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[Frumple]

Understanding that people aren't just randomly born terrible, actually making their lives better, and making sure they know why their lives got better is the solution.

Because that's a thing you can do when they actively fight against it and piss on any and every thing you try to do. Chunks of the folks you're talking about will literally get themselves and their family killed to sabotage efforts to make their lives better. Like, we try because it's the goddamn moral thing to do, but the solution you're talking about is more than just a little difficult with the cards on the table in this country.

[feelotraveller]

And that's why we'll get Ultra-Trump in 4-8 years.

We'll get an Ultra-Trump again in 4 or 8 years because the duopoly is designed like that, to flip-flop from bad to worse to bad again. 

From the outside it is fatally flawed.  From the inside it can be reformed to be marginally worse or better without ever really changing nature <<plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose>>.

And beyond that Empires fall and their death throes are horrible.

(Nothing stops us from being nice to one another meantime, though.)

[SalmonGod]

Understanding that people aren't just randomly born terrible, actually making their lives better, and making sure they know why their lives got better is the solution.

Because that's a thing you can do when they actively fight against it and piss on any and every thing you try to do. Chunks of the folks you're talking about will literally get themselves and their family killed to sabotage efforts to make their lives better. Like, we try because it's the goddamn moral thing to do, but the solution you're talking about is more than just a little difficult with the cards on the table in this country.

That's the excuse I always hear, but it's not like Democrats haven't fucked up the opportunity when it was squarely in their laps, either.  I know you're probably tired of hearing about it, but like in the beginning of Obama's first term when they had the presidency, house, and senate.  What did they do with it?  Pushed Obama's flagship achievement -- healthcare legislation built on a model developed by a conservative think tank.  Banks handed massive amounts of money while they foreclosed on millions of homes, many illegally, and faced no consequences for their illegal behaviors.  The fiercest campaign of government secrecy and whistleblower persecution in the country's history.  And double-down on mass surveillance and militarism.  Yeah, conservatives being obstinate death cultists is an issue.  I'm not denying that.  But it's not like that's all there is to it, and it's not a problem that just randomly occurs in a vacuum.  Everything didn't cease functioning properly because the conservative death cult blipped into existence out of nowhere.

Also, I fixed the link in my last post.

[Frumple]

So your thoughts on what's being proposed to open up 2021 with? 50k student loan forgiveness across the board, massive infrastructure spending, etc.?

[Reelya]

I know many out there will quickly retort "If someone decides to become a fascist because someone said something mean to them, then they were probably a fascist piece of shit all along and we don't want them!"  But this is absurdly reductionist, and would be comical in how dishonest or stupid it is, if it didn't threaten to doom us all.  Tell someone they're a piece of shit who needs to go stand in the corner with the other pieces of shit enough, and eventually you'll generate a person who sympathizes and bands together with the other pieces of shit, no matter how virtuous they may have once been.  Do this to everyone who ever produces a whiff of bad smell, and you're going to make a real problem for yourself.

This is why the ostracism of anyone, for example, remotely incel-like actually feeds the incel community rather than weakening it.

https://www.verywellfamily.com/do-girls-and-boys-bully-differently-460494

Most female bullies do not act alone. Instead, they tend to have accomplices or followers who support their behavior. Additionally, girls will rally around the primary bully in order to gain more social standing in the group. They will give in to peer pressure and bullying even when they know it’s wrong.

Apparently, a common thread in incel related stories is that the guy was bullied by girls in their teen years, and given what the literature says on the patterns of female bullying vs male bullying, the stories I've seen match the academic literature pretty well. I'm guessing a lot of them have bullying related PTSD, but because of circumstance (gender of the bullies) it's entangled with gender issues. And girls bullying guys isn't something we as a society have a narrative for, so we can't process this information.

Society is still very much in the traditional masculinity mindset and guys who don't fit with that get shoehorned to fit the expectations. This still even permeates many feminist's thinking. So any guy expressing any negative emotions about women is clearly just a 'woman hater' and can't possibly have valid experiences from their life that make them feel like that, or so we say to ourselves. Because, a man being a victim doesn't fit either the traditionalist nor the feminist mindset. So these guys can't openly express their experiences in most mainstream, feminist, liberal or traditional conservative spheres, since all of those groups would consider them as just losers. So they end up on toxic forums where they're easily red pilled by the other broken people on those forums, who misdirect their trauma into anger against a bunch of shit that's nothing to do with it. Girls have always been bullies, that's nothing new and nothing to do with feminism, it's just that in traditional masculinity we don't acknowledge men who have been victimized by women, and mainstream society is still working on trad. masculinity as the working hypothesis so we have no way to process or acknowledge these experiences, and until we have that, 'incels' will be forced into a corner to chat amongst themselves.

So I kind of get the impression that a fair chunk of the online incels are autism-spectrum guys with poor social skills who have experiences of being bullied during their teen years by girls. It would be interesting to take a poll of them to see how many went to co-ed schools vs how many went to all-boy schools, and I'll bet that most of them went to co-ed schools (*Note here, i mean that guys who went to all-boy schools end up with a different bag of stuff wrong with them). This is why I don't use the incel thing as an insult, I think many of them have some form of psych issues as well as the bullying trauma history.

[SalmonGod]

So your thoughts on what's being proposed to open up 2021 with? 50k student loan forgiveness across the board, massive infrastructure spending, etc.?

That I'll believe it when I see it.  As I've said many times before -- platform doesn't matter.  Record and funding matters.  I don't see why I should be expected to trust people telling me they're going to do a thing when their entire history is the opposite of that thing, and they're funded by entities with interests opposed to that thing.

[MrRoboto75]

Apparently, a common thread in incel related stories is that the guy was bullied by girls in their teen years, and given what the literature says on the patterns of female bullying vs male bullying, the stories I've seen match the academic literature pretty well. I'm guessing a lot of them have bullying related PTSD, but because of circumstance (gender of the bullies) it's entangled with gender issues. And girls bullying guys isn't something we as a society have a narrative for, so we can't process this information.

Society is still very much in the traditional masculinity mindset and guys who don't fit with that get shoehorned to fit the expectations. This still even permeates many feminist's thinking. So any guy expressing any negative emotions about women is clearly just a 'woman hater' and can't possibly have valid experiences from their life that make them feel like that, or so we say to ourselves. Because, a man being a victim doesn't fit either the traditionalist nor the feminist mindset. So these guys can't openly express their experiences in most mainstream, feminist, liberal or traditional conservative spheres, since all of those groups would consider them as just losers. So they end up on toxic forums where they're easily red pilled by the other broken people on those forums, who misdirect their trauma into anger against a bunch of shit that's nothing to do with it. Girls have always been bullies, that's nothing new and nothing to do with feminism, it's just that in traditional masculinity we don't acknowledge men who have been victimized by women, and mainstream society is still working on trad. masculinity as the working hypothesis so we have no way to process or acknowledge these experiences, and until we have that, 'incels' will be forced into a corner to chat amongst themselves.

So I kind of get the impression that a fair chunk of the online incels are autism-spectrum guys with poor social skills who have experiences of being bullied during their teen years by girls. It would be interesting to take a poll of them to see how many went to co-ed schools vs how many went to all-boy schools, and I'll bet that most of them went to co-ed schools. This is why I don't use the incel thing as an insult, I think many of them have some form of psych issues as well as the bullying trauma history.

A lot of the problem is also economic.  Wages and the job market are so trash that most men can't do their main traditional job in a marriage: they can't provide for their family as a breadwinner.  Even if both spouces need to make income these days the man is still expected to make the majority (ie women seek those with a higher income, even if they have a job with a high income themselves).  Its a common media trope of a man falling for a 'lowly' barista or whatever but the guy flipping burgers will never have that luck.

If a man can't put a roof over his own head what value do they provide in terms of marriage?

[thompson]

I’m not sure there is much anyone can do about the incel problem. In every generation there will always be someone left on the bench, and biology doesn’t help as natural selection largely works by excluding the unfit (with females performing the selection in most species).

Making matters worse, the natural gender balance is around 1.05:1 males:females.

What proportion of the adult male population would come under that category?

On the topic of “The Democrats Suck”, again, I don’t think radical change is the way forward. There just isn’t broad enough support for it, and Trump doesn’t seem to have been unpopular enough to catalyse that. Given Republican obstructionism, even modest reforms will be difficult to get through the senate. A moderate platform might not be inspiring, but it is realistic.

My thoughts would be to focus on issues on a case-by-case basis and hope change can come about one step at a time. The big unknown right now is how the Republican Party rebuilds post-Trump. If they go Ultra-Trump we’ll need to hope people don’t buy into it. If Roe vs Wade is overturned that could change federal politics in a big way too. Could make abortion more of a state issue, but in the short term I’d expect it to polarise the debate at all levels.

The other great unknown is how China policy evolves. If the US gets serious about decoupling or imposes sanctions for various things, that could have some big ramifications. I can see people being unified by a common enemy, which would completely change the tone of the political discussion. It’s not a development I’m particularly happy with. This will probably play out to the Republicans’ advantage, with or without an Ultra-Trump.

So, I’ll mostly be holding my judgement until it becomes clearer where these different currents are leading us. I do think the more “Traditional” Republicans will prevail, if only because I’d expect the nutty fringe to spoil their votes on someone like Trump Jr or Kanye West in the preselection round due to name recognition. If and when a true Trump successor emerges we should have some warning as they’ll need to build their profile first.

[JoshuaFH]

I’m not sure there is much anyone can do about the incel problem. In every generation there will always be someone left on the bench, and biology doesn’t help as natural selection largely works by excluding the unfit (with females performing the selection in most species).

Making matters worse, the natural gender balance is around 1.05:1 males:females.

It's actually the other way around, with females being slightly more populous than males. The social effect is small, but I imagine incels know this fact and it feeds into their own self-hatred even more as a result.

But the ordinary dynamics of natural selection don't apply in this scenario, the incel population is created artificially, as a byproduct, of capitalism and its evolutions throughout the years has done to harm the concepts of family and community.

[MrRoboto75]

I’m not sure there is much anyone can do about the incel problem.  In every generation there will always be someone left on the bench, and biology doesn’t help as natural selection largely works by excluding the unfit (with females performing the selection in most species).

You could have a less shitty economy, for example.  Y'know, pay people, so they can afford a family.

You could try giving a shit about people on the spectrum when they become adults, instead of just forgetting about them.  You could try giving a shit about mental health in general.  Or healthcare in general.

You could try and curb the social media echo chambers that exist to profit off of outrage and radicalism.  Or the fact that they encourage comparison of your life to someone else's "highlight reel" that ignores the inevitable negatives of living.

Nevermind the rise of dating sites basically rent seeking the problem of loneliness and making it worse for everyone.

You could stop stapling romance B plots to every form of media, or whatever stupidity works for relationships in the average romcom.  You could stop stressing relationships as a fundamental part of having a "good" life.  You could stop treating them like fucking losers deserving of mockery.

There's plenty you could do or try but that'd require admitting society might have fundamental issues and people aren't comfortable admitting that.  Moreover, the problem isn't that incels exist (as you think they are inevitable), but that society is apparently creating more of them and they can be becoming more radical and dangerous to society.

[Lord Shonus]

There's a fundamental difference between "guy who can't get a date" and "an incel". The latter was rare (though not nonexistent) until the Internet allowed them to get sucked into a sea of toxicity.

[ZBridges]

Incels should just hook up with femcels.

[MrRoboto75]

There's a fundamental difference between "guy who can't get a date" and "an incel". The latter was rare (though not nonexistent) until the Internet allowed them to get sucked into a sea of toxicity.

That line blurs more and more these days.  Have any criticism at all about modern dating and own a dick and you'll be branded an incel, as no matter what's going on its the man's fault.

Incels should just hook up with femcels.

Much as the common suggestion is to hire an escort.  Actually getting laid isn't the real problem and prostitution won't make it go away.

[Folly]

Understanding that people aren't just randomly born terrible, actually making their lives better, and making sure they know why their lives got better is the solution.

If your premise is correct, people aren't just randomly born terrible, then making their lives better solves everything.

But if you're wrong, and people are in fact just randomly born terrible, then making their lives better just gives them more time and opportunity to procreate, making more terrible people, increasing in number until they have a sufficient population to influence democratic policy, leading to widespread intolerance, hatred, and worse.

You fear an Ultra-Trump down the line. I fear that your attempts to prevent that outcome will inevitably make it a reality.

[Reelya]

Incels should just hook up with femcels.

femcels have the option of just rebranding as the much more palatable radfems, so i don't think there are that many of them.

Maybe they're women with no date who are too toxic for the radfems however so they're slumming it on incel boards, I guess. (or a more likely analysis is that radfems are dime a dozen so they wouldn't stand out then, so they made femcel instead. It's a much smaller pond, so standing out as a prominent femcel would be as easy way to get online recognition).