everybody on ilx complains about reddit

even the bronies figured out that friendship is magic

DJP otm. Their minds are poisoned with hatred. They need serious therapy to undo everything about their mindset.

I've always felt a "there but for the grace of god go I" with these guys because I think I struggled with similar emotional problems and put off dating and sex a lot longer than my peers because of it.

I feel like probably everyone has felt like this at some point; the idea that you're undateable/unfuckable makes your situation more tragic and *special* than it would otherwise be and, crucially, it allows you to stop trying.

Though thankfully even as a teen I turned this against some nebulous notion of "the popular kids" rather than women in general.

Yup with ya there DJP.

Some people also always want to be the underdog to a fucked up extent

You'll often see them insist that they would take literally any woman who would have them, no matter what she looks like, but not one will.

to reiterate my point a little clearer, I think they--consciously or not--are trying to avoid being with anyone. And yes you can tragically pine for something and also work actively to make getting that thing impossible. there's an idea in psychology about "embeddedness"--they are comfortable in the the environment they are in, and fear leaping into a new one. it's a natural fear, but a convincing description of depression is an inability to leave one form of embeddedness for another one.

there's something to having room in your interests for things others are into

like for every dipshit complaining about "normies" not liking what's cool, there might be a neighbor or coworker you could befriend by paying just passing attention to some mainstream thing and talking about it instead of defining yourself in opposition to really innocuous things

ryan otm again, though -- there's a base insecurity most people have about social interaction, but until you really interact, it's hard to see that you're not different

I mean, love and dating are painful and involve a great deal of heartbreak and rejection. It's not a crazy thing to want to avoid as long as you make the choice authentically.

Which these people aren't.

80% of successful social interaction involves recognizing that the other person is just as nervous about talking to you and mitigating it for them.

I think what I was trying to get at earlier is that in order to be interested in and care about other people, you have to care about yourself and feel that you're worth caring about.

i read about a psychologist who treats social anxiety and his methods were pretty much "exposure therapy" down the line. forcing his patients to intentionally create awkward situation (like, dramatically spill a cup of coffee in a coffee shop and then ask for a new one, approach a table of women and ask one of them out). the ethics of his approach aside, there's definitely something to the idea that society has evolved in such a way that you can more or less avoid similar experiences--which would normally just happen via typical forms of socialization. do they even have middle school dances anymore? is it expected for the boys to ask the girls to them? etc.

so i think what we're seeing is a regrettable project in wholly new forms of socialization (the internet, gaming) for a subset of particularly socially anxious young men (like i was).

I don't know if that's always true. I've had some severe bouts with depression where I didn't care much about myself or what happened to me but I still managed to be considerate of/interested in others.

Xp mh

If these people learned to take a sincere, unselfish interest in others they wouldn't be lonely anymore. They would probably end up with romantic affection too after a while. The thing that repulses women

― Treeship, Tuesday, October 10, 2017 12:53 PM (thirteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

... is not their physical bodies or their lack of success but their neediness and suspiciousness and misogyny

― Treeship, Tuesday, October 10, 2017 12:54 PM (twelve minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I think there's some truth to this, but I also think statements like this have a bit of the just-world bias about them. These guys are so repellent that it's very tempting to dismiss them as simply too hateful to take the obvious steps to remedy their situation. But I think that a big part of what hooks these guys is the fact that the worldview is based, in part, on observations about real and intractable unfairness.

Surely there are people who take a sincere, unselfish interest in others who are still lonely; and people who are needy, suspicious, and misogynistic but still attractive to women; and the explanations for these things will have a lot to do with social advantages and disadvantages that are distributed arbitrarily. These guys lash out about that in the most unproductive way imaginable, but if the reply is basically "your problems would go away if you weren't such an asshole", that just digs them in further--because they know it isn't true.

I'm probably strawmanning you a bit to make this point, but a lot of responses to incels--there's a whole other subreddit devoted to making fun of them--are of basically that kind.

Also, while I'm posting about this, I'd be remiss not to note that incel communities tend to be insanely racist.

not being an asshole may or may not help them with women (romance is tragic and fickle and does not work out for everyone) but it will definitely make them happier with their lot in life. you don't care about others to get something in return, it's literally the only thing that makes your own life bearable.

It also needs to be said that there's a kind of willfulness to a tragic self-conception, where you see yourself in such romantically pathetic terms. it's like an updated "sorrows of young werther," the grandiose emotional pain of adolescence turned into a world-view. i think this tendency will always be with us! it's the online organizing and persistence into adulthood that is most upsetting here. without ideological support this attitude would vanish as just a matter of life going on, finally meeting a girl, etc., but these belief systems make it rigid and more resistant to actual experiences that contradict it.

All their problems wouldn't go away if they became less self-absorbed and bitter but many would, and they would be in a better state of mind to deal with the problems that remained. Like, as long as you don't care about others you will be lonely. By definition--even if others love you.

These people seem to be missing like basic moral insights.

Or ryan otm

maybe someday reddit will produce its very own buddha who discovers that the suffering of not getting laid can be solved with....compassion!

It being reddit, that buddha will go by the handle "urea_fritters"

Lol

damn it

I also speculate some of these people aren't necessarily Americans- I know that there is a fairly sizable contingent in India of younger professional people clued into Reddit

Maybe I'm just hoping that so I don't have to share a society with these folks

Somewhere around a fifth of my coworkers are younger professional people from India but none of them are shitheads!

Surely there are people who take a sincere, unselfish interest in others who are still lonely; and people who are needy, suspicious, and misogynistic but still attractive to women; and the explanations for these things will have a lot to do with social advantages and disadvantages that are distributed arbitrarily. These guys lash out about that in the most unproductive way imaginable, but if the reply is basically "your problems would go away if you weren't such an asshole", that just digs them in further--because they know it isn't true.

And also we've not knowingly met any of these people in real life - wonder if some of them would, face to face, be people with just a nice, quiet demeanour as contrasted with their online manner

That's a good point. They could be venting and indulging an inner demon.

However, a person who thought the way these people claim they think would be a miserable person.

Oh yes.

I agree (xp) we must avoid the just world fallacy. Or I mean actually - it's fun to call these people assholes based on their shitty online postings and the urge to do so is quite understandable if we're being honest. But also we know what bargain basement nightclubs, whatever, places where people hang about and socialise, are like in actual real life, which is to say often not very accepting, not very mature, not very chill. Society at large is itself fairly prone to lashing out at people.

Tho obviously if you're not someone who's likely to be shot at by police etc etc you have things to be grateful for

lol what the fuck happened to this thread

i never meant for this to turn into psychoanalyzing incels. it's already a fool's errand to take their words as individuals at face value imo. it's assuming a lot of good faith about a massive group of people adhering to strict ideological guidelines. trying to argue with whatever web of internal logic (in this case, lore) they've concocted is trying to argue with a wall. the logic's imaginary! i don't even believe that the majority of the posters there truly believe in a lot of what they're peddling, if only because so much of it is in conflict with itself. for the most part it's just a group of solipsistic, entitled boys who are lashing out in the only way they feel comfortable -- semi-anonymously, self-righteously, with memes and the security of knowing they're intellectually superior (because kayfabe internal logic)

reddit is a great place for people who, in real life, fade into the background. if you fail to impress your peers, you just... fade into the background, where you're comfortable anyway. real life doesn't work that way

i'm way more interested in the way their communit(ies) (and hate communities in general) work as a self-defending machine, and the way reddit is organized to allow for/encourages the plunge into hate extremism

Surely the "works both ways" thing here is that if you accept the logic that they're too ugly to date then there's also women who're in the same predicament, and presumably deserving of incel solidarity.

Rule 11) Those who continuously claim there are as many female incels in the same situation as male incels will receive a warning and then a ban. Most can agree that women can be incel in some rare situations such as extreme disfigurement, but their numbers do not come close to male incels

so you think the posters are not trying to represent their "true" experiences and beliefs but rather are just playing a role in order to gain approval from a highly conformist yet (weirdly) extremely low stakes, anonymous community?

i buy it.

trying to argue with whatever web of internal logic (in this case, lore) they've concocted is trying to argue with a wall. the logic's imaginary! i don't even believe that the majority of the posters there truly believe in a lot of what they're peddling, if only because so much of it is in conflict with itself.

What parts of it do you think are in conflict? Their worldview strikes me as largely internally consistent and pretty much unfalsifiable, since anything observation that seems to contradict it can be explained away by appeal to some malevolent female subterfuge. I figure that's part of how the subculture works as a "self-defending machine": it can generate a self-justifying response to anything.

i've never clicked on this thread because i think the reddit community (and esp the imgur community) is so fucking terrible. you'd think the title would have made it clear that it was a safe space to hate on reddit, but what can i say.

i really regret that now. how could i have gone this long without knowing about this guy who stores all his pee and cum shirts up in his attic and passionately hates his wife? you can't make this shit up

so you think the posters are not trying to represent their "true" experiences and beliefs but rather are just playing a role in order to gain approval from a highly conformist yet (weirdly) extremely low stakes, anonymous community?

obv new to this thread and still trying to review the last week or two, but yes, that is reddit

Some of the incel guys may be playacting--maybe most--but that little world has already had one participant go on a killing spree.

xps

it's more than i'm not really concerned about self-identified incels on the individual level because the ideology of the community is much larger than their individuality

so in a way, yes, but i'm being intentionally vague, they're a whole-ass population and i don't think you can apply a single psychoanalytical intent to them

at a community level the place is throbbing with solipsism. i don't know if similar communities outside of reddit are like this, but at incels it's like no one's actually talking to each other, it's a community of people talking to mirrors. it's hard for me to even imagine them performing to "gain approval" of the community. there isn't like a king incel with the most incel karma points. their whole thing is that they're at the bottom of society and the sub is their personal gutter. or maybe i'm wrong and i just haven't spent enough time there. JRN would probably know better about the social hierarchy if any

at a community level the place is throbbing with solipsism. i don't know if similar communities outside of reddit are like this, but at incels it's like no one's actually talking to each other, it's a community of people talking to mirrors.

this reminds me of what I think about when I watch twitch chat and all the copy pasta nonsense. like I legitimately do not understand what communicating is going on there.

What parts of it do you think are in conflict? Their worldview strikes me as largely internally consistent and pretty much unfalsifiable, since anything observation that seems to contradict it can be explained away by appeal to some malevolent female subterfuge. I figure that's part of how the subculture works as a "self-defending machine": it can generate a self-justifying response to anything.

the main conflict is between the reality that doesn't exist (where women are as perfect as they are in the movies and also desire incels) and the reality they think exists (all women are [everything bad ever] because they don't desire incels). their ideology is built on the fantasy of the pursuit of women, which disgusts them. like at least when MGTOW hate women, their solution is to do the opposite of that.

i'm tired and not explaining well, but this is generally why i see their whole routine as an exercise in screaming and not intellect.

if you replace "the pursuit of women" with "the pursuit of sex, which women selfishly keep" it makes more sense though. but that doesn't seem to be it, given their flexibility with paying for sex.

re internal logic, having an answer to every argument doesn't mean those answers have to line up with each other. as long as they only need to answer one question at a time, the ideology is protected enough, in their eyes.

and they know it too! all of these new hate movements are like this, at least on reddit. go on the_donald, no belief is ever expressed in good faith. they know half their shit contradicts the other half, it's more about getting on message, and enjoying the company of others who are bullshitting their way onto the same message.

t_d is more ironic about it, but the approach is the same i think. it's more about sharing the message than believing in it

a friend of mine saw me using zing on my phone yesterday and wanted to know what ILX was so I gave her a two minute tour and her takeaway was "oh, so it's like a low budget reddit" and i wasn't sure what to say to that beyond "...kinda, yes"

it's at least a high-budget reddit!

our quality/$ratio is very good

Don't compare ilx to anything with fucking nested comment threads.

Ilx is a more user-hostile metafilter if you're going to compare us to anything

Ilx isn't much like other online communities I've seen, thanjs God.

i like "user-hostile metafilter"

the reality that doesn't exist (where women are as perfect as they are in the movies ...)

their ideology is built on the fantasy of the pursuit of women, which disgusts them.

Again not wanting to defend 'these guys' but I do think of this worldview as emanating from some central point of culture (mass television, movies and advertising) and heading outwards and outwards until we reach the obviously toxic edgeland of incels.

Like the narratives they come out with about sex sound less like actual experiences from life, and more like the cliched plots of low budget teen sex comedies? Or the logic of the narratives is that of advertisements (have big car, get to fuck sexy girl).

So I think all the stuff people are saying about certain online communities and reddit specifically helping this stuff to really fester and get properly nasty is OTM, but also that reddit is perhaps just an accelerant acting on an ideology that is already here?

by reddit do you mean social media in general?

i agree with you about the media aspect, it's one of the things i mean when i say solipsism -- they sound like they have possibly never had any sort of human contact with an actual girl, and they're taking media portrayals of girlfriends as the world they were promised. when i think of their idea of the ideal woman, i'm always thinking about the girlfriends video game webcomics artists write for their self-insert protagonists.

i think it comes down to patriarchy and rape culture and capitalism and this attitude has taken some form for a long long time. but i disagree that the online communities are only accelerating it. if the communities were shut down, it would be a legitimate blow to the strength of the ideology and the spread of its language. if the subreddit was shut down specifically, and any attempts to resurrect it, then a few of them might migrate elsewhere, but for the most part it would be dead on reddit. and the thousands of men that are set to be converted would go on to doing what they were doing before, being sad in their solitude and then going any number of different paths from there, some positive some negative. i really believe that angry young men are driven to right-wing extremism when the opportunity of a community is right there.

and incels in particular is such a trap. no one who subscribes to it is just dabbling in it. there are a lot of trump people who will stick their toes into t_d, post there a few times and then i guess get bored with the act. it's like a lot of the other meme boards that are built on doing the same joke over and over. incels is a whole identity, it's degrading and miserable and you have to commit to it. culty.