Friendship at the Edge of a Cliff
The debut Friday post is a bit of a doozy: incels, ideology, idiocy, inspiration? Read to find out more...
Happy Veterans Day, for whatever that’s worth. I am sure that many of the people that read this will be anti-many things, military expansion and neocolonialism included. I agree whole-chestedly. But it’s good to look at culture from the perspective of “normal folks,” insofar as there are normal folks in America (or the world writ large) anymore. Many people are taking long weekend trips, perhaps having family and friends over for a barbecue, enjoying their day off at face value. On the surface level, I agree. Any day off we can get in the late-capitalist hellscape of American working life is a massive win, be it celebrating war criminals (or at the very least the enforcers of global capitalist hegemony at M16-point) or genociders (incidentally, I didn’t even get Columbus Day off, which is bullshit. If I have to hear his name and how great he was, at least give me off so I can shit on him on Twitter all day).
Veterans Day is a unique experience for me. I usually text my dad “thank you for your service” even though I really don’t care and actually think his time would’ve been better spent doing literally anything else—something I’ve said to him multiple times. When my dad graduated high school, he was full of potential, but a little bit of a shithead (the apple indeed does not fall far from the tree), and the Marines seemed like a great idea for him. For a young man—handsome (for a German), smart, and athletic—this was a great way to secure a career. Now? It’s a last resort. As that older generation aged, many of them sunk themselves deep into politics as conspiracy theory. Grasping for any narrative to hold onto an understanding of the changing world, these boomers-adjacent take all information from crackpot sources, saltless, chewing on every one of Tucker’s expertly delivered lies and faithfully repeating those talking points to their beleaguered families on Facebook.
Meanwhile, army recruitment is down, so the fat cats in Washington are pulling out all the stops. Special recruiters stream on Twitch or even join parties with kids (boys or young men usually) and squad up, trying to entice them with the familiar promises of a Mustang and a signing bonus while L-dancing after a Victory Royale. Insidiousness aside, this speaks to something that’s shifted in America. Young people don’t go out to the military recruitment office or stop by the Marines' table in school to talk to the predator there. Recruiters can enter kids’ living rooms and bedrooms while they’re playing with their friends and spread the DoD’s propaganda much easier. That’s just where the kids are.
The army explicitly acts on the premise we all seemingly have internalized—the internet mediates nearly every part of our lives professionally and academically. It’s also the place our friends are. “I just talked to him the other day,” I say to my partner, referencing an instagram video I sent to one of my friends from back home. Even in person, conversation tends to circle back to “did you see this post?” or “bro that’s just like that tweet…” without the interlocuters noticing. I find myself bringing up old memes or unconsciously adopting linguistic tics of other Twitter users. Our brains are “permanently broken,” to borrow a phrase from Hasan Piker, the Twitch personality I listen to so often that his voice is indistinguishable from my internal monologue. Checking out of the media consumption machine is almost impossible; a notification from a friend while trying to hunker down and read a book can lead to a 15-minute distraction, never to return to the pages of Minima Moralia.
My goal here is to address something that has been burbling up in the dominant media recently: the rise of the incel/ NEET/wayward young man. I can’t help but notice the ways that these people are derided—viscerally, in many cases—by the smug talking heads and writers on both sides of the aisle (many of whom are indeed nepotism hires and very few of who deserve the salary and prestige consistently afforded to them and those who think like them.) I believe, had I been a little bit less well-read as a consequence of my upbringing, I would potentially have fallen into that trap, where misanthropy becomes the only way that you can relate to the world and enmity becomes the only way to understand your place in it. Many of the people that descend, have descended, and will descend into this painful place are simply seeking a purpose for their lives, a reason they have been gifted (cursed?) with life and sentience.
Now, I’m still figuring that out, personally, but I think that my experiences are instructive to those that have never been in this situation or understood what it was like to be on the edge of a cliff, looking down at frothy waves of self-doubt crashing into jagged rocks of reactionary ideology. Falling is tantamount to shredding your soul, internalizing your pain, and in turn inflicting it on others, especially the most vulnerable in society. If you look around, you see others at your level, scrabbling their way up the wall, diving headfirst into the maelstrom, or kicking others under them and pulling those above down with them. Their eyes are bloodshot, brows knit in frustration, screaming in anger. It’s hell.
Climbing back up to solid ground is a tall task. Someone reaching their hand down could, with some effort, pull you up and help dust you off. If you’re lucky enough to have someone in your life whose words can pierce the din of the raging storm, getting to safety is possible. A glance back down at those still struggling reveals much: bloodshot eyes hide tear-streaked cheeks; brows are knit reacting to profound pain; screams of anger are actually keening laments, charged with real sorrow. Where once you fought against those adjacent climbers, now at the top you realize they need your help. Some grab onto the rope and try to climb it; others slap the helping hand away or put all of their strength trying to drag you back down beneath them.
This metaphor doesn't truly encapsulate the entire experience, but it can be instructive to those who are clueless as to how the average son or nephew ends up as a groyper 8kun poster (or worse, someone who takes their ideology into the real world violently). My experience may not be totally similar to everyone in this same cohort, but generally, the things that plague wayward men once hounded me:
“bad luck”/missteps in dating/relationships;
lack of (or a feeling of) lack of agency in my own life;
wallowing indoors, staring at a game screen for hours on end;
(I still do this, but with less wallowing);
hatred of my body;
a feeling of no direction or purpose;
misanthropy from a feeling of vague superiority;
a blend of inflated confidence online and a complete lack of confidence in person;
various untreated/self-treated mental health issues;
substance abuse issues*
*weed was a killer for my depression; while it may feel like it’s helping, it really is just burning out your ability to produce dopamine when you’re not directly smoking at all times, which is obviously not a healthy usage model. This is not to say I am anti-THC; however, like most addictions, it will exacerbate underlying issues. It is not a panacea. Life is not that easy.
And of course, the inability to relate to others. My situation—being a relatively left-leaning person in an incredibly reactionary structure: a fraternity—was certainly different than most who succumb to this belief system. I was rudderless, devoid of meaningful connection, and daily considered whether life was indeed worth living.
Of course, this is a profoundly privileged experience. I was not scrounging for extra dollars to pay my rent, not working to support myself and others, and barely even meeting my obligations at school. I spent my free time smoking weed and playing FIFA or jacking off—literally and metaphorically—seeking, at every second, to fill the deafening silence that would leave me with my own thoughts. It’s not nearly the same thing as a worker who doesn’t have the luxury to consider whether or not to sit alone with their thoughts because they don’t even have a free second. I acknowledge that.
Still, this is a similar situation that a cohort of young men can definitely relate to, save for small differences in the details. The symptoms I have been describing are obviously endemic to capitalism—specifically this later stage post-postmodern era we’re suffering through currently. But, in my dad’s generation, these boys and men could at least convince themselves they had a purpose. The Army existed as means to simply copy-paste a motivation, a cause. Something —anything—to convince them their lives had meaning. Unfortunately, the only ones articulating a cogent narrative of things generally…sucking…are right-wingers, both the unwitting and the calculating. Young men have a choice between the reality-denying “everything is great actually” liberal line and the “everything sucks but it’s not your fault” conservative story. For the future of our species, I worry about how stark those choices are.
I don’t have a coherent answer to the question “what do we do about these ripe-to-radicalize incels?” I can answer a response that I’ve seen several times, though. Commentators and repliers have responded with what basically amounts to “who cares?” about these people. There are certainly more worthy people deserving of hope, love, and media coverage whose lives are infinitely worse. I am not going to argue that these young men are the most important cohort in our body Politik. Far from it. But that doesn’t mean I can write them off. I was nearly there myself. So from what I know, articulating a narrative that emphasizes empathy and validates their experiences is key. Traditional masculinity; a toxic, transactional culture that devalues individuals based on shallow metrics; and the deafening silence that accompanies living in a brain that tells you to hate yourself at all times are real experiences that can seriously damage a person’s psyche and are not your fault. These are by-products of hundreds of years of capitalist and imperial development of the American Empire, rotting relationships and condemning individuals to lives of alienation and subjugation.
My best advice is to get outside and try to relate to people. Be vulnerable, even if it hurts. Don’t close yourself off—that’ll only make you more lonely. Just try getting out of your comfort zone every once in a while. And don’t be afraid to make mistakes or get rejected. You’ll grow despite the pain.
The only way out of life is through.
But having people around can help lighten the burden.
-H
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