Why do almost all 'incels' blame their situation on looks?

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I'm glad to hear that you've finally found a good circle of friends, at least.

But do you still think that the way you were treated when you were younger was inevitable and couldn't have been different in a different social circle?


I'm really curious about what happened to the online dating scene between 2010 and 2015. Feel free to PM me if you don't think you can say it publicly.

In particular I'm wondering whether the change was due to changes in the nature of the dating apps/websites themselves, or just due to changes in the demographics of who was using them and for what purposes. Or perhaps just the sheer number of people using them, so that every user (male or female) now has a lot more new people to choose from every day and hence picks only the most beautiful?


Very sorry to hear this. I've heard that there tends to be a lot of awkwardness between singles and couples in mainstream social circles. Has no one yet come up with a good way of systematically addressing this? There ought to be a way, it seems to me.


Can you give some examples of the sorts of things they said and did that disgusted you so deeply?

Anyhow, about Elliot Rodger:


I just now Googled some photos of him. He doesn't look ugly to me. Not a supermodel, but certainly not bad-looking.

It used to be that only women got obsessed with utterly unrealistic beauty standards and considered themselves ugly if they weren't absolutely gorgeous enough to win a beauty contest. Now it seems men have caught this disease too?

I'd put "Nazi paraphrenalia" in a separate category from all the other things you mentioned above.

The other things all point to the need for a much larger and better-organized independent autistic subculture, where more of us can be accepted for ourselves, in-person as well as online.

An in-person local autistic singles' group would not be able to solve the dating problem for autistic men all by itself, due to its likely lopsided male-to-female ratio. But such a group could, as a group, participate in activities that would bring its members into contact with people of other kinds who are likely to be relatively accepting.

Thanks for the clarification.

Thanks for the link.

I notice that your sample U.S.A. city was Houston. I wonder if your results would have been any different had you picked New York City or maybe San Francisco.

I think there are a few reasons why incels might jump to the conclusion that they're physically unatteactive rather than lacking social skills. I have no data to support my suppositions, but personal experience leads me to believe some of them.

I'll first start off by saying that of the incels I've seen, my impression is that most of them are slightly below average, moderately below average, or well below average in appearance.

That said, I'll get into my list.

1. Physical Attractiveness is More Obvious Than Good Social Skills, Especially if You Have Bad Social Skills

When you see a good-looking couple together, your first thought isn't 'gee, that guy must have good social skills'. You assess the information that is directly available to you. It's well-known that good-looking people tend to have more luck than bad-looking people when it comes to relationships. If you see a bunch of good-looking and average people able to get relationships with relative ease, it's easy to conclude that you must be bad-looking if you can't get a relationship at all.

Furthermore, good social skills tend to be less obvious to people with poor social skills.

2. Good Looks And Good Social Skills Are Not Mutually Exclusive

In fact many of us often assume just by looking at a good-looking person that they're socially adept.

The words and actions of good-looking people tend to be more well-received than those of bad-looking people, even if they're eating or doing the same thing. Good-looking people, being more likely to be well-received by others, tend to have more opportunities to develop their social skills, and social skills are like most things. They improve with practice. On the flip side, ugly people who are generally tossed to the side don't tend to get nearly as many opportunities to develop their social skills.

3. Comparing Notes
Men generally get a sense of how attractive they are by the feedback they get from women, relative to the feedback their peers get from women. I used a social networking/dating site in my teens where everyone on there was around my age. The women there would often offer to rate the guys on appearance and vice-versa, and we were able to see what the women rated us compared to other guys. I consistently got the lowest rating that the women were willing to give. There isn't anything to conclude from that other than that I'm not attractive to women.

There's also tinder. I barely ever get any matches on tinder to where I've deleted my account. If I were to compare notes with other guys who have hundreds of matches, I'd be forced to conclude that they're more attractive. Add to that that they've had relationships before and I haven't despite wanting them, it's difficult to argue against the fact that at a minimum, these guys are more attractive than me, and at a maximum, I'm unattractive

There's no real indicator of social skills on tinder like there is of physical attractiveness.

I'll add more to the list when I can but I'm out of time at the minute.

whereas the O.P. said, on the contrary:


I'm not sure how one would obtain a statistical sample of incels to determine how good-looking or ugly they in fact are on average.

Be that as it may, I did a little poking around via Google just now and found a page of "incel selfies" (which I won't link to, as doing so might break the rule against promoting incel ideology). In my personal opinion, a few of them were indeed ugly, a few of them were relatively good-looking (though not supermodels), and most were average-looking, at least in terms of sheer physical appearance.

But what leapt out at me was their facial expressions: Almost all of them had a really creepy, hate-filled vibe. If that's their normal facial expression, then I would suspect that that is their main problem. Alas it's a problem that probably feeds on itself, in a vicious circle, due to their lack of success with women, compounded by their immersion in "incel" ideology.

Damn if I know! Meetup didn't exist back then. It didn't exist until 2005, and wasn't widespread until 2011. So using it simply wasn't an option. All I had was my group of long-time friends, who had the snooty women, and the people at my college, who I couldn't really hang out with because I didn't live on campus. (Although the women at my college were at least outwardly nicer.)

I aged into my looks by the time I was 26 or 27, so women stopped branding me a creep the minute I started talking to them. Even so, I met them only through online dating sites, singles' dances, and Meetup. Never through friends. I suppose if I were 18 to 26 today, with Meetup out in full force, I'd probably have an easy time finding new groups of friends, with friendlier women and such. In fact, Meetup has a reputation of attracting socially awkward types, and to be honest, it's not entirely untrue.

You hit the nail on the head. Online dating used to be a refuge. A refuge for The Undesirables to meet each other. Which meant I had a chance to find a relationship. And some of the women I met off dating sites were actually pretty cute. But after 2010, the online dating sites became saturated with the Beautiful People, and women started using it for the wrong reasons. So instead of it being a level playing field, women started getting 100 messages per day. So my messages were getting lost in the shuffle, and I started getting no responses. (I hope I phrased this without breaking TOS.)

It wasn't any specific thing. It was just the way the couples interacted with their partners and with other couples. It all looked more fake and insincere than an episode of "Beverly Hills, 90210". Lots of over-the-top compliments, lots of bragging about how much the partners love each other, the women seemed to look down on me, and the men acted more like women's accessories than their own persons. After seeing it enough times, and realizing that this is what I'll be expected to do in my future relationships, my sex drive plummeted. I even rejected women who showed romantic interest in me a few months later, offering my friendship instead. And this year, Effexor finished off whatever was left of my sex drive. If I were to, say, go to a strip club, I'd be yawning in boredom, until the dancers get annoyed and tell a bouncer to kick me out.

I have tried several 'White' countries, when the same person gets less matches in 10 White countries combined than a 1 Asian or African country, then there's an undeniable some "culture-specific hive mind thinking" going on in this world when it comes to looks.

I got like hundreds of matches in Morocco and Tunisia alone, while it' s ZERO in some European countries, that's a no coincidence. And to prove it that's not due to some unpopularity of Tinder in some country, I have used another account in my experiment with a picture of a handsome Euro guy, and he got a lot of matches in these same places where I got no matches, in Houston It got a lot of matches with Whites totally in contrast with my real account.

I have asked a Tunisian woman once about the male beauty standards in the Meghreb area and she simply said 'usually we're much into slim guys'.

What were these "wrong reasons"?


Sounds to me like the total volume just went up too high.

It seems to me that the only good kind of dating app would be one that asks you lots of questions and uses your answers to pre-filter possible matches by criteria other than physical appearance, before allowing you to view any photos. That way, there would no longer be thousands of people per day competing for a few beautiful people. There would be a lot fewer total people to choose from, but more people would get to choose from amongst good possible matches.

What do you think? Does such a dating app or website exist?


What led you to believe that all groups of couples would be like this, and hence that this was what you would be expected to do in your future relationships?

Gee, how can I say it without getting issued yet another warning? Um..., uh..., er..., "taking advantage of the disparity in desirability between themselves and the men viewing their profiles". For example, using dating sites to harvest Instagram followers.

Yes, it does: E-Harmony. But it's for marriage, rather than dating, and I heard negative things about it as well. Same ones as normal dating sites, with members being too picky or demanding.

What else could it be? It was all 2 or 3 couples acting that way while hanging out together, in unison, like a hive mind. It looked like a regression to freaking middle school, where a boyfriend or girlfriend was a status symbol to parade around, rather than a person to love. That's not what 30-somethings should be acting like! It was such a scary sight, that it killed my sex drive. Also, one of their friends threatened me with brass knuckles, when he found one of my jokes immature. I ran outside and called the police; he was arrested, because brass knuckles are illegal in my state. The couples all got angry with me, and took his side . I think they did it because he had a serious girlfriend; in other words, fit in with the group.

Some may benefit greatly with weight reduction and a new wardrobe. Others need all that, plus a new job, and someplace other than their parents' home to live in. Still others may need a complete personality makeover to have even a chance of success.

But what all of the "I can't get a date" types that I've met really need is to stop blaming others and work on improving themselves. I've known adult men who blame their parents, their siblings, the bullies in grade school, the jerks at work, and every pretty woman they see with a boyfriend already on her arm. They need to focus less on others (and the past) and more on improving themselves (in the present) before they can have even a slim chance of meeting that special someone.

If the focus is on "blame," then the person whose focus is "blame" will have no chance of success.

People do not seek partners who seek scapegoats.

Added to the Collection of Wise Aphorisms.

I think it's a case of, 'If your only tool is a hammer, all of your problems start to look like nails'.

It is based on a woefully underdeveloped understanding of how relationships and intimacy actually work. I think the lack of understanding is the cause of the relationship difficulties, the poor understanding of the cause of the difficulties, and the resulting difficulty fixing the actual issues.

It's a bad paradox. It's like employment sometimes.

In order to gain experience, one has to be hired for the job.

But in order to be hired for the job, one has to have experience.


Same with romance. People seem to seek experienced people, thereby eliminating the inexperienced. This leads to the inexperienced having difficulty gaining the requisite experience.

Trying to inform them (and there are a lot of them!) about how relationships work when they are dead-set on the idea that "Looks and Luck" alone are responsible for successful relationships is a waste of time. At best, they will ignore you. At worst, they will accuse you of trying to keep them from getting a girlfriend. In any case, they consider advice like "Learn a skill", "Get a job", or "Move into a place of your own" to be outright lies. Even advice like "Don't act desperate", "Relax", and "Smile more" is met with derision and scorn.

I am of the opinion that all they are really interested in is complaining, and not about actually doing anything to solve their problems -- and there are a lot of people with a lot of wrong beliefs about what it takes to start and maintain a relationship.