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.
It isn’t until recently that the incel specifically put some thought into how others percieve him - his niche in the ecosystem, so to speak. His impression so far is of the unimpressive, unassuming kid in the corner who walks through life in his own delusional world of porn and post-ironic memes in an effort to cover up his insecurities. He mostly keeps to himself, but the moment he opens his mouth, it’s guaranteed to be a regurgitation of some so-called edgy sex joke from Reddit spoken under five levels of sarcasm.
Whereas normal people talk about drama or their friend’s feelings, here the incel is circlejerking to an audience of three or four who are patient enough to put up with his schtik and who are also perhaps in the same mental purgatory of social irrelevancy. Normal, sane people have no reason to be a part of this, much less women. If he were a woman, he would also steer clear; that’s just common sense.
The incel has thought many times about turning over a new leaf and nixing the whole creep act, but he never ends up following through. After all, now at adult age, this act is where homeostasis has brought him, and the thought of throwing away all of that investment is quite scary (sunken cost fallacy). His cancer has gotten him a sporadic following he’s not quite sure he could even garner by keeping things clean. Said succintly, what would he be without the five year old boobie humor? His female coworker has already said he’s too two-dimensional, so he infers that losing the only semblance of personality he has left would demote him to one-dimensionality. (Is that even a thing?) Thinking of positive traits he admires in others, he’s not patient or hard-working enough to see any of his talents to their logical conclusion, and according to his family, he doesn’t have feelings, so just what the heck would be left, then?
In reality, the incel has no reason to have any friends. He firmly believes that the ones he does have merely put up with him and have come to terms with the fact that he’s a “package deal” friend they have no choice but to keep around when they too are too lonely to bear. What a waste of time.