Whenever people are like oh we need to empathize w/ incels, care about their feelings blah blah, I just think about what Lundy Bancroft said about abusers.
They need to learn empathy, and this excessive focus on their feelings is a barrier to them learning empathy.
🐦🔗: https://twitter.com/iHateCogsci/status/1610409758120361984
https://sb-ex6e14yir4.b-cdn.net/media_attachments/files/109/628/430/505/308/353/original/db370a81de5f1eee.png
But this is step 1 of "offering an alternative": recognizing that it takes different skillsets/social conditions to get them well-adjusted, because for whatever reason they're starting from a different psychological basis.
I agree that to some extent the whole idea of focusing on these guys is counterproductive. But focusing on them is not the same as making sure that our movement is equipped to deal with them effectively, without having to relive this generational moment over and over again.
They feel alienated from society because it feels unlivably complex, and they happen to fit enough heuristics of the power group that they feel entitled to deal with that complexity by violently maximizing their adherence to power.
The right takes advantage of this by a) being in power already, b) being the same kind of people, and c) happy to use these guys to further their own interests. So they offer the easy, accessible, lowest-common-denominator solution of just catering to that entitlement.
Of course "Be a good person" doesn't effectively compete. But that doesn't have to be the only narrative the left offers. We need the next step, a narrative that starts with "Be a good person" and builds it into a competitively epic cognitive reward mechanism.
1 touch grass
2 get a hobby
3 wear clothes that fit
4 learn juuuuust enough about astrology/tarot/wicca to have low-stakes conversations about them
5 learn to love "the game" without needing to "win" to feel accomplished
6 buy experiences, not things
bro is completely fucking ran through lmfao
what is 5? Is "the game" referring to the trash idea of "the game" of picking up girls?
I apply 5 to everything. You're not going to learn piano by forcing yourself to practice over and over, feeling miserable until you get good results - but if you learn to like the act of practice, then you'll end up doing it a lot more and thinking about it when you're not doing it and before you know it you'll have a year of playing behind you and you'll be really good.
You can apply that to talking to people and dating too. PUA types are all about getting their number as high as possible, but that's loser shit - if you instead just like talking to people and flirting and keep it casual and cool, you're far more likely to hook up or get a date or whatever your relationship goals are.
Nice. I would (somewhat ruefully) add "your country's most popular professional sport" to the list in #4.
lol. why?
A lot of new age/hippie women are into it.
well, that still seems oddly specific. I've never even met a new-age/hippie woman.
guess I'd do it if I met them though
Maybe it'd be worth rewriting to a more general version about keeping an open mind about stuff and putting some effort into learning about and taking seriously things other people like even if you don't "get it". I wrote it that way because I was thinking about the thread on the lack of lefty dating advice so I was thinking about things I would specifically say to a teen/young adult cis het man.