Try to Hit the Pool 2

Part Two: How beauteous mankind is!

Incel is shorthand for "involuntary celibate". It refers to men who feel unable to engage in romantic or sexual relationships despite wanting to. The term was originally coined in 1997 by a Canadian woman known only as Alana, who rather ironically was one of the first Incels. She created an online support group for lonely people struggling with dating - “Alana’s Involuntary Celibacy Project”.

At the start it was not gender specific. Later, she would distance herself from Incel culture due to her seeing it as going far away from the original goals of just being a support group for lonely people of any gender.

This now exclusively male group has got an extremely bad name of late, and it's hard to argue they don't deserve it, from mass murderers to online stalkers.

On a quick side note, the Incels that often talk about women only going for Chads are the exact same ones that call larger women undesirable. But for some reason they think they deserve what is known as a Stacy. If these references are unclear, allow me to clear them up: a Chad is a physically attractive man, and a Stacy is physically attractive woman. These terms would be used on the internet by Incels long before they started to be used by the wider online culture.

There is one person who would tie these terms and the use of them to a dangerous subset of Incels. Although he never directly uses them himself, rather he describes women and men in his manifesto in terms that would later become the archetype for these terms, one known by Incels in a sort of meta humour way as the supreme gentleman.

I speak of course of Elliot Roger, who carried out the 2014 Isla Vista killings near the University of California, Santa Barbara. He killed six people and injured fourteen others before taking his own life. But this isn't the whole story. Elliot would leave behind a manifesto, one where he spoke about his plans, laying out how he thought his “day of retribution” would play out, and why he committed these crimes. Elliot intended to carry out revenge against the beautiful girls and boys, because they were getting all the sex and he was left out. In Elliot’s manifesto he lays out how he would go into public places and sit there for hours wondering why no girls ever approached him. To any man reading this, the answer is simple: you can't just sit somewhere looking creepy and expect women to throw themselves at you. Elliot, with such an inflated sense of self, genuinely believed that this is how it should work. He deserved to just have women drop their panties to him on sight.

But more than that, Elliot from his words seems lonely, delusional and with more than a host of undiagnosed mental health issues, perhaps autism, due to the fact that he doesn't really seem to understand how humans interact.

The goal of this part of the book isn't to humanise the man so much as it is to understand him, at least in some way, as his dejection and loss from society is something many men feel. This being said, Elliot was a loser. I mean this in the sense that his “day of retribution” did not happen anything like he wanted it to. In the end he wouldn't kill any of his intended targets, instead killing his roommates, random walkers, and one guy in a shop which he fired wildly into. In fact, at the point he did have a chance to kill any beautiful women, he was confronted with a locked door. This is not even a joke. Elliot had already uploaded the now infamous YouTube video stating his intention to kill as many people as possible. He then headed to a sorority house, gun in hand, ready to take his so-sort-after revenge, but found himself at an impasse. Those damn bitches had locked the door. So what's a mass murderer with extreme social anxiety to do? Well, obviously, knock. He knocked on the door. When no-one came to answer, probably due to the fact he had told them he was coming via the now famous YouTube video, he just left. But not before shooting some random girls who were just walking outside the sorority, who would not fit the bill of anyone he was targeting in his manifesto. Elliot failed in every way to carry out what he said he would, ending his spree by killing himself. The ultimate act of cowardice and ending to a loser of a man.

The manifesto Elliot created had a beat-by-beat play of the day and how he envisioned it, it would end with him rolling out the heads of his victims on the street. This did not happen, but it speaks volumes to his delusion.

After this event, Incels would be forever linked to Elliot. What didn't help is the meta humour from Incels. The term Supreme Gentleman is something Elliot called himself in his manifesto repeatedly, as he thought he was superior. When people online use this term to describe him, it is what is known as meta humour. Elliot was an idiot and very clearly had an over-inflated sense of what he was capable of, and while his mass murder spree was horrific, it was in no way what he envisioned he could do. Hell, the guy had so much social anxieties that even with a gun in hand, when confronted with a locked door, he didn't shoot the lock out or bust it in. He knocked.

All of his murders other than the roommates he killed at the start of his spree were impersonal and via gunfire. This to me speaks to a kind of social anxiety. Even in murder, he could only do it personally to people he was already acquainted with. He stabbed his roommates to death, along with their friend who was at their shared apartment that day. All other victims were shot randomly including the two girls just walking outside the sorority he couldn't get into due to, I remind you, a locked door.

Elliot would injure many more people and kill one more before he killed himself, but the meta humour with people calling him the supreme gentleman, is simple. He failed in every way to do what he set out to do, and is in no way supreme, or a gentleman. He is most obviously an inferior specimen in every sense of the word, and that is the joke.

One of the best coverages of this is by a YouTuber known as Mumkey Jones. From 2016-2018 he created a series of videos on Elliot where he covered all of this in depth. YouTube would ban this creator for these videos as they viewed the satirical way he covered it as a promotion of violence and a breach of their terms of service. Of course, the internet being what it is, you can quite easily find these videos still and I would highly recommend you watch them as they break down exactly what Elliot was and the events of his murder spree in a way that makes sense of the events. Jones shows Elliot as what he was, a loser, but also provides some insight into the loneliness felt by many young men.

Mumkey Jones himself is a fantastic source of information and insight into this world. His ideas can help you understand why these men might act like this and of course, in some way that many people find distasteful, humanizing them. But after all, they are still human, and perhaps if we can understand the ingredients that lead to these violent acts maybe we can help prevent them in the future.

So, post supreme gentleman, the perception is that Incels are now all seen as dangerous. They are looked at as ticking time bombs that need to be “FIXED”. Of course, this societal attitude breeds more dejection, and therefore more violence. Since the days of Roger, it feels like Incel shooter has become the normal go-to for shooters. But the term Incel is, in and of itself, misleading. These men aren't acting out because they can’t get laid, at least not in reality, they are doing it because they feel rejected by society. Like so many terms used today: “Nazi”, “fascist” and now “AGP” being among them - terms like “Incel” serve only to distance understanding and reduce people down to basic elements. None of which do a good job of explaining why these people might think or feel the way they do.

The real reason Incels feel the way they do is because in some sense, like all of us, they were lied to about the world. They are told that if you just do a certain set of things, work out, get rich, get plastic surgery, you will achieve your goals. This is simply not true. For these men, goals of this kind will always be out of reach. And while some have the chance through positive thinking to get there, others never will, because of the facts of life.

Most men with bad facial structure will never be with a woman that they see as tall, blonde and beautiful. It’s not for them. They instead will end up sad and dejected when they reach for these goals, but due to the internet and the way a lot of these women act doing OnlyFans (a website for the quick and easy distribution of pornographic material) and whoring themselves out online, these men see themselves as deserving of them. As, in their minds, these women are simply driven by money anyway. It is true that women of the same generation as the mass influx of Incels are also lost, and horribly let down by society at large. But this book is not about them or their perspective. On a quick note, OnlyFans should be banned without question, but I refuse to elaborate on that further.

The sad thing is, if only these men would just aim to be with people of their own standard, they would maybe find happiness. But we can see everything these days. The whole world is at our fingertips via the internet, and the lack of social roles, the envy and injustice of being born the way you are is ever-present. It looms over you every time you log onto social media. There is someone out there who is doing what you do but better, someone who fills the gap you might fill but in a more convincing and proficient way.

Another class of people in a totally different culture that also fit a similar bill as the Incel in basic elements is the "Hikikomori", which is a Japanese term that refers to individuals who withdraw from social life and seek extreme levels of isolation, often staying in their homes for extended periods of time. This term makes no reference to sex, and can be something that impacts both genders, not being an exclusively male phenomenon.

One of the first major studies on hikikomori, conducted by the Japanese Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare in 2003, estimated that there were around 1 million individuals experiencing extreme social withdrawal in Japan. While many studies suggest hikikomori are predominantly male, the exact gender ratio varies. Some research reports figures as high as 70-80% male, while others show more balanced or even female-majority distributions, depending on sample and methodology. This suggests that while men may be more frequently identified as hikikomori, the phenomenon affects both genders in significant numbers. The term "hikikomori" (引きこもり) literally translates to "pulling in" (引き, hiki) and "room" or "stay" (こもり, komori). So, it roughly means "to pull oneself into a room" or "to stay inside."

Both groups, the Incel and the hikikomori, feel they are rejected by the world. The Incels more so because they feel they are not allowed to participate in the mating rituals of those around them, and the hikikomori more so due to the toughness of the work and school life in Japan. However, in essence, when we break these down to their basic parts they both reflect the same issue: not feeling part of the world, and not feeling accepted by it.

But why are these groups feeling this way? Japan, especially Tokyo, has a very high population density. You will often hear stats about how the Japanese population is falling, but this doesn't mean that it isn't one of the most densely populated places on the planet, with some 30 million people living in the Tokyo area alone. With population density comes an issue that impacts men greatly; men need things to be, things to drive for, and they need social roles. In overpopulated places there is a lack of social roles, especially those that are very developed like Tokyo, which is why I believe it is a perfect example of the late stages of this issue.

In a big city with many established businesses and an economy that is at peak or decline, it can be extremely hard for young men to find a place in the world that isn't just a cog in a faceless machine. In Tokyo the issue is physical, in the West it is metaphysical. Allow me to explain; The internet is, as they say, a global village, that global village is very overcrowded. A man looking online for things to be would find it very difficult to find a place, a social role in this global village that isn't already taken, a purpose in short.

To give some credence to what I am saying, I would like to reference some experiments conducted on mice throughout the latter half of the 20th century.

John Calhoun's mouse utopia experiments were a series of behavioural studies conducted in the mid-twentieth century to examine the effects of overpopulation on social structures in mice. To sum up the idea behind the experiments; mice, or in some cases rats, were placed inside an enclosure with a limited space available. These mice or rats were given everything they could want for. Food, water and anything else required for survival. Each enclosure had a limited amount of space.

However, the mice in his experiments would never completely fill the available space. The population collapse always happened before they reached full capacity. The most famous of these was "Universe 25," where Calhoun created a seemingly perfect environment for mice; abundant food, water and shelter, but limited space. Universe 25 was interesting in more ways than one. In the experiment, some of the males became aggressive and started to fight a lot with the other mice, while the females became withdrawn and unable to be mothers in any meaningful sense. But the most interesting group of mice were termed the beautiful ones. These mice became obsessed with self grooming, all of which were male.

Later, the female mice would be unable to produce young at all. The population collapse was not really due to overcrowding, as in all his experiments the mice still had plenty of space. Population collapse always occurred before the space was full. This population collapse took the form of the mice simply not being able to interact with each other the way mice should. Females not taking care of their young and males being uninterested in breeding, or in the case of the more aggressive males, being too interested in fighting.

Many people view these experiments as a warning about overpopulation. However, it is clear that the real reason the mice ended up collapsing is more due to the fact that they had a lack of things to do, or a lack of meaningful social roles.

Those who are dejectors of the study often say that as humans we are not the same as mice, and we would in fact be able to move past these hurdles with the use of technology, or by just being aware of them. But can we? If we look at Universe 25, the most famous of the experiments carried out in-depth, the female mice become socially withdrawn and unable to care for their young. That seems to be true of us too, as fewer women are choosing to have children, instead choosing work and often finding it impossible to find a suitable mate.

Meanwhile, men are going in two directions; one side is overly aggressive, seeking as much as possible (we see this with the manosphere), and the other side the beautiful ones. These mice were obsessed with self-grooming and in a sense only in such things as self-image. Is this not what we see with the Incels and a large subset of the trans community today? With Transmaxxers being the most obvious example? If you can't fit into any group or be something of note, then the easiest goal is to focus entirely on oneself. This kind of self improvement is always achievable then the social role becomes pure narcissism, the Incels and a lot of those in the manosphere are also guilty of this same obsessive self-grooming. Are they too not just looking at pure self-improvement by overthinking what it means to be a man? Looking to dominate and control, obsessed with working out, buying expensive things, money and personal growth only. With no real room to improve the world, the only place to do so is inwards.

I don't think we are that different to the mice, I think our hubris in thinking we are is most likely what will be our ultimate undoing. However, the acceptance of this as fact would too be our undoing, it is imperative that we hope for a better future.

This idea about society is nothing new. In fact, it is explored in one of the greatest writings of all time. Brave New World by Aldus Huxley is a book seldom mentioned in the discourse of the modern world. People always speak of Orwell’s 1984, but 1984 is a book about the authoritarian take over by a single party state, one of the most quoted lines from it being “if you want to imagine the future of humanity, imagine a boot stamping on a human face forever”. While 1984 tells us a story of what humanity would be like if it was dominated by force, Brave New World tells us a story of what it would be like to be dominated by pleasure.

Brave New World takes place in a future that is completely controlled and planned, down to the growth of humans in a lab to fit predetermined social roles, jobs and even desires. The main protagonist, Bernard Marx, is of little interest for the context I’m trying to provide, but he is in some ways an outsider too. He is what is known as an “alpha” in the book, the highest caste of humans, able to more or less think for himself. Yet due to a possible contamination of alcohol in his growth pod, he is shorter than he should be compared to the other alphas. The character that is relevant to what I am referencing here is John the Savage. John is introduced part way through the book, found in what is known as the savage reserves, a part of the earth untouched by the world government of Brave New World, where people are left to be human. They reproduce as normal and don’t have a caste system. John loves Shakespeare, he is able to read it whereas the humans within the system are not allowed such books. Bernard meets John and returns him to what is a dystopian London, where he becomes a kind of celebrity. On a quick side note it is rather interesting that both Brave New World and 1984 are based in London, the UK used to be oh so relevant.

Brave New World and 1984 are not saying the same thing at all. Brave New World is not telling us what could be, it’s not so much a warning as a reality check, a warning of what is. Sure, many of its themes are shocking, but few engage with this book on its own terms. There is only one part of the book that is important to read for my example. Near the end, our hero Bernard Marx is called before the world controller (a title that is exactly what it sounds like) along with John the Savage. John is a representative of humanity as it is, raw, beautiful and artistic. The world controller, Mustapha Mond, represents the ruling class. But more than that, he represents the sad truth of our world.

In this conversation, John the Savage asks why they can't have beauty and art. The answer given by Mond is simple: that beauty means instability. To have creation and development at a pace that would benefit humanity would cause chaos.

Another thing asked by John is in regard to the manufactured, and in Brave New World literally bred, social classes. They are represented as Alphas, Betas, Gammas, Deltas, and Epsilons. John asks why everyone can't just be an alpha, the highest class. Mond explains that such a society was already attempted, and it failed catastrophically. He says;

"The experiment was tried more than once. The result was always the same—disastrous. Alphas can be completely socialized—but only on condition that you make them do Alpha work. They don’t like doing lower-caste work. We actually tried it on an island. The whole of Ireland was put on the Alpha-Double-Plus level. They were given the best jobs. But they behaved just like Alphas: they complained, they fought for leadership, they intrigued, they murdered. Sooner or later they were bound to revert to their natural condition of being completely useless."

Sound familiar? This response to John is almost a mirror of what happened in the mouse utopia experiments, in the sense that in this society of all alphas, all the social roles were filled. So too with the mice.

Brave New World was written in 1931, while the mouse utopia experiments took place from 1940-1972. I'm not advocating for some kind of breed of classes, but I ask you to do a quick thought experiment. If we talk of overcoming the social issues presented in mouse utopia via technology alone, how exactly are we to do that? It doesn’t bear thinking about. Circling back to men, these statements and experiments push forward the simple truth; that people need roles to fill. It is true that, however sad, Mond is correct. That by breeding people into these roles with no knowledge that things could ever be different, it would be an optimal solution. But that's just science fiction, at least for now.

The point of the above examples, other than indulging myself in some things I find particularly interesting, is that ideas of this kind are presented all over literature and science. The roles we fill are as important as the food we eat, and without them, everything will break down. The reason Incels act out is simple; there are not enough things to be and yes in some way not enough things for men to possess.

“How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world That has such people in't!" - The Tempest, Shakespeare

In the mouse utopia experiment's explanation, I touched briefly on the subgroup of mice found in Universe 25 known as the beautiful ones. Those who, to remind you of the footnotes, were obsessed with self-grooming, personal image and who were exclusively male. To go back to the Transmaxxers mentioned in the last chapter, another factor for them is that some were Incels before they decided to transition. The original creator of the Transmaxxers manifesto meant it at the start as a way for Incels to escape their fate. They chose to pick a new way of being, one where they felt as if they did have a purpose, but also “FIXED” their Inceldom as they put it.

In the 2010s, men experienced a significant invasion of their spaces by women - spaces that, to women, often held little personal significance. Gaming and tech were some key examples. During this time, there was increasing discussion about how male-dominated spaces needed to change, with critics arguing that they were misogynistic, unwelcoming, and in need of feminization. However, to men, these spaces were as important as a restroom is to women - a place of personal comfort and retreat. In a man's office or gaming space, you might find all sorts of fun items and collectibles, whereas his toilet serves a purely functional purpose.

This is the subject for the next chapter…