
Incels: America’s Newest Domestic Terrorism Threat - smacktoward
https://www.lawfareblog.com/incels-americas-newest-domestic-terrorism-threat
======
kerkeslager
"Love the sinner, hate the sin" needs an update to the modern age.

It's easy to get disgusted and frustrated with "incels", as they are
_constantly_ saying reprehensible things. But ostracizing them from society
doesn't fix them, it just results in worse problems like this. I think we need
to focus on rehabilitating incels so they can rejoin society as healthy
members, rather than ostracizing them.

At a more fundamental level, I think that our culture focuses too much on
blame. Identifying the person who caused the problem doesn't solve the
problem. We should focus on fixing the problem, not on blame. Yes, incels'
suffering is mostly self-inflicted, but they are still suffering, and if we
don't address that suffering, the suffering spreads.

Perhaps the answer is to start treating "incel-ism" as a disease. I don't know
if the disease model really applies here, but I think it's at least worth
investigating.

There's a balance to be had here: we need to be compassionate, but not naive.
Some incels can't be in society because they are a danger to society, and our
current ability to treat their suffering has limitations.

~~~
pizza234
> Perhaps the answer is to start treating "incel-ism" as a disease.

There is already! Although the specific incel issue is not classified in
psychology (AFAIK), a person with such severe symptoms can be classified as
suffering from relationship and/or social anxiety disorders.

I think that the incel problem has a very specific issue in the fact that it's
culturally ostracized; people who suffer from it are labeled as shy and lazy.

I'm not sure from which angle the social problem (I refer to the
ostracization) should be attacked.

Research on this subject started in the 80s, but there has never been a
(significant) following. The rational wiki has a good introduction:
[https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Love-shy.com#Love-
shyness_as_a...](https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Love-shy.com#Love-
shyness_as_a_mental_condition).

If the condition was officially recognized, I think it would be a very good
start, as probably people suffering from it would have a clear reference;
right now, since there isn't any, it's very easy to fall into toxic
subcultures.

~~~
allovernow
>I think that the incel problem has a very specific issue in the fact that
it's culturally ostracized; people who suffer from it are labeled as shy and
lazy.

The issue is that society has a fairly strict range within which social,
psychological, and physical features are considered attractive, and some
subpopulation will always fall outside of these norms - but how society values
these outliers changes over time and given the consumer, status driven culture
in the U.S. there may be more of them now and they're being rejected worse
than ever...but this increase in the trend is just speculation in my part.

Regardless, for some people, no amount of therapy is going to make them forget
that they have suffered the collective judgement of society and weigh in at
the bottom of the attractiveness scale, with little realistic hope of
improving their rating without wholly changing appearance, personality, and or
interests.

~~~
big_chungus
> Regardless, for some people, no amount of therapy is going to make them
> forget that they have suffered the collective judgement of society and weigh
> in at the bottom of the attractiveness scale, with little realistic hope of
> improving their rating without wholly changing appearance, personality, and
> or interests.

Therapy won't actually solve the problem, in any case. Therapy doesn't
magically procure a wife. Typically, this problem has been solved by sending
lots of young men to go die in a war. Other times, a plague has helped, though
that tends to kill more evenly.

~~~
pmoriarty
_" Therapy won't actually solve the problem, in any case. Therapy doesn't
magically procure a wife."_

Not having a wife is not the problem. There are plenty of people who live
their entire lives single but don't turn in to hateful, bitter, violent trolls
and assholes.

It's doubtful that getting married will turn these bitter, violent trolls
around.

There's an entire culture that these people are part of which encourages these
sorts of attitudes and behaviors, and simply getting married is unlikely to
change their culture.

~~~
big_chungus
> There are plenty of people who live their entire lives single

Most of them do so by choice.

I agree that there are a few bitter, violent trolls. Their behavior is used to
dismiss an actual societal issue. Nobody really knows what society is supposed
to do with men these days, especially in the communities where the
"traditional" roles don't exist any more.

~~~
pmoriarty
If what you say is true and the bitter, violent trolls are only a small
minority of the larger incel community, and if that community wants a
peaceful, reasonable dialogue with the larger world, then that community is
going to have to clarify its position as being distinctly different from the
trolls and denounce them rather than encouraging them, glorifying them, or
treating them like martyrs.

~~~
kerkeslager
1\. That's not what the post you are responding to said.

2\. I don't care whether incels want a peaceful, reasonable dialogue with the
larger world. I want to solve the problem, and you should too. Starting a
dialogue is a necessary part of solving the problem, and waiting for people
who don't feel they can talk to the rest of the world to start a dialogue is
not going to work.

Ostracizing angry, lonely people is a great way to make them angrier and
lonelier.

"They're the one's with the problem, they should be the ones to apologize" is
not an effective strategy.

------
shrubble
From the article: 'the death toll now stands at more than 50 people ' (over a
few years)

[https://crimeresearch.org/2015/01/do-more-children-die-of-
ba...](https://crimeresearch.org/2015/01/do-more-children-die-of-bathtub-
drownings-than-of-accidental-shootings-no/)

Annual rate of 69 children each year that die from... bathtubs.

Seems a bit overblown...

However...

Anytime you have large numbers of unmarried men, you have social problems.
This holds across multiple societies and multiple cultures across millennia.

~~~
minimuffins
Bathtubs aren't a novel cultural formation. Bathtubs also don't kill people on
purpose because of beliefs they've recently adopted.

Personally I think it is reasonable that we talk more about incel killings
than bathtub killings.

The problem is not that incels pose an objective risk to my safety or yours
but that their presence signals some kind of pretty serious systemic
dysfunction. How does an ideology like that take hold on any kind of scale, is
a question worth trying to answer.

~~~
Gibbon1
My bullshit theory is crimes have three potential 'against's'

Against a person. Against a community. And against the state.

Mass shootings check all three boxes hard.

------
mdni007
Prostitution needs to be legal

~~~
arthurcolle
Once the majority of boomers start to shuffle off their mortal coils, I
suspect many social issues that are perceived as "divisive" at present will
immediately become accepted, and things like this will just come to pass.

Drug legalization, sex work, perhaps gambling & sports betting, etc. However,
I could see holdouts if some subsegment of the post-boomer generations
continue to hold attitudes that "vice industries" are immoral, which is fair.
I imagine that the later generations will just adopt an "I don't care, let
people do what they want" attitude.

~~~
ses1984
I'm guessing you're pretty young, late twenties at the latest.

~~~
arthurcolle
You're absolutely right, I'm 27 - turning 28 in February. Do you care to
comment on what gave you this impression, and, more specifically, why you feel
it has any relevance on what I wrote?

I understand that I made a pretty broad statement, but anecdotally, there are
so many different instances of boomers denigrating choices of later
generations across many different buckets of choices - social, technological,
moral, cultural, political, psycho-sexual; and as I've lived my life, we've
seen rapid chances in societal behaviors that just make me feel that as every
successive generation comes into existence, you just get that bit-flip for
that dimension of the 'collective consciousness' (not woo-woo collective
consciousness, but just the aggregated set of behaviors and interactions
manifested by the people that exist today, that came to pass based on the pre-
existing cc from their parents and those that influenced them, etc).

Psychologically, it's funny, because there is this commonly cited concept of
'teenage/adolescent rebellion' where, despite the love and adoration you feel
for your parents, there develops a kind of rift in response to the rules
imposed vs. what you immediately want to do/desire to explore the world
without the parental control structure that was imposed previously. Perhaps
the generational shifts that are seen are a consequence of this - maybe not,
I'm just thinking out loud here. But yeah it is an interesting topic.

Care to comment further on what gave you this impression? I'm intrigued.

~~~
ses1984
Put yourself in the shoes of someone who was 30 in the year 1990 and they
might have had the exact same outlook you have now.

Try again for 1960.

Society has changed in the 60 years for sure, but not always in the way you
predict, or the way you want.

------
orf
You can view some of the more... repostable incel content here:
[https://old.reddit.com/r/IncelTears/top/?sort=top&t=month](https://old.reddit.com/r/IncelTears/top/?sort=top&t=month)

Seems like this is the natural progression of the "kneckbeard" stereotype,
when mixed with more extreme online content and teenage sexual angst. Not sure
how you can combat this kind of ideology.

~~~
HeWhoLurksLate
From the mods on a post:

> _Comments are locked because I got 10 reports of seperate people calling
> each other “fags” come on guys. We aren’t 12 anymore be an adult and stop
> using homophobic insults. Everyone who used a homophobic slur was banned for
> 30 days.

Stop that._

Wow. Apparently the moderation team is pretty important in deciding the path a
sub goes down.

~~~
allovernow
Or there's a sizable minority attached to this subject with legitimate
concerns but an opinion which runs very counter to what is socially acceptable
on Reddit. If you start paying attention, you can already tell which articles
on Reddit are likely to be locked for this reason. Reddit is practically
designed to amplify dogma into an echo chamber - that goes for how power among
mods and admins is distributed and how the voting algorithm determines comment
ordering and visibility.

Incels are the new nerds. They're safe targets for ridicule, even though their
lot ultimately sucks for reasons not entirely within their control. Telling
someone who has trouble dating to learn to date is like telling a socially
awkward, uncoordinated teenager to just "learn to play sports".

~~~
pmoriarty
Incels aren't simply people who have trouble dating.

Most people who have trouble dating don't turn in to bitter, hateful trolls
who glorify in violence against the people they desire.

------
joaomacp
This article treats the 'incel' phenomenon as a security threat, just like
ISIS and Al Qaeda, instead of looking at it as a social problem and trying to
solve it.

Doing this is the same as declaring 'war on drugs' instead of treating it as a
medical condition, and trying to fix addiction problems by medical campaigns.

I think the USA do this because they have a weak state, that can't really
steer people's social and mental health. I think the ideal approach would be
to look at how we can improve society, in order for 'incels' to stop existing.

Technology plays a big part as culprit. Speaking from my experience, watching
YouTube / Instagram / etc. fools my brain into thinking I have a social life,
and makes real social interactions feel harder, as they're messier. It makes
me socially anxious, because I almost never need to practice real-life
interactions.

I think the above happens to many young men today, and we should look at it as
a society and find / promote solutions.

------
scarface74
Just as a reference, the entire “Intel” movement started as a positive support
group before it morphed into its current state.

[https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-
all/76h59o](https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/76h59o)

------
The_rationalist
The root cause is a hard cold truth that should have far more visibility than
#metoo, in an ideal world.

www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-how-and-why-sex-differences/201104/why-
dont-women-ask-men-out-first-dates/

------
eplanit
Maybe sex robots can help with this issue?

~~~
wpietri
Probably not. If they were just lonely guys looking to get off, there are
already plenty of options, commercial and free. Ones that they either reject
or already use.

------
allovernow
>Although it was originally conceived as a site where lonely individuals of
both sexes could meet, exchange experiences, and provide support, both the
concept and its online manifestation were taken over by men complaining about
their own involuntary celibacy and debating the causes behind their
frustrations

Because dating is asymmetric and loneliness is much more pervasive among men.
It's incredibly frustrating that academics and media outright refuse to
acknowledge this fact! This article is an ideologically driven, sensationalist
dumpster fire.

~~~
wolfgke
> Because dating is asymmetric and loneliness is much more pervasive among
> men. It's incredibly frustrating that academics and media outright refuse to
> acknowledge this fact! This article is an ideologically driven,
> sensationalist dumpster fire.

Here an article who analyzes this phenomenon by the Gini coefficient
([https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Gini_coefficient&...](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Gini_coefficient&oldid=935239101)):

[https://quillette.com/2019/03/12/attraction-inequality-
and-t...](https://quillette.com/2019/03/12/attraction-inequality-and-the-
dating-economy/)

"On a list of 149 countries’ Gini indices provided by the CIA World Factbook,
this would place the female dating economy as 75th most unequal (average—think
Western Europe) and the male dating economy as the 8th most unequal
(kleptocracy, apartheid, perpetual civil war—think South Africa)."

------
mnm1
Right wing groups and Islamic terrorists have killed millions. Comparing
incels to them is frankly idiotic and ridiculous. That's like saying my one
server search engine can compete with Google's search infrastructure. The
words "terrorism" and "terrorist" are already almost meaningless. Let's not
make them completely meaningless. Not every crime is terrorism. These are not
organized groups perpetrating violence for a stated purpose, but fucked up
individuals randomly killing people. If this is terrorism, every shooting is
terrorism and the word becomes meaningless. Worse, it normalized actual
terrorism, like that perpetrated by right wing extremists, and makes that
indistinguishable from other crimes.

------
snagglegaggle
At the end the article foists everything upon mental health treatment. I see
no evidence that that will be enough. What if your life just sucks?[1] A
therapist can't snap their fingers and get you more money.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shit_Life_Syndrome](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shit_Life_Syndrome)

~~~
wyldfire
Life sucks ergo violence? No, therapy can help you cope.

~~~
snagglegaggle
My wants are inconvenient so roll over and die quietly? Doesn't sound
attractive.

------
3fe9a03ccd14ca5
There are a lot of troubled boys in this world growing up to be troubled men.

We’re passing through a season of men vilification. Changing this ideology as
a society is probably a good first step to creating the support programs we
need to help turn things around.

------
corporateslave5
Online dating has made it so basically all of the women are sleeping with the
top 10% of men. This is the new normal.

Edit.

This is also largely the view of incels. Forums where they talk about why they
can’t get girls. So everyone down voting my post can go stick their heads in
the sand.

Adding one more thing. Anyone that hangs out with an extremely tall and
attractive guy will be shocked how easy it is for them. It’s almost like
living in a different reality. Dating and sex are extremely opaque. You need
to run in different circles to understand what’s going on

~~~
ivraatiems
You're gonna need to provide some data on that, because that sounds like
absolute nonsense (potentially mixed with some misogynistic assumptions about
how women choose partners) to me.

~~~
ericmcer
The research does show women generally having a similar number of partners,
whereas some men will have 100s and others 0. Dating apps might exacerbate
this? Source is uhhh basic google search?

~~~
crystaldev
You're just learning that there are a handful of guys who will fuck anything?
Having hundreds of partners doesn't make you "top 10%."

