This article, like 99% of mainstream arricles, are obviously anti incel. However, it doesn't go "incels only want virgin 10/10 Stacie's" and actually touched on some points we have, including going to our forum to gather posts.
Interpretations of the past are often used either implicitly or explicitly to justify political goals, beliefs, and worldviews. There is a wider conservative political narrative of imagining the past as an ideal and utilising it to critique the current era as too liberal. This involves presenting the past as warm, communal and caring, contrasting it with a cold and individualistic present. This popular and affective form of politicised nostalgia, theorised by Svetlana Boym as ‘restorative nostalgia’ concerned with returning to and rebuilding the past, is visible in mainstream right-wing populist movements as well as far-right and male supremacist extremism. This political nostalgia has been thoroughly analysed in the context of far-right ideology and relates to both gender conservatism and a mythological idea of a past, ‘pure’ racial community.
Indeed, a racial volksgemeinschaft is more high trust and therefore caring and less individualistic, which only create more suffering.
When conservative ideas about gender are justified by arguing they are natural, they also gain value as morally right. For example, a common argument for women staying at home as mothers is that women are and have always been naturally suited for being stay-at-home mothers
That's the truth.
Since the 1970s, conservative actors and movements have presented the 1960s as an important watershed moment in history and culture. According to this narrative, the success of progressive social movements, such as feminism, radical left-wing politics, and the civil rights movement, ruined the ‘normality’ of conservative society and interrupted the natural course of history. This connects to the almost fetishising idealisation of the 1950s as a conservative utopia, one that many far-right and male supremacist movements long to return to.
Indeed, the 1960s have ruined the cultures around the world.
Incel discussions often present a heteronormative patriarchal system based on nuclear families, monogamy, and individuals committing to their ‘looksmatches’ (partners on a similar level of attractiveness) as natural and normal. However, this societal system is also presented as a way to control women’s purportedly ‘natural’ tendencies towards hypersexuality, hypergamy (seeking sex and relationships with the most attractive men possible), and shallowness.
I'm surprised that someone ACTUALLY gets it. "Conservative" social norms were there for thousands of years to control hypergamy
Another way of engaging with the past, different from the explicitly political nostalgia described above, is a more banal nostalgia reminiscent of an ideal 1990s and 2000s pop culture. Discussants long for their own childhood and youth – a time when life was simpler, and they had not yet realised their future would be hopelessly lonely. Banal everyday nostalgia is often less political than restorative nostalgia; we like to reminisce, idealise the past, buy retro products and rewatch old films and TV shows.
2000s was the best fusion of technology and culture. I personally think we should ban social media and dating apps and smartphones should be only used for simple communications, as seen in 3G era where most communications were done via text messages
the broad ideas of victimhood, hopelessness, and everything inevitably ‘getting worse’ align well with nostalgia. The causes of this worsening situation are largely believed to be feminism, social media, and the appearance-focused nature of online dating. Even everyday discourses of music, video games, and movies connect to the idea of modern culture as decadent and ruined by feminism, reflecting contemporary culture wars. According to these incel narratives, in old movies, there is no “political agenda”, whereas there are too many “strong female characters these days”. Life before social media and feminism is seen as ideal and modernity as suffering.
DEI, ESG, forced diversity etc etc. Also, she made a good point about online dating being appearance based.
This connects to both their specific perceived victimhood and a wider experience of economic and social uncertainty among young people, who feel unfairly impacted – with good reason – by the increasing demands of the neoliberal capitalist system, as well as the ongoing climate catastrophe. A general form of pessimism typical to online discussion culture, dubbed a “landscape of precarity” by Eliisa Vainikka, and the more specific incel collective victimhood leads many incels to paint dystopian images of censorship and mass arrests awaiting them in the near future. They present women and attractive men as the winners in this new world, where, they claim, unattractive men face ever-worsening marginalisation and oppression.
Indeed! Leftists call this enshittication, Marxists call this as being evidence for their theory of "the tendency of profit to fall" which I subscribe to, right wingers call this globohomo.
the focus is often not on the past itself. It is used to justify the incel worldview of everything getting worse and their own unchangeable fate being only suffering and oppression. These narratives of a catastrophic present and dystopian future, and the fantasies of different ideal timelines just barely out of reach, all contribute to the overarching idea of collective incel victimhood. This victimhood identity helps bind together contradicting narratives in a way that does not need to be coherent and logical to be attractive. The idea of victimhood is central to many extremist movements and ideologies, and it can fuel political violence. While claims of victimhood should be approached critically, the feeling of being an outsider should be acknowledged without legitimising the affective idea of male victimhood or supremacism.
Indeed, for many young men, there is no future. We need to acknowledge this problem, inevitably, we will also acknowledge the problems of secularist, liberal norms as it is inevitable. Open criticism towards Israel and Jews were considered extrem taoboo, yet, it is being preached by leftists like no tomorrow.
Overall, the article is anti incel and gives incorrect solutions such as "deradicalization" rather than social changes. But like I said, when you point your finger at the problem, it is only a matter of time before people find out who is responsible for it, and the people will not hold back in their voices.
