So recently here in the UK we had an "incel shooting" (Technically he was ex-Incel) and it has the entire media doing interviews and talks about the Incel "problem". What is triggering me though is that all these attempts to understand "Incels" seem to go actively out of their way to never, ever address any points Incels make or any of the material conditions that have led to the rise of Incels in the past decade. I can understand not wanting to give Incel views any creedence, but at the same time, you can't just ignore all the data which does show Incels do have a point that something in the dating scene has gone very wrong.
In the past decade, sexlessness among men under 30 has risen from 8% to 28% in one US study and 40% in another Australian study. Women's "sexlessness" has barely budged. You also have apps like Tinder which specifically use algorithms to put down young men and make them feel unattractive, unless they buy gold, suddenly with gold their profile is shown to more "compatiable" women thus they start getting matches, Tinder thrives on male misery and 80% of modern dating is done through this single app.
The one piece I've seen in the week since that did address one Incel point, debunked the Incel 80/20 view (80% of young women go for the top 20% of men almost exclusively), by showing all the data we have shows it's only between 60-70/20… I have no idea how this is supposed to be a massive own of Incels but apparently it is. People all over Reddit UK and twitter thought so.
These are real material societal issues, the fact it's leading to radicalisation is the obvious one, but there are many issues linked with not having relationships, being single is almost as bad for your health as smoking and the 20s are an extremely formative time in someones life, if you're going throughout your 20s without a single relationship or sex, how are you going to adjust to one in your 30s or 40s?
I don't have any real solutions to this, I think the only thing I could think of is making an open-source dating app that doesn't have the super manipulative algorithms and focuses more on and values and interests like OKCupid used to do before Tinder, but what is more interesting to me is why is everyone beating around the bush so hard on this topic instead of just addressing the material cause? Online Dating systems mashed with the the social order of dating (men have to approach) has massively weighted dating to the extreme
Post too long. Click here to view the full text.