The One Where I Face my Inner Loser at 40

Being an incel is synonymous with hating women.

It depicts a frustrated, sexually deprived man who has feelings about lack of sex. Getting angry is understandable when one can only handle a limited amount of alienation. They blame themselves, but the human brain won’t allow that for long.

So the blame and anger seek an easy target: women.

A couple of years ago, I started watching HealthyGamerGG podcast on YouTube. As a gamer and degen, I am the core audience. I’m not your target demographic; I’m a woman over 40. But being me, I peruse their subreddit where anyone can ask questions.

Many members, mainly young men, feel dejected with no clear goals, dreams, or relationships.

Reading the exasperated pleas for relief, I recognize familiar themes from my past. Rejection, compulsive screen use, great potential but little outer success. They describe a wasted life, resignation to meaningful change, and wanting to disappear. Limerence, being behind in life, and inability to stop watching screens even when it’s ruining their life.

I look different. My gender and age are unrelatable, but I find myself in many of the heartfelt entreaties for respite from the constant beating life has offered them. And me.

We are alike.

Loneliness

Everyone is friendless.

Isolation, misery, and lack of love especially affect all young people. They want connection, but between the pandemic and social media, socialization seems to have disintegrated, a relic of the past. Where have the third spaces and communities gone?

Most of the lost boys of the subreddits aren’t evil. Or angry. Nor violent.

Merely desperate to assuage their deserted, broken hearts.

Me too, boys, me too.

I have obsessed over men who didn’t know I existed. Friendzone? I was in the don’t exist zone. Mere mud in the gutter of the social hierarchy of my high school. Even my friends regarded me with disdain, little more than better than no one. They didn’t meet the standards of the cool crowd, and I didn’t meet their standards.

Rejection wasn’t my middle name. I was the captain of the team. Leader of the gang. President of the club of rejects. You know, if we weren’t subdued in the shadows, pretending we were shy instead of pathetic wannabes.

If only we could overcome our submission and become friends.

Many felt defeated, unable to connect.

Worthless

The abject shunning our entire lives doesn’t leave us hope.

I went from reject to degenerate.

One a good day, I am empty. On a bad, I could disappear and no one would care. Probably.

The only reason I haven’t been alone for twenty years is I accidentally became pregnant. Tricked the guy into staying with me. Later we married. But I suspect he dislikes me.

So much so I cheated. Cementing the resentment of being with me.

Incels feels as I do. They are no one, nothing, and without worth or usefulness.

I’ve accomplished nothing. I self-published a bunch of shitty smut books, and no one cared. No one cares about my writing on medium. And my kids are close to independence.

I can disappear. They wouldn’t care. Fuck, they’d be fortunate. We are a blight.

Someone to blame

I don’t know who to blame.

Incels have an integrated target for women. After all, women rejected and despised them. Our brains loathe negative feelings, so self-condemnation is fleeting. Women are an easier target, plus they feel relief at having a reason.

I rage at my husband sometimes.

He hates me. Must be his fault.

Deep down, I know it’s me.

Not only the cheating and lying in my marriage. My degenerate status was clear from the start. My family knew and disregarded who I was. In school, peers sensed my brokenness and followed with rejection.

Now we live in the fringes of society. We have jobs that don’t pay enough and lack satisfaction. Maybe mine is, because I teach kids to be more productive. Some live at home, or in crappy apartments. We dropped out of college because we failed to live up to our potential. And we probably have ADHD that is self diagnosed, because we don’t meet the criteria because our elementary school grades were the highest in our class.

Screen addiction, but not really. Because the real problem is we lack skills to deal with the negative emotions stemming from “not living up to your potential.” Between our screen addiction and that ADHD, we crave dopamine more than a drug misuse craves their drug. So every day after our sad little jobs end, we settle in the spot on the sofa perfectly molded to our asses and we play a video game until our eyes are stuck open from the dryness that comes from staring at a screen fighting evil dragons in a fantasy world where we are all powerful. Failure mans simply pushing a button, trying again, and grinding meaningfully to level up, which brings a shiny feeling. Plus, you actually gain gold and goods.

Can you tell that I wish I was gaming instead of writing? I’ll conquer this, realizing my potential as a writer.

I got lost because I’m high from cannabis edibles, and none of my writing followed the outline I wrote. Like everything else, writing outlines never works for me.

Incels. Me. very much the same.