Often at work people will ask me to charge their phone, it’s even quite common for them to carry their own charger around with them now so they only need an empty plug socket and I most of the time will do it for them. I’ll plug it in behind the counter somewhere and then they’ll come back in just before their bus arrives or after they’re done looking around and collect it. Most weeks I’ll get asked at least once, but the last time I was at the busier shop I had two people ask me at the same time. Or, slightly apart but both had to be charging next to one another for a little while. Describing these two reminds me of that couple I talked about quite a while back in that it’s almost cartoonish how these people live up to what is supposedly just the deluded worldview of the incels. First a woman maybe in her early 20s but could pass for early 30s, overweight and with a comical amount of make-up for a sunday afternoon. Of course she had a shit attitude, even her tone when asking me to charge the phone had an undercurrent of entitlement. Sure she was asking, but it felt like she was just going through with a formality and the idea of me saying no wasn’t even a possibility in her mind. I did think about saying no just to see how she’d react but I felt it’d be petty of me when I almost always say yes to other people who ask. Also having her around means she’s more likely to buy something, and other customers are more likely to come in. It’s an interesting thing I’ve noticed actually, how the shop can be dead for ages (sometimes for nearly half an hour) and then as soon as one person is there other people become interested. The way heads turn, sometimes people who’ve been outside paying no attention for some time, like hyenas is quite amusing to me. Anyway, second was a man of similar age maybe, now he was not a “Chad” but still someone I’d imagine is quite attractive to women. Trendy haircut, trendy fast fashion getup, handsome, not scrawny or chubby, etc. He came in a little after her, asked like he was expecting me to say no and seemed grateful when I didn’t.
I suppose you can already tell where this story is going. Her phone was lighting up and buzzing every couple minutes, and his phone didn’t go off once. It wasn’t off or on silent, because when I took the plug out to hand it back to him and the screen lit up I looked and the icon wasn’t there at the top. I know that’s fucking weird, and it gets worse because I also looked at her messages or at least the snippet that shows on the screen if you don’t press to see the full thing. I don’t remember what any of it was about, I didn’t see enough to, but I know it was various people messaging her. There were several names, both male and female. Now how is one supposed to react to admittedly anecdotal evidence that falls in line with their worldview so neatly? I’m certainly not going to be inclined to take these ideas (in this case, the whole “easy mode” meme) less seriously after this, and it’s hard to just disregard it even though supposedly that’s the rational thing to do because anecdotal evidence is meaningless right.. At least according to pseuds and contrarians, but pseuds and contrarians do get a bad rap and I think are a lot more valuable than they get credit for so who knows. I will say that confirmation bias, especially when it comes to people who talk about these kinds of things, is a real issue. An issue I don’t want to contribute to, especially as this whole blog does kind of a have a “we want the incel audience” vibe to it. I promise, it’s only partially intentional. So I need to be careful, but I have to say there’s no way I will be able to stop this incident from affecting my view on things. I need to be careful with this entry as well, it’s easy when you’re used to talking about this kind of thing with the sort of people on /r9k/ to forget that not everyone is up to date with the latest internet loser slang.
The thing is, the “ideology” of the incels is uncodified and is also only a splinter of a far far FAR larger ideaspace or subculture anyway. That’s why after literally thousands of articles, youtube videos, news segments or whatever no one actually understands anything at all about any of this shit. Not even the actual fucking incels themselves. Incels are something new because the term has recently become famous, even though I remember it being thrown around in 2014 on /r9k/. There was even a tripfag IncelManlet around that time but he just disappeared one day, press F to pay respects. Incels are a movement, they want to KILL people, and they all share a uniform set of ideas. Incel is just a term for a guy who can’t get laid but would like to, see anecdotal evidence above for why women can’t be incels (or robots, or losers, or nerds, or geeks, or dorks or etc etc forever) ;D. Not in spite of the fact that most of those guys would love for there to be, because of it. Another anecdote to illustrate what I’m talking about perhaps. This friend of mine I’ve mentioned before, we were chatting around the time of the Toronto van attack when the term incel was getting mainstream news coverage about the subject and at some point I said something like “you know I’m an incel right” because I didn’t like the mean spiritedness in his voice while having this conversation. Then there was some surprise, I’m surprised by his surprise because he knows I’m still a virgin and he knows I’m not asexual, and it ends with him saying I’m actually not an incel. Ask people on the internet who self identify as incels on places like /r9k/ or incels.me and they’ll give my definition in most cases (but not all, because there is no codified ideology of incelism it’s really just a collection of a certain type of guy within the larger internet “red pill” scene), which is what I stated above someone who can’t get laid. It’s the most straightforward term ever, celibate involuntarily.
I’m not quite sure what my goal is here, I don’t really have a plan but basically I’ve had a view of this world since around the age of 14 and I feel like a lot of people miss the forest for the trees because they not only pay attention just to the few times this world is brought into contact with our own but also because those who do try to understand it are overwhelmed. They’re overwhelmed by the numerous slang terms and codewords which are always evolving, and they’re overwhelmed by conversations which rely on assumptions and the results of earlier conversations the outsider wasn’t able to experience. You’ve probably heard the expression “start with the greeks” if you’ve asked anyone about reading philosophy. The idea is that you can’t just dip into the works of a more trendy philosopher like Nietzsche or Descartes, because you’d be missing the context of a several thousand year conversation which these works are a continuation of. I’m not comparing the at absolute best two decade long red pill “discussion”, of which early PUAs like Roosh would be the greeks if we stick with the metaphor, to the canon of western philosophy (although plenty of autists would, and there is certainly a large contingent in this red pill world who would jack off the concept of western philosophy despite being the exact types who would be told to start with the greeks) but the metaphor works I think to explain why this world is so impenetrable to normies. You scratch just a little and the whole comparison falls apart, it’s the greatest minds of the aristocracy going over things for generations and a bunch of lower middle class and working class 20-somethings arguing over tiny details while generally agreeing on the same worldview. Apples and oranges, but both are fruit.
That’s what the discussion is, if we go back to this idea of a separate world then incels and pick up artists and MRAs and neoreactionaries and MGTOW and the Alt Right ad infinitum are all various nations and civilisations of this world. Sure, history is nothing but bloodshed and warfare but there are a lot of shared premises. Instead of agriculture, social class, a legal system or warfare you have the 80/20 rule or hypergamy, the sexual marketplace (and the fundamentally different and fixed roles of men and women in that), a rejection of the current social and political order, evolutionary psychology and probably more that I can’t think of off the top of my head. There might be some groups within this world that reject one of these while still following the rest, just like the Russian empire 2.0 (USSR) supposedly holding the goal of achieving a classless society or various hunter gatherer tribes and peoples like the Scythians or the Comanche that weren’t agricultural. It’s a case of being able to break the rules after you understand them. It’s kind of a weak metaphor, but I like to explain things this way because it’s how I think. There are patterns all over the place and I think when people are made aware of these shared patterns they better understand what it is that’s important to focus on, or at least what you want them to focus on. Of course if you stick with thing, there are certain “cultural areas” within both this world and the real world. Certain regions of the world where empires have risen and fallen clearly are more close to one another than groups on opposite sides of the planet who had minimal on no contact. Just how you can see a huge influence from Rome in everything that came after in Europe from Byzantium to the British Empire, or how Buddhism spread to cover quite a distance on both sides of the Himalayas, certain groups are much closer to one another in similarity while others might consider themselves so different people associated with them would be angry about me grouping them all together like this. There clearly is a link between it all though, and I think I’ve finally found a way to explain it so I’m not going to just let it go. I’m aware of the term “manosphere” but I think it’s not broad enough, I’d say the manosphere is like one of those cultural areas in this imaginary world that quite a few groups some of whom are still going strong and others that have completely dispersed are covered by. Think of it like you think of the idea of “The West” when looking at European history. The more I think about this world metaphor the more ways I find it to be applicable actually. Sticking with this idea, just like all civilisations have heroes and leaders most groups in this online world have a few e-celebs associated with them. There are also of course e-celebs in this sphere who aren’t directly associated with specific groups, just like there are heroic figures claimed by multiple nations and peoples. These people are who come to mind immediately if you talk about one of these groups. Most of them are pretty shit individuals so I’m not gonna talk about them, but you probably know or have at least heard of a lot of them.
I think the most helpful thing of all about looking at things this way though, is that I finally might understand my place in all of this after around half a decade. I’ve been heavily exposed to the shared ideas of this “world” and can certainly say I’m part of it but yet I always hesitate to say I’m a part of any of these groups. /r9k/ and the robots are the only group I’ve really stuck with and feel some connection to, but I’ve taken several long breaks from visiting the board once even leaving for over a year. I’ve always just enjoyed looking at the larger picture, which is why I’ve always seen this larger world/ visualised it that way (although only the last couple days have I been fully conscious of it), and so I’ve drifted around and seen things come and go. Anyone else remember true forced loneliness or “neomasculinity”? I’m just a rootless drifter, a people watcher, enjoying watching things play out without my direct involvement. I stick around for a while, and sometimes naturally I get a little too invested like during my /pol/ phase (gazing too long into an abyss..) but I always move on because there’s one thing that separates me from all the other people like me who inhabit this desolate world. I’m too self critical, no matter what that niggling voice is there telling me I’m probably full of shit. I can’t trust a single thought that goes through my head, I can never comfortably make an objective statement. That goes for this blog too, of course. It might all be complete nonsense, just the ramblings of a neurotic mess, you shouldn’t trust a word. This world is like the collective unconscious of young men the world over, and naturally it evolves as the population increases and the backgrounds become more varied. That’s what I mean when I talk about my worldview, the zeitgeist of this other world.
I read Herodotus’ The Histories about a year ago and what I liked about it so much is it was less of a history book and more like a travel guide for the ancient near east. Herodotus was able to explore this world in a time not only of constant change but where anywhere even only a thousand miles from home was completely mysterious. I suppose he had a better understanding than most of the “rules” or prerequisites of civilisation but he was more apart from any specific one than most also. I’m not planning on writing extensively about this stuff, although naturally this blog inhabits this world because my thoughts are influenced by it no matter what. So going back to the unintentional catalyst for this entry (because when I started writing a couple days ago I planned to go in a completely different direction), what does it matter? I’m sure most people like me would just shrug it off as expected, but that’s why they’re also not quite me because I’m always a bit thrown off when something conforms to my worldview. I’m always expecting something around the corner to make me question myself all over again. There have been plenty of times where that has happened, and yet I still consider myself part of this “world”. If the opposite had happened and the guy’s phone was blowing up with messages I’d still be here, but let’s be honest that wouldn’t have happened… because it didn’t happen.
Ramblings of a neurotic mess 