I have noticed a fascinating thing in the culture war revolving around incels, which is that nobody is actually examining their situation, rather they examine their potential as market commodities.
The biggest failure both sides of this culture war is to treat incels not as human beings, but as problems to be solved. Like variables in an equation. I believe the reality is more sophisticated.
The pick up artists sell them snake oil that promises to cure all their ailments, and then on the inverse you have social democrat intellectuals exploiting them as a kind of misogynist boogeyman, as to sell their own customers a different kind of snake oil for a different kind of problem.
One of my favorite memes is the incel Karl Marx analysis, that identifies women as the monopolyholders of sex, and how workers must seize the means of reproduction. It’s very amusing, and sadly not entirely correct.
Rather, the Marxist analysis is as follows: The problem incels are dealing with is that their loneliness is a market. It produces demand. All human needs are markets under capitalism. Hunger, disease, thirst — thirst; All which may alleviate such needs is put under a barrier of cost, and ultimately class.
The reason why I am not so dismissive of incels is because I lived under a state eugenics programme, and not to mention that at one point my now ex-spouse was deported by the government. I was, in a very acute sense, rendered involuntary celibate by undemocratic government policy.
And even progressives will concede that this, when the government does it, is wrong. But, if you are rendered celibate by market forces, the progressive thinks it’s fair enough.
Another problem too with the incel analysis is that it only assumes men are incels, but I beg to differ. Look at the cultural products following neoliberalism. Look at Twilight, Fifty Shades of Grey, The Notebook, all these extremely successful films marketed at lonely women as an escapist fantasy. It is wonderful in just how sophisticated this cruelty is.
Male incels are sold pick up artistry, and told to get out there and find women etc, and then the women incels are sold escapism, and are instructed by market forces to shelter themselves from people they may have a meaningful relationship with.
Moreover, the pickup artist nonsense with its transparent manipulative tactics and card magician approach to charisma makes women feel inherently repulsed, it takes the incel, who is guided by a desperation to escape misery, and exploits this desperation to get them to humiliate themselves and further entrench their alienation.
Then on top of that you have these liberal intellectuals who brand them as Elliot Rodgers in the making, and tells society to shun and fear them, basically manufacturing an echo chamber of constant rejection, failure and reinforcement of the many doctrines that produces such rejection and failure. Everyone is lining their pockets in this process.
And the reason why is simple, there is no profits in a problem which may be solved. Loneliness is as natural to us as any other unmet need, it’s not some great mystery. It is an ordinary and harmless thing. To say that people are perhaps a bit misguided in their efforts to impress a potential romantic interest, that they perhaps need a new approach and learn to figure out who they truly are, would be the least profound thing to say.
It is as unoriginal as the Greek poetry that inspired Shakespeare to inspire the Bohemians. It’s all been said and done, and the solution is usually the same. Why offer people such simplicity when you can put them on a road of endless and unfulfilling consumption? To garnish their wages with big promises and small results?
Why tell them that they are facing an ordinary chapter of life, which demands personal growth and study, and is nothing to be feared, when you can instead tell them some pseudoscientifc nonsense about how humans who fail to mate prior to 25 or whatever are destined to die alone? To draw up some officious looking diagram of wolves or lobsters and say that this is their reality?
Because history once again disagrees. Most of the big sex symbols of yore were usually matured. Albert Camus and Marylin Monroe are good examples of this, they peaked in their 30s, not their 20s. Both these people would’ve been put out to pasture by the standards incels are expected to follow.
Because truth is that there’s more to attraction than just a pretty face. People say beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and sure enough it is. But more profoundly: Beauty is sublime. It is astonishing, breathtaking, captivating and remarkable… for about 6 seconds, then you start to get bored of watching the majestic sunset or the tropical waterfall. You start to feel the weight resting in your boots, and notice that fly buzzing around your ear.
So it makes perfect sense how beyond this lies its presentation, its mystery, its appeal. To be able to beguile and charm and fascinate beyond those 6 seconds. If this wasn’t the case, then sculptures would’ve rendered humanity extinct thousands of years ago.
It is not a matter of that radiant smile that stops us in our tracks, but rather of what compels us to remain. The ebbs and flows of the lips, and the way in which the voices caresses us and shakes our very foundation. How it seems to render us strong and weak at the same time, how it petrifies us with the paradox of innocence and temptation, this is the not so well kept secret of it all.
By modelling the products to be counterintuitive in this way, the market persists. One segment of the incel market is instructed to pursue and fail, and the other to shelter themselves and fail. Assuring that the profits of commodified loneliness remain optimal. That the product never does its job, it simply gives a promise too alluring to pass on. The only seduction you’ll find from a pick up artist is in the power of their marketing department.
And this is by no means a conspiracy, rather investors and capitalists follow the path of highest profit, and this is such a path.
Moreover I find that when people do escape the incel market and try to participate in dating, they are met with new barriers from market forces in the form of endless aspirationalism. To be a relatively healthy and interesting adult with some good redeeming qualities is no longer enough, everyone is expected to present themselves as Greek deities. No longer is it enough to pursue the Eros, but instead you must become it.
And each segment is also met with inverse aspirationalism, as self-proclaimed experts who write relationship columns and the like, along with many pseudoscientific psychologists, produce nonsense articles on the many expectations of a relationship. Everything must be fulfilling, and profound, and romantic, and passionate, if not every waking second is a carefully choreographed scene from a Hollywood film, then maybe it’s time to break up, etc.
Nothing is ever your own shortcoming or flaw to overcome, nothing is ever a personal trial that demands self-improvement, instead your partner becomes a scapegoat to project your miseries unto, and then you leave them, become alone again, and are twice as miserable. Ready to try and win the lottery by consuming the same products, follow the same aspirations, and enter into yet the same doomed affair with some other hapless subject.
And so you might wonder why people would fall for such a scheme, and it is simple: Through the implicit threat of loneliness. Either keep up with the latest information, or your chances of happiness are gone forever. Supposedly there is this giant competition, which to me seems a bit contradictory.
This is after all social behaviors, and we are a social species, whole point of being a social species is to stop with the competition. That’s why this always inevitably fails. Why it produces fragile relationships, unmet expectations, and ultimately a very bleak reality for its many adherents. Because it was never designed to help them, but rather to help this market of loneliness.
Reality of the matter is that we elevate the important people in our lives by elevating ourselves. Our wisdom becomes their wisdom, our strength becomes their strength, and our union becomes a way in which to partake in these things, and a well to draw water from.
The flaws you see in others are often the flaws you cannot admit to yourself. This is the true burden of loneliness, because we lack that other consciousness that can guide us to betterment. The twisted and perverse ways in which market forces and corporations turn this strength into a poison, and teaches people to reject personal attainment, is a terrible crime indeed.
In truth, there is no such thing as a good relationship or a bad relationship, at least not in the abstract. The most relevant and objective metric would be a functional relationship, or a dysfunctional one, and what that is will largely be determined by its participants. A good relationship is based on one’s needs, not one’s wants. Wants are the needs of idiots, always avoid them.
Slavoj Zizek made a good point about this, he said “If you know why you love someone, then you do not truly love them.” His point being is that love cannot have a singular purpose, it cannot be defined as bullet points on a list, and the same is true of relationships. Love is this irrational devotion to the other, it is as seasoned by its flaws as well as its virtues, it is beyond profit or loss. It is not about gaining, but about completing.
What defines love rather is not what it gives you, but how it renders you bereft in its wake. How it encapsulates you within an inexplicable and unknown spiritual aroma, that carefully exalts all that it touches. It is what brings melody to autumn winds, what brings colour to recollection, what brings delight to mundanity. It is the novelty of the soul, and no one can rationally determine its raw forces.
To even attempt to do so is inherently hubristic, like attempting to engineer the controlled demotion of an atom bomb. It is an element that is beyond our powers, and it is precisely this that makes it our greatest strength and our greatest weakness.
