because of their looks. That thinking makes them entitled people with an overall terrible personality. That's why they can't get laid.

Men have it much, much, easier in the beauty standards department then women. If a man can't get laid his looks have relatively little to do with it. There are fat short dudes out there absolutely killing it in the romance world. Personality, empathy, and good attitude are worth their weight in gold.

Women are expected to not be fat, but men are expected to be tall. It's easy to hit the gym, but height is impossible to change. It's also socially acceptable for women to fake good looks by wearing makeup and high heels, but for men, it's not socially acceptable. So yeah, women have it much easier beauty standards.

Playing dumb is not a good look.

Still haven't answered what's wrong with incels

Male incels are generally very miserable people with a lot of mental health struggles.

The implication is that society is also very hostile to men and boys right now, demonstrated by them becoming incels in large numbers.

incel generally isn't used literally to refer to all people who want to have sex but can't, but a male subset of said group who tend to hold really strong beliefs along the lines of "women won't sleep with me because they're bad", "women only like the bad dudes not nice guys like me", etc.

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