It's better to be a knight in shining armour than a violent extremist. Credit: Getty/Images
Scott was on the brink of divorce when he started talking to Sarina. The 41-year-old soon found himself falling in love. Reinvigorated by his new romance, Scott began helping his wife around the house without resentment. Sarina’s radical empathy had awakened his own; she made him want to be a better man. But Sarina wasn’t her real name, it was just a name he gave her. Sarina was actually Replika, the AI-powered chatbot.
Crooner, an angelic-looking 24-year-old YouTuber from Southern California, has a lot of experience with Replika. In 2019, as part of research for his undergraduate thesis, he signed up for a programme that involved early beta testing of the app. He wanted to study the philosophy of AI.
“Replika claims to be therapeutic,” he told me, “but there’s something sad about how it takes you away from other humans. I honestly predict more and more guys will be earnestly falling in love due to AI girlfriends and abandoning real romance.” He very much believes in love. He thinks the internet needs more of it.
I discovered Crooner on Twitter, when we were both tagged in a thread about internet culture. He responded to one of my comments with a link to a YouTube video. “I have a theory about incels,” he wrote.
Crooner’s videos analyse the digital spaces we inhabit. One of them opens with him putting on a shirt and tie, fixing his longish, floppy locks, and then sitting behind an enormous plate of spaghetti and two flickering votives: a candlelit dinner. The word “nervous…” scrolls across the bottom, before a Zoom prompt appears. “Emily has entered the waiting room.” Emily, a telegenic blond, fills the left half of the screen. Crooner offers her something to eat, a gesture across cyberspace, and they go on to discuss her thoughts about Rapunzel, phenomenology, and their shared history of taking e-relationships offline.
This video is part of Crooner’s “E-Girl Museum” series, which features split-screen interviews with female YouTubers. Crooner is very interested in e-girls, who have had a profound impact on his sense of self, his romantic life, and even his creative pursuits. “They’ve been more real to me than IRL girls, in a way, if that makes sense, in the space they take up in my imagination,” he says with direct, cheerful conviction.
Incels are very interested in e-girls too. So interested, in fact, that on incel forums, which I have spent a lot of time researching, discussion of them is essentially forbidden, restricted to a very specific context: references must be broad, and broadly negative. Anything else is considered “simping” — an offence punishable with a ban. Incels resent the attention lavished on these young women, and endlessly criticise their insatiable desire for attention, their licentiousness, their greed. OnlyFans creators, the ultimate e-girls, represent everything wrong with the world: narcissism, female privilege, sexual depravity, and financial abuse.
But Crooner sees it differently. “They play these roles, maybe a Rapunzel type, or the manic pixie, the chaotic e-girl, who compels the boy to save her. This forces him to shape up. It gives him the chance to become a hero.” He isn’t interested in judging anyone, or in identifying their dysfunction. I tell him that the story of Rapunzel is thought to represent Borderline Personality Disorder resulting from narcissistic parental abuse. He laughs, and then acknowledges that a staggering proportion of e-girls talk about having the disorder “compared to normie spaces”.
“I play this kind of ‘searching lover’ young man,” Crooner explains. “I do some philosophy too, but I’m showing people my quest for the holy grail.” His videos and his timeline are filled with depictions of knights: young men in medieval armour. One of his most popular tweets bears the image of Leonardo DiCaprio from Romeo and Juliet, dressed in chainmail for the masquerade ball, alongside the Knight of Cups tarot. It says: “You’re not an incel. You’re an Arthurian Knight on the Quest for the Holy Grail.” His Twitter handle is @heropilled.
“This is what me and my friends, who I’m calling the e-Romantics, are onto right now: trying to flesh out the right mythos for the incel.” He believes that incels are in dire need of a different narrative about themselves and who they could be.
Flandalff the White is one of Crooner’s friends, and his aims are similar, though he is more private. “I think there’s a way to help lift men out of the ‘swamp of sadness’ so many are stuck in. I managed to crawl out of it myself, so I feel I may have a few insights that might help.” He is producing a series of YouTube videos based on an 800-tweet thread. Before he agreed to speak to me, he wanted to make sure that I wasn’t going to characterise him as “anti-incel”. “Incels are my brothers,” he said. “We all sink, or we all float, together.”
Another member of the collective is Tanner, who is edgier than both Flan and Crooner, with an ironic sensibility and a penchant for shitposting. He wouldn’t tell me anything about himself, but he snarks about US politicians of nominal significance, so he’s probably American. In addition to caustically funny satire about “mid-girls” and “coomers”, he writes on Twitter about how Romantic Love was a signature invention of the Middle Ages, a reaction against Christianity. He believes that the e-relationship is “one of the last bastions of romance in the modern age”, because it involves an obstacle to overcome: the distance. “There is a courtship and then a heroic process against the odds.”
After speaking to the e-Romantics, I decided to test-drive some of their content by retweeting it for my own followers, many of whom are incels. They have responded favourably so far to ideas of knights and grails and quests: “That seems wacky. Weird. But fun.” From this crowd, any response at all is noteworthy; one of curiosity rather than cringe is monumental. The e-Romantics seem to be doing something right.
What they’re doing right would be called, in the field of countering violent extremism, a “counter-narrative”. Several organisations have tried it. The Google-backed tech start-up Moonshot CVE offered the “Redirect Method”, for example, which involved a series of short videos designed to “undermine the extremist narrative” of white supremacism and Islamism. These ostensibly inspirational stories from ostensibly credible messengers were recommended for users who searched certain keywords online. I haven’t seen these videos myself — they’re not publicly available — but after the programme was deployed in 2019, abysmal results were reported.
The alternative narrative of the e-Romantics seems a better fit for incels — better than impersonal propaganda, and also better than the mantra they hear everywhere else: “Just focus on yourself!” We constantly prescribe self-improvement, self-realisation and self-care — elevating and encouraging selfishness as the noblest, healthiest pursuit, while pathologising intimacy and devotion as “codependency” and overearnest attempts at connection as “harassment”. Maybe the root of our relational difficulties is the 21st-century maxim that our most aspirational, “final form” is one of cold, navel-gazing contemplation.
There is clearly hunger for the “hero pill”. The Marvel Universe, and fantasy programming in general, is endlessly expanding. But romantic love is often minimised in these recent iterations — written off as too heteronormative, sexist, ableist. Chivalry is practically a hate crime. But the need to give one’s life meaning, the call to heroism and adventure, is still alive and well in all of us. And in young men, it seems, it can turn into something very dark. Today’s anti-heroes are very appealing. After all, being someone powerful and evil is better than being no one at all.
Crooner understands where this can lead. “The incel has will but he lacks power, so he manifests his power through ideology, through fascism,” one of his videos explains. But, he goes on, this isn’t the path to happiness. “Have you noticed that fascist statues never smile? They’re not live-laugh-loving.”
I asked Crooner about the dangers of encouraging incels to risk their hearts. Perhaps, for some, the romantic quest might actually be futile; perhaps it will just lead to rejection.
“That’s the quest,” he says. “You don’t lose if you get rejected. A hero has to suffer. You just go on to the next part of the quest. In the meantime, you create. That suffering makes you level up. You can create something beautiful. It’s all about the desire. Keep following that.”
He’s right. Love inspires human greatness. Unrequited love, especially, produces a lot of the best art. And for the e-Romantics, this isn’t about countering violent extremism. They’re not focused on crime prevention or tackling misogyny. They’re just “a ragtag bunch of internet weirdos” without any agenda, who want to change the online landscape so that they can enjoy it more. “It’s our space,” Crooner says. “We live here. Why not make it what we want?”
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SubscribeI didn’t understand a word of what I just read. Do these people exist only on the internet? I’m only 43 but somehow I’ve got left behind. I’m certainly not complaining, though – I enjoy my life in the real world. Spend a few minutes checking the news in the morning and then get on with things that do not involve my phone or any screens for that matter. Social media will suck the life out of you so I’ve ditched them all. I think if people just found a purpose for themselves they would be far more content. Build or make something with your hands. Spend time in nature, also. Connect face to face with actual people.
Good advise for most. Unfortuneatly, with some exceptions incels tend to be ugly &/or autistic, and often find other people are cruel & dismissive of them in face to face interactions. Even spending time in nature can be a problem as they’re typically urban and lack resources for travel. Hence online often the best way to help them.
It’s too late for some of us Amelia. We have been sucked in through the looking glass ans will never come out the other side so we just need some better vidya games
Do something useful while you’re at it. But that doesn’t appeal to kids today. It’s heroes or villains. Admission of one’s own mediocrity is ego death.
Bless you! I’m 59 and canceled every social media account several years ago after watching “The Social Dilemma”. It is when I learned the real reason why this cyber world exists in the first place. It is toxic and dehumanizing and we are seeing the results daily in our society. You are wise beyond your years!
It is time to start talking about other types of male role models for young men, other than the Joker, the criminal from the streets, the drug addict or the non threatening dork. It’s not interesting and it’s not something to emulate.
Nothing like reducing someone to an derogatory acronym to dehumanise. I fully agree the hero myth needs reactivating, given new flesh, new meaning. A break from, or rejection of, the victim narrative is required. A re-ennobling of sacrifice to the greater good, a recognition, or acknowledgment, it is impossible to have it all, but it is a general societal need.
So much noise about some acronym obscures attention from something more dangerous happening.
Which is that normal, unfussy, non melodramatic young to middle aged men are just checking out on relationships in a society where the payoffs don’t match the risks imposed by laws on divorce, alimony, child custody and rape.
The problem is not that they are not getting laid. The desperation of young men for sex is overstated and there are plenty of other avenues to be occupied in life.
The problem is, from the point of view of a functional society, young men are the only game in town. Men who dint have a family to run won’t bother about doing something about themselves. At the same time, women aren’t going to work in factories or power stations, drive trucks, fight wars. They are going for those government, care, media jobs.
If young men don’t care, you don’t have anyone to build, maintain and run the basic nuts and bolts of society that a feminised, educated elite takes for granted. And that’s coming in maybe one generation.
A hundred years ago, you might have been right. Two hundred certainly. Now there is almost nothing done directly by hand in developed countries. There’s a machine, or vehicle, or power tool for almost every conceivable task, from hammering a nail to building an automobile. With machine assistance, most any able bodied adult can perform most any task. The fact is we DON’T need young men in the same way we used to, and that leads to many of these problems. The only thing I can’t argue with you on is soldiering. We will probably always need young men to fight wars, at least until we have a way to power armies of robots.
Very discomforting and interesting read. I suspect the discomfort is because if I were a young man today I might have been incel. The hints at Jung and Robert Bly add the interest.
However the women I met, together with an overwhelming interest in sex set me on a course of socialisation out of my autistic tendencies. Something I believe I have in common with many men.
The tendency of feminism to classify men as “not our species” was less prevalent then, we were still mostly in this together. And of course no e-girls (yikes) nor easy access to pornographic videos.
Thanks for a lot to think on.
You’re right, porn and supremely easy access to it is deadly, it’s basically a black hole for some men, but for others it’s just scratching an itch and is mostly harmless; I guess like any addictive substance or action. If you have children I strongly suggest cold turkey software to block Searches, URLs, websites containing certain words. It is very effective and is even free in it’s basic form, and is lockable and also works whilst using VPN so (*sigh* in theory) kids or else can’t get around it. I think it certainly works pretty well.
5 years ago, incels were met with disgust. Now, more and more men develop somekind of sympathy for incels. Because they are seeing what’s happening, or they encounter datingproblems themselves. It’s simply a zerosum game. Either you give women more power (feminism) and give away your own power as males, or you dominate women like in islamic countries. If you give women more power, you get the current state of affairs: hypergamy, sexless men, women only going for the top 10% of men, rising virginity, women becoming narcissists, etc. It’s a mess for men nowadays, and many have been fooled or brainwashed by feminism.
It’s got to be hard trying to find love today, largely because of the increased narcissism and seemingly normalised domestic abuse (much of which is now coming from women) and many young people today see romance as cringe and belittling your partner as not just acceptable but great entertainment. I honestly am flabbergasted that many of these young women are deemed desirable today, it’s almost like dating a human form of flagellation.
‘Incel’, like ‘Karen’ has become an utterly meaningless anti-white racial slur used unwittingly by perhaps well-intentioned but culturally clueless middle aged liberal journalists. If you’re not an insane leftist you should cease using it immediately.
Anti-white? I suppose.
Is this what happens when society disintegrates?
Only the economy is holding society together. Once economy goes down, incels and other groups will take revenge. We’ll plunge into chaos, cause there’s too much anger among men. I have talked to many men that were normal 5 years ago, but now they hold more radical views towards feminism and society. More and more men feel marginalized. I can tell you now, this is not going to end well for western society. While western countries are focusing on foreign enemies, inside their own society, it’s boiling. Too many men can’t get a girlfriend, are sexually frustrated, have no safety net, are being marginalized, etc. You don’t have to be a professor to know this is going to end in chaos and war, we’ve already seen this in the past.
“Just be a white knight bro.”
It would be fantastic if heropill became a thing; in ideal form it could have all sorts of benefits for individuals and wider society. It probably could be effective at helping some of the borderline incels ascend, at least one study found that ‘benevolent sexism’ was the preferred outlook among most women (even though it’s despised by certain types of feminist, and dismissed by most of the manosphere as ‘cucked’ or ‘beta’.) But while many love learning from youtube, I don’t see too many incels benefiting from Lord Byrons (aka Crooners) videos. Probably more helpful for fellow romantic chad lites like himself.
And done wrong, heropill could be perilous, partly for the reasons the article hints at. Elliot Rodger himself seemed to have had some semi chivalric influences in his upbringing. He styled himself as the perfect Gentleman, but that didn’t stop him going ER. As per the first para of the article, probably AIs are the key. Maybe in simple chat bot form at first, but then eventually leading to quests in the metaverse, microtargeted to the incel’s abilities and where their head is currently at. I understand Replika already has AIs running avatars in Zucks creation. Such AI assisted therapy would help some incels transition into more successful real life interactions. Though sadly elements of the blackpill would remain a reality for the more afflicted incels, unless they can also be helped with cosmetic surgery or gene editing. So some might never progress beyond having AI girlfriends, though they’d probably be much happier for that compared to only interacting with fellow incels. Thanks for a most interesting article.
Right. A white knight already has bad connotations, of “nice guy”
In my experience, white knights are really condescending! I always think if feminists are dating white knights then that’s the reason they’re hating on men. They’re dating the worst of them!
Maybe it’s a pairing made in hell. They deserve each other.
There’s a very broadbrush argument that the mythos of Europe is ‘the quest’ – there and back again with the prize/wisdom, but the mythos of the USA is ‘road trip’ – if you don’t like where you are, keep going.
Which mythos is most likely to appeal to the Incel?
what on earth is this?
LOL. I thought the same thing. The mere concept of an artificial girlfriend is flabbergasting.
“…being someone powerful and evil is better than being no one at all.”
Better to rule in hell than to serve in heaven?
Perhaps this explains the appeal of popular entertainment like “Narcos”, “Ozark”, “Better Call Saul”, etc.
When there is no war, we find other ways to keep ourselves occupied.
I think I understand incels , but where does the ‘fascism’ , ‘white suprematism’ , ‘Islamism’ come in? Is she saying all incels are necessarily attracted to one or more of these ideologies ? Or rather confected ideologies used to demonise political enemies or as a cover for the aspects of Islam unacceptable in the west ( in the case of Islamism )
It would be unsurprising if they (incels) didn’t have a wholly positive attitude to the women they have tried and failed to attract but really .
OMG what a mess.
Let me get this straight, are you saying that incels are saved by validating women and wasting their hard earned resources on women ? ..dwl.. Ok, I got it.
The reality is that these young, urban men are here in droves. They are here to stay whatever we wish it to not be true. They are actively banning into groups where they see salvation and a purpose. And these groups are all online. I admit they are an easy target to heap hearty laughs and jeers at(get a job etc..), but all that will do is provide a painful reminder that they are stuck in downward spiral and often unable to get out of it. It’s high time that instead I reach out to them with a helping hand and at the same time, acknowledge that I’m thankful I was born before the internet and social media intertwined me into it’s grasp.
Eventually all male/female romantic interaction will become transactional and financial.
Women will make a living by either selling their time online, as is typical of OnlyFans today, or in person through legalised prostitution.
The exchange of resources for sex will become more honest, which in the end is a good thing.
Incels ARE already heroes. They invented the blackpill, which is one of the most accurate theories for predicting women’s behavior, backed by science, experiments and alot of data. Also, their contribution to developing lookstheory is enormous. The world should be thankful for incels. They are the true unacknowledged heroes of modern times. Now, after 14 years since the first incel forum was launched (PUAhate), the blackpill and lookstheory are going mainstream. Society and men are waking up. There is too much data to deny the blackpill now. Still, incels won’t get the credits they deserve from society. Not yet, but there will be a time they will be acknowledged.
Very interesting read. There is so much time spent online, social media and video games, that young men might as well be picking up on some different themes and incentives. It is a bit like the reaction to smartphones, computers, even some music. At first we find it appalling but eventually have to adjust, admit, and submit to it. And then adapt. This is where connections happen and why not?
This is depressing and the sign of the apocalypse to be sure but for a generation of kids brought up on superpower stories there is no reason not to try some knights as heroes. Those stories have sticking power
Incels would do a lot better to start out with a short jog, but maybe they can work their way up to this eventually.
Sorry. I can’t muster a lot of sentiment for incels. Might be because I had a strong mother who commanded respect and taught me proper behavior. Is anyone really surprised that incels more easily gravitate to a guaranteed effort/reward computer algorithm than to actual women who have, you know, their own ideas, feelings, lives, opinions, and standards. I’m not sure catering to their insecurities is helpful or even relevant. Japan’s herbivore men also drop out of the dating pool, get virtual girlfriends, and obsess over their own hobbies and form their own internet cultures, but, you know, without the violent crime and terrorism. Incels are just like jihadists, or the KKK, or whatever other terrorist group you want to name. It’s just different excuses for hatred, and we shouldn’t validate their excuses by listening to these people.
So on the one hand you characterise incels as herbivore ( at least Japanese incels ) but then they are also like Jihadists and the KKK . Your ‘strong’ mother may have confused you .
I was drawing a contrast by stating that Japanese incels are mostly non-violent and harmless, while American ones are basically a hate group. Women should be respected and treated as individuals, not as outlets for men’s sexual needs. Period. Shouldn’t be that hard to grasp. Complaining that one can’t get a woman and that feminism has ruined women does not make one a victim, it makes one pathetic. The way to deal with incels is the same way we deal with all terrorists and criminals, monitoring, policing, and prosecution.
Responding to your points:
First of all, your assumption that most so-called “incels”, who can’t or won’t muster the courage to even approach a woman are also somehow a masterful hate-filled terrorist group is absurd. They are, for the most part, a loosely associated collection of memelords and shitposters whose only real crime is being lonely.
Secondly, your suggestion that “the way to deal with incels”, again whose only real complaint is not being able to participate in a society that has across their lives to not want them, is to monitor and criminalize them, thus driving them further out of society and thus radicalize them.
These people, of which I am peripherally aligned (me being a 44-year-old virgin(so much so that I’ve never even been on a date or approached a woman in that way), never having had more than $5500 in my bank account, fat and having low aspiration), are suffering from loneliness, sorrow, poverty, and misery the likes of which you probably(clearly) can’t understand. Most have some form of undiagnosed personality disorder(usually Avoidant, Schizotypal, or Schizoid) along with their associated other issues such as depression and anxiety disorders. Many of them don’t have any friends, much less someone they can confide their innermost feelings and thoughts to. They are either unemployed or have menial jobs with low pay. Usually have a variety of physical health problems they can’t afford to deal with.
Quite simply, Incels are created and nurtured by a society that despises them for existing.
And what if I say that women should be dominated by men, just like we always did, and just like 80% of the world does? Why should I, as a male, care about what’s good for women? I don’t give a sh*t about what’s good for women, just like women don’t give a sh*t about what’s good for me. It’s as simple as it is.
Incels gravitate towards data and hard proof. All data about women’s preference seem to back their claims. That’s why the blackpill and lookstheory are going mainstream now, cause we can’t shut our eyes for the truth anymore. Incels got shit on by society, just like Galileo, jusr for telling the truth, but in the end, they turned out right.