My son (18) has become angry and bitter

[ForLimeScroller]

My son (18) is finishing his A levels this year and is going to university next year. He is incredibly angry and bitter at his life and I’d like some advice on what to say to him. He is going to do a physics degree and always found academics quite easy and was always described as very intelligent or sometimes a “genius”.
He has very mild autism and was often teased when he was younger he was called things like “spastic” and “retarded” and was told he has an “extra chromosome” although it is important to note he is not intellectually disabled in any meaningful way and no one would genuinely believe he was when speaking to him.
He is bitter he never had a high school girlfriend although I know he has “pulled girls” in house parties and more recently nightclubs. He has become incredibly bitter, and he has started looking at things online that are not good for him. People like Andrew tate ad other alpha male influencers. He started telling me about things like the “blackpill and redpill” which are dating ideologies he found online. They basically say the conventional dating advice of just be kind and the right girl will come are wrong and the only way to attract women is by working extremely hard at it and constantly obsessing over self-improvement. He seems to believe he was dealt a bad hand in life and has become obsessed with self-improvement in order to be able to “pull women” and becoming one of the top 1% of men. He looks up to and admires people such as Andrew Tate and aspires to become like them. He seems to believe he is currently treated like a “sub human” and has become obsessed with self-improvement and something called “looksmaxing” to an unhealthy degree. Very often on the weekend he goes to nightclubs where his sole objective is to find a girl to take home with him so he believes can finally ascend out of subhuman status although I don’t believe he has managed this yet.
He is so obsessed with this he has spent over £50 of my money paying people online to rate his face out of 10. They sent him a long technical document filled with ratios and measurements of his face which resembles something I would read in my career as an engineer. They also gave him a final rating of a 4.5 out of 10 or slightly below average. One of them told him “Your face is common but you will be seen as slightly below average or plain looking”. Another told him you are a 4/10 but you have potential to looksmax to a 6 and the primary advice was to keep going to the gym to slim down to 12% bodyfat and get a 6 pack. Another thing he did online is he went onto a livestream of one of these alpha males influencers and asked for looksmaxing advice and asked him to rate him out of 10. This influencer online insulted him and told him he looked like he had been through a midlife crisis and that he had man boobs and a gut. However he then rated him a 6/10 and said his face looked good and there was nothing wrong with it. This seemed to please him greatly as it seemed to give him hope that he has the genetic potential to “save himself” and manage to ascend to the top 1% of men. When my son told the influencer but a 6 out of 10 is average the influencer told my son women don’t want average they only want the best men. I think this is a harmful message as it further cemented his belief how he is is not good enough and made worse his constant need to self improve.
He seems to believe that average men in western society he is treated extremely poorly and he told him girls see him like he would see “dog shit on the street”. He also believes that the top 1% of men have a quality of life 100x better and he has made it his life goal to reach the top 1% of attractiveness.
He has often tried to change his personality to attract women. His voice is quite flat and monotone and I have noticed a conscious effort to change this around women where he would try to vary the pitch of his voice. He was also told he was socially akward and compared to “AI” or “Chat GTP” in another instance of people taking the piss out of him. This seems to really upset him and I can see how much effort he puts in trying to “fix his personality” to be more attractive to women.
I would really appreciate some advice on what to say to him so that his mental health can improve when he starts university next year and how he can learn to accept himself how he is instead of constantly seeing himself as defective and trying to fix himself into what he sees as the ideal in order to attract women.

Lots of people telling OP to 'clamp down' and 'stop him accessing stuff' but its really not that easy with an 18 yr old!

I really think that if you can find a way to help with his social isolation and get him out in the world more things will get better.

Might he be able to get a job? Go an volunteer overseas? Time spent doing and not ruminating and being online will really help.

Agree with this. I have two daughters similar ages, one aged 17 in the upper sixth and one at uni. Neither has dated yet. Each of them has friends who also haven’t had a boyfriend or girlfriend yet. Your son seems to feel entitled to a girlfriend as though this is something to possess, like a car, but relationships happen between two people who get on well. Building good social skills and actually being interested in girls as people is the important thing.

Stopping this from progressing means asking for help, like @ForLimeScroller
is doing, that means seeking advice and support because he's unlikely to just stop or be able to by himself because he is autistic and that means a different way of thinking, he is not neuro typical and has obsessive tendencies which are being manipulated here.
I'm surprised you as an Autistic person, do not understand that. Telling your son he's a 'weirdo and an incel' is cruel and unproductive. Do you imagine if he hears that from his own mother he will just shut down his computer account and never mention his obsession again? i thought not.

This is what online extremist grooming does to children - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4g77e57q17o

Maybe somebody should have called her a weirdo or stupid?

@GatherlyGal I totally agree with your suggestions, a different environment and with lots of activities will greatly cut down on the hold this all has on him and will stop him ruminating. With obsessions its the downtime where most of us just relax that's the worst for them because the rumination kicks in.

I'll be honest your daughter's being a similar age to ops son is irrelevant to the discussion. I'm assuming your daughter's don't have autism although you havent said so I apologise if wrong.

Being autistic you struggle to make friends and fit in you come across as weird and will have been bullied and isolated pretty much your entire life, it's a lot deeper than him just feeling "entitled to a girlfriend".
I'm not making excuses at all just explaining what it is like

@Scrubberdubber I don't know what posters don't seem to understand here. OP has already written about his difficulties and struggles to fit in in the past and one can see how it has all led up to this. Even if @Christwosheds is autistic and has 2 autistic DD's they all present differently. One struggles with body dysmorphia another one struggles with germ anxiety, we are all different but it is disordered anxiety that is driving it all. People are being deliberately harsh & cruel because it is a male, were it an 18yr old woman OP posted about it will all be 'aw, she's very young, barely out of her teens', and lots of helpful advice how to protect her. The language some posters are using is as if they hate @OP's ds whom they've never met. It's triggered many, sadly.

Angry sexually frustrated 18 year old males are frightening to women - a body dysmorphic girl of the same age nor so much.

The angry males who have given me grief over the years have all been "neurotypical" (don't know what other word to use) loud confident types who will never have heard of any of the niche internet talk that ops son is into.

That aside surely it is not hard to see why an autist who has been bullied and isolated most of his life has turned bitter? How to turn this around I cannot say hopefully someone will be along with good advice and not the PPs who told op to call her son a "weirdo". He's likely been told that his whole life and hearing it from his own mother isn't going to help.

Right but we don't write them off at the age of 18 we try and find ways to help and steer them off a dangerous path.

Where did I say write them off? Just understanding the instinctive difference in reaction from women. To you he’s your darling little boy to random women he’s down right frightening.

This is a really dangerous slippery slope. Please read up on incels as this behaviour is what he is subscribing to. We have actually had safeguarding talks at school about Andrew Tate and his ilk. There are some articles on this on Psychology UK. I would possibly be trying to find any sort of advice groups you could approach.

What I will say is that uni will broaden his horizons. It will become very clear to him that this behaviour is a massive turn off for women. Really difficult for you.

I also don't agree with the comment about mild autism. There is no such thing. It's pretty clear his autism is causing some significant problems here. I'm a parent of a young teen who is AuDHD.

hopefully someone will be along with good advice and not the PPs who told op to call her son a "weirdo".

Nobody has suggested calling him a weirdo. What I said was I would tell him he sounds like a weirdo and an incel and to never bring it up again

Sounds like, is different from you are. And the fact is he is an incel and what he’s saying is weird. Do you disagree with that?

If he is comfortable saying this to his mum, arguing with his father about it and influencing his younger brother I dread to think what he’s saying in college. He needs to be made aware of how unacceptable it is to voice these opinions. I would rather tell him myself, before someone else does.

I'm surprised you haven't been ripped a new arsehole here. I agree with you, it's spot on.

OP I don't agree with ' mild autism '. What you have is someone who APPEARS like everyone else, but is not. My son would have been diagnosis Asperger's when that term was used. Yours too I imagine.

There is in my view a high risk of traits of narcissistic personality disorders and sociopathy in a certain group of ND males. I don't know if that's exactly what it is as we just don't know enough about all this and I think ND traits might look like Personality disordered states.

Boys in this group are at such high risk of fixed, concerning views and the internet is really bloody dangerous here.

I don't know the answer to this. I just think a complete no tolerance attitude is all you can do in response. What else can you do here? With a fixed personality type, it will be utterly beyond your control and you therefore only have the most firm and unrelenting boundaries. I am realising this is the only way in my own situation.

Whenever I read about incels, I think of Peter Crouch and Abby Clancy. Yes he was a professional footballer so had plenty of money, but she was a model no doubt surrounded by men with money. Yet she chose Peter Crouch.

I'm quite fond of him, as he played for the team I support, but nobody would say he was goodlooking. What he was, according to her, was funny and kind.

I'm my opinion, any one who chooses a partner based only on looks is a fool. Other attributes are much more important. And why would anyone want a fool as a partner?

@Scrubberdubber many males are personality disordered and NT. A scary proportion I believe. Terrifying actually.

Being male and autistic just increases the likelihood I believe.

I tell my son when something is just weird. We have funny weird which is great. But we have creepy, not ok weird and I explain that quite happily. I try my best to be kind about it. I think absolute honesty is very important. We are blinkered as mum's and that's dangerous in itself.

I don't know that it increases the likelihood of a personality disorder being isolated and not fitting in definitely can lead to bitterness but is that the same as having a personality disorder? I genuinely don't know much about personality disorders tbh.

"Incel" is short for involuntarily celibate, when you're autistic you struggle with friendships relationships social skills in general so it's easy to see how this happens.
Having calm arguements where you give reasons why his new viewpoints are wrong in a way that makes sense without getting angry is your best way of coming out of this. You can probably tell I've been here before and know someone very similar to ops son. We managed to see the light at the end of the tunnel eventually and that phase is a distant memory now.

But seriously the most toxic males I know are "neurotypical" loud confident and have not even heard of any of these incel internet theories.

How many women does he think find Andrew Tate attractive? Almost none! So why on Earth would he want to be like him? Ask him that.

I’d also tell him that reading all that incel crap is a surefire way not to be attractive to women. Men like that come across as creeps and weirdos and women run a mile.

Why doesn’t he stop and think what women actually want? Tell him. I’d also try to build up his self-esteem and reduce the time he spends online.

Sounds a fake post this. You know way too much. Sounds like someone trying to start a debate on modern dating/Andrew Tate and coming up with this nonsense story.

Has his asd been pushed to one side/ downplayed as he was good academically and had no intellectual deficits? I used to work in that field of work and the person turning 18/ going to uni/ finishing uni is often a time when socially and emotionally they fall apart.

I am not autistic, no. Nor are my daughters. I don’t think I said anything at all to suggest that I hated the OP’s son ! He has to fit in with the world, and so it wouldn’t be remotely helpful to him to act as if this way of thinking is ok, because it isn’t. Women are not objects. Nobody is entitled to a relationship. He is still at school ! It’s totally normal to not have a relationship.

@Scrubberdubber you might be right. It can be impossible to know someone is PD until you're on the receiving end. It's all confusing because ND struggles like you point out can feed into the problem, and maybe it will change in time.

It's difficult to know. I still can't discern what is what in my own situation.

Echoing others, you need support with this as he's been/being radicalised. This is very serious.

I very much agree that counselling would help your son, OP….navigating relationships, realising this Andrew Tate baloney is really destructive and dangerous. It is especially important this is done now, before he leaves home and goes to University. University is a difficult transition for young people, and throw autism into the mix, and they need support.