Young Men Aren’t Fucking, and We Are Just Laughing About It
How is it funny that men who don't fuck are were more depressed, anxious, lonely, and less satisfied about life than those that do?
Nobody thinks about the suffering of a single man in an 866 square feet apartment alone, grilling his fourth salt-less chicken breast of the day, unfucked.
Evolutionary Psychologist William Costello is one of the scientific exceptions. He studied well-being differences between involuntary celibates (incels) and men who have sex (non-incels). He found that incels were more depressed, anxious, lonely, and less satisfied about life than non-incels.
I've "known" those results for years before they came out. I grew up as a gamer, anime watcher, and sports hater – the "nerd" trifecta. Still, I did not become an incel. But many friends did, and their lives can be summed up as a series of cool life events they midly enjoy but that they'd ditch if it meant having sex.
Women rarely empathize with incels, mostly because women deal with sexual rejection less often than men. Any of my female friends can find dozens of men at a club to sleep with them. I know because I've seen it, and they've admitted it. Their beauty plays a role. But it is also the case that men have lower standards, and biologists and my experience suggest they also have an easier time detaching sex from love. I've seen far too many male friends sleep with someone they would never date just to leave a dry season. My female friends would too, but they would be more mindful of who they pick.
I told all the above to a female friend on the mothy cobblestones of Amsterdam. We sat in front of the canal after going twice to Albert Heijn, once to buy a $3 yogurt and a second time to get a half spoon half fork to eat it. The smell of British high-school potheads was all around us. Still, I presented my case, which she agreed on. Later, at Oosterpark, she pointed to a guy and said, "That could be [our incel friend's name] if he dressed and groomed better."
Though that could be true, I also got a 1% high for nothing because she didn't get it. Men can't control every variable women find attractive, such as ethnicity, height, and facial symmetry. A typical incel saying is, "There's no gym for your face." Nor for height. When I hear arguments such as "height doesn't matter," I imagine the infinite instances in which my gorgeous female friends drooled over an average-looking 6'3” guy. I also think about the 2006 study that found that five-foot-six men had to earn $175,000 (around $265,000 in 2023) more than six feet tall men to be on the same dating ground. A white shirt that fits might help "short kings," but the Dutch guy with an unwashed graphic tee has an edge.
Non-incel men can empathize with incels' pains because, at some point, most men were involuntary celibates. But non-incels also do not get it. I've told incel friends to switch joggers with black jeans, hoodies with jackets, and sports t-shirts with shirts. Not because these garments guarantee attractiveness, but because, absent other variables that attract women, such as confidence, ambition, and status, the least you could do is reduce the number of things you can be misjudged for. But my good intentions were naive. I didn't realize that looks were part of a multivariable equation.
My female friend brought this up, pointing out how incels would be more fuckable if they were more confident. True, but not simple. Confidence originates from at least mild success in an area or significant success in others. If you have nothing going on for you and continuously lose girls to narcissistic gym jocks, your willingness to keep trying reduces.
Roughly speaking, there are two groups of Incels
One is anxious, depressive, and lonely but hopeful. They wash the dishes whenever they leave the house in case they return with a woman. They can read about what women, on average, look for in men and accept it. For example, they can admit that if they were to have the responsibility of bringing a human to life, the least they'd expect is to be with someone with the financial means to care for her and their child as she recovers from labour and restructures her routine.
This is the "least worse" group to be in because hope tends to make these men fitter, happier, more productive. But it is temporarily “least worse.” The more they dress up and down, the more likely they are to feel inadequate and end up in the second group.
The second group has incels who have lost all hope of having sex and have become misogynists. This small subset of incels is the one people talk about the most. And here’s an anecdote to explain the difference between the two.
I was at Latin America's best bar, Alquímico. Two female friends and I were under red lights, an industrial fan, and an imitation of a DJ. Five young men on my right ordered bottles with sparklers that didn't go off until everyone at the club gazed from right to left to center. Twenty-year-old Swedish girls joined them. About thirty minutes of sips, whispers, and one saliva exchange later, the girls left.
What happened?
A non-incel might interpret this as normal club behavior and move on. This is exactly what one of the guys did, immediately hitting on one of my friends.
A hopeful incel might ruminate over what went wrong, buy a dating book, and look forward to applying chapter five.
A frustrated incel might conclude every girl is a gold digger.
A study collected over four million posts from an incel forum to reveal how misogynistic its incel participants were. They found users were three times more likely to use misogynistic terms like whore, bitch, and Becky (a reference to an average-looking woman with low self-esteem who needs validation and is a nerd. Ironically, this is exactly what incels experience, making Becky a projection of their self-hatred.
Again, these results don't surprise me. I wouldn't expect anything but wrongly directed hatred from a subculture that feels inferior, frustrated, and isolated. If I download Tor, turn on a VPN in Malta, and enter a drug-buying platform on the Deep Web, the least I can expect is to find the word "cocaine."
These incels' way of unleashing their frustration is wrong, but I no longer think they exaggerate. These men get daily reminders that their genes are not appealing enough to be passed on. They project their frustration through despective generalizations based on their experience. It's like saying startup jobs are unstable because you've been laid office times like a friend of mine has. The statement is not true per se, but can you really argue you would not do the same if you have been feeling rejected for the last 2,000 days?
Shut the Fuck Up and/or Help
My solution initially disappointed me because I felt I had to develop a 20-step guide to free the incel community. But, ultimately, this is my best one: shut up or help.
Women, men also care about how they look. Maybe not as much as you do, but more than you think.
You don't like it when men say, "You are having butter chicken AND Kinder Gelato? Even if he said it thinking about the safety of the toilet you share and not about your weight. Or when your mom asks why you aren't losing weight, even though she knows the contraception pills are to blame.
So don't tell your balding friend that he's a walking forehead now, that he's skinny, or that he'd be more attractive if he were taller. His male friends are already picking up on these things, sometimes for decades. My dad literally has a friend who has had the nickname of "human scum" for forty years because he didn't look put together at high school. The last thing a guy who's not at his peak attractiveness needs is to be reminded of it by the people he's craving to attract.
And yes, ideally, the men in your life can "take a joke." My ex called me arrogant before we started dating. It didn't harm me because I knew she was misjudging my confidence. But that was me, a non-incel. If I were unconfident, alone, and unfucked, I could have interpreted her comment as "You have a distasteful personality trait and are doomed." Feels like an overreaction, but it's not when it's a thing people have brought out to you for decades.
Men, your friend knows he's not fucking. You don't need to remind him.
Chances are you are also seeking wealth, status, and females. You know how stressful this can be. Don't ask your male friend when they are flying to Turkey for a $1,000 hair transplant, the number of girls they kissed at the club, or STDs they caught in Ibiza.
Support them, challenge them to improve, and find ways to grow together. Otherwise, shut up. Imagine suffering daily and having someone worsen it. Your advice on getting a haircut, clothing, and becoming confident is well-intentioned. But there's a state of mind that your friend will have to be in before these things can benefit them. Even if you were an incel at some point, you can't relate to anyone's pain. Acknowledge, help, or don't do anything.
Incels, you will need to improve. I know you hate to hear it and how shallow and unhelpful it sounds, especially to those of you improving and seeing no benefits. But you have potential that only you can tap. I began to attract more women when I – wait for it – began talking to more of them. And then some more when I went from 55 kg to 70 kg, built a career, and learned to dance salsa.
I consider myself good-looking, smart, and ambitious; these are attractive traits. But none of that got me Port wine dates with beautiful women before. Not even now, but I could. I'm also still not married to a Greek woman. But whether that's because of me or an external variable, my experience tells me that a "better" me will have a higher chance of it.
Poet Charles Bukowski was a dirty old man, but he explained the pain of underdogs better than anyone.
"Now this is mid-July, and I haven’t had a piece of ass this year," the poet said. "They laughed. they thought it was funny. people who are getting ass always think it is funny when somebody else isn’t. "
And it's true society ridicules the involuntary celibate.
We don't think about the men waiting for a WhatsApp message that they'll never receive because there's no one to send it or the digital nomad with no one waiting for them on either hemisphere, or the guy willing to fully love one of the billions of women out there but that can't because he can't articulate the right combination of words. These are the kind of situations that we would hate to live but laugh about because they haven't happened to us.
It might be the case that you don't know how to help an incel, and that's ok. No help at least ensures that you don't mess up trying to help, which is better than failing at helping.
Most humans would agree that love is universally necessary. You feel it. Incels, despite their bad streak, do too. It might be the case that you don't know how to find love for an incel, and that's ok. No help ensures you don't mess up trying to help. That is as much help as many of them will need.
Your turn: Have you thought about this before? Think I'm exaggerating or believe there's a better way to do things? Does my experience and scientific data correlate to what you have seen in non-celibate men you know?
Disequilibria in male-female sexual dynamics were solved via social institutions that encouraged monogamous social norms and practices. This predominantly refers to marriage. Jo Henrich's The WEIRDest People in the World covers the history of monogamy vs polygamy customs and the cultural evolution thereof.
Tech innovation and related cultural changes took a buzzsaw to the traditional solutions (poor Chesterton's Fence). The only way forward will be some sort of neo-traditionalism that restores a monogamous balance. But it is at least partially incumbent on incels, who are failing to agitate sociopolitically and constructively conceive of themselves as an interest group, to effectuate these changes.
There is of course a lot of anxious discussion about this in American public discourse. Here's some recents, which seem related to your post.
-https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/unfuckable-hate-nerds-william-deresiewicz
-https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/07/10/christine-emba-masculinity-new-model/
-https://www.washingtonpost.com/washington-post-live/2023/07/12/christine-emba-richard-reeves-crisis-american-masculinity/
This post irks me. Though I can empathize deeply with the amount of shit in an incels life, underneath all that there’s a justification for abdication of responsibility and resentment.
1.) I’m a former nerd who glowed up because of football, accidentally, then a ton of personal development. Over approx. 7 years of hard work I have a moderately high body count. Granted I have good genes, but I actualized the potential of those genes through hard work and putting my life together.
2.) I also experienced incredible depression, suicidality, and emotional dysregulation regularly under the deeply flawed notion that being a stud and banging any girl I wanted would heal the wounds in my heart. Would trade most of my experiences for monogamy with a great girl and being at peace with myself anyday.
3.) a lot of the rhetoric in this incel research seems to be based on the notion that it’s almost impossible for someone to get laid. There are SO many horny, lonely girls out there that will sleep with someone if they feel comfortable, they’re available and the partner meets a minimum standard of attraction. Once you have basic skills in life, you go out consistently, you can still be completely miserable and get laid a lot. I know - I did it for years.
4.) overall, it would be good if incels got laid, of course. But that starts with them. They need to go to therapy. Find out why they hate themselves so much (probably a lot of trauma) and take responsibility for their lives. There is literally an ungodly, infinite amount of self help out there from any perspective that basically works. They need to NOT go on forums basting in their own resentful pity parties and spend time doing things that are meaningful and good. Once they do that consistently, see if women are attracted to them then. It’s seems complicated, but it’s actually very simple.