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 doesn’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.