BBC 1 now - The Secret World of Incels

[HollowTalk]

Putting it here rather than in the TV section. One minute in and it's fucking horrible.

I suspect some will use it as a handbook...

In(voluntary) (Cel)ibate

I saw it the other week on iPlayer. Cafish guy was an overentitled little twerp who hasn't quite computed that the reason he can't get laid isn't his looks - it's his repulsive personality.

Had a bit of empathy with the other guys on there - the guy who was probably on the spectrum seemed to have skirted round the edges of the whole incel online culture and was starting to compute he was just going through a shitty dating patch (hell they're NORMAL!). The guy with the skin, from what I remember from seeing it had had terrible acne as a teenager which hadn't cleared up going into adulthood - and was dealing with all the emotional baggage that comes with that really - which again, I can kind of get as DH had awful disfiguring acne that only really has resolved as he's hit his 30s and he still has a lot of scars from it - and the impact it obviously had on his self esteem and confidence is really marked... if he'd have been born a little bit later on and was hitting teens and twenties now, as an introvert who spends a lot of time online - he's the sort of character who again would be potentially liable to be sucked down the incel plughole (thankfully he wasn't born into the cohort that seem to be prime pickings for it and had to just work through that horrid teens/early 20s dating singleton hell period to end up married with kids and holding down a very good job).

It shows that the potentially violent criminal misogynists are a subset, and are not synonymous with Incels

It strikes me as yet another area where vulnerable people are being groomed online.

It is so easy for genuinely dangerous people to speak loudly over, and for, those seeking answers to their problems and to drag them to a more extreme position than they held for themselves.

It must be nice having someone to blame for all your shortcomings and struggles.

It must be nice having someone to blame for all your shortcomings and struggles
Unfortunately it is at the expense of women. The more losers like catfishman are hailed as heroes by other sad inadequacies losers the more they will up their game.
Not only are they freaks,they are bloody dangerous!

It strikes me as yet another area where vulnerable people are being groomed online

Oh absolutely.

I personally feel the Prevent agenda should have a far wider reach.

What I found weird is that isn't it normal for single people to go through periods of being - well, single? And not having sex? Something about the online screen swiping culture has led people to feel entitled or wrong for experiencing normal relationship stuff.

Yes, but if you struggle somewhat with what is socially normal, I think it might be possible to not realise that. Pop culture is resolutely sex positive, and the impression they give is that everyone is having lots of sex. Lack of a sex life isn't something people regularly talk about publicly either, IRL, unless they are very close. I think men might do so even less than women.
It makes me think a bit about the discussion about marriage being non-feminist. One thing about having sex tied to marriage as the ideal, it does imply that being unmarried could include an expectation of not having sex and that would be normal. I think a lot of young men think as teens that when they are older, they will just get to have a lot of fun sex.

I personally feel the Prevent agenda should have a far wider reach
Excellent point.

I personally feel the Prevent agenda should have a far wider reach.

Yes, online grooming across a broad range of areas is a huge issue to my thinking and that would be a constructive move to start addressing it.

I don't think it needs to be prevent as such but teaching people how to spot ANY extremist group and what extremist language there is, and the problem with echo chambers in general and how they reinforce ideas without challenge and that's not healthy.

Social media allows the creation of these and makes your mind very narrow.

You have to go out of your way to fight back against that and seek out opposing views. I find this is harder than you think.

It's a useful tool if you can do it.

It's social media awareness and the pitfalls of it, rather than simply fighting extremism.

Catfish guy needs locking up somewhere very secure.

A six foot deep hole in the ground is pretty secure.

The PREVENT service does. I know, I have personal (as a clinician) experience of it.

The prevent training we had in school covered all kinds of extremist ideology and then tailored specific advice for school context. (E.g. in our region we are more likely to identify white nationalism than we are islamist extremism)

One of the (several) prevent trainings I have done taught us about extremist vegans (with a straight face).

The PREVENT service does. I know, I have personal (as a clinician) experience of it

The prevent training we had in school covered all kinds of extremist ideology

Interesting. I've had it (several times) in school and, whilst they have included white far right as well as Islamic extremism, there hasn't been any mention of anything else in the training that I've had.