Incel Insanity - An Open Letter to All You Sad, Sad Men

Image by ღ ♠ Aegir ♠ ღ @ Flickr

Do you know why I hate incels? And by that, I mean, utterly despise them? Because I was lonely, gawky, frustrated and isolated too, but I didn't use that as an excuse to be, frankly, an overly entitled twat.

Every Saturday night, I'd go to a pub, get drunk, hope to get chatted up, and go home disappointed. And do you know what went through my head as I flopped back home up a steep hill? It wasn't that women were all whores, or that I was somehow a neglected genius and hero of my own tale

It was that I was crap, and since they had the right to choose whomsoever they wished, there was a brutal truth being elucidated here. I wasn't what they wanted, and why would they want to choose me anyway? I had no right to anything.

Boys will be Boys

Now, before you all start screaming 'Cuck!', 'Fag!' or 'Beta!' at me, know this. It's not necessarily your fault if you're alone. It's not proof that you are worthless. But it does mean that you aren't what other people are looking for. And that might be because you suck, or down to a myriad of other factors.

They don't choose you. And why should they? It's their choice, not yours. As I staggered up that hill each night, I knew the problem was me, but I couldn't get away from me either. What to do? You have to accept that you can't do everything.

In fact, I knew the answer anyway. I had a fair few women who were seriously attracted to me at various points in my life, but I rebuffed them. The pattern became predictable. Either I felt they weren't good enough -  for ME!?! - or my shite-or-flight reaction had taken hold.

In truth, it was because I was scared. It was easier to be rejected than accept being desired, loved, by another. It was my fault. It was easier to hang around pubs and be ignored. I regret the distress I caused, but that doesn't undo the harm done, and never will. Contrition will not wipe the slate clean.

I was crap and I was unloved. My only real role models were my arsehole parents, at that time tearing themselves apart in a really nasty Dad-Screaming-Cunt-Down-The-Phone divorce. And I didn't really know how to function socially. Alas, and alack, the poor victim.

Burn The Witch

But once again, the problem was me. And when you can't function as a rounded human being, why the cocking hell should anyone else be expected to compensate for that? You are not some handsomely wrought, granite yet tragically overlooked apogee of masculinity.

You're an angry loser reinforcing and being reinforced by other angry losers in the High Temple of Angry Loserdom. You are proving your detractors right, and frankly, I can think of plenty of people who'd do far more with your life if they had the chance.

You're cowards too - because only a coward avoids self-reflection.

I did a lot of self-reflection as I flopped up that hill. Nature weeds out its runts. Was I a runt? I felt like one. But I couldn't be anything else. Time and again, I reminded myself that I couldn't help being a runt, but it was how I chose to deal with that which defined me. I was neither a unique and wondrous child of God nor a motile pile of dog turds. I was mediocre. I learned to endure because that was the right thing to do. Giving into spite, delusion, hatred... That was pathetic.

Tits Oot For The Sads

The world is full of pretty girls. And not-so-pretty girls, and ones in-between, and... None of them are your birth right. You don't have a birth right. You may or may not die alone. Plenty of people do. This neither excuses nor ennobles you. Loneliness and self-doubt is every bit as much an aspect of your humanity as hope, joy and aspiration. Perhaps more so, because your mortality, your failings, defines you in a way some are desperate to run away from.

I once even wondered if my wretched state wasn't a rich seam waiting to be satirised. For a while, I toyed with the idea of a fictional industrial black metal band, consisting of Billy No-Mates who had foresworn women and were trying to get them replaced with gynoids and artificial wombs.

Their albums would consist of wall to wall songs demanding that their fans would reject women in all their forms, like latter day militant monks, and await the day they would finally be free, presumably by a bit of casual femicide. It appealed to my black humour and amusement at the loopier end of the human spectrum. The joke, like most modest proposals, would be on them, of course.

"Nah", I thought, shelving the idea. It's too blatant and unsubtle, and you'll probably get some lunatic who takes it seriously. Think of all the idiots who misread Fight Club or took Ghostwatch seriously. I was worrying about the Republic of Gilead before it became fashionable. No, into the waste paper bin it went...

Sutcliffe Jugend

Then a few decades later, I started reading about the Incel movement, and its fellow travellers in the PUA and Alt Right scenes. I'd already noted latent trends in the festering primordial cesspit of 4Chan, where lots of keyboard warriors had started creating the noxious echo chambers Stephen Duncombe had warned us about way back in 1997. Gamergate, however, with its rampant witch hunts and hysterical (geddit?) pursuit of ideological foes was nonetheless a shock to me. I couldn't believe people could be so vile.

Were there really as many weirdos like me out there? And if so, had they really gone so far as to give into their resentment and frustration, to become the comedy misogynists I'd once rejected as too silly an idea for a story? Why hadn't they learned the humility that is the only benefit of being a loser? Why hadn't they learned the only answer to hardship was decency? I wasn't ennobled by my loneliness, of course. But I didn't choose to be brutalised by it.

The truth was that I was never alone. There have always been runts like me; they were just hidden and isolated. They still are, or would be if it wasn't for that great double-edged sword, the World Wide Web. But extreme misogyny was always there, if you knew how to look. Serial killers like Peter Sutcliffe leapt to mind, alongside the authorities refusing to take him seriously for as long as he stuck to killing 'whores'. Or the Montreal Massacre, where feminism was somehow to blame for the killer's shortcomings and, not, y'know, the traits that made him want to shoot people in the first place.

Perhaps the really aim of all the woman hatred, the relentless finger pointing and melodrama, is that it means never having to face what you really are. Elliot Rodger was a wretch, a pathetic Walter Mitty made significant only by lax gun laws, the slaughter of people who couldn't fight back, and any number of sad cases and closet psychopaths who fawned over him. People always side with bullies - and what else is someone who causes pain and misery to others, but a bully? Strip away the mewling self-pity, straw feminists and enabling, and what you have are rogue males who haven't quite got the guts to have a fight outside a kebab shop.

Forever Alone (and for good reason)

Perhaps, just perhaps, you exist on the margins of humanity because you lack humanity. You can't be a threat to others, and then expect them to embrace you. Because, in truth, that is all you are - a threat, radicalised madmen fawning over each other's dysfunction. Try being gay, black, disabled or even - heaven forfend! - a woman, and then, perhaps, you may have grounds for complaint.

Sadly, for me, I never became a Wizard. I am happily married now, and I even dare to say I have had some success in my life. Resentment and hatred never brought me those things. Nor were they handed to me on a plate. Sometimes, it works out, and sometimes it doesn't. If you can't accept that, turn off your computer and do something useful with your life. The Web is just making you worse.

And that's why I really hate you lot. So many people have been marginalised like you claim to have been, been utterly shat upon by the world, demeaned and belittled, yet they have never given into violence or hatred. If you have been as mistreated as you claim, why are you indulging in the very hatred, prejudice and oppression you're always bemoaning? It's just a ruse. You're dross. You ain't entitled to shit. But we are entitled to hold you in the lowest contempt. As you so readily prove, loserdom is not inflicted. It is achieved.