On incels, dead bedrooms and the hard problems of loneliness • Hacker News Board

Re: On incels, dead bedrooms and the hard problems of loneliness

#271

Post by [deleted] » Tue, May 04, 2021, 6:32 PM UTC

cushychicken wrote: post #174

landryraccoon wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Man this thread sure must be depressing if you're single. Single? That's your problem, that your single. Go get a relationship and be happy! Way to dogpile on people when they're down. I say enjoy being single. If a relationship happens, good for you, but don't listen to people that say you're damaged / worse off / going down the drain because you're single. They're just jealous you can travel and play video games wh…

Another way to phrase the original top comment (which, btw, is very deservedly the top comment): "If you can't be happy on your own, there's no way you'll be happy with a partner." Happiness comes from within. Pegging your happiness on something external to yourself - material wealth, social standing, another human being - is giving away all agency you have over your own happiness.

[deleted]

Re: On incels, dead bedrooms and the hard problems of loneliness

#272

Post by alex_smart » Tue, May 04, 2021, 6:32 PM UTC

benlivengood wrote: post #93

tachyonbeam wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's one bitter truth about life: (almost) everyone needs some amount of physical intimacy to be happy, but it's not something anyone is entitled to. Those of us who have access to that are privileged. I agree with the author though. IMO the existence of so many "incels" is some expression of a real societal problem. Many young men are suffering, and we don't acknowledge their suffering as genuine. We just tell the…

At least in the bay area there are plenty of cuddle parties for platonic physical touch. Feminism has a pretty convincing answer to the problem like I edited my original comment to include. Toxic masculinity is the social exclusion of deep emotional relationships between men, including the "suck it up" culture. The key is that only men can really participate in that healing because it's entirely a problem between men…

So, feminism's answer to the problems men face is completely disconnected with men's own experiences and feelings.

Color me surprised.

Re: On incels, dead bedrooms and the hard problems of loneliness

#273

Post by colinmhayes » Tue, May 04, 2021, 6:33 PM UTC

everdrive wrote: post #190

>Her response was that they had so much "male privilege" and that they have no excuse for underperforming. That, thus, they should still be _ahead_ of women, presumably, despite the goal being that they... shouldn't be. This will be downvoted and poorly received, but the fact is that women despise weak men. If a man is in a poor state, most women will be visibly disgusted by him. A man generally should not expect sym…

This is an opinion, not a fact.

Re: On incels, dead bedrooms and the hard problems of loneliness

#274

Post by hn8788 » Tue, May 04, 2021, 6:33 PM UTC

toyg wrote: post #221

spoonjim wrote: post #140

Essentially, what we have right now in the sexual marketplace echoes what we have in the economy... a lot of the sex is being had by a small fraction of the people. The need for sex is perhaps as high as the need for money but nobody talks about this crushing inequality, perhaps because there is no practical way to “tax and redistribute” sex. The problem is worse for men since a man needs a certain set of skills and…

> there is no practical way to “tax and redistribute” sex. But there is a way to improve supply: give dignity to prostitution.

That doesn't work out as well as it sounds. Unsuprisingly, the amount of women willing to have sex with strangers for money is relatively low. Studies have shown that legalizing prostitution increases the rate of human trafficking to meet the greater demand.

https://orgs.law.harvard.edu/lids/2014/06/12/does-legalized-...

Re: On incels, dead bedrooms and the hard problems of loneliness

#275

Post by krastanov » Tue, May 04, 2021, 6:33 PM UTC

textgel wrote: post #144

krastanov wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you equating reasonableness of the *average* person that self-identifies as feminist and the *average* men's-rights-advocate?

Considering the year on year decrease in women who identify with the movement, its fairly clear anyone who would describe said movement as "reasonable" would no doubt hold the traits inherent in the movement that so many find despicable.

You are making some pretty wild misrepresentations of reality: https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2020/07/07/a-centu...

The closest thing I can find to your interpretation is that women of color are less probable to adopt the term "feminist" because they are less probable to feel the movement has done enough for them.

I do not know who has convinced you of an alternative definition of the word, but feminism means "believing in equal treatment / equal opportunity / etc".

Re: On incels, dead bedrooms and the hard problems of loneliness

#276

Post by sudosysgen » Tue, May 04, 2021, 6:33 PM UTC

jhgb wrote: post #241

rjbwork wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're probably thinking of Marxism-Leninism, though it's hard to know without knowing what country you're talking about. I'm not even sure what a "Marxist" country could possibly entail. They'd dedicate all resources to analyzing society through the lens of historical materialism?

You surely won't be surprised if I tell you that Marxism-Leninism embeds the ideas of Marx about stages of societal development. Also, no; most prominently, we largely dedicated our resources to pointless heavy industry at the expense of light industry and services.

Marxism-Leninism is a strict subset of Marxism. The Marxian ideas about stages of societal development for example have no bearing about whether you should focus on light or heavy industries.

If you're talking about the USSR, there was actually some dissension after the death of Lenin on whether light industry or heavy industry should be focused on. Lenin wanted to focus especially on neither, with his NEP that would create a temporary market economy to figure that out on it's own.

Eventually, the decision was taken to focus on heavy industry. The decisive arguments for a focus on heavy industry had nothing to do with Marxian economics - those arguments went either way. The main determinant of the Soviet focus on heavy industry was the failure of Stalin to obtain security assurances from Western Europe, leading to a focus on heavy industry for military purposes.

At least in the 20s this was a solid move, because Soviet heavy industry saved tens of millions of lives by stalling the Nazi offensive, whose plan was to kill 50% of the Soviet population (something very bad).

After the end of WW2 however, it was pointless in retrospect to continue the focus on heavy industry. But the Soviet Union did not really calculate the geopolitcal impact of nuclear weapons and built a military that could rival NATO, and this required a lot of heavy industry.

Pretty much, Marxism had nothing to do with Soviet investment in heavy industry. The main reason was to feed the Soviet war machine, from the very beginning.

Re: On incels, dead bedrooms and the hard problems of loneliness

#277

Post by neolefty » Tue, May 04, 2021, 6:34 PM UTC

carlisle_ wrote: post #107

I really like this post because it exudes nuance. So many problems are boiled down to terse summaries that are barely accurate when examining details. People being hateful and violent are a problem. More of a problem are the conditions that push people in this direction. When presenting the underlying cause, people push back and instead focus on scapegoating or minimizing. This problem occurs in engineering all the t…

Agreed. It definitely helped me be more sympathetic to a wider variety of single men.

All of us can do better (in the article's case, that includes single men who are romantically frustrated) and _almost_ all of also us deserve some sympathy. I thought the article did a great job of generously showing the overlap between the two.

Showing that intersection — imperfect people with whom you can still sympathize — is key to being helpful. And overcoming imperfections is so much easier when you have help and a listening ear. I know plenty of young men who could use someone to talk to about this.

Re: On incels, dead bedrooms and the hard problems of loneliness

#278

Post by crispyambulance » Tue, May 04, 2021, 6:34 PM UTC

tachyonbeam wrote: post #43

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>having a romantic and sexual relationship is not a requirement for a happy life. It is for many, many, many people.

That's one bitter truth about life: (almost) everyone needs some amount of physical intimacy to be happy, but it's not something anyone is entitled to. Those of us who have access to that are privileged. I agree with the author though. IMO the existence of so many "incels" is some expression of a real societal problem. Many young men are suffering, and we don't acknowledge their suffering as genuine. We just tell the…

> the existence of so many "incels"

Curious, are there are more of these now than in the past?

I suspect there were more decades ago because of more cultural taboos about premarital relationships. What's different now? That these folks are angry about it?

Re: On incels, dead bedrooms and the hard problems of loneliness

#279

Post by rc-1140 » Tue, May 04, 2021, 6:34 PM UTC

One thing about the post in its entirety, not just the content, that really stood out to me was that there was a commenter "kayla" who behaved exactly in the manner that the author outlined when talking about the "feminist" and "MRA" subgroups. They immediately jumped onto the aggressor's bandwagon, saying that the lowercase-i incels were simply too lazy to fix their problems even though extremely-generalized and dismissive solutions (prostitutes, therapy) existed.

The author tried to open a discussion about their position with an incredibly well-thought out response, and all "kayla" could do was respond to their own post afterwards about having sympathy for the users of the "dead berdoom" board on Reddit but still behaving in the same manner that the author outlined (i.e., just fix your problem you lazy bum).

It's very troubling that the type of person described by the author immediately arrives on site and starts their spiel.

Re: On incels, dead bedrooms and the hard problems of loneliness

#280

Post by a_band » Tue, May 04, 2021, 6:35 PM UTC

gustavo-fring wrote: post #80

a_band wrote: post #77

The correlation of the appearance of this phenomenon with the rise of porn really shouldn't be ignored.

Can't be ignored but that rise was caused by and coincides with a ton of other cultural, social, and technological changes.

I agree. But porn directly targets sexual behavior and response. It's the sugar soda to obesity.

But to singly focus on it would also be a mistake.