Blog

photo of me working at my desk on my laptop surrounded by musical instruments and general clutter

This is the place I work through unrelated phases of life for all to see and take away from. There are most definitely inconsistencies between posts, but that’s just an inevitable part of the growing process.

In lieu of a comment system, please send me an email, and I’ll either send a reply or post a response here for the common good.

All non-quoted text CC-BY-SA

what SSRIs do to a mfer

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poster in the style of chinese revolution propaganda with army soldiers on stage playing rock music and caption reading, “Propaganda - a blatant attempt to influence your musical taste.”

One can have a field day following conspiratorial thought to its logical conclusion and trying to avoid deception. As of late, that would include but not be limited to:

First, a friendly reminder that these are hypothetical extensions of a train of thought, and don’t reflect the opinions of the author verbatim. Anyone in the habit of thinking will have had little hints of these three ideas ruminating in their minds. Taking the time to articulate them is worthwhile, primarily because they destroy most of what people rest their laurels on and leave them with questions where they used to have answers. Take social anxiety out of the equation and all of a sudden, rural simple living seems like a cope and a close minded renunciation of what one’s family and community has built them up for (not that they should take others’ word as gospel, of course). If it’s any consolation, there are still a few conspiracies worth subscribing to that provide some ground:

[...]

incel 46 - risk it for the biscuit

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alternate timelines and explanations for a socially awkward anime protagonist

The optimist part of the incel would like to believe that his chronic emptiness will be ultimately productive by urging him to seek comfort and happiness in social situations in a way that solo hobbies can’t any longer. Sure, as of late, social interactions have gone wonderfully without any self-consciousness, and he’s sure that he’d thrive under any self-imposed challenges. The problem is that he’s not particularly motivated to seek these new risks, not out of fear but out of apathy. The problem before was that he envisioned the cons to be huge and numerous but the pros to be imaginary. All he’s done is get rid of the cons without having gotten to the core - convincing himself that there are people out there interested in deep, fulfilling relationships with him. The moment he does that, the pros will finally begin to outweigh the cons and he will begin to naturally talk to people. If he were to do that now, he’d still get in his own way by cutting conversation short, overthinking social cues, and keeping attention away from himself.

[...]

zoomer tourist owned epic style by landchads

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The world is so big I want to see. Literal translation of chinese characters to english as a caption. Anime girl holding sack of possessions on shoulder waving bye to the viewer with a stern face

It is currently eight in the morning and another bright sunny day in central Mexico on the second floor of my aunt’s apartment overlooking the town while I wait for my jet-lagged family to wake up. I am scribbling this on a quaint grade school notebook that cost eleven pesos at the corner bodega, as well as with a mechanical pencil I bought for 400 yen in Osaka the year before (peak globalism). All that said, here are a few takeaways from my trip so far.

[...]

the pirate's life

- In pursuit of a more pious life, I was reading a book on youth catechism the other day, and a passage from the section on the 7th commandment (Thou shalt not steal) stuck out to me. And then the realization hit me like a freight train - I've built my entire workflow of pirated media! For laughs, I thought about the prospect of going clean so to speak, and reflexively repudiated the idea. Was I really going to act in the interest of greedy corporations who always screw over the author/artist? [...]

muh japanese studies (piracy draft)

- I am currently in possession of about 1000 mp3s, a dozen or so ebooks, and hundreds of hours of Japanese anime ripped from YouTube and peer to peer torrenting networks, and haven't paid a cent for any of it. I have built my lifestyle around the critical consumption of media that I plan to store to some capacity indefinitely on my personal hard drives (in full in the case of music and the books, speech only in the case of the anime). [...]

innawoods plan pt 2 - concerns

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stock image of asian family in their living room nonchalantly next to a gigantic rock that takes up half the room

How do I know that moving into the woods is the right move for me? Would I be doing it for the right reasons? Let’s think about it.

As of today, my vision is to stay in my hometown until June of next year. That way, I stay true to my promise to help my friend with his musical endeavors for the remainder of his time in the U.S., and additionally, I carry my efforts to study music to their logical conclusion by obtaining my bachelor’s degree and honing my lifelong craft as musician. After that, I will use the money I have saved up so far, in addition to everything I manage to save between now and then, to:

[...]

incel 45 - what are your goals

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“Take me down to the ##USER CITY## where the grass is ##COLOUR## and the girls are ##USER_PREFERENCE##

The incel has fallen into a rather dangerous train of thought - there’s no point in socializing or talking to women because all the places his friends would take him to do those things automatically equates to women that aren’t worth the effort (hedonists in bars, institutionalized sheep in universities). Don’t get him wrong, they are most likely great to talk to and have value in and of themselves, so they’ll probably find a nice bar Chad or uni cuck to share good times with. At the same time though, if he holds out for when “the getting is better” in some other imagined utopia, he’ll be like a newborn calf trying to navigate the new world of dating. But I guess it isn’t too much of an issue since the women he is aiming for wouldn’t have too much experience either.

[...]

being a nerd 15 and 30 years ago

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Considering I haven’t learned or come across anything of value to share to you guys, let’s indulge my imagination for a moment. What would my current life look like in previous generations? Hopefully, doing so puts the sheer exponential speed of technological growth into perspective and makes us grateful for the amenities of today.

2008 - A lot would surprisingly be the same.

plastic and aluminum Gateway laptop from 2007 my first laptop - Gateway MT6705 (2007)

[...]

incel 44 - unfindable

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4 panel of Mr. Bean waiting in front of wheat field, checking watch, and getting bored

“why cant I get a girlfriend” why can’t your girlfriend get you

Well, for starters, the incel never goes out.

Why not?

Because being constantly in the public eye is more trouble than it’s worth.

What trouble is he referring to?

The incel has indeed sacrificed his precious time and put himself in uncomfortable situations before, and what did he get? The ratio is about 20 or so superficial friends he had the “privilege” of being nerds and wasting money with and has completely lost touch with, for every one or two actual friends. But still no partner. And since he didn’t particularly need more friends from the get go, so he considers this a net gain of zero.

[...]

innawoods plan ver 1

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What is my life narrative for the next ten years?

incel 43 - his people

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japanese middle schooler sitting at desk wearing two eyepatches over both eyes and striking a chuunibyou pose

Will the incel know how to stop being a beta male when the time is right (not going after women)? He tells himself that he makes the choice not to associate with anyone of the opposite gender, but is he just deluding himself? Left and right, he sees girls he considers cute hooking up with guys he knows personally that aren’t any more charming or charismatic than him, and while from the start he had solid reasons to dismiss said girls as worthwhile targets, he can’t help but feel helpless as life passes him by and the circle of life rotates around him. He’s always thought of his strategy as holding out for the payout of a lifetime and not being pointlessly distracted by passing fancies, but he figures at some point, he actually needs to do something - get out of the starting line, so to speak.

[...]

music for simple living

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old white male farmer looking at his computer screen confused at finding a city slicker on farmersonly.com

What is the role of music in a simple life - a life, say, in the countryside with the nearest pocket of more than 200 people at least a half hour away, without a big box store in sight?

Let’s, for the sake of cohesion, define a simple life as a life as free of technique as possible (technique in the sense Ellul1 laid out - any series of means that are established to achieve an end as efficiently as possible), then simple, traditional music is preferred.

[...]

incel 42 - the competition

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when you find a fellow weeb in real life and can now be degenerate retards together - two anime students dancing in the classroom

While comparing oneself to others is usually useless at best and counterproductive at worst, doing so is an inevitable part of the mating process. The market in the city and most highly populated towns is oversaturated, so even if the incel is able to stand his own ground by being a healthy, loyal young man, there are nerds who rely on modernity to bolster themselves up the tier list. People, to be fair perhaps unintentionally, crowd around anime, emo aesthetic, Disney, etc. to make and maintain personal connections. Effectively, he’s cornered by alpha chads and coked-up beta males out of a niche. And while it’s easy for the plain as white bread incel to conclude with some black pill statement like, “There is not someone for everyone. Love is not guaranteed,” he needs to interject that this is by no means a concession. His odds of finding someone whose time he is worthy of and vice versa is not zero, so his job is to stay the course and not succumb to shortcuts of short-term happiness - to continue to polish the rough edges of his personality and redirect negative trains of thought. There is no end in sight to this long, unglamorous road, but the payoff is immense, even if he fails.

[...]

peak innawoods tech

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electric guitar with really badly put together body of wooden slabs jutting out every which way

I was in a prepper mood, and began to think about what I would and wouldn’t be able to use after the collapse of civilization. Here is a non-exaustive table with some of the more drastic changes I can imagine, in no particular order. The headers refer to Kaczynsky’s [video] delineation of technology - left column being that which depends on a service grid or intricate parts that cannot be sourced by any one individual, and the right column being the opposite.

[...]

children and the internet

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Jesus, who is labelled “anime titties” is intervening between two business men in suits and acting as their liaison, who are in turn labelled “me, an innocent kid” and “the internet”

How do I straddle the fine line between shielding my future children from the degeneracy of civilization while at the same time, allowing them to learn from trial and error and reap the artisic benefits of music and the arts? What is my responsibility as father and creator? I relate a lot to God the father in that aspect - I cannot force my children to walk the good path nor expect them to fully see the merit in doing so until much later in life when they decide to embark on the same journey of being a good role model. Being accountable to my future offspring has really forced me to clean up my act and think longer term as to what I choose to spend my time doing.

[...]

incel 41 - what will this lottery ticket buy me?

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Engrish Messenger screenshot. I am bracup to you. Why you bracup whith me. Becows i am new boyfrndship. Ok talk care to your self. You live happines with yur new rilatoin. I go out your life and you don’t sadness. No becows. I am have new girlrand. You is chiting me. Angry emoji. If you is chiter than i am your teacher.

As a thought experiment, would the incel truly have any intention to be monogamous and faithful if he weren’t socially handicapped? And if not, wouldn’t that make his intention for seeking out someone as faithful as him inherently selfish? At first, this is a non-sequitur, but hear him out. Like a peasant suddenly coming across a windfall, would he just squander the loot and hurt himself and others irreversibly in the process? Would he have come to the same realizations about the nature of sex if he had had more ample opportunities growing up, or better yet, had stumbled into a meaningful partnership and been further along in life with children at a young age like many of his friends? Which version of him would be happier? If he believe that actions speak louder than words and that this fictitious version of him is the winner, does that make his current stance a compromise of sorts - a more neurotic (and probably just as misogynistic) take on the incel meme?

[...]

incel 40 - don't just do something; stand there!

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YouTube video titled, “15 Signs You’re a SNOOZER male (SUPER RARE) & Is it Better Than ALPHA?”

According to conventional wisdom, extraordinary outcomes require extraordinary measures. Makes sense, right? According to the same cultural idiom, doing the same thing and expecting different results is insanity, or just plain irrational. Therefore, the best way for the incel to achieve his life long goal is to be proactive and do things that he wouldn’t have thought to do before.

[...]

ode to radio

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denpa - the official no illegal emission mascot of Japan

Earlier this week, I completely overlooked time zones when I set out to record online radio using my remote server. My Debian server is set in UTC and I put all of the times in my crontab (scheduler) in local time, therefore missing everything I wanted to hear. I feel like a donut for taking so long to notice, but I might as well take this teaching opportunity to detail a use for computer scheduling that I haven’t seen documented anywhere else and that you could benefit from.

[...]

bugmen

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cat being eaten by fish plushie

“We have been tasked by corporate to read this notice to you in its entirety, so please save all your questions for the very end”

Oh boy, another outbreak of the meme virus. Isn’t being in a cramped, unventilated office the worst place to have this announcement, then? Hopefully, we get paid to go home early like last time.

The monotonous, sterile reading continued, eyes glued to the page. “We here at Generic Retail pride ourselves on our positive work culture and attention to our individual associates…”

[...]

an egg and half of the other

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giant-stick-figure-wearing-armor-protecting-little-stick-figure-shielding-him-from-arrows-asking-him-what-he-wants-for-breakfast

Jose blew wind into the inside of his shirt as he waited for his ice to deposit. The TV haphazardly installed in the crammed kitchen was blaring after school cartoons in a vain attempt to cover the traffic noise right outside the window he left wide open. Jose served himself a glass of freshly squeezed grapefruit juice - the one good thing about the musty April air. Any moment now, his dad would get back from work, so he decided to have a quick snack and get to homework - at least pretend that he was a good student and not get yelled at for being a lazy idler. He could be working in the room, but today he had to bite the bitter pill and start a conversation and neither could escape if it started in the kitchen.

[...]

incel 39 - cumbrain

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When a girl makes eye contact with you for more than 0.5 seconds. Hand about to slam button saying “She wants me” meme.

As of late, the incel resolves to never talk about his plight with women with his therapist ever again, and instead challenges himself to bring up other more big-brain topics to his sessions. To accomplish that, he needs to do two things - minimize the instinct to simp and carefully take note of the thoughts and concerns that populate that now empty space in his mind so he has enough material to cover that oh-so-menacing 50 minute slot. A few ideas:

[...]

memes

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girl awkwardly smiling in front of computer saying, “Hehe, everyone will laugh at my memes…”

One unforseen consequence of cutting off the internet is that you experience a paradigm shift in how you spend your time. People like to follow the path of least resistance, so if a luxury like reddit meme pages or ASMR is all of a sudden harder to get a hold of, the most sustainable reaction would be to lessen or eliminate the importance of these luxuries in your life. Case in point - I’ve found myself feeling increasingly stupider doing this kind of “off the cuff” rummaging of feeds and pages, and increasingly sticking to my laundry list of music to download and emails to send. Telling someone to have fun is the best way to ensure they won’t have fun.

[...]

backup

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Windows blue screen of death sad emoji. AAAAAAAAAA is 20% complete

I need to get my backup situation in order to avoid wasting time.

I ended up nuking my installation of pacman about halfway through the month trying to free up space on my paltry 64 GB drive, and I spent about a week on and off trying to fix it only to give up and nuke my otherwise perfect Arch Linux installation. Luckily, I had my home partition separate from the root partition, so I didn’t have to pointlessly migrate my files to a scratch disk (that I didn’t even have) and back. Thankfully, the problem was fixed, and getting back to a workable environment took only an afternoon.

[...]

music discovery

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little manga girl (Yotsuba) putting on headphones and screeching in horror

A problem I’ve run across in my music library is that I would add every new song that even remotely caught my attention, and unsurprisingly enough, they end up boring and annoying me in shuffle mixes not long after. Over the past two years, I’ve trimmed down my library of 3000 songs to about 800 or so that are interesting enough to play fully through and worth sharing at parties or long car rides.

[...]

dumbsmart phone

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3 military men working on a portable phone switchboard

When I wasn’t off doing real life stuff, how have I filled my time this past month?

For one, I’ve eased off the monke, innawoods mantra and changed back to my 2017 smartphone as my daily driver. The straw that broke the camel’s back was a strange glitch with the Nokia 225 that cut off predictive text halfway through a word if a text was received during typing. As much as I enjoyed flexing on people’s iPhone 47Smax2+funkymode and its tumor growth of cameras, the threshold for this lifestyle meme was always functionality, and I don’t see anyone coping with such a major oversight.

[...]

. by koronba

- Technology, and the internet in particular, has lowered the barrier of entry for new composers and given them a playground of sorts to carve niches and rapidly deconstruct and build off of existing ideas. Here is the story of an otherwise silly utau song that is more than meets the eye. [...]

incel 38 - horny isn't a personality

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guys look i’m horny. guys i’m suuuper horny. isn’t funny that i’m saying that i’m horny. guys lol i’m horny horny posting lmfao. super horny. isn’t saying that i’m horny for the 300th time super funny

Being more mindful of the words and ideas he chooses to share seems like the incel’s next step in becoming autonomous and losing his dependence on the male instinct. Being horny is not a unique personality trait, and nobody really cares no matter how close they pretend to be to you. For shits and giggles, he wonders how far he’d get in convincing someone he’s asexual - akin to the way baseball players train with overweight bats to make game day easier. He could sure as hell try, and rectify his arsenal of small talk along the way.

[...]

incel 37 - MID TWENTIES SPEEDRUN ANY%

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text thread. wyd. nothing. u. same bored lol sits by u farts omg so sorry. lol. blushes and smiles shits pants aggresively I drank milk today. photo of extra virgin olive oil

List of every reason the incel doesn’t talk to women he likes:

The more astute of you might have begun to suspect that the incel is simply deflecting his anxieties about himself on other people. But whatever the cause, in his interest of following the golden rule, he wouldn’t want someone to be on his back with unsolicited advice and strict standards to uphold, so why would any sane person want the same for themselves?

[...]

incel 36 - kawaii surplus

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smiley holding duck while tearing up as if holding something precious

Is a positive yet awkward social disposition all it takes to trigger the incel’s sympathetic response? According to a random ten second conversation he hears between a participant and a socially-handicapped but well-meaning volunteer, the answer is yes. In a strangely optimistic way, that means he should have no problem abating his thoughts and putting off the cringy first steps until the time is right. That is to say, he’s not missing out on once-in-a-lifetime chances every waking day like he originally thought. There is no need to feel FOMO and much less reason to shame himself for not treating dating like a game of whack-a-mole.

[...]

the American educational system

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wall eyed cat with broken limbs being the school

I was sitting in a lackluster history class earlier this morning that nobody had cared enough to do the reading for, and that the teacher felt the need to monopolize with his irrelevant political takes, when I felt a sudden tinge of indignation and disillusionment at the state of higher education around me. With my classmates fervently typing away on their Discord server complaining about the class all around me, I was compelled to think back to my own experiences with school.

[...]

incel 35 - herbivore men

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grade school girl smiling with crayon dust around her cheeks handing you a red crayon and saying, “Here. I saved you the red one”

She really has no sex appeal. The incel would feel silly for even entertaining the notion. It’d be like courting a little girl with how restless and fidgety her resting state is, and he isn’t about that lifestyle. Poetically enough, the very thing that allures him to her is the very reason he doesn’t feel it socially appropriate to advance anything. Any small talk he makes with her would, in the back of his mind at least, be under the pretext of eventually taking the plunge and asking her out. He can’t imagine talking to her, or any woman for that matter, without this intention, and I’m sure this intention would be painfully obvious to anyone within earshot of him. And while he intellectually knows that there’s no real consequence of having his intentions known, he doesn’t feel it to be true.

[...]

off grid return to monke - progress

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two slavic boys playing solitaire in the middle of the night on a crt monitor being held above a hole in the ice

What does a lifestyle of not having home internet and using a feature (read: dumb) phone as a daily driver look like?

Pros:

Annoyances followed by solutions/adaptations:

[...]

incel on the perc - 34

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Yu-gi-oh anime screenshot. Holding bottle labelled meds. Captions read, “Take them.”

Something tells the incel that if he takes his stimulant medication while seeing someone, the resulting tunnel vision would make him get in his own way more often. That alone is giving him good reason to stay off his meds - peace of mind. In actuality, when he thinks about his state of mind when off his medication, he is amazed at how little he thinks about women. Sure, he has his favorites, but they don’t occupy as much brain time as women (or one or two in particular) do. His time in college is pretty uneventful in that aspect as well, with no one going down in the books as “the feared one” like in grade school.

[...]

incel 33 - stop cooming

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Katagiri-san manga. Manipulative girl wants to date spineless boy and fix him. Boy runs away. She calls out, “Don’t run away, you shit.”

The incel could start writing something cringy and self-pitying like “It’s the same thing every time” or “How do I stop the cycle?” to open a journal entry, but then he realizes that he’s actually known the road to enlightenment, albeit uncomfortable and painfully unglamorous, for the past few months now and simply refuses to take it - stop cooming. To clarify, just what “cycle” is he hellbent on stopping? That would be the fixation on a sexual object and the delusion of playing out some role set out for him by fate or a higher being to shoot his shot and take what is “rightfully” his.

[...]

new website

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pikachu with eyes, nose, cheeks, and mouth all stacked from top to bottom of face like bad css

I finally got around to setting up my own website and email service, in hopes of achieving a fraction of the aloofness and sovereignity of bill wurtz or Luke Smith. Jumping through the hoops was fun in its own right, and prospects were bright, until I got to thinking about what exactly would furnish the site. My original plan included transcriptions of my favorite underrepresented pieces of music, but a few search engine searches revealed how rigid and inescapable copyright laws were in the US and Japan. I could certainly get away with a Laxity piece or two, but there’s no sustainable source of content to be had there.

[...]

incel 30 - I'M NOT CRYING, YOU'RE CRYING

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What are some “guy secrets” girls don’t know about? The average guy is so starved for positive attention that a simple compliment is enough to get him interested in you.

It really doesn’t take much for the incel to start daydreaming about a girl. With just the slightest deviation from the social script (Hello, how are you, bye, etc.), he already begins to question her intentions and to entertain notions of being closer to her. He’s so deprived of affection that the slightest hint of generosity will set off a domino effect of both good and bad feelings.

[...]

Luke Smith

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yes, redditards, no nut november is over. Destroy dick december is over. How about we start Join Jesus January? with Obi Wan from Star Wars as the picture.

I have a tendency to become a fanboy of certain people or franchises, and the most recent reincarnation of this is my consumption of the majority of Luke Smith’s content. Granted, most of this consumption is mindful and towards practical or personal goals, but I’m not quite able to shake off some cringe at doing so. This wouldn’t be the first time I’ve let someone’s virtual words affect my real life; I called myself atheist after watching George Carlin and I gave myself permission to shave myself bald in honor of DT (Derek Taylor) and his stoicism. This time around, I’m letting some conservative indo-european elitist in the woods influence me into nerfing my cell phone, frantically memorizing the keyboard shortcuts of his custom linux distribution, and focusing my efforts into living the better part of my life in the rural countryside.

[...]

incel 25 - the rumor come out

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4chan green text. the guy who can’t even fantasize about girls anymore because it just makes him feel sad

When the incel tries to imagine himself in a relationship, he instinctively feels that he would be wasting their time and that sooner or later, they’d find fault with him and find someone else that can better satisfy their needs. Don’t get him wrong; he’s sure he could fulfill every other role in his life, but that’s just because in the case of friends, the relationship isn’t exclusive, and in the case of family, they’re stuck with him.

[...]

incel 22 - self destruction

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kanna kamui (loli dragon) from kobayashi’s dragon maid staring ominously from a sewer gutter

There’s no way to win. In an effort to ensure that the incel doesn’t get too emotionally close to any one woman, he keeps his distance and chooses his battles sparingly, guaranteeing him failure. Even if he was assured that a person liked him, he would probably hold them to a higher esteem than himself and fear the day he reveals his true self and loses again. And in the event that he perceives the love to be unconditional or skewed in his favor, he will feel suffocated and burdened immediately as time has proven.

[...]

off the grid (no internet)

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dwayne johnson’s mother witnesses his son join the internet and becomes an anime trans female

Why did I want to go off the grid?

Deep inside, there was this inclination that suffering through something no one else would dare do would in itself make me better than those around me. When friends and family would give me strange looks, that would only fuel my desire to follow the project through. On a more practical note, I felt that I would be able to unlock my true potential by ridding myself of the biggest distractor in my life.

[...]

incel 21 - socratic questioning

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The Simpsons. Homer showing off his new skinny physique to Marge. Front face says, “Never getting rejected.” Backside reveals that the skin behind him is simply tied together to make the front more taut and is labelled, “Never asking out.”

If the incel’s dating strategy is to act disinterested and to only consider behaving like an actual human being after getting obvious signs from the other side, and if his ideal type is someone as introverted and passive as him, he’s got another thing coming. All signs point to what the people around him have been trying to convince him of the entire time - not just standing there but rather doing something.

[...]

incel 20 - depression

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Kids have crushes. Men have girlfriends. Legends have depression.

Q: Why does the incel hate himself? A: He is inconsistent. Q: Who is he doing all this for - living and whatnot? A: For those who don’t give themselves permission to live. He, supposedly, is the spokesman for the insecure average Joe.

Just yesterday, the incel realized that the very women the incel is attracted to (anxious people he is secretly hoping to “save”) are the very kinds of people psychologists say he is incompatible with. As he suspected, he can’t trust himself to pick out a good partner. Why the hell would a secure type fall in love with anyone other than another secure type in the first place? Is this that invisible chemistry in the room his therapist tried to convince him exists? He wants to call bull, but he sees it happen to the average Joe every day.

[...]

ham radio 2 - real life edition

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img

Now that I’m back in school and with less time to dedicate to hobbies, what do I take away from having gotten my radio license?

Why did I get the license in the first place? The global pandemic had done away with about 6 months up to that point and I saw no point in signing up for online music classes. Therefore, I had all of this free time to myself that I had determined from the start would be dedicated to getting extra money and pursuing personal projects - the biggest one of course being the acquisition of Japanese. The Dunning-Kruger effect was rearing its ugly head and I hadn’t the patience nor the discipline to spend hours of my day on something I was guaranteed not to use for the foreseeable future (lock down).

[...]

10 reasons to stay away from social media

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This person tried to unlock your phone. Picture of cursed creepy Mark Zuckerberg smiling with bug eyes

Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat – the zoomer to boomer playgrounds freshly tilled and kindly bestowed to us by rich businessmen and their acres and acres of sweet server farmland. Increased communication has been and will continue to be the driving force for civilization, yet I’ve chosen to go off the deep end – well, not completely. The thirty day repent period that based Z u c c gives you after deactivating has finally elapsed, so as of today, the only account I hold in a centralized media platform is Reddit, which is serving as a nicotine patch for dank may-mays. Why don’t I have any social media accounts? After some thought, here are some patterns I’ve noticed that even the most avid of you users should relate to.

[...]

incel 19 - self hatred

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Senpai, you ran away again. Running away has become a habit of yours, hasn’t it. You really are scum. What are you going to do in life if all you do is run away? Get a hold of yourself.

When it comes to media and pop culture, the incel finds himself attracted most to codependent partners that rely on their victims’ inferiority to bolster themselves up and that serve as an outer voice for their interior dialogue (“You are scum” and the like), which worries him considerably. He reacts very positively to this archetype because that chain of events is the only way he can consistently imagine himself stumbling into a relationship. From the start, he doesn’t relate much to healthy relationships - however, get suicide and depression involved and now you’re talking. He has to be wary of this tendency because while the storylines in TV and anime always end up nicely resolved, there is a high likelihood he’ll end up hurt and even more desolate than when he started if he chooses to entertain the notion in real life.

[...]

incel 18 - why bother

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15 Movies With No Female Characters Whatsoever. Gigachad smiling with popcorn and 3D glasses

The incel sees no reason to have a platonic relationship with a girl. Everything he values in a friend, a guy can do much better (and without all that stress!), and that has been the pattern for all of his best friends so far. The only exposure to the opposite sex he gets is at work or through male friends; in both cases, he wouldn’t go out of his way to hang out with the girl in question but rather “puts up” with their presence to achieve an end (making a good impression at work or getting to the real star of the show - her male friends). Don’t get him wrong; he has had some great funny moments talking to some of his coworkers, but all pleasure on his end was derived from the performance value of his shtick and the illusion of being a charismatic Chad - that is, not out of two way human connection, and definitely never platonically. You could consider it mental masturbation.

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incel 17 - you go first

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Hello! I see we’re from the same city haha. you look like a nice person. would you like to be my friend? my friends call me Skyla. you can call my Skyla if you want, if you accept me of course. we can play Farmville! or if you want maybe we can go to the beach together someday and build sandcastles or talk about our day! hope I hear from you, cheers! friend request sent. Nice to meet you Skyla. I would love to be friends with you. thanks for the message. It means a lot coming from you. have a nice day

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incel 16 - codependency

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manga cover of 18 year old girl that has 22 year old filthy shut-in on a leash

Logically speaking, the incel should abhor the concept of codependent relationships - the kind usually built on the premise of scoping out one’s surroundings in search of someone pathetic and desperate enough to be interested, and of subsequently developing a sense of Stockholm syndrome towards each other for the purpose of giving meaning to their own lives. This premise is unlikely, illegal (depending on how far it goes), and most importantly, unsustainable in the long run. There’s a lot of name calling and ego destroying from one or both sides, as well as (understandable) resentment of these names that both bring up when they try and fail to leave and actually better themselves.

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incel 15 - ffs move on

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Sad Keanu Reeves sitting on a bench being consoled by Yotsuba, a 5 year old girl with green hair

The incel sees his grade school crushes in his dreams every few months or so, which he attributes to going in and out of similar headspaces as he was in back then. More precisely, he chooses to reopen his fixation not on the people themselves, but his projected image of the ideal partner loosely based on them that has sprouted legs and taken on a life of its own. He just uses the name and face as shorthand at this point.

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incel 14 - eye contact

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Gordon Ramsay locking eyes passionately with the Swedish Chef from the Muppets

The incel doesn’t quite know what to do with the feeling of helplessness he experiences when forced to be physically close to women, like packed public transit or small class/work rooms. The pattern of noticing that a girl is cute, avoiding eye contact, and trying to keep himself in check before conjuring any hopeless or baseless images in his head is nothing new to him, yet he has only now gotten around to describing this ingrained reflex. He imagines being so clingy and socially starved that he could very easily fall in love with anyone that is polite enough to give him the time of day or even bat an eye in his direction. At the very least, this is the script he was told by the internet as to how introverted shut-ins like him deal with the opposite sex - with his failure with his grade school crush serving as evidence. This script portrays him and his cohort as burdens to the people we choose to subject to our fantasies, and who is he to selfishly impose on the people around him who just want to study or work in peace?

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incel 13 - mental gymnastics

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The one girl who genuinely liked you, but you were too insecure about yourself that you didn’t think any girl would ever want to date you so you subconsciously push her away hurting her and yourself, but you’re also afraid if you did start a relationship your lack of experience would make you a terrible boyfriend anyway - And Other Hilarious Jokes You Can Tell Yourself Volume III

Instead of taking steps to increase his odds of meeting someone he could start a relationship with, the incel is instead doing mental gymnastics to justify not even trying and instead feeling content with the status quo. If he changes his mentality from “I’m falling behind and there’s nothing I can do about it” to “I haven’t had a reason to start a relationship, and I still don’t, and probably won’t for the foreseeable future, and that’s OK,” he is bound to be more content with himself.

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incel 12 - dirty jokes

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Talking to people your age who have their lives figured out. Video game screenshot of realistic looking business man next to cartoon looking render of shirtless Mario

Today, the incel heard a male coworker playing around with a double entendre about fingering with a female coworker, and a part of him was weirded out at how nonchalantly she went along with the joke. That being said, there was definitely a tinge of almost admiration at seeing people so secure in their sexualities - boxing on a whole other weight class. In his current model of the world - at least, the ones both traditionalists and post-uber feminists push - women don’t laugh at sex jokes and the ones that do are hoes, but this girl seemed pretty loyal to her boyfriend, so apparently there is more nuance to the situation.

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incel 11 - stay in your lane

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Thinking about the girl who brought Shadow the Hedgehog as her prom date. Retweet says: These standards for men are getting out of hand, man. I can’t compete with fucking Shadow the Hedgehog.

The incel has to remind himself to stay in his own lane and stop comparing himself to others when he sees a cute girl come up to him followed by their choice of a partner. The moment the partner comes into the scene, he gets to work micro-analyzing their chemistry and what the partner brings to the table. The outcome is a mixture of relief and disillusion - relief for noticing the passive, complacent roles a lot of these men are pigeonholed into (or worse, accept wholeheartedly), as well as disillusionment for determining himself the “loser” in this five second battle of the wits and realizing the wholesome values the person in front of him lives by and realizing how in the end, the random dude has done something the incel has never done - be considered worthy of someone’s intimacy. On second thought, he will always end up being loser with that definition of success.

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incel 10 - sociopathy

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4chan greentext. She doesn’t think about you anymore Anon. She can barely remember the sound of your voice. She betrayed you, and faked remorse. She already moved on to a new man. You bought into a lie Anon. You thought you could larp as a chad. Top comment reads, “haha joke’s on you, she never faked remorse”

There was a coordinator that used to work at the incel’s workplace who got suddenly fired a while ago. The reason she is on his mind is that the dissonance between the kind of person she was versus how easily he opened up to her makes him worry about his inner bullshit filter that he had grown to count on and makes him question his taste in women as a whole.

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incel 9 - inaction

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If Internet Explorer is brave enough to ask you to be your default browser, you’re brave enough to ask that girl out

Why doesn’t the incel ask the people he likes out?

ham radio

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smoking hot wife, adoring kids, dude must be one kickass ham radio operator

I struggle to find a place in my life for HAM radio and my fascination with all things radio. Every job or niche that I can conjure for a radio can be done much cheaper and more conveniently with the internet. Let’s list some:

I’m left with a basic knowledge of morse code, and I almost feel guilty for not having any outlet for the hours I have spent studying the letters. I tested myself two nights ago, and quite predictably, I had retained enough to get by and spring back up, but not enough to be able to show off to other people even as a proof of concept (the same can be said for my japanese and music study oof). At best, I can sneak in an easter egg into some content that 0.01% of any audience will have the tenacity or drive to interpret.

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incel 8 - values

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Ideal gf. has a vagina. or a dick i ain’t picky dm me

As for his woman situation, the incel has been slowly polishing his rhetoric, but hasn’t tried any major overhauls yet to his thought process. He can’t think of any reason a girl would go out with him, and every girl that he holds the light up against to inspect flaws he can’t overlook, most of which are not even their own fault but rather over compatibility with his personality or physical features.

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incel 7 - niche

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subversion of distracted boyfriend meme. Red dress girl is labelled “you” and Mario and Laura (the couple) are labelled “3D girls” and “2D girls”

It’s only after reading erotic comics that the incel realizes how socially irrelevant he really is in his circles. Whereas the protagonists in those kinds of stories have leads to follow, he, in contrast, lacks the foundation to go anywhere. Along the same vein, anytime he does deceive himself into seeing a lead, he start fantasizing and putting himself in positions where he can’t win. His female coworker rejected him, his classmate keeps her distance (from everyone, actually, so he can’t take that personally), and his clubmate got offended when he so much as hinted at affection. But in his constant effort to supress his incel mentality, he reminds himself that he is in full control of his behavior and that he is also to blame. He doesn’t fully know how, but this is what he has been inculcated into believing, so he’ll play along.

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incel 6 - vibes

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generic white man smiling while showing off red onesie raincoat

The incel doesn’t think he has the emotional intelligence or ability to convince someone that he would be a good partner. He keeps assessing his current relationships with people for possible leads to follow, but never finds them, or for that matter, any indication that his situation will change any time soon. But of course, he can’t expect everyone around him to change in his favor; as long as he keep on being the same person and keeping the same thoughts, nothing will change.

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incel 5 - projecting

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Sam Hyde with huge computer and photoshopped anime girls surrounding him

The incel is fixated on the idea of seeing the people he cares about and identifies with the most score with as many girls as possible. His hope is that he can succeed through them vicariously, and that if other people with similar (supposed) mental deformities can score, he should be able to as well. In short, him cheering them on and feeling visceral frustration at any hesitation they show is merely him confronting his own demons and not considering the other person’s feelings at all.

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incel 4 - apathy

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4chan greentext. be me. walk into gym wearing tiny 80’s shorts and fake mustache. see literal 9.5/10 girl running on treadmill with earphones in. walk up to her, motion for her to take her earphones out. tell her she’s alright looking but not really my type. walk away and leave the gym. hang out in my car in the parking lot, flying my rc helicopter all over the place. girl walks out. do 30mph fly-bys inches above her head and chase her running and screaming to her car. drink the rest of my nesquik and head home.

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incel 3 - empathy

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Little Girl Sings ‘You Are My Sunshine’ To Her Cat As He Passes Away. Damn bro, I mean like was the singing really that bad?

Can the incel love? Does he have the ability to love? He has been chewing on that question as of late.

Where does this notion come from? The incel has a notion that this isn’t a question most people coming of age typically ask themselves, as by that time, they have already committed themselves into lifelong relationships (platonic as well as romantic). Why is he asking in the first place? For starters, an inability to love would fill in nicely as a reason he is so inexperienced with girls, so he can’t help but lean in that direction just to get closer to some answer. But by far, what raises his suspicion the most is looking back at random thoughts and exchanges with people over the years.

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incel 2 - cereal and puzzles

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Lain from Serial Expermients Lain looking depressed and serving herself a bowl of Sour Patch Kids cereal with Mountain Dew for milk

People have no reason to like the incel. A relationship is based on mutual benefit, and people are going to look for a partner that checks enough boxes on their mental laundry list. Why would anyone go for him, when they can go for the smarter, funnier, more compassionate person right next to him? This is analogous to choosing what cereal to buy at the grocery store. Depending on what the person is in the mood for, they could go for the saccharine goodness of marshmallows, or they could suck it up and buy themselves a box of whole wheat because they are health conscious. In this scenario, the incel has yet to find out what audience he caters to, or what selling points he would have as a cereal box. After a trial period of sorts, companies are incentivized to discontinue any cereal brands that find themselves in this purgatory of sorts as the real crowd pleasers take the stage. In his case, natural selection is making the adequate market adjustments. The big takeaway is that he’s not entitled to find customers just because he exists; he needs to adapt himself and give the right people what they want.

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incel 1 - self improvement

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Engrish shirt. i am going to receive evefything i desine. all the light people and oppurtuneties fluw tu me. i heve made spece for them in my life.

The reason the incel is single is because he doesn’t put the effort into not being single. This is what he has decided to tell people when the topic comes up. Realistically, he can’t imagine a situation where he would have to justify himself like this, but at the very least, he has an all-encompassing answer to his dilemma that can be broken down into a logical hierarchy.

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incel 23 - move the goalposts

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when you miss the note on guitar but bend the string to make it sound ok. photo of person that was supposed to be a perspective shot of him holding the moon, but he misses, so his fingers are terribly photoshopped to be around the moon

At the closing of the year, the incel’s therapist challenges him to ask 5 random people how they’re doing daily. Unsurprisingly, he doesn’t end up doing the challenge, but this doesn’t have to be a problem if he doesn’t want it to be. He moves the goalposts so that reaching out to more people isn’t as mission critical as he originally makes it out to be. The adage of telling oneself a lie until it becomes the truth can go both ways; if he tells himself that his intention wasn’t to build a romantic connection, he’ll start believing it to be true. Hell, maybe if he goes far enough, he can turn into one of those hip asexuals with a poppin’ Tumblr page. Using another metaphor, he misses 100% of the shots he don’t take, but why should he want to play basketball in the first place? Sure, he might feel compelled to after seeing his friends make their shots, but he can play other sports and have fun in his own way that is true to his values. Granted, you could make the argument that his values are fundamentally flawed, but as his atheist therapist likes to point out, there is no absolute right in the world, and we’re back to square one.

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incel 24 - just git gud

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when you’re too shy to confess so you decide to just trick her into doing it. Anime problems require anime solutions

Because the incel is so critical of himself and his negative tendencies, he not only gets disillusioned when he doesn’t find someone as paranoid as him about not sucking, but he also pushes people away subconsciously with these unrealistic expectations that people either refuse or don’t believe they can meet. He has this quote he heard floating around in his head, and he doesn’t know if a girl told him this in real life or in a dream, but it goes, “I just don’t think I’m the right person for you; you’d probably get bored of me really quickly.” Additionally, he recalls his mom commenting on his demeanor during his high school days with, “You always looked really busy, like you didn’t has time or interest in women,” which is the most useful criticism his mom has ever given him, in retrospect.

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incel 26 - shit taste

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when she says she needs a guy just like you. anime screenshot of high school boy thinking to himself, “I see. This girl is a moron.”

Could the incel really enhance a member of the opposite sex’s life? Just by being himself? He thinks about people with Asperger’s or any other neurodivergence and he doubts that they would be anything other than a liability to a partner. And even if a partner had the toxic, codependent mindset of wanting to fix someone, wouldn’t they choose the most physically attractive manchild to experiment with as opposed to the average Joe? He wants to believe that there is someone out there looking for someone like him to complete herself, but as great as that would be, he has to come to terms with the fact that nothing is guaranteed in life.

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incel 27 - I'm calling about your car's extended warranty

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screenshot from danish webtoon ongezellig. shy introverted girl wearing hoodie (Maya) is being asked by extroverted girl wearing bright orange dress (Coco) for a favor. scene is composed shade to light matching their personalities.

Potpourri time - list of the incel’s intrusive thoughts when dealing with women:

To sum up, the incel needs to be less apologetic and needs to choose his battles wisely - only where he can be himself. It’s not much, but it’s a start. If only he could find a way to not feel unique and different (the myth of uniqueness as his therapist puts it). Nobody is better or worse off for their lifestyle choices, himself included.

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incel 28 - bad RNG

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teacher is helping a group of kindergarteners paint. kid: i have a question. teacher: ask away. kid: why do we have to use those shitty plastic scissors. teacher: because, billy, when you grow older you’ll have to work with shitty plastic people.

Would the incel fare better in a place with less people? The majority of the people his age in the more remote parts where his relatives live made an active effort to reach out to him and his family. A desire to connect seemed somewhat ingrained in them. He doesn’t want to imply that his environment is to blame for his social ills, but he can’t help but feel like there’s some way to move the process along.

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incel 29 - copium

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guy hooked up to artifical respirator (iron lung) with tank labelled “copium”

The incel wants to indulge in the amenities of the modern world, but he doesn’t want to spend money, so therefore he should plan not to consume product. Only when his desire to consume product and the value that product would bring into his life outweigh the physical cost will he consider consuming product. Any other thought process outside of the one outlined is very likely to be a waste of time, and probably some form of self-pity in disguise. He could also perhaps convince himself that he never wanted to consume product in the first place (sour grapes), but a lie like this is guaranteed not to last for long. He could also consider coming to terms with not consuming product and facing the problem head on. He could also put himself in positions where he doesn’t have to think about consuming product. Finally, he could remind himself of the opportunity cost of consuming product and have something to show for his invested time and effort (education, skills, creations, friendships).

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incel 31 - liabilities

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manga panel of girl using flip phone and wearing a solid blue hat that says, “please be patient i have autism”

The incel is starting to feel that the women one courts tend to be liabilities rather than assets, and remembers his classmate complaining the other day about dating someone with no personality. Case in point, the incel recently hangs out with a friend of a friend, and the entire time, he can’t help but feel like he is babysitting her and walking on eggshells when it comes to steering the conversation. He is aware of the polarizing effect of the word “normie” but that word seems to be the most succinct summation of his feelings of sheer boredom and disillusion at trying to converse and reach common ground. There is no bark - no bite at all - with normies.

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incel 32 - the pope is bullying me

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white van with about 100 different political and religious stickers

The incel’s default mode of conversation is to correct and judge people on what they’re doing suboptimally in order to fit his viewpoint of the world. He has gotten better creating conversations rather than commands out of his opinions, but still, the tendency to bully people into his way of thinking remains. Women probably see this from a mile away, and properly choose to not associate with the bully and surround themselves with positive, affirming people (for better or for worse).

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