This is an interesting thread (and one I got an email notification for lmao). Permit me to open myself up to mockery on this topic (and also happy 1 year Agora anniversary woo):
I didn't know jack shit about incels, the manosphere, red pills, MGTOW, all this shit until Covid. Maybe it was Q3 2020 that I came across this stuff. Now, prior to all this, I've been in short-term, long-term relationships, one night stands etc. I'm in my late 20's now, but when I was in high school I definitely would have been considered a proto-incel; I used to get very frustrated about girls, thought I was too short, ugly, plus being a minority didn't help.
Despite all that, I managed to socialise fine, get laid and managed to get stalked a few times lmao. I will confess I did have extra things that helped me; I've always generally been in good shape and physically active, and was a musician for a while, but I'm still 5'6" and keep my head clean-shaved bald (due to my racial background, I don't think being bald has been all that negative if I'm being honest. I also get weird comments about my head being a "good shape", whatever the fuck that means).
But here comes 2020, and I stumble across all these internet worlds I had no idea about; dudes talking about 80/20, hypergamy, Chad's, Stacy's, AF/BB. Now, though my relationships had been fine, and some were total clusterfucks, I started to have this incredibly sinking feeling that there was some truth to all of it. I'll admit, I went down the absolute rabbit hole, and it's now permeated my entire vision of women and relationships.
A percentage of the community also seems to be made up of men who are not actually incels but have had the bad luck of being in an extremely toxic relationship where the woman was fucking nuts and fucked them over and now they resent women or men who had a mother who was fucking nuts and now they resent women. Those are the ones I pity.
This sums up myself to a T. I don't think I'd be considered an incel considering my body count and relationship history, but there's still this lingering feeling of being some sort of romantic reject, due to these physical things that are out of my control. I'm sure my personality has also taken a hit because of these views as well.
As I get older, and life gets more difficult being a single renter living in this absolutely bullshit inflationary hell, I find myself thinking how nice it'd be to have someone to build something with, instead of trying to fruitlessly beat the increasing costs of living by jumping jobs every so often. Definitely been on my mind more and more, and it's wearing me down, but I guess I've latched onto whichever "truths" I came across as I fell down the rabbit hole and I've convinced myself this is the only real way I can live. Ignorance was bliss.
My only real motivation sometimes is to just save up whatever scraps I can and go backpacking across the world until my money runs out. I don't really see a future where I'm able to properly settle down in any fashion. I would like my mindset to change, but (maybe due to being stuck in a feedback loop), I only really see examples that all the observations made by incels and whatnot are actually true. Sucks man.