I don’t have to spend time around incel spaces. I have friends, family I get along with, I have a support network. I insist on spending time around incels, though, because I absolutely have to know why we exist, what is the lesson that we’re supposed to learn from our existence.
I’ve seen a fair few hypotheses that I think sound reasonable, and it’s come to my attention that I often switch between them. I don’t have them written down, which certainly makes any kind of reasoned analysis harder, so thus: my project. I intend to create a short catalog of different explanations for why inceldom, as a culture, exists. I fully expect to miss a hypothesis or two.
I am starting with two notions: One, that inceldom as a concept is either new, or at least has increased substantially as a proportion of the population, or has at least increased in visibility. Two, that explanations make take the form of larger trends in society. Simply slapping an explanation like “it’s a bunch of male entitlement” fails to explain why that entitlement seems to be on the rise.
It also should go without saying that these hypotheses are NOT mutually exclusive. Rather, the truth is likely going to be a mix of multiple, or even all hypotheses.
Category: Atomization
Several hypotheses revolve around the concept that society is just becoming more lonely in general. It’s easy to see how a more individualized society that still maintains a hierarchical structure could leave more and more people missing out on proper socialization. The specific reasons why are varied, though:
1 - Atomization via Late Stage Capitalism
There are a handful of extremely popular opinions grouped around the idea that society has failed to promote community, and the most prominent in the communities I regularly traffic in (outside of incel spaces) revolves around the idea that capitalism killed the community. The argument, as I understand it, basically asserts that humans are, on average, both working too much and also have to pay too much to exist. The common, shared “third space” (not home nor work) has gone the way of the dodo, and the replacements are too profit-driven to allow activity that isn’t directly producing profits. As an example of this, places like malls and parks used to host groups of teenagers just hanging out. Modern sensibilities hold that they are intimidating and should be dispersed unless they’re there to spend money or use park equipment. You can’t just go into a bar or coffeeshop without buying a drink, and even after the drink is finished you’re expected to get another or get out. The actual places that exist outside of work or home carry an expectation of spending money to exist there, and in with the backdrop of an increasing cost to live, people are squeezed out.
This would result in incels existing by virtue of those who are most vulnerable - not particularly sociable, either by nature or by lack of social skills, getting completely cut off. Even if they could afford to hang out at these spots, there’s nobody there with a similar social desire.
I like this hypothesis on account of the sheer relatableness that pretty much everyone expresses when engaging with this theory. My primary complaint is that this hypothesis doesn’t seem to actually explain the experiences of many incels, who bring back reports of being rejected from those third spaces - be it school, after work hangouts, etc.
2 - Atomization via Increasing Secularization
The traditionalist version of the above argument usually revolves around secularism and the reduction in church attendance. This argument is surprisingly satisfying - religious attendance not only functions as a third space in and of itself, but it also transmits values and specifically builds a shared sense of identity that fertilizes the existence of community. To bolster this, there’s evidence showing that people who attend church are more likely to get married than those who don't. Marriage rates seem like a useful proxy for estimating “loneliness” and inceldom, as a result, so this carries some weight to it. The broader form of this argument asserts that secular values don’t provide for community at all, although this is a much weaker position to defend, as one then has to demand that community is a function of religion, as admitting otherwise means that secular values can provide for community, just maybe not the contemporary set.
By this hypothesis, incels would thus represent the failure of secularized values - the group that needs religious ministration to return to a more normal existence. This fits into a larger context of social transition away from certain values that humanity has held dearly for milennia and could be considered “battle-tested”.
I like this hypothesis for its ability to marry relevant data with a cogent explanation, but my major complaints revolve around this data. The data used is often subject to heavy selection bias - there may be more marriages and fewer divorces in religious communities, but are those marriages extending to vulnerable incel populations, and are they necessarily strong marriages? How many are hanging on by a fear of exclusion due to a divorce?
3 - Atomization via Social Media
Coming soon..
Category: Technological explanations
One of the historical constants in human society is the development of new technologies. Each technology has brought with it social changes, and I’ve heard it said before that all history is determined by the state of technology.
4 - Transhumanism is developing too slowly
This is kind of a goofy theory, but it appeals to me somehow. I’m not an anthropologist, but I’ve been exposed to theories from anthropological discussions that posit that human civilizations are contingent on technological innovations. The invention of language allowed humans to form large tribes, agriculture allowed for cities, rule of law allowed for nations to be stable over the course of generations, and so on. It’s pretty easy to argue that electricity is required for contemporary society to exist. There’s an argument out there that transhumanism is a necessary technological evolution to enable us to reach a higher level of civilization. Now that we’re in the information age and have gained the ability to disseminate far more information than we’re capable of processing, we may be losing coherence as a society because of a combination of paradox of choice and imposter syndrome.
What this would look like is something like this: Bill wants to distinguish himself and create a sense of status to anchor his identity to. He decides that he wants to try bodybuilding, so he starts working out and posting his progress on instagram. Bill never even cracks the top 50% of bodybuilders on instagram, because somehow nobody can break into the top, and he becomes disheartened by his lack of progress. Sure, he’s got a great body, and in his community he may have the most built body there, but with exposure to the entire world, he’s 3rd rate at best and can’t build his identity around this. Repeat this to almost everything, and you’re in the situation of at least 50% of the population.
Transhumanism, on the other hand, solves this problem. Do you have breasts, but want them to be bigger? Sure, just get implants. Want them to be smaller? Get a reduction. Want to have more hair? Get a hair transplant. Want to have less hair? Get it lasered off. These are forms of transhumanism, but we can still go so much further. In the future, Bill may choose to get bulky, badass robotic arm/leg replacements that come to define him as a Strong Guy. Assuming we don’t blow ourselves up, this type of technology will serve as the great equalizer, and will allow people to customize their identity as they specifically prefer. This would allow civilization to resolve a great deal of identity dysfunction and thus advance to a new stage.
This particular hypothesis would explain incels as being caught in a position where they would benefit the most from transhumanism in the form of plastic surgeries, etc., that could help kick off positive feedback loops and would result in positive, holistic effects.
The primary strength for this argument, in my opinion, is the sense of a regression from past trends. I’m leaving out the complicated relationship that incels have with transgenderism, even though it has a lot to do with the transhumanist argument since it really deserves a much more nuanced take. The serious complaint about this argument, though, is that it’s almost completely unfalsifiable, and largely relies on a deus ex machina solution: Eventually Some Tech Company Will Fix All Of Our Problems. Additionally, people who think that incels are just a bunch of dudes with body dysmorphia are definitely going to argue that no amount of transhumanism can fix mental illness.
5 - Romance is dead, and apps killed it
There is never a shortage of complaining about Tinder. Frankly, the Match-dominated series of dating apps definitely encourage extremely shallow behavior. Combine the existence of a dating app, where flirting is expressly permitted, with a a common sensibility that male sexuality is dangerous and public flirting is undesirable, and you could end up with a really common sentiment insisting that it’s only appropriate to find relationships online. This leaves us at the mercy of dating app formats, and so far all the popular dating apps are incredibly shallow, providing very little opportunity to showcase anything besides one’s physical attractiveness and ability to craft a persuasive profile. Very little honesty is required, since these apps, by necessity, do not feature enough information to either verify someone’s character or do a deep dive.
The online nature of online dating encourages tentative connections that have extremely little commitment. Even strangers, meeting in real life, will tend to feel at least some level of pressure to treat each other well, if nothing else than just for the immediate humanity of the other, something that apps are great at obscuring. This is part of the value of apps though - not being confronted with that humanity helps increase people’s willingness to participate. It’s very low stakes, low stress when you can just ghost out whenever you want.
To this end, incels would burst into existence as a result of being consistently outcompeted by people who are simply more well-suited for dating apps based on their looks and skills applicable to profile creation/messaging.
Favorable strength for this argument is that, frankly, just about everyone does dislike Tinder & Co., and yet use this type of app anyways. An increasing portion of relationships forming online definitely suggests this is a pain point. The great weakness of the argument, though, is that proto-incel communities (love shy, etc.) definitely existed before dating apps became so shallow. This seems like an accelerant more than a spark for the incel problem, and may even be a way for society to exclude incels more effectively.
6 - Incels are a reflection of increasing online radicalization
This hypothesis grows out of our common understanding of violent extremism, including terrorists or hate groups. The argument goes that people with a grievance are vulnerable to be exploited by someone who offers an explanation for their grievance, but in reality that explanation is a smokescreen to promote allegiance to a cause that may or may not be organized. It’s hard to imagine that someone who really actually does have it all would descend into an antisemitic mania, whereas it’s not hard to see someone who has real problems with their lives being told that brown people or women are the cause of this.
This hypothesis uses the blackpill as a type of worldview, and understands incels as emotionally vulnerable young men who find enough hard truths in the blackpill that they swallow it whole, likely through a process of masochistic epistemology (“it must be true because it hurts”). From there, incels are dragged in and beaten down with constant self-debasement and negativity until positivity becomes taboo, and there is no easy path to even attempting to leave the mindset. The hypothesis can exist in a form that treats incels as a hate group, or another form that considers incels to be only analogous to hate groups, or somewhere inbetween.
What I like about this theory is that there really are a lot of parallels regarding the behavior of different groups of aggrieved young men, plus it offers some concrete strategies to move forward. My major complaint is that there just aren’t any recruiters that are radicalizing people, and a look at the broader incel community suggests that most incels really aren’t that radicalized at all. The hypothesis may be better for addressing specific groups of incels.
Category: War of the Sexes
Although I generally loathe the term “war” in this context, it does seem sort of fitting for this set of hypotheses. The arguments discussed here generally revolve around the idea that women’s standards and expectations have recently had a relatively large shift, thus cutting off a section of men who no longer meet them.
7 - Women’s standards are rising faster than men are evolving
This is a popular hypothesis of many diverse spaces, including incel spaces, manosphere spaces, and even many feminists. The argument, phrased more or less pejoratively, revolves around the idea that women are more independent, less dependent on men, and therefore have higher expectations for partners. It’s obvious how this would produce incels - men who fail at meeting these standards are going to find it difficult to find partners.
Frankly, it’s hard to find any real arguments against this happening on at least some scale. There’s plenty of disagreement regarding the moral status of this, with feminists and allies often arguing that this is a just outcome, with incel & manosphere groups having mixed opinions on the just-ness of this. The usual understanding of this revolves around different specific standards - feminists usually cite misogyny, manosphere types tend to cite hypergamy and self-defeating expectations of fame & income, while incels usually target raw physical attractiveness, especially including skin color. I’m not comfortable blaming any of these in particular, especially considering the sheer diversity in women’s desires. It seems likely that all three opinions are true on some level.
As stated, this one almost definitely has to have something with the existence of incels. This hypothesis is very strong, although the specific interpretation of what standards are problematic remains elusive. The major weakness of this theory is that it’s usually tied to the sexual revolution and women’s independence, which introduces a timing issue. Incel groups are a relatively recent phenomenon, and a lot of male loneliness stats show a relatively recent spike - if most of the legal changes influencing women’s independence occurred in the 70s and 80s, then why is this effect only coming into play 40-50 years later? There’s a rabbit hole there of explanations that again deserves its own article from someone smarter than I.
8 - Women’s standards are rising - Evolutionary speculation variant
Basically the previous, but a little more blackpilled. This argument focuses on the idea that women have moved from practical appeal to aesthetic appeal in their preferences, and that a historical selection of men for practical, rather than aesthetic value results in a shortage of men who are genetically equipped for the modern dating market. To explain in detail - evolution can happen along various axes, not just pure survival. Any factor that could help a set of genes reproduce more readily should result in being overrepresented. Thus - imagine a world where women who were more physically attractive were more likely to pass on their genes, while the primary driver for men was their ability to maintain gainful employment. Times a thousand generations.
The end result of evolution from that would be women who are phenotypically attractive according to an average of conventional standards, while men would be relatively randomly distributed, and thus, relatively more heavily weighted towards lower attractiveness than women. If women were suddenly granted agency to choose partners based on their subjective feelings of attractiveness, of which physical form was a factor, then surely this might introduce an imbalance of unfuckability between men and women. Even if men and women were paired up with their looksmatches, you’d end up with attractive women pining for attractive partners who are already taken, and uglier men who who too few potential mates in their league, so to speak.
This argument definitely assumes that people tend to not want to pair up with people who are significantly less attractive than they are, or at least that a sufficiently large number of people feel that way. Even if just 20% of the population was so shallow, that could induce a noticeable difference in desire that could explain incels.
The strength of this argument is that it provides a pretty neat framework that seems to match well with a lot of observations (OKCupid chart, etc.). The weakness is that it’s entirely speculative, and people seem to really hate it for some reason that I’ve never been able to figure out. I’d love to hear better criticisms of this hypothesis.
9 - Patriarchy for me, but not for thee
Closely tied to the women’s standards argument, this particular version focuses on the lack of progress in opening up conceptions of masculinity to include a larger number of men. The basic argument revolves around the observation that social constructs around gender may be linked, but they aren’t necessarily the same thing. From there, one could observe that five decades of concentrated progress on expanding the social construct for women doesn’t necessarily expand the social construct for men, and thus, one ends up with an imbalance, where women are allowed to be powerful, but men aren’t allowed to be powerless. The men who are powerless, thus, consequently end up as incels - unable to gain respect from women or society in general.
This kind of hypothesis is often used much more broadly than incel discussions - it comes up often in discussing men as fathers, men in care/education professions, and so on. We all agreed that women should be doctors, but why do so many still sneer at male nurses?
This argument has as a strong point the fact that it’s an observable phenomenon, and its existence is thus beyond question, even if the level of impact isn’t. A major weakness is that it doesn’t easily explain why incel rates seem to be rising when gender equality in general (including for men) is improving.
Category: Naturalistic Explanations
The arguments in this category revolve around the idea that mankind has a certain pattern of behavior that fits us best, and that incels are a part of it. It would be worth viewing these with a long historical lens, perhaps thinking back to Medieval or even Classical time periods, and trying to think about the similarities in human nature between those times.
10 - There’s just too many men
Another hypothesis originating from the perspective of historical trends, the “too many men” hypothesis essentially argues that, for a variety of potential reasons, the mating process works better when there’s a slight shortage of men compared to women. As an example, one may argue that a woman who may not be fully convinced on a man may be more willing to settle if she felt like her other life goals (children, etc.) were more important and urgent.
This hypothesis does have the disturbing implication that a potential solution to the incel problem is a decimation of the male population, although I usually see this phrased in form of “We need to figure out what to do with our excess males”, which doesn’t inherently imply any kind of death. Regardless of the method of disposal, though, this argument does imply that excess men have to be dealt with, even if in the form of sticking a bunch of men in monasteries or otherwise inducing celibacy.
A major strength of this argument is how apolitical it is, people from any direction on the political compass can find some truth to it. My criticism, though, is that wartime or other primary male losses tend to be overestimated - does a 0.5% loss of men make that much difference in the lives of the remainder?
11 - Incels are inevitable, polygamy is natural
This is the hypothesis that I fear the most. This argument from historical data observes that for essentially all of human history, a far lower proportion of men than women have reproduced, and since men and women are born in roughly equal amounts, the implication is that the majority, or even vast majority of men have lived incel lives. The contemporary favoritism towards the nuclear family and the consequent 1-1 pairings of reproductive rates is cast as an outlier, which is currently accurate.
The argument continues to assert that as gender equality improves, a state of nature will prevail and society will return to a configuration where relatively fewer men than women will reproduce, with the implication being that polygamy of a type will naturally re-emerge. I stumbled across this hypothesis some time ago, and since then I’ve had a keen interest in the criminally-understudied polyamory community to try to understand what the relative gender balance is. If it is indeed true that there are far fewer men than women, that would lend this hypothesis substantial evidence. If this hypothesis is correct, then the implication is that some forms of patriarchy (forced monogamy variant) are potentially uniquely capable of combating the scourge of polygamy. If this hypothesis is accurate, then the future holds a LOT more inceldom.
Historical evidence is a significant strength of this article. Estimates for different periods of time suggest that reproduction rates could have been 1:15 (men:women) to 1:40, a miserable inequality. A significant weakness, however, is that some anthropological evidence suggests that the state of nature for human relationships is actually serial monogamy, and also ignores that there is a third choice beyond polygamy (cast as natural) and forced monogamy.
12 - Incels always existed, they’re just more visible
While pondering what obvious explanations I’ve missed after publishing this article, I can to realize a very obvious theory that comes up so often that I must have forgotten it. This hypothesis asserts that rates of inceldom, etc., may be subject to change over time, but in the larger scale, there’s always been a crust of primarily men who are incels, and the only thing that’s changed is our visibility. In the pre-internet era, terminally single men may have found ways to clump together, but never enough to form an identity. This may be modulated by the way that men tend to make shoulder-to-shoulder friendships as opposed to the face-to-face style that women prefer.
This hypothesis definitely finds fertile soil in our understanding of history. Based on studies of human & mitochondrial DNA, researchers have found that there’s about twice as many women as men in your family tree, going back millennia. The obvious result of this is that, across the human species as a whole, 50% of men have been incels as an outright floor - the true rates are likely even higher! It’s worth noting that this sort of analysis works more like an average than a median, so it definitely is vulnerable to outliers. If most societies were monogamous, but relatively fewer societies were extremely polygamous (or caused Genghis Khan type events, just a suggestion), then you could end up creating this data while still having an overall tendency away from incels. Nonetheless - the data is shocking. Through history, we can see examples of earlier pseudo-incel men who set out on the seas, rushed for gold, formed criminal gangs, and all of that, and it’s worth remembering.
A strength of this hypothesis is definitely found in historical trends and genetic findings, and certainly is true in some ways. A great weakness, however, is that it goes back to the question of how does one define an incel? For sure, some salty sailors may have never experienced romance in their lives before succumbing to scurvy at a young age, but are they the model that we want to understand contemporary incels with?
Category Miscellaneous
13 - Mental illness as a contagion, especially body dysmorphia
I’m taking the liberty of grouping a variety of explanations under the label “mental illness”, even though that is a little unfair. “Unhealthy mindsets” might be more accurate. The argument essentially asserts that the root cause for inceldom is that too many men just have the wrong mindset about how their lives fit in with culture. From here, it’s a matter of asserting that this mindset may not be their fault, but it is their responsibility to fix it.
The major strength of this argument is that it has a very self-righteous moralizing tone that is quite easy to endorse. The major fault, however, is that it fails to truly explain anything - why is this mindset suddenly popping up?
14 - Aggrieved Entitlement
Michael Kimmel proposed this theory to try to answer why so many young men are just so angry, and people certainly link incels to it very regularly. Variants of this theory are very often brought up, even to the point of people saying that the use of the word “involuntary” is an example of entitlement. The theory basically asserts that patriarchy offered a devil’s deal to men - if you act in accordance with “what it means to be a man”, then one would become a patriarch and receive the proceeds of those actions. Those proceeds would include women. When this devil’s deal fails to produce what was promised, some men will double down, triple down, etc., and grow angry that the system isn’t working. So they feel that they are entitled to a woman, and they are very angry that they aren’t getting one, and the only way they know how to get a woman is to just act in accordance with patriarchally masculine norms, but even more intensely.
Incels are explained using this hypothesis as being the ones for whom the romantic prospects were the proceeds of patriarchy that didn’t quite work out. What this would look like, practically, is that as a young man you receive certain messages about how you should behave and what women like. So tips like “Women like it when you hold the door open for them” and “women like clean shaven men” and so on, and when a young man does those things, but gets rejected anyways, it can feel very unfair. He could stop, consider that maybe his understanding is wrong and try to correct it, or he could instead become angry and insist that he’s “the supreme gentleman” and that women are engaging in a conspiracy to destroy him or something like that, and thus, the incel.
The strongest point about this theory, in my opinion, is that I absolutely agree with the idea that patriarchy offers the devil’s deal and that it can be frustrating when it doesn’t pan out. That’s a real effect that I think every man knows - it is very relatable. What I don’t like about this hypothesis though is that it seems geared towards explaining a very specific type of person, and I just don’t think most incels are like that. It feels to me like the kind of theory that is useful as a partial interpretation, but it gets accepted commonly as being the explanation, even if it’s incomplete. It matches the media image of the incel better than my experience.
15 - Microplastics or other environmental toxins
I have a dread feeling in the back of my head that this one is going to turn out to be true. Much like the close tie-in of leaded gas bans and falling crime rates, there could be a deeper environmental reason for this that we simply don’t have the research in place to understand. The hypothesis goes like this: It’s common knowledge that testosterone levels in men are declining, that sperm count in men is declining, and environmental toxins seem like likely culprits. If sexual dimorphism in general is attractive to people, and certain relevant biomarkers of sexual dimorphism are decreasing, then isn’t there a real chance that this could actually be the root cause of inceldom?
Environmental toxins are always experienced in a gradient, people who consume more of potentially contaminated products will experience is stronger, people who live near accumulations (production, storage, waste, etc.) will experience these toxins in a stronger way. Some people who may already be in a socially tenuous situation and get a dose of these bad boys may be first in line to become incels. Girls are generally considered to be more resilient than boys, which may help explain why men seem to be affected so much more.
Both the strength and weakness of this hypothesis are the same: Not enough data. We’ve observed that many plastics have endocrine-disrupting properties, but the effect size is likely to be small, the trials are going to have to go for a long time, and thus it’s difficult to really study this issue. This means that all the hypotheses listed above very well might turn out to be nothing more than overintellectualizing a topic to death, which seems ironic enough that surely it must be true. Regardless, microplastics as an explanation has almost no evidentiary basis to confirm or deny.
A note about looks
I have to write a little bit about looks, since that is very conspicuously absent from the above list. I simply cannot list this as an honest hypothesis on account of not having a reason to think that looks among men changed significantly in the last 50 years. I could very well see women’s preferences changing (see #4), but looks isn’t a suitable hypothesis because it doesn’t actually explain the rise of incels as a class - it only explains why some men aren’t incels.
I already know that I missed some explanations, and I’ll be glad to edit them in later, please drop me a line on twitter @baffletrot if you see something I need to add in. If you read this and feel like my treatment of your hypothesis was unfair, then sorry, and please let me know what you think and I’ll see if I can update it.
As always, thanks for reading.