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.
what SSRIs do to a mfer
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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:
- The conservative party’s main purpose in any country is to keep the status quo of rich white men under the guise of morality by appealing to fear, pessimism, and anxiety. This is very apparent by their default rhetoric, which is also found in the far left but a lot less prevalent in the mainstream. With those feelings gone, there’s no reason to be scared of progress. Any talk of red or blue pills is nonsense. Skepticism is encouraged though; neo-reactionary types like Mencius Moldbug do have a point though about the proliferation of progressive thought in the media as a way for them to stay in power. That doesn’t necessarily doom society, though.
- The 4 year music degree track (there is a spectrum of people that would extend this as far as “any degree”) is a pyramid scheme that in many instances is “pay to play” (choir tours, drum corps). Nobody actually gets finished in that short a time (false promises) and the only way to make stable money is to teach and aid in the recruitment of other people. Granted, this last point is a major stretch; kids’ lives are only made better by having basic musical proficiency. That being said, there is always a sense of teachers lobbying and proving themselves useful in the eyes of the public, leading to a democratization of the arts. Without public school music classes, students would probably start learning music in high school with a church youth group, decide that musical ability is worth keeping around, and take a few community college courses on the side to solidify theory and get a sense of musicianship they could then impart as a volunteer in their community. This is the most R.O.I. one can get out of music, mainly by avoiding the money and years sunk into a 4 year college. And the burn out teehee
- Organized religion is a cope for sociopaths, narcissists, and other pathologically obsessive personalities, as well as an avenue for them to abuse each other for money, control, or power. “Normal people” don’t go to church because they see right through this guise and have little to no desire to channel their emotional curiosity about the world into something liturgical. This does leave open the question of morality and its ultimate source, as well as the question of consciousness - both of which science is fundamentally unable to answer (Luke Smith) - leaving us with the compromise that if all major religions are equally arbitrary and share the same core tenants of morality (The Abolition of Man) we might as well adhere to the one we were given at birth and share a piece of our culture with our children while not quite taking everything at face value - much like the Japanese and their state religion (Shinto + Buddhism) - for the time being, at least.
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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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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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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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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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.
- I’d have a thiqq secondhand laptop as my daily driver, and I’d probably still be into free and open source software. Coincidentally, it wasn’t much later that a student teacher would walk in with the most chuunibyou smirk on his face and pull out his laptop boasting, “Guys, it happened! Stand in awe at the power of Ubuntu,” as the rest of the class collectively yawned.
my first laptop - Gateway MT6705 (2007)
incel 44 - unfindable
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“why cant I get a girlfriend” why can’t your girlfriend get you
- Bill Wurtz, 2018-07-29
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?
- Get as many fulfilling musical experiences as possible between now and when I graduate. To the same effect, set aside time to help my friend with his band.
- Take my state-sponsored private voice lessons more seriously in order to teach more effectively when I move out as a part-time gig.
- Do as little in the classroom as possible to pass my classes and obtain my degree by next summer.
- Feverently save money to amass capital by refusing to pay for food and abstaining from needless shopping.
- Make gigantic spreadsheet of possible places to move to in the US.
- Contact realtors and make travel itinerary out of top 10 or so places.
- Look for remote work/freelance online work I can take with me anywhere. I might be able to translate Japanese or Spanish.
- Look for paid, or even unpaid, apprenticeships for carpentry, eletricity, welding, etc. to get hands-on experience I can use to fix my house.
- Take the grand tour of the US whenever confident, perferably by the end of the year. Make up your mind soon after.
- Buy easily repairable (that is, as old and low tech as legally possible/practical) used car.
- Move to the area and settle into a cheap mobile home.
- Go to church every Sunday and get involved with the community.
- Save up with remote and part-time gigs (teaching, trades) in order to slowly begin building a proper home.
incel 43 - his people
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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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“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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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List of every reason the incel doesn’t talk to women he likes:
- He’s been told that women don’t like a desperate person, so logically, he shouldn’t bother breaking the ice until he has overcome his concupiscence. They’ll see right through him.
- He’s not in the habit of talking to women, and the only reason he can see himself doing so is to probe them for dateable characteristics. He can’t speak for everyone, but if someone came up to him with such an agenda… he’d actually be really grateful, but most people would consider that shallow and want nothing to do with it, not to mention the evolutionary incentives are out of wack. Therefore, he does the women a favor by getting to the conclusion quicker.
- Speaking of shallow, isn’t going up to someone because they’re attractive a weird concept? Ideally, he’d be genuinely curious about their lives to strike up a conversation, and both parties would be better off after the transaction. In practice, he usually doesn’t get out of his own head enough to see the people around him, and if he does, he never sees anything worth talking about in its own right that wouldn’t come across as affected and rehearsed.
- He sees the kinds of people the women hang out with, and there’s no way he can compete with that level of empathy and compassion. He has also been told not to compare himself to people, but when it comes to being on the selected side rather than the selecting side of the gene pool, he has no choice but to pit himself against the competition to see what the hand he was dealt can get him.
- As long as he is unable to distinguish women he wants to be friends with with women he wants to date, he will always be hesitant due to seeing every little thing he does as a high stakes transaction.
- When he goes up to a dude, he is usually offering words of comfort or a witty add on to a joke they started. That’s his in, so to say. He feels like the words escaping his mouth has a wholesome purpose that will make someone’s day better; he would never talk just to make himself feel better. However, women don’t seem to operate this way. He never feels like he has anything of value to offer in exchange for his probing and prodding for attention - attention they could easily go to someone else for. In many ways, the thoughts and opinions he has are unique enough to guys for him to throw his hat in the ring, but are not usually pertinent to the vibe that most women in his circles go for.
- In his pursuit of finding someone that won’t be a liability, he tends to be extra judgmental towards women. Words that he uses to close the case in his head once and for all include: basic, cringy, emotionally unstable, normie, superficial, Disney freak, overgrown child, antisocial, entitled, superstitious, loose, political sheeple, etc. Whenever he finds himself simping extra hard, he puts up these labels as a barrier like an extra coat of deodorant and that tends to offer another 16 hours of B.O. blocking power.
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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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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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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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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What does a lifestyle of not having home internet and using a feature (read: dumb) phone as a daily driver look like?
Pros:
- I’m encouraged to go to bed at a reasonable time more often.
- I’ve been running more consistently due to having nothing better to do.
- I’m encouraged to hang out at school more to mooch off of free Wi-Fi, and with that comes social reinforcement to study and mindfulness about what websites I choose to browse in public.
- I find myself practicing music more without really trying due to easy access to practice rooms and not having to worry about bothering my neighbors and roommates.
- I’ve had less anxiety about being alone without YouTube videos to fill up that empty space. There’d be times I didn’t remotely care for anything in my feed, but still put on a video at random in hopes of getting in the mood, akin to opening the fridge 1000 times. Nowadays, I flip through the radio for a bit when I’m bored at my desk or put on my Japanese passive immersion when I’m bored doing menial chores.
- Social media and YouTube would have to be consoomed deliberately. I found myself giving up feed scrolling entirely instead of going through the trouble to stay up to date on content creators and influencers, and I usually don’t think too much of this until a bugman starts talking to me about pop culture.
Annoyances followed by solutions/adaptations:
[...]incel on the perc - 34
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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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.
[...]incel 17 - you go first
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incel 16 - codependency
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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.
[...]incel 15 - ffs move on
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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.
[...]incel 14 - eye contact
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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?
[...]incel 13 - mental gymnastics
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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.
[...]incel 12 - dirty jokes
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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.
[...]incel 11 - stay in your lane
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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.
[...]incel 10 - sociopathy
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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.
[...]incel 9 - inaction
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Why doesn’t the incel ask the people he likes out?
- He is so far removed from society that he will never be able to correctly discern attraction from friendliness, therefore he is forever doomed to put innocent people around him in uncomfortable situations for his own self-satisfaction.
- He is in such a rush to start an intimate relationship that he is hypersensitive to any and all positive affirmations. He is aware of this, and overcompensates by disregarding all signs that anyone could give him as mere delusions.
- People at his age have expectations for what they want out of a relationship, whereas he has none. Who is he to impose his juvenile ideas of love and sex on other people and waste their time?
- He bases the quality of his interactions on how playfully and effortlessly he can converse with another person, like a skilled game of tennis, but that is very one sided when it comes to what the other person would gain out of further interactions. He has yet to meet someone whom he can unequivocally affirm will fare better in life with him by her side as opposed to without him. He assumes that this is a step in the right direction of being less selfish.
ham radio
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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:
- visual content, which before would have been supplemented with OTA TV, can now be laser focused for the individual via YouTube in a way no broadcasting medium could ever do. Even in the apparent strengths of TV, namely the lack of effort in picking out content and getting a quick dopamine fix, the expense in getting a tuner and decent antenna and the added inconvenience of ads deter me from getting this fix I can frankly do without to begin with.
- all non-commercial radio streams worth anything can be tuned into online and in much better quality than what the portable radio in my phone or mp3 player can provide. Why would I pay $50 for a decent HD radio when I can get every single HD exclusive channel and thousands more a .pls click away?
- talking to cool people. All of the people in my life worth keeping around are not radio fanatics, and the idea of making new friends just to have a reason to use a $600 toy you bought has always felt backwards to me, no matter how much I tried to hype myself up to push the talk button and make a contact. Not to mention, there are no easy ways to actively make friends in this quarantine climate. It has only recently dawned upon me that I am very demanding of the people I choose to reach out to by nature, and every person I’ve heard or seen in this radio sphere are very one-dimensional (focused on one or two things), hard to relate to, or just plain vapid.
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.
[...]incel 8 - values
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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.
[...]incel 7 - niche
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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.
[...]incel 6 - vibes
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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.
[...]incel 5 - projecting
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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.
[...]incel 4 - apathy
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incel 3 - empathy
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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.
[...]incel 2 - cereal and puzzles
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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.
[...]incel 1 - self improvement
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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.
[...]incel 23 - move the goalposts
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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.
[...]incel 24 - just git gud
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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.
[...]incel 26 - shit taste
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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.
[...]incel 27 - I'm calling about your car's extended warranty
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Potpourri time - list of the incel’s intrusive thoughts when dealing with women:
- What do you want from me - from this transaction?
- What is a safe neutral response to her question?
- Why are you talking to me?
- How long can I keep this act up?
- Don’t talk to me; I’ll start daydreaming about you if you do.
- Why is everybody so cute?
- Have I overstepped my boundaries?
- Did I say something stupid?
- Don’t look at her eyes; she’ll get creeped out.
- Feign as much confidence and self-sufficiency as possible without making eye contact (a steep order).
- What would a normie say?
- Did I look at her face for too long?
- Find a neutral area to look at instead.
- Don’t bust out the self-deprecating humor; only say things that make you look cool.
- Where is my out? Who’s the most alpha chad in the room I can count on to keep the good times rolling and pick up the ball I will inevitably drop?
- Look sociable. Smile to show people you’re having a good time, even if you’re bored. Apparently people freak out if your face is neutral for too long.
- How short can I cut this conversation without being rude?
- What could I possibly want from this person? What’s my alibi if someone asks me why I’m talking to them?
- Am I speaking for too long? Am I giving the other person enough time to speak?
- She’s not into you; she’s that friendly to everyone. You’re not special.
- What direction does she want to steer the conversation? I’ll just follow her lead.
- How much of an asshole can I be and still get away with it?
- What is my body language saying? Should I manspread to exhibit alpha energy, even if my natural reaction is to be as small as possible? Will that come across as fake if I do so?
- Wow, she’s talking a lot; Thank god I don’t have to deal with this on a daily basis.
- What can I say instead of what I’m really feeling to keep the atmosphere casual?
- What a lucky dude.
- Where do you even find women like this?
- Who can I roleplay as to get through this conversation?
- Is there any subtext to her words? Probably not; I can usually take people at face value.
- How much can I pretend to show I care without my fabrication being too obvious? How much even should I pretend to care?
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.
[...]incel 28 - bad RNG
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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.
[...]incel 29 - copium
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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).
[...]incel 31 - liabilities
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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.
[...]incel 32 - the pope is bullying me
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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).
[...]