I think I was. I think I was almost an incel, and I was almost an incel before “incel” was even a thing! I was almost an incel before “online communities” really even existed. I am, after all, old.
For those not in the know, Wikipedia defines “incels” as: members of an online subculture who define themselves as unable to find a romantic partner despite desiring one, a state they describe as inceldom.
I had never even heard the term “incel” until a few weeks ago. I came across an article mentioning that military leaders had issued a warning to members of the military about the opening of the movie Joker. Apparently the online incel community had issued a series of threats in relation to the opening of Joker. In fact, some of the recent mass killings have been tied to men with ties to these incel communities.
Okay, so, no, I never had any plans of committing egregeous crimes against humanity. People who commit those crimes are monsters. I know I was never a full-on incel, because it wasn’t even a thing thirty years ago. I can’t imagine that, had I not met my wife, I would have ever turned into the kind of violent incel whose self-imposed misery leads to a total disregard for human life. What I could relate to when reading about incels is the mindset that leads to inceldom, and it’s not all about sex. It’s about feeling desirable to someone you find desirable. It’s about the fear of growing old alone because you will never meet the expectations of a desirable mate.
I always viewed myself as a social inept (and, really, I still do). People seemed, for the most part, to like me (or at least tolerate me). I was relatively nice to everyone, and I was funny, but I never felt like I really fit in. I didn’t date in high school. I didn’t date in college. The small handful of times I found the courage to ask a female I was attracted to out, I was rejected. When you have no confidence in yourself, and you find nothing but rejection in your earliest attempts at those things that are extremely difficult in the first place, one of two things will happen:
You let the rejection make you stronger and more determined, you will work to improve yourself, and you continue on until you find success…
… or…
… you give up.
I’m guessing anyone who has read this blog before knows how I responded.
By the age of twenty-two, I had completely given up on the thought of ever having a romantic relationship. I had completely given up on the idea of even going on a date. “Love” was a foreign concept meant for other people better than myself. Looking back, I remember thinking that I had “given up on women”, but in reality, I had given up on myself. “Women,” in my head, were just a construct that I could blame for my misery. “Women” only liked physically attractive men, and I was not one. “Women” only liked tall men, and I was not one. “Women” only liked men with money, and I was scraping by on a crappy assistant manager salary at Sherwin-Williams.
I was even to the point of blaming other guys for my misery. Guys who were taller than me (which was most of them) were not my friends. Guys who were better looking than me (which, in my head, was almost all of them) were genetically blessed creatures that weren’t of the same species as me; I couldn’t be friends with them.
In my day-to-day life, I was still just as friendly and funny as I had always been with coworkers, customers, and the general public, but I really built up a resentment toward people and was building internal walls between myself and… well… everyone else. Trump would have been proud. I was “Making Rich Great Again” with walls.
The first incel community was created online in 1993. It was a much milder, less full-of-hate version of the current communities (it was started by a woman… in Canada… how mean could it really be?), but I was only an Internet connection away (which were just starting to become common through dial-up) from discovering a world of other socially-inept people like myself and letting the anger build. I was extremely lucky that, after dozens of interviews failed and mailed-resumes not responded to, I found a job after college. Were it not for that crappy, low-paying job with Sherwin-Williams, I would have literally been living in my parents’ basement… which I’ve come to discover isn’t exactly a good place for a borderline incel to be.
And then I met my wife. Actually, we were “set-up” by mutual acquaintances. I would never have asked her out on my own. I had, after all, given up on “women.” Over twenty-six years later, and we’re still together. I don’t really have much more self-confidence than I did twenty-six years ago… but I have someone to lovingly tell me to stop complaining all the time.
I still carry many of the negative thoughts and attitudes toward my fellow man and woman (and self) that were developed during that time when I was in that dark place. I wish I had never allowed myself to go there. I wish I could have seen some sort of light. I believed that God was out there and had a plan for me, I just believed that I was going to hate His plan.
I’m sure there are people who go through long periods of self-doubt, self-hate and depression and they emerge better from the experience. I emerged, for the most part and with only slight relapses, but I emerged kind of broken. I’m full of mistrust, I take offense at the stupidest things, I often feel completely incompetent in areas where I’m not, I can’t let go of things from the past that still try to crush me, and, to this day, I have a hard time liking people in general.
And I turn fifty this month…
… but at least I’m not an incel…
… so, yay me?