this post was submitted on 24 Mar 2025
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I identify as an incel. I don't visit the incel web spaces though and I don't blame women for it.
I'm an incel because I can't afford to date. Like every week I'm barely able to get by living in poverty. Dating takes time and at least some money. If I got a little more of either, I'd have to use it to better my situation before dating.
I bring this point up because, as toxic as incel culture is, I rarely see it tied back to the shitty economy. Just people pointing fingers at each other as though the Male Loneliness phenomenon were entirely the result of people's personalities.
And yet, I have seen places of abject poverty where people sing to eachother and sing together, they have joys and romance. Dirt poor people are making sweet love together and having kids and I don't know how but they just keep on going.
So the economy is part of it, yes, but poverty isn't a barrier to gettin some lovin, because it doesn't cost anything to get a woman's attention.
There must be more to the story, there is something else going on with our culture and our society that makes it seem impossible.
The places you talk about still have a public social life, 3rd spaces, etc. In advanced capitalist countries, there is no public space without some sort of consumption.
Yes that's definitely an issue.
Still, it seems clear to me that for many, (like the kid in the story whose mind was poisoned even before his first attempt) the biggest barrier to achieving relationship bliss with someone special is the belief that it's simply not possible, and all the attendant self reinforcing red pill misogynistic bullshit beliefs one finds online.
One mustn't forget Jlo's informative musical statement: "even if you were broke, my love don't cost a thing".
I'm inclined to think that these kinds of thought distortions are a product of the hyper commercialization and hyper commodification of our lives. People don't meet other people unmediated by consumption or a screen, so the ideas of what it means to connect are distorted.
Careful, Archarnian. That sounds like anti-capitalist talk.
[and i'm tired of pretending it's not]