February 1, 2019 • 63 mins
It's true that romance and relationships in general are a minefield for almost everyone -- but for a group of people who call themselves incels, there's an active conspiracy running against them. Short for 'involuntarily celibate', this group has generated huge amounts of controversy with with incitement of violence, encouragement of sexual assault, and militant misogyny that one could easily mistake for trolling. Join the guys as they explore the origins, growth and devolution of the incel movement -- including what happens when internet conversations result in real-world catastrophe.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. M
(00:24):
Welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my
name is Nol. They called me Ben. We're joined with
our super producer, Paul Michigan controlled decade. Most importantly, you
are you. You are here, and that makes this stuff
they don't want you to know. The Course of true
love it's often said never did run smooth, and this
(00:44):
episode UH might not run incredibly smoothly either. We need
to open I think with a disclaimer. This episode contains
UH descriptions of sexual violence, descriptions of murder, hamas side suicide,
and a boatload of language that reasonable people would find
(01:05):
incredibly offensive. So if that is something that would be
difficult for you to listen to, now is the time
to turn back. Assuming you're still here, Uh, let's dive in.
At some point in our lives, regardless of who we
are in society or how we feel about ourselves, virtually
(01:27):
every one of us has grappled with those heavy, tough
questions of romance, of amorous feelings, of love, and of course,
love's ugly cousin heartbreak and likely experienced um rejection or
a feeling of being some sort of outcast, at least
for a time. People aren't usually don't usually come out
(01:48):
of the womb with complete and utter sexual confidence, something
you have to kind of work your way into. I mean,
other than Morrissey, that's right. Well, Morrissey is a very
special case. It's true. I don't know if Morrissey was
born or just sort of um self generated. You know,
you know Morrissey is editoriously a sexual celibate. Yeah, yeah, uh,
(02:09):
val Cell, That's what I would say. And this, this
unifying emotion, this unifying set of questions, uh, you know,
it runs across the human species. There's pretty compelling evidence
that other mammals, not just primates, experience what we would
(02:29):
call love, heartbreak, grief, envy, jealousy, the whole cavalcade of
related feelings. Today's episode explores an entire subculture dedicated in
some ways to these questions. This group calls itself collectively
in cells I, N, C, E. L. Here are the facts.
(02:52):
Let's start with that. Let's start with that one word.
What does in cell mean? It's just a portmanteau, it's
a it's a it's tew words involuntary and celibate. And
the gist basically is it's people who identify themselves as
this in cells. They believe they're the victims of some
(03:12):
oppressive society, the one in which we all exist, but
they view it as much more oppressive than perhaps the
average person would. And in this society, women, through their
purported control of uh, sex and relationships and sexual relationships, Uh,
they're able to control almost every single aspect of life.
(03:33):
And the person who identifies as an in cell is
the victim. Yeah. Yeah, The in cell movement has a
lot of different variations, but that's that's the key. They've
constructed this theory of attractiveness and will explore more of
that in a moment. I and I believe the best
way to succinctly describe it is a type of absolutist
(03:56):
sexual cast system. Yeah. And they've also constructed this worldview
where sex is an inalienable human rights um and a
big part of the language in the Intel community, at
least among most members, is the notion that they are
entitled in some way to sex as heterosexual males and
(04:17):
as we'll discuss very much. Is a heterosexual community. I
shy away from using the term movement, honestly, it gives
me the creeps that can I think of it more
as a as a community kind I don't know, it's well,
we'll get well, we'll discuss it, for sure, I would.
I would typically say a community, although many individuals in
that in this world, if you do see it as
(04:39):
a movement, the difference between a community and a movement
is in the word right. A movement is oriented towards
a specific set of goals that can be measured as
a successor failure. In this community inherently kind of lacks goals.
In fact, it's largely about furthering these negative feelings. If
(05:03):
you can say there's a goal, it's to feel as
horrible about yourself as you possibly can. There are some
contradictory goals, for sure. I don't know that everyone agrees
within that community, certainly not outside of it, but I
don't want to lose that. That point the the idea
that sex is a human right, that only a certain
(05:24):
type of person is indeed a person, and that desiring
sexual contact while not experiencing it, at least in the
way one desires is both deeply traumatic and a great
historical crime of our age. So out of all the
horrible things human beings have ever done, not getting laid
to be crass about it is somewhere at the top.
(05:46):
Forget about genocide and mass starvation. And we we want
to be very clear and knowing you, you raise an
excellent point here in this worldview, there is no room
for same sex relationships, the trans community, lgbt q, I A,
and so on in this in this reality, there is
(06:07):
only a black and white again absolutist reckoning in which
men and women are the only players. And we've read
the three of us have gone far, far far down
this rabbit hole. I've read some stuff about same sex
relationships from this perspective, and a lot of the people
(06:29):
who are against it believe that get this, I don't
know if you, if you guys saw this, believe that
people who feel that they are gay or attracted to
members of the same sex are just deluded because of
the evils of feminism, and that they have been um
bamboozled for lack of a better word, because they have
(06:51):
never met a quote unquote real member of the other gender.
Very strange, very strange, and and like many insular groups
like cults or militaries or religions, the in cell community
both isolates and identifies its members through the use of
acquired terminology or jargon. Right, we have phrases like normy
(07:14):
for most of us listening, and for us here in
the studio that term is us, where either normans are
chats well it well. Also, the Norman is one that
has meaning outside of this community. I mean, it's certainly
kind of an Internet term for squares, I guess, you know.
But then within the in cell community it's its own thing.
(07:34):
And some of the terms they use are very much
exclusive to the in cell community, and some like that
they kind of co opt and give their own little
spin to right right, right, So a Stacey or Chad
is an attractive, popular person who has, in their view
the majority of sex on Earth. Actually, I mean, that's
(07:55):
literally what it is. And there are other variations of
this that we can explore. There are more examples. You.
The term woman is very very very rarely used. It's
either phemoid, femoid, or female. But the best phemoid, though,
is it's kind of the one they really lean on
to me, that's just this inherently mothering name for women.
(08:17):
It sounds like some kind of callous, unfeeling robot like
think like the fembots from the Austin Powers movie. Also
akin to like some kind of natural resource that has
to be harvested and used rather than you know, like
a thinking, feeling human person. Yeah, goes back to the
word humanoid, right, that resembling a human exactly. So there
(08:39):
are there are other things like beta buxing, mogging, magging,
I enjoyed. Magging is essentially when someone feels that some
other I guess maybe a competitive It's a competitive thing,
so they So, for instance, if uh, Paul michigantrol decade
(08:59):
and don't worry, Paul, I'm not using you as an
in cell example. I know you'd never forgive me. I
can see Matt's reaction to your face right now. So
let's say let's say Paul is um in like a
singles party, mingling dating or something, and then uh, someone,
some in cell person wants to talk about a book
(09:22):
or a book becomes part of the conversation and Paul
has read the book. If the person is insecure enough,
they will feel that Paul has somehow mogged them or
one up to them or uh made them seem like
they have less value by having read that book as well,
you know what I mean. So it's really mogging, like
beauty or pornography is in the eye of the beholder. Interesting.
(09:45):
There's also an inherently as we'll get more into this
later as we start to talk about some physical qualities,
but there's an inherently problematic kind of racist language as
well in the in cell community. So you can be
an in cell of color, but if that is what
you are, than they almost exclusively blame your lack of
success on women are attributed to the race. And these
(10:07):
are some very offensive terms, and a lot of this
comes from a fantastic video on YouTube called from a
channel called ContraPoints um and there's a video on in
cells in that that I cannot recommend highly enough. But
terms like um rice cell or black cell or um
curry cell to refer to people of other races, so
it's almost like they're making that the focal point of
(10:30):
their deficiency rather than some of the other details that
we're going to get into right right, And there's uh,
there's an important point here because oftentimes those those words
are self applied, which which would be startling, I think
to a lot of people from the outside because they
are very racist. Yes, this is a very self loathing
centered community. And so there are um categories that in
(10:55):
cells divide themselves into, the racial category being one. Uh.
It's also they'll also base their description on what they
see as their sex life or what they see as
the physical or mental or social defect that's keeping them
from attracting women, where as they would say obtaining sex.
These are things like brain cells, near cells, people who
(11:18):
feel like they do have sexual contact but that it's
so uh sparse that they're they're almost in cells where
they're almost red pilling, which comes up in just a second.
Mayor cells Marcel's people who are married but in a
sexless marriage, or even having as specific as having a
weak wrist they call it the wrist cells or being
(11:39):
too short or too tall height cells. Yeah, and as
I was reading this list, I kept thinking, you know,
what do you call the person who's gone the longest
amount of time? Are they? Are they a duras cell?
But I do not step down from that. You don't
need it. I will die on this hill. But I
(11:59):
mean that's that's a little bit of levity. And to
be honest, I didn't see anything with dura cell. But
let's talk about pills. So cells are big and so
are pills. The concepts espoused first in The Matrix, which
was made by people who would be found objectionable by
this community, right where the who went on to both transition, Yeah, exactly.
(12:26):
I didn't realize they both transied. Yeah, they're like twins,
I believe, and they clearly shared the same experience in
terms of their sexuality, their identities. So we all remember
in the Matrix, I'm assuming. Okay, if you haven't seen
The Matrix yet, spoilers. I rewatched it actually over the
weekend with my kid. Yeah, amazing, Okay, it didn't quite
(12:48):
hold up for me, And I think the reason is
this because it's been parodied and ripped off so much
that it almost looks like a parody of itself at
this point, at no fault of its own. Sure does
that make sense? I can see where you're coming from.
I the the idea here goes back to a scene
in the Matrix where in uh oh, what's the what Morpheus? Right,
(13:11):
wherein Morpheus offers the protagonist Neo a choice. He can
take a blue pill and he'll just forget the weird
stuff that happened leading up to that moment and live
out his life, or he can take the red pill
and have his eyes opened, encounter a revelation to see
the world as it truly is in the universe of
(13:33):
in Seldom. The term red pill describes someone who, like
Neo in the Matrix, takes that red pill experience as
a revelation and now recognizes the quote unquote true nature
of human society, accepting this absolutist black and white view
and primarily subscribing to the belief that society discriminates not
against women but against men, specifically against you. You know
(13:58):
what I mean. It's it's very bleak, very bleak wal view,
and red pilling is just the act of spreading this
world view, of convincing other people of proselytizing for in Seldom,
and this applies to all right thinking and neo Nazism.
The idea of Rigg being red pilled is when you
have a mentor of some kind or someone who welcomes
(14:18):
you into this world in this way of thinking, and
it takes yeah, yeah, well said this also occurs with
how they rebranded race brace supremacy arguments. Oh uh, race realism,
did you guys run into that one? That's that's the
thing people are saying with a straight face. Uh. And
then there's black pill. Yeah. So if red pill is
(14:39):
societal like worldview change kind of thing, black pill is
a little even more metaphysical, and it's going deeper even
than the red pill. It's, uh, this fatalistic version of
the world in which people who believe it inside the
in cell community, they subscribe to this biological determinism where
(15:02):
your your body was basically as you were born, it
was determined even before you were born that you were
going to be an insult because of these traits that
you have. Either it's your height or your risks or
your forehead shape or shape of your skull. Yeah, whatever
it is, these factors are going to make you unattractive.
(15:24):
And then the same the same thing applies to people
who are attractive, and just you cannot change your in
seldom and you cannot change the Chad dum or whatever
other version of humanity that exists out there. Yeah, And
the whole the black pill is is really just the
everything that comes along with going full bore into this
(15:46):
very nihilistic worldview and everything that comes along with it,
and Natalie, when a k ContraPoints on the YouTube channel
was talking about, kind of breaks it down in a
really interesting way. UM describes the black pill as the
self defeating world view with no hope of happiness and
sexual gratification. UM sexual market value is genetic, completely unchangeable,
(16:07):
this idea that you will be a virgin forever, that
you'll never be able to have sex, therefore you will
never be able to have happiness and you should just
l D A R or lay down and rot again.
Like like many UM. I don't want to call it
a cult, but like many cults or movements that mess
(16:27):
with your mind, there's this preponderance of very specific terminology
and acronyms. Scientology uses a ton of acronyms for a reason.
It works when you want to make people do and
think as you would have them do and think. If
neither the red pill nor the black pill uh suits you,
(16:47):
then congratulations, sheeople Uh you along with me personally, are
a blue pill. That means that you, like most of
the world, don't accept this belief and in cells will
can it or you cartoonishly deluded? So how did they
get here? Let's look at the timeline. It's fascinating because
(17:09):
we mentioned Okay, so we mentioned the ContraPoints video is
a great exploration of this community. Uh, the matrix is
founding mythology both by trans people right or who who
have now transitioned. That's the contra Poicte channel. It's a
trans woman who does this channel and incredibly intelligent and
(17:31):
funny and wonderfully produced and to the great shame of
the in cell community. Or this is the first stuff
they don't want you to know. This movement was originally
the brainchild of Believe It or Not. A woman in
the ninety nineties, a bisexual college student known only by
her first name Alana, was living in Toronto, Canada, and
(17:53):
started a website called Alana's Involuntary Celibacy Project for those who,
like her, were struging to form loving relationships or felt
maybe they were late bloomers, you know. And she described
the side originally as a friendly place website where she
posted articles. She ran a mailing list, people just talked
(18:13):
about their personal experiences. Uh. To quote the country song
looking for Love in All the Wrong places, yeah, and
just a general feeling of loneliness, and it was a
forum for men and women to talk about that and
much more of a support community as opposed to what
we'll see that it kind of twisted and mutated into
metastasized would be a good word, right, So we have
(18:36):
quotes from Alana. She says there was probably a bit
of anger and some men were a bit clueless about
how women are unique individual humans, but in general it
was a supportive place. And this is from an interview
that the BBC did with her a while back. How
supportive was it? Get this one couple who met on
this site ended up getting married and lived happily ever after.
(18:58):
So this was not a credibly toxic or negative place.
And fascinating thing about the in cell community and as
we see it, even in its earliest roots, the growth
of it um is very intertwined with digital communication, and
over the past few years numerous online forums have become
home to in cell philosophy. Yeah yeah. Originally Alana had
(19:22):
created the word in the cell i en v c
e l uh. Someone suggested in cell was easier to say,
and then also it's it's homophonic with imbecile. Right. So
to Alanna, the word in cell used to mean anybody
of any gender who was, as you said, Matt, just
(19:44):
lonely but never had had sex, or who hadn't had
a relationship in a long time. And she says, now
we can't call it that anymore. The word has been appropriated.
By two thousand, she began to move away with the
community and she thought, you know, my work here is done.
This is blossoming, this is growing. This is a good thing. Uh.
The digital world, the spontaneous communication, this low cost of
(20:06):
information is allowing people to meet and support one another.
But as the group grew, it became something fundamentally different.
It encountered what psychologists would call the extremity principle or
group polarization. And we'll get to that right after a
quick word from our sponsor, and we have returned, Matt,
(20:37):
have you ever been in a situation where, let's say
there's something that you kind of like, like maybe a
band or a I don't know, ice cream, and you've
met a group of other people who also kind of
like it. Yeah remember ice cream club? Oh yeah, I
remember ice cream club? And then you walk away. Studies
(20:59):
show that if you talk to people who feel the
same way you do, even about something relatively benign, even
if your feelings aren't particularly strong one way or the other.
If you already have that initial tendency or baseline opinion
and you talk with people who have similar beliefs, afterwards,
you will tend to have your belief in that thing
(21:19):
more extremes. So you might walk into some some conversation saying, oh,
are you guys talking about Ben and Jerry's chocolate peanut
butter fudge striped toffee explosion. I made that up And
they might be like, oh, yeah, it's pretty good, and like, oh,
what do you like about it? And as you start
talking about it, yeah, I think about that aspect, and
then you walk and you walk back and you're like,
(21:40):
you know what, that's my favorite ice cream flavor. Not
only is it my favorite, it's the best, possibly the
best ever. Yeah, there ever was that ever existed under
the sun, and other people just don't get it. You know.
That is an example of group polarization. The extremity principal
psychology shows us that people who holds similar beliefs tend
(22:01):
to congregate, and as people a similar beliefs speak with
one another. These beliefs tend to become more extreme. So okay,
so this is what happens with people who like fish
the band. Yes, shout out to our producer, Josh. Yes,
this this happens with bands. I'm totally kidding. I think
fish is great. Fish is fine, but I don't see
(22:25):
what the fish people see in it, you know. And
I think part of that is possibly the community and
the communal nature of going to a fish show and
being around your quote unquote people and you know, and
then if you if you took all that away and
just listen to their albums, I don't think it would
be the same experience if you're doing it in isolation, right, Yeah,
I agree, And I think you know to be fair
(22:47):
world pretty well outside the fish bowl. I mean, they're fine,
they're fine. Any of us even been to a fish show. Now.
I've had fish food ice cream by Ben and Jerry's,
which is great. Quite little fudge fish are awesome. The
closest for me is d n B Dave Matthews band.
I had that happened with me. You Got You Got
Red Pills Crab. Yeah, and I hated Nirvana because of
(23:09):
my insular d MB group. Matt, Matt have you been
have you been rehabbed? Though? Are you? Are you still
a Dave Dave ite? I'm better now. I still like
Dave Matthew. You can like both. Yeah, my songwriting smart? Yeah,
yes it is okay, Okay. Also I said some that's fair,
(23:30):
but that's these are These are innocuous examples, right. Studies
show that after these conversations happened, uh, both you listening
and the people you've spoken with will walk away agreeing
more essentially with your opinion, will be as the Simpsons
would say in Big End. This holds true for opinions
(23:50):
about sports, teams, ice cream, bands, like fish, other snacks, films,
philosophical beliefs. This also here's where it's weird. This also
holds roof for stuff we don't like. Let's say that
you think Police Academy for is the weakest film in
the entire franchise. Would ever think that? I don't know, man, yeah,
I wanted a herrowin example, and you interact with people
(24:13):
who share that belief after this conversation, you will likely
think even less of what is arguably one of the
most breathtaking cinematic achievements in this our modern age. I'm
tearing up just thinking about it too. Man. It's like
mob mentality, where you have a bunch of people that
are maybe a little bit racist, and then you start
getting them talking to each other and they manufacture like
(24:33):
this problem that doesn't even exist, and then nearly the
magnitude they think it does, all of a sudden, there's
devils everywhere and you gotta kill them. Yeah, you's gotta
kill them. They go from they'll create new problems that
don't exist. I love that you said that they go
from you know, well, I think this stereotype about the Germans,
or I tend to think the French are somewhat arrogant.
(24:56):
And then you know, a few weeks later, after joining
the right Facebook groups, they're like, hang the Welsh exactly. Yeah, well,
and this kind you're talking about a drift towards extremism, really,
and it doesn't just happen in these little things. It
happens in the big things, in the big communities and
religious communities, yeah, quickly, in political communities, especially on Facebook.
(25:19):
And it's exactly. It's exacerbated and accelerated by this social
media bubble that people just live in, and that is
what the in cell community is. If nothing else, it
is a bubble. You know. It's like when you only
watch Fox News, or you only watch CNBC, MSNBC or whatever,
and you choose to curate your experiences and blot out
(25:40):
any outside experiences, You're gonna become a more extreme version
of that thing. It's just gonna happen. And uh, digital
platforms play a huge role in this. There's no question
that Twitter played a huge role in the radicalization of
people who later went on to join Islamic insurgencies. There's
no question that Facebook and Russia played a huge role
(26:02):
in in making people in the US drift toward more
extreme beliefs, not just political stuff anyway. Again, there's a
book called Foundations of Geopolitics. It's the playbook for what's happening.
Read it has nothing to do with this episode. It's
weird plug, weird flex but okay, good but weird flex,
good book. Yes, they're just so so we see this. Um,
(26:26):
we did a video earlier, I think, um years back
on radicalization in Isis. But this this stuff still plays
a huge role. Just because you're not seeing a video
of someone getting beheaded doesn't mean this isn't dangerous when
it happens in other places, other communities, other bubbles. So
what does the in cell community believe? Now, let's let's
(26:50):
look at their modern beliefs. First off, shout out to
our house. Stuff works, DNA, how do humans work? Let's
in cells are very m adamant about this. Yeah, you
know all that stuff that you grew up around. Oh yeah,
there's a soul mate for you, somebody out there waiting
just for me. Equal Yeah, remember the whole thing, like
(27:11):
they're all these fish in the sea. There are enough
fish for everyone, I guess, and there is someone for you.
Well that is some bull crap, buddy, what poppy cock?
That's not very nice. Tell me more. Well. Attractiveness, you
know that thing when somebody's like, hey, I like you,
I like the cut of your jib, I'm digging this vibe. Yeah,
(27:34):
that's not an individual per person real thing. There's no
individuality involved. It's just a clear cut set of measurements
that are that are just in a couple of factors
and they are exhibited a couple of things. That sounds
very familiar. Yeah, vaguely eugenic in nature. But let's let's
let's go on, let's test these water. Speaking of genetics,
(27:57):
let's talk about your height, your bone struck sure, your
wrist size, your skin color, your forehead size. Yeah, let's
let's talk about that, because that right there is the
heart of what makes you attractive. Uh. There are some
socially uh accrued things that can get you an attractive
or can create a chad nous within you. Yeah. Most
(28:21):
of that is money, just money, wealth, and but there
are a couple of other things power, influence, prominence, being
a celebrity in general that can cause you to have
chad dom even as a founder of Facebook, like Bill
Gates for instance. Correct, it would be an example. There
are other factors. Let's see just a few. Um, personal initiative,
(28:44):
if you work out a lot, if you eat a
healthy diet, if you dressed well, making some of these things,
like if you actually make a self improvement in one
of these areas, it can be called max ing. Yeah.
But that's the thing though. In this community, term is
inherently kind of a negg, right, It's sort of like, oh,
you're how cute You're you're trying to lift yourself up
(29:06):
out of your pathetic squalor you're trying to dress Max
or looks Max, but your risk will still be exactly. Yeah,
that's that's one of the that's one of the inherently
I think contradictory things. There's also similar to it's distant
relation the world of pee ways or pickup artists. There's
(29:28):
this inherent belief that everything is programmatic and that if
one does action A, action B, a result B rather
will inevitably and immediately follow um. Super producer Paul was
telling me, I'll fair about a show on Netflix he's
watching I Believe called You, where one of the characters
is somewhat of an in cell type and actually does
(29:50):
pick up get a girl, but it's exclusively using these
kind of manipulative pickup artist techniques, and the inner monologue
the whole time is sort of like expressing disbelief, you know,
sort of like wow, it's really working, kind of you know, um,
but it's it's very much a bit of a of
a mark con kind of situational. Have you seen that?
Have you guys seen that? I have? Not? Okay, well, uh,
(30:14):
I don't want to ruin it for anyone. It's it's
worth watching. It is very lifetime ish. Actually, it's like
Lifetime after Dark kind of thing. But I'd be very
interested to hear what you guys think after concluding the
word I would use is problematic, and I think it's
I think it's a great comparison you're making. So one
of the great debates, just like just like you said,
(30:37):
one of the great debates in the in cell community
revolves around this um to do or not to do
question about whether one should attempt to max in one
way or another, right, get a get a better job,
dress better, maybe join a club like Toastmasters where you
learn to speak to other people, or instead to rebel
(31:00):
against this society. An attempts somehow to fundamentally change or
in this view, correct the status quo. This leads to
something called the beta uprising or the in cell rebellion,
which which we promise will get to. That's just a seed, uh,
that's we're just planting that acorn to grow into a
really bioke as this episode continues, Okay, beta uprising, Beta uprising,
(31:25):
and and what goes along with is too is in
the same way that maybe someone um who's having depression
would not take kindly to you just saying come on,
just get over it. Just get out of bed. You'll
be fine. You know you've got anxiety, go exercise, you know. Um.
In the in the ContraPoints video, she I believe coins
the term. I don't think this is in the community
Chad splaining when most in cells are not receptive to
(31:48):
being told to just get their ship together and try
and improve themselves. Um, and that idea of maxing is
looked at often with scorn and has some form of
fakery or as being not true to your in cell roots,
which they all still despise and think that they are
less than. It's so it's very uh counterintuitive the whole thing. Yeah,
(32:09):
there's double thing. And there's also this is something that
you pointed out from the from the contra Points video.
There's also this idea of catastrophizing. Could you tell us
a little bit more about what that is. Yeah, it's
something that I think we can all relate to on
some level at some point in our lives. But it's
just this kind of cyclical negative thinking UM with anxiety
(32:31):
and depression throwne in there. Um. Psych central dot com
describes it as an irrational thought a lot of us
have and believing that something is far worse than it
actually is um and it can take two different forms,
making a catastrophe out of a current situation and imagining
making a catastrophe out of a future situation. So it's
one of these things where the the extreme transition from
(32:53):
problem to we're all going to die, everything is hopeless
and pointless is a real stress, whereas the steps between
the individual spots on that spectrum maybe aren't as much.
But when you finally get to the end result where
your mind goes, you realize that this is very rational,
like the slow boiling of frauds. I would say that
I am highly guilty of catastrophizing about my own life. Yeah,
(33:16):
and I think it's something any most people have experienced
on some level or another. I i am have been
as well, and it had to work at it to
not do that. But it's inherently part of this whole
black pill worldview is that we will never find happiness,
will never find love or sex or kindness of any kind,
will always be treated as these outsider pariahs, and therefore
(33:37):
are doomed to a life of isolation and misery. What's
that line that from the invisibles everything is true, nothing
is permitted. Right. Oh yeah, I think that is it.
I don't know if it's verbatim, but it sounds right. Yeah,
there's a thematic similarity. So we've got the world painted
more or less right, we've got the gist, the bare
bones of this. Let's explore the most important aspect I
(34:03):
guess in the in cell community, or at least philosophically,
women and men. According to in cell belief, humanity works
on this adapted version of the Parado principle, the principle
it's called, and this means that around twenty of the
dudes in existence, if that get or obtain at least
(34:25):
eighty percent of the women, yep, get or obtain. Women
are thought to be both intellectually and morally inferior in
this in this worldview hypergamus, meaning that they sleep around
a lot from their teens to around age thirty, and
there is also some very creepy stuff about underage people
(34:46):
in the in cell community. But at the same time,
this double think occurs because despite the fact that women
are supposed to be markedly inferior, they are at the
same time enormously powerful due to, as you said, met
their perceived control over sexual relationships. And this is so
similar to other discriminatory world views. A racist, for example,
(35:07):
will also argue in terms of double think. Probably the
most prominent and disturbing example from World War Two was
that the Nazi Party and Nazi people who held Nazi
beliefs thought that Jewish people were inherently, irredeemably inferior, yet
literally in charge of the planet. So how do you
(35:27):
how do you hold these two ideas in your head?
In any group like this, the target of discrimination most
must be portrayed as fundamentally less than but also, for
some enormous reason, incredibly powerful. Women therefore function, according to
the in cells best as objects. And you know we're not.
(35:49):
We're not gonna do some song and dance and pretend
like the world is not riddled with misogyny. This, this
did not come out out of whole cloth, you know
what I mean. This came from somewhere. So that's how
they think of women, objects that are somehow inferior but
also all powerful and in charge of everything. Yeah, but
(36:12):
then what about the dudes? What about the dudes? Well,
there are several types of male and it's all based
on really a misunderstanding of mammal hierarchy and studies that
have come out a while ago about this kind of thing.
And it's it's phrase. As you've heard before, alpha's and
beta's really those are the two primary ones. But then
(36:33):
there's a third called the omega, which sounds awesome. Yeah,
but let's continue, all right. So in alpha is essentially
a chad. It's a high status male who gets all
the sex he wants just whenever he feels like it.
He just kind of points and then that's that's it. Alternately,
(36:53):
a an alpha may refer to a male's tall and
muscular body type. Like if you sit look at someone,
it's that guy looks like an alpha. That's what you're
talking about. You have a muscular dude, right. Essentially, that's it,
um And this the thought is that this alpha is
just irresistibly attractive to all females, not just Stacy's who
(37:16):
as we kind of mentioned before, but also Becky's which
I don't even know if we mentioned a Becky. Becky's
are just more average looking, possibly a little nerdy females,
sort of a female equivalent of a beta. Yeah, exactly
a beta. So yes, in this case, both alpha and
beta females. I guess, um, I find the alpha male irresistible.
(37:38):
And these guys sit at the absolute top of the
human sexual food chain, right right. And there's a very
bitter comparison drawn here to uh, the dark triad and
the idea of being a bad malay you know this
(38:00):
again in this in this view or from this perspective,
and alpha is different from a bad boy due to
their restraints. So unlike for instance, Christian Bail in American Psycho,
these guys are able to not instantly immediately sexually assaulted
in murder everyone. But that makes them even more desirable.
(38:23):
It's a very very strange, circuitous logic path there. And
then we talked about I know we mentioned the Stacy's,
but Stacy's are kind of classified as being sexually promiscuous
lived the life of luxury. Never have to work instantly
arousing bodies with large brass curves that are attractive to
(38:44):
Chad's right, um, And this also is a sign that
they are fertile, right And this is a very agist community.
So the life of a Stacy is limited and stops
at age thirty according to most insults. Then we've got
the beta, right, the guy the beta guy is not
(39:07):
that great in relationships. Again, they use the word females,
which is it's funny um our. Our colleague Louren Vogel
Bomb pointed this out to me years ago, and it
still haunts me whenever people say female, I can't not
picture of for Angie, Yeah, you have to ask her
(39:27):
about it. I mean, it's such a clinical way of
looking at a human to categorize. Has anyone ever called
you a male? That's so weird that I would seem
very strange. And you have the some people say female
and conversation and it's you don't bad at eyes much.
But it still is inherently kind of clinical and strange.
I think most times when guys get called male, it's
(39:48):
either in a doctor's office or when there's an a
p B out, you know, male suspect. So so the beta,
for some reason, for one factor or another, is not
confident enough or competent enough to be at alpha. Maybe
because he doesn't buy into bad boy behavior, maybe because
(40:13):
of his something unchangeable about his physical appearance or his
social position. And they are often portrayed as the settled
down types, so in seldom would believe that once a
woman is hit what they call the wall around age thirty,
they seek a beta mail to financially support them, typically
through marriage, while they still pursue alpha's on the side.
(40:36):
And then, if they really want to paint urban legend
horror story of it, the beta male U ends up
taking care of someone else's child while the former Stacy
or whatever you wanna call it, whatever you wanna call
this person while they go off to pursue their adventures.
That's a terrible life, but still they argue it is
(40:58):
better than the worst of the worst. Yeah, the omega um,
that is, the guys with absolutely zero chance of ever
having sexual intercourse so far as they believe. Right, So
this is this is the kind of the the lowest.
These are the people who end up advocating some of
(41:21):
the more insane or fringe beliefs, at least people who
perceived themselves this way. And we talked about the way
that women are divided, right Stacy's, Becky's, Norman's Uh. Do
we mention the term roasty? No? Okay uh? And then
there is I would feel free to urban dictionary. I
would say watch the video Noel has mentioned multiple times
(41:44):
here and you'll learn about it. So there's also this
I think I mentioned earlier in this very agist but
if anyone were to ask me, hey, Ben, what is
the what is the peak desirable age to an insult?
What's the peak desirable age for a mate? Then I
(42:07):
would say it's gross because often people will advocate being
attracted to very very young teenagers, and these are guys
in their thirties and forties. We just have to mention that.
Now this is just scratching the surface. But we have
to look at Now we've got this philosophy, right, we
(42:29):
understand the universe, we understand the the crucial or pivotal relationship,
the debates around it. But how does this long winded
background on philosophy work out in the real world. To
answer that, we have to look at modern actions. First off,
these communities are being banned online left and right. Well, yeah,
(42:51):
and for good reason, right, I mean, not only are
they violating rules of whatever subreddit or whatever message board
they're on, especially concerning incitement to violence, and another really
big problem they have is hate speech. It just continues
to happen. And there are also other things. I mean,
(43:13):
when you get into some of the suicide uh talk
that occurs in a lot of these I mean, you're
not only are you violating rules in terms of use
and all that stuff, you're you're becoming a danger if
you're talking about suicide openly, like the way it happens
in these it's crazy too, because that's that's also part
of the language of these communities that they have a
(43:35):
name for it. It's called suey fuel. And a lot
of times people will post these um, you know, very
hopeless like kind of memes or whatever where it's like
there's some from from the video where it's like an
image of a bunch of women staring at the perspective
of whoever the viewer is with disgust and saying, like
(43:56):
the that feeling when you're the ugly guy and you
walk into a room or whatever. It's stuff like that
that just kind of like inherently makes you feel worse.
And they kind of when they get called on people
that post this stuff, they say, oh, it's just gallos
humor and it's certainly not trying to incite anybody to
do anything. But yet these boards are also filled with
actual suicidal ideations and people posting, whether they be cry
(44:19):
for Christ for help or what have you. That's a
very real part of it too, and advice on how
to do it right. So usually when one forum is banned,
another one will rise up beta style to take its place.
And now that we're talking about this idea of beta rising,
let's let's explore the beta uprising. The also known as
(44:42):
the in cell rebellion. The more extreme parts of the
in cell community call for a beta uprising. This would
be defined as collective action by people identifying both as
Beta and Omega too through acts of public violence force
a change in society. The logic and detail of this
plan shift, with the primary goal being to create conditions
(45:04):
wherein the in cells do not feel so oppressed and
can either uh force or induce women to sleep with them, or,
in some cases, for the very very misogynistic angry individuals,
UH just force women to live in some sort of
servitude right, or even mass killings. This is dark, deplorable,
(45:29):
very nasty stuff. But unfortunately, as long time listeners to
this show no and as the as the three of
us know, UH, it is not particularly anomalous. In the
vast cesspit of opinions on the Internet, there are people
advocating all sorts of horrible, horrible, horrible things. Sometimes they're trolling,
(45:52):
sometimes they're serious. Sometimes it is a dark Catharsis. But
things change when the digital trash talk and dark ideation
creates real world consequence. And the Insul community has done
just that, and we'll learn about it right after award
from our sponsor. Here's where it gets crazy, so in
(46:21):
seldom put on its big boy shoes terrorism wise. In
recent years, multiple young men identifying with this belief system
have conducted mass murders, and we have several examples. Unfortunately,
the first and most well known, I would say it
would be the case of Elliott Roger, who on May
(46:42):
um in East La Vista, which is part of Santa
Barbara County, California, murdered six people, injured fourteen, and took
his own life in his car. Yeah, the attack began
when he stabbed three men to death in his apartment,
and then he drove to a sorority house and he
tried to get in but he was unable to. He
then shot three women outside, two of them died, and
(47:03):
he drove past a nearby delhi and then shot to
death a male student who was inside that Delhi. Then
he began to speed through the area through Olivista and
he shot and wounded several other pedestrians. He hit people
with his car. Um In the end he exchanged gunfire
with police, and he did that twice actually as he
(47:23):
was going to all of these places, and he received
a non fatal gunshot wound to the hip. But in
the end, at the very end here he he crashed
his car into a parked vehicle and police found him
dead with a self inflicted gunshot wound to his head.
And before setting out for this sorority house, shortly after
(47:45):
he had stabbed three people in his apartment, he uploaded
a video to YouTube titled Roger's Retribution. In the video,
he details his attack plan. He states that he wants
to punish women for set actually rejecting him, and to
punish sexually active men and couples for essentially having sex.
(48:05):
He feels rejected. He doesn't know. He's like, I don't
see what you don't see in me. I am the
supreme gentleman. This moniker becomes important. It sticks around. Before
he does this, he sends a written document to about
thirty four people in total, his friends, family, and his therapist.
It is a long manifesto titled My Twisted World The
(48:26):
Story of Elliott Roger. In this manifesto, he claims that
in his ideal world, he would quarantine all women that's
not the term he uses in concentration camps, and says
that the vast majority of the population in these camps
would be starved to death deliberately. This would be an
(48:47):
efficient and fitting way to kill them all off. I
would have an enormous tower built for myself and gleefully
watch them all die. He also dreamed of a quote
pure world where man's mind can develop to greater heights
than ever before. Future generations will live their lives free
from having to worry about the barbarity of sex and women,
which will enable them to expand their intelligence and advance
(49:09):
the human race to a state of perfect civilization by
cutting out more than half of the human population. That
last part I'm adding because that's true. That's how the
numbers work. Absolutely no. And that's the thing too, that
that I meant to mention earlier. There are obviously shades
of in cells within this community, the most extreme being
abject hatred of women um and the maybe lesser extreme
(49:34):
being the more self loathing. I'm sad that women don't
find me attractive and then I'll never find happiness. But
they don't necessarily automatically take it to that level of
make women are sex slaves and uh or kill them right.
And this is not a defense of Roger in any case,
but he did have a very long history of mental
(49:55):
illness as well, which we we see often in in
these shooting deaths or in these mass murders. Upon his death,
when the story of the tragedy hit the news, the
Insuldum community began worshiping Elliott Roger to one degree or
another as a martyr. Unfortunately, uh he inspired other people
(50:20):
and just to go out here on a limb and
say this. We are speaking about the in cell community
as one community. We do not mean that every single
individual who perhaps identifies in one way or another as
an in cell believes that this is the right thing.
Oh no, yeah, exactly it is. If you go online
(50:41):
and you look at the message boards, you may feel
that way that every single person on this board thinks
this guy did the right thing. Um, I assure you
that that that is not the case. But in certain
subsets of this community, he is held up and revered
as some sort of proto messiah almost or something. Yeah,
it's the yeah, harbinger of the revolution. Well, we are
(51:05):
anything but absolutist, and that would be an absolutist worldview
to take, I believe. Uh. We also have to remember
that in the age of the Internet, when you're reading
the printed word and then is often posted anonymously, you
don't It's very difficult to divine the sincerity or motivation
(51:26):
for a piece of writing or a piece of communication.
But this martyrdom is real and it inspired more people.
And the next example would be a guy named Chris
Harper Mercer. In October one, Chris Harper Mercer, six year
old student at Umpqua Community College near Roseberg, Oregon, shot
(51:50):
nine people and then injured eight others. He was wounded
when the police arrived, and then he took his own life.
Before the shooting, he studied the actions of earlier shooters
such as Chow and such as Roger and cited these
people as his inspiration and influences and his um He
(52:13):
also had a history of, you know, unfortunately mental illness,
which again is not a it's a huge factor, but
it's not an excuse and it is certainly never a justification.
The timeline continues up to last year. There were there
were several instances here. Here's two of them. One in Canada.
Alec Menassian on April eighteen drove a rented van and
(52:38):
sped through the North York City Center business district, targeting
pedestrians with his van. He killed ten, he injured sixteen.
This was the most deadly attack of its kind in
Canadian history. Yeah. And prior to the attack, Menascian had
been active on several forums and in self front said
that it's called for some kind of rebel million and
(53:01):
also saluting the aforementioned supreme gentleman Rogers. Yes, so the
name came back. And there's another example to just from
as recently as November. Right, that's right, open pronouncing this
name right. Actually, I don't really care if I am
H Scott Paul Berry berre L Beryl Beryl b E
I E R L E. Not heard it spoken. Um.
(53:22):
But on November two, uh, this forty year old gentleman
um shot and killed two people and wounded five others
at a midtown yoga studio in Tallahassee before he took
his own life. Um. And he also cited Rogers as
an inspiration. Yeah, it's true. He also not only did
(53:43):
he cite Rogers an inspiration, but he had this long
history of groping women and had been in legal trouble
with this before he These guys also have some four
chin posts you can find. But this is well, this
is the most publicized phenomenon, real world consequence of this community.
(54:06):
And again, this community does not move in lockstep. Uh.
This is far from the only case. There's a very
high likelihood that people some people identify as in cells
have committed unsolved sex crimes because there is glorification of assault.
Given that some self identified members of the community have
(54:27):
gone online to brag about everything from intimidation to outright
sexual assault, including planning this stuff, by the way, and
advising each other on how to do it, it's disturbingly
likely that several members of the community have actually committed
acts of sexual violence. And again, in many cases these
could just be Internet trolls or people telling tales for attention,
(54:50):
but the frequency of these sorts of posts and the
anonymity right makes it unlikely that all of these are
pranks or works of fiction. And then there's the the
thing that I find incredibly disturbing, which is beyond an
individual act of sexual assault, and that is the concept
(55:11):
of what they call the redistribution of sex notably hit
the mainstream in a New York Times article. But the
belief is this more extreme members of the community will
call for things like the legalization of sexual assault or
some sort of state supported program to force sex, meaning
Uncle Sam or some you know um Orwellian big brother
(55:34):
kind of thing would make again, more than half of
the population sleep with the other half. Again, this idea
argues that men are the only real humans, and therefore
the human right to sex applies primarily and virtually solely
to men. This idea of systematic rape is it's a
(55:57):
real thing which baffles me. And this is this stuff,
the very stuff that Roger the and the original shooter
we talked about, talked about in his manifesto and in
his video that he made before carrying out some of
these these crimes. Yeah. Absolutely, And at this at this
point the story continues, it's again important to note that
(56:21):
there are tons of involuntarily celibrate people of all ages, genders, creeds,
and so on across this planet of ours. And these people,
while quite possibly unhappy with their sex lives, are certainly
not out to harm anyone. They're just looking for human connection.
And it's also we haven't really talked about the age
range of these folks because I used to call what's
(56:44):
being described here as just being an awkward, gawky teen
or something. You know, like, at what point did it
become kind of weaponized in this way? Right? And I
think the bubble quality that we're talking about with the
social media bubble, and especially when you factor in some
mental illness, mental health issues, and this kind of as
it's described in the Counterpoints video death cult model that
(57:07):
we have here. So this this notion that since Helia
never gonna win, then you might as well go for
suicide or worse, murder suicide revenge, right, right. And it's
it's crucial to note that the difference here is that
this online community is radicalizing isolated people and this is
(57:29):
creating real life murderers. One of the most common questions
I'm sure a lot of us were wondering this to
the course of this episode. One of the most common
questions people ask when they learn about this community is
why don't in cells just uh engage with sex workers? Right.
In many places, prostitution is legalized or decriminalized, so would
(57:51):
that be uh solution. The in cell community largely seems
to be against this, and there are some fantastic articles
by sex workers who say that this is not This
is not safe for sex workers. I also think it's
kind of missing the point because a lot of what
these people crave is the companionship that comes with sex,
(58:13):
not necessarily the sex act itself, um, more of the
companionship and the genuine closeness and uh intimacy which which
we kind of now we even gloss over. But it
feels like that point is maybe lost. That it's all
made about these little horn dogs that just can't get
what they want. But surely we all can relate to
the idea of being alone and not having anyone love
(58:35):
you and give you kindness and tenderness or whatever that
could kind of make you go a little nuts. I
could see that. Yeah, if if you're okay to watch
something a little more mature online, watch that ContraPoints video,
and the very first thing that it starts with describes
exactly what we're talking about here, the desire for intimacy.
(58:56):
That's what I mean by human connection. Yeah, for sure, sure,
that's it is true. You know it's not sex for
the sake of sex could easily be a transactional interaction,
especially when you're considering that someone's paying for it right. Also,
there are tons of social factors that we don't have
(59:20):
time to get into today. Uh. We are available if
you want to write to us with questions or feedback.
We'd love to hear from you. We want to thank
you for listening to this, and we want to hold
this up as an example of how online communities can
have real world consequences. And just to point this out,
I personally can identify with that feeling of being down
(59:45):
on yourself, not believing anything good about yourself when someone
compliments you, that feeling of believing the worst about yourself. Like,
whoever whoever craps on me the most is probably the
right person because they're telling me the truth. Wait wait wait,
people compliment you guys, um uh every every now and
(01:00:06):
again again, Like Ben can't hear it. He it doesn't
register in his ears, and it doesn't register in my
ears very well either. I almost cannot hear that. I
think it's a very human thing though, to always trying
to be to to to tend to be your worst
critic and your worst enemy. And because you know yourself
(01:00:29):
better than anyone else, therefore you must know the deep,
the deepest roots of your inadequacies. And then it's almost
like this idea of seeking out those negative comments, the
ones that cut to the core, and that you say, oh, yeah, see,
I was right all along because this is what I
already believed. What these people they're saying it's nice. I
don't believe that. Therefore, um, you know, it's it's not true.
(01:00:51):
It's a tough world out there. It's a tough world,
and it's a hard balance to strike, right. It's about
mental health and mental wellness and being good to yourself.
And not to chat explain or anything, but I do
feel like this is a mental health issue in a
lot of ways. Yeah, if you are feeling that way,
there's nothing I or anyone here could say to you
(01:01:12):
to probably make you feel better in this moment if
you're feeling this way right now. But there are people
out there who really do care about you and really
do think you're a great person. Whether you want to
believe that or not, it's true. I think there's probably
a lot of undiagnosed depression and anxiety and social stuff
that's going on here too. I'm gonna bring us to
(01:01:36):
a lighter note. Everybody hates to hear you are Not
Alone song coincidentally written by R Kelly. A lot of
people don't know. I just found that out. UH. To
end on a lighter note. If you feel like reaching
out to someone and you just want someone to chat with,
I would like to introduce you to something called call
(01:01:56):
a Swede. Sweden has this number until give you in
a second where you can call people and get connected
to a random Swedish person. It is four six seven
seven one seven nine three three three six, so it
might be a little bit of an adventure right in
your day, I believe. I don't know if it's still open,
(01:02:18):
but give it a ring and if that number doesn't work,
you can contact us UH directly via phone. Yes, we
are one eight three three st d w y t K.
Leave a message if you're feeling some type of way.
We will have your number so you might call you back.
Who knows you know you can. Also you can reach
(01:02:39):
us on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. You can reach the
best part of this show, your fellow listeners on our
Facebook community page. Here's where it gets crazy and uh,
you know, I'll say it. If you want to reach
out to someone, you can find me directly on Instagram.
I'm at ben Bulan and I'm at Embryonic Insider and
you can reach us an argument conspiracy at how stuff
(01:03:02):
works dot com. M M m
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. M
(00:24):
Welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my
name is Nol. They called me Ben. We're joined with
our super producer, Paul Michigan controlled decade. Most importantly, you
are you. You are here, and that makes this stuff
they don't want you to know. The Course of true
love it's often said never did run smooth, and this
(00:44):
episode UH might not run incredibly smoothly either. We need
to open I think with a disclaimer. This episode contains
UH descriptions of sexual violence, descriptions of murder, hamas side suicide,
and a boatload of language that reasonable people would find
(01:05):
incredibly offensive. So if that is something that would be
difficult for you to listen to, now is the time
to turn back. Assuming you're still here, Uh, let's dive in.
At some point in our lives, regardless of who we
are in society or how we feel about ourselves, virtually
(01:27):
every one of us has grappled with those heavy, tough
questions of romance, of amorous feelings, of love, and of course,
love's ugly cousin heartbreak and likely experienced um rejection or
a feeling of being some sort of outcast, at least
for a time. People aren't usually don't usually come out
(01:48):
of the womb with complete and utter sexual confidence, something
you have to kind of work your way into. I mean,
other than Morrissey, that's right. Well, Morrissey is a very
special case. It's true. I don't know if Morrissey was
born or just sort of um self generated. You know,
you know Morrissey is editoriously a sexual celibate. Yeah, yeah, uh,
(02:09):
val Cell, That's what I would say. And this, this
unifying emotion, this unifying set of questions, uh, you know,
it runs across the human species. There's pretty compelling evidence
that other mammals, not just primates, experience what we would
(02:29):
call love, heartbreak, grief, envy, jealousy, the whole cavalcade of
related feelings. Today's episode explores an entire subculture dedicated in
some ways to these questions. This group calls itself collectively
in cells I, N, C, E. L. Here are the facts.
(02:52):
Let's start with that. Let's start with that one word.
What does in cell mean? It's just a portmanteau, it's
a it's a it's tew words involuntary and celibate. And
the gist basically is it's people who identify themselves as
this in cells. They believe they're the victims of some
(03:12):
oppressive society, the one in which we all exist, but
they view it as much more oppressive than perhaps the
average person would. And in this society, women, through their
purported control of uh, sex and relationships and sexual relationships, Uh,
they're able to control almost every single aspect of life.
(03:33):
And the person who identifies as an in cell is
the victim. Yeah. Yeah, The in cell movement has a
lot of different variations, but that's that's the key. They've
constructed this theory of attractiveness and will explore more of
that in a moment. I and I believe the best
way to succinctly describe it is a type of absolutist
(03:56):
sexual cast system. Yeah. And they've also constructed this worldview
where sex is an inalienable human rights um and a
big part of the language in the Intel community, at
least among most members, is the notion that they are
entitled in some way to sex as heterosexual males and
(04:17):
as we'll discuss very much. Is a heterosexual community. I
shy away from using the term movement, honestly, it gives
me the creeps that can I think of it more
as a as a community kind I don't know, it's well,
we'll get well, we'll discuss it, for sure, I would.
I would typically say a community, although many individuals in
that in this world, if you do see it as
(04:39):
a movement, the difference between a community and a movement
is in the word right. A movement is oriented towards
a specific set of goals that can be measured as
a successor failure. In this community inherently kind of lacks goals.
In fact, it's largely about furthering these negative feelings. If
(05:03):
you can say there's a goal, it's to feel as
horrible about yourself as you possibly can. There are some
contradictory goals, for sure. I don't know that everyone agrees
within that community, certainly not outside of it, but I
don't want to lose that. That point the the idea
that sex is a human right, that only a certain
(05:24):
type of person is indeed a person, and that desiring
sexual contact while not experiencing it, at least in the
way one desires is both deeply traumatic and a great
historical crime of our age. So out of all the
horrible things human beings have ever done, not getting laid
to be crass about it is somewhere at the top.
(05:46):
Forget about genocide and mass starvation. And we we want
to be very clear and knowing you, you raise an
excellent point here in this worldview, there is no room
for same sex relationships, the trans community, lgbt q, I A,
and so on in this in this reality, there is
(06:07):
only a black and white again absolutist reckoning in which
men and women are the only players. And we've read
the three of us have gone far, far far down
this rabbit hole. I've read some stuff about same sex
relationships from this perspective, and a lot of the people
(06:29):
who are against it believe that get this, I don't
know if you, if you guys saw this, believe that
people who feel that they are gay or attracted to
members of the same sex are just deluded because of
the evils of feminism, and that they have been um
bamboozled for lack of a better word, because they have
(06:51):
never met a quote unquote real member of the other gender.
Very strange, very strange, and and like many insular groups
like cults or militaries or religions, the in cell community
both isolates and identifies its members through the use of
acquired terminology or jargon. Right, we have phrases like normy
(07:14):
for most of us listening, and for us here in
the studio that term is us, where either normans are
chats well it well. Also, the Norman is one that
has meaning outside of this community. I mean, it's certainly
kind of an Internet term for squares, I guess, you know.
But then within the in cell community it's its own thing.
(07:34):
And some of the terms they use are very much
exclusive to the in cell community, and some like that
they kind of co opt and give their own little
spin to right right, right, So a Stacey or Chad
is an attractive, popular person who has, in their view
the majority of sex on Earth. Actually, I mean, that's
(07:55):
literally what it is. And there are other variations of
this that we can explore. There are more examples. You.
The term woman is very very very rarely used. It's
either phemoid, femoid, or female. But the best phemoid, though,
is it's kind of the one they really lean on
to me, that's just this inherently mothering name for women.
(08:17):
It sounds like some kind of callous, unfeeling robot like
think like the fembots from the Austin Powers movie. Also
akin to like some kind of natural resource that has
to be harvested and used rather than you know, like
a thinking, feeling human person. Yeah, goes back to the
word humanoid, right, that resembling a human exactly. So there
(08:39):
are there are other things like beta buxing, mogging, magging,
I enjoyed. Magging is essentially when someone feels that some
other I guess maybe a competitive It's a competitive thing,
so they So, for instance, if uh, Paul michigantrol decade
(08:59):
and don't worry, Paul, I'm not using you as an
in cell example. I know you'd never forgive me. I
can see Matt's reaction to your face right now. So
let's say let's say Paul is um in like a
singles party, mingling dating or something, and then uh, someone,
some in cell person wants to talk about a book
(09:22):
or a book becomes part of the conversation and Paul
has read the book. If the person is insecure enough,
they will feel that Paul has somehow mogged them or
one up to them or uh made them seem like
they have less value by having read that book as well,
you know what I mean. So it's really mogging, like
beauty or pornography is in the eye of the beholder. Interesting.
(09:45):
There's also an inherently as we'll get more into this
later as we start to talk about some physical qualities,
but there's an inherently problematic kind of racist language as
well in the in cell community. So you can be
an in cell of color, but if that is what
you are, than they almost exclusively blame your lack of
success on women are attributed to the race. And these
(10:07):
are some very offensive terms, and a lot of this
comes from a fantastic video on YouTube called from a
channel called ContraPoints um and there's a video on in
cells in that that I cannot recommend highly enough. But
terms like um rice cell or black cell or um
curry cell to refer to people of other races, so
it's almost like they're making that the focal point of
(10:30):
their deficiency rather than some of the other details that
we're going to get into right right, And there's uh,
there's an important point here because oftentimes those those words
are self applied, which which would be startling, I think
to a lot of people from the outside because they
are very racist. Yes, this is a very self loathing
centered community. And so there are um categories that in
(10:55):
cells divide themselves into, the racial category being one. Uh.
It's also they'll also base their description on what they
see as their sex life or what they see as
the physical or mental or social defect that's keeping them
from attracting women, where as they would say obtaining sex.
These are things like brain cells, near cells, people who
(11:18):
feel like they do have sexual contact but that it's
so uh sparse that they're they're almost in cells where
they're almost red pilling, which comes up in just a second.
Mayor cells Marcel's people who are married but in a
sexless marriage, or even having as specific as having a
weak wrist they call it the wrist cells or being
(11:39):
too short or too tall height cells. Yeah, and as
I was reading this list, I kept thinking, you know,
what do you call the person who's gone the longest
amount of time? Are they? Are they a duras cell?
But I do not step down from that. You don't
need it. I will die on this hill. But I
(11:59):
mean that's that's a little bit of levity. And to
be honest, I didn't see anything with dura cell. But
let's talk about pills. So cells are big and so
are pills. The concepts espoused first in The Matrix, which
was made by people who would be found objectionable by
this community, right where the who went on to both transition, Yeah, exactly.
(12:26):
I didn't realize they both transied. Yeah, they're like twins,
I believe, and they clearly shared the same experience in
terms of their sexuality, their identities. So we all remember
in the Matrix, I'm assuming. Okay, if you haven't seen
The Matrix yet, spoilers. I rewatched it actually over the
weekend with my kid. Yeah, amazing, Okay, it didn't quite
(12:48):
hold up for me, And I think the reason is
this because it's been parodied and ripped off so much
that it almost looks like a parody of itself at
this point, at no fault of its own. Sure does
that make sense? I can see where you're coming from.
I the the idea here goes back to a scene
in the Matrix where in uh oh, what's the what Morpheus? Right,
(13:11):
wherein Morpheus offers the protagonist Neo a choice. He can
take a blue pill and he'll just forget the weird
stuff that happened leading up to that moment and live
out his life, or he can take the red pill
and have his eyes opened, encounter a revelation to see
the world as it truly is in the universe of
(13:33):
in Seldom. The term red pill describes someone who, like
Neo in the Matrix, takes that red pill experience as
a revelation and now recognizes the quote unquote true nature
of human society, accepting this absolutist black and white view
and primarily subscribing to the belief that society discriminates not
against women but against men, specifically against you. You know
(13:58):
what I mean. It's it's very bleak, very bleak wal view,
and red pilling is just the act of spreading this
world view, of convincing other people of proselytizing for in Seldom,
and this applies to all right thinking and neo Nazism.
The idea of Rigg being red pilled is when you
have a mentor of some kind or someone who welcomes
(14:18):
you into this world in this way of thinking, and
it takes yeah, yeah, well said this also occurs with
how they rebranded race brace supremacy arguments. Oh uh, race realism,
did you guys run into that one? That's that's the
thing people are saying with a straight face. Uh. And
then there's black pill. Yeah. So if red pill is
(14:39):
societal like worldview change kind of thing, black pill is
a little even more metaphysical, and it's going deeper even
than the red pill. It's, uh, this fatalistic version of
the world in which people who believe it inside the
in cell community, they subscribe to this biological determinism where
(15:02):
your your body was basically as you were born, it
was determined even before you were born that you were
going to be an insult because of these traits that
you have. Either it's your height or your risks or
your forehead shape or shape of your skull. Yeah, whatever
it is, these factors are going to make you unattractive.
(15:24):
And then the same the same thing applies to people
who are attractive, and just you cannot change your in
seldom and you cannot change the Chad dum or whatever
other version of humanity that exists out there. Yeah, And
the whole the black pill is is really just the
everything that comes along with going full bore into this
(15:46):
very nihilistic worldview and everything that comes along with it,
and Natalie, when a k ContraPoints on the YouTube channel
was talking about, kind of breaks it down in a
really interesting way. UM describes the black pill as the
self defeating world view with no hope of happiness and
sexual gratification. UM sexual market value is genetic, completely unchangeable,
(16:07):
this idea that you will be a virgin forever, that
you'll never be able to have sex, therefore you will
never be able to have happiness and you should just
l D A R or lay down and rot again.
Like like many UM. I don't want to call it
a cult, but like many cults or movements that mess
(16:27):
with your mind, there's this preponderance of very specific terminology
and acronyms. Scientology uses a ton of acronyms for a reason.
It works when you want to make people do and
think as you would have them do and think. If
neither the red pill nor the black pill uh suits you,
(16:47):
then congratulations, sheeople Uh you along with me personally, are
a blue pill. That means that you, like most of
the world, don't accept this belief and in cells will
can it or you cartoonishly deluded? So how did they
get here? Let's look at the timeline. It's fascinating because
(17:09):
we mentioned Okay, so we mentioned the ContraPoints video is
a great exploration of this community. Uh, the matrix is
founding mythology both by trans people right or who who
have now transitioned. That's the contra Poicte channel. It's a
trans woman who does this channel and incredibly intelligent and
(17:31):
funny and wonderfully produced and to the great shame of
the in cell community. Or this is the first stuff
they don't want you to know. This movement was originally
the brainchild of Believe It or Not. A woman in
the ninety nineties, a bisexual college student known only by
her first name Alana, was living in Toronto, Canada, and
(17:53):
started a website called Alana's Involuntary Celibacy Project for those who,
like her, were struging to form loving relationships or felt
maybe they were late bloomers, you know. And she described
the side originally as a friendly place website where she
posted articles. She ran a mailing list, people just talked
(18:13):
about their personal experiences. Uh. To quote the country song
looking for Love in All the Wrong places, yeah, and
just a general feeling of loneliness, and it was a
forum for men and women to talk about that and
much more of a support community as opposed to what
we'll see that it kind of twisted and mutated into
metastasized would be a good word, right, So we have
(18:36):
quotes from Alana. She says there was probably a bit
of anger and some men were a bit clueless about
how women are unique individual humans, but in general it
was a supportive place. And this is from an interview
that the BBC did with her a while back. How
supportive was it? Get this one couple who met on
this site ended up getting married and lived happily ever after.
(18:58):
So this was not a credibly toxic or negative place.
And fascinating thing about the in cell community and as
we see it, even in its earliest roots, the growth
of it um is very intertwined with digital communication, and
over the past few years numerous online forums have become
home to in cell philosophy. Yeah yeah. Originally Alana had
(19:22):
created the word in the cell i en v c
e l uh. Someone suggested in cell was easier to say,
and then also it's it's homophonic with imbecile. Right. So
to Alanna, the word in cell used to mean anybody
of any gender who was, as you said, Matt, just
(19:44):
lonely but never had had sex, or who hadn't had
a relationship in a long time. And she says, now
we can't call it that anymore. The word has been appropriated.
By two thousand, she began to move away with the
community and she thought, you know, my work here is done.
This is blossoming, this is growing. This is a good thing. Uh.
The digital world, the spontaneous communication, this low cost of
(20:06):
information is allowing people to meet and support one another.
But as the group grew, it became something fundamentally different.
It encountered what psychologists would call the extremity principle or
group polarization. And we'll get to that right after a
quick word from our sponsor, and we have returned, Matt,
(20:37):
have you ever been in a situation where, let's say
there's something that you kind of like, like maybe a
band or a I don't know, ice cream, and you've
met a group of other people who also kind of
like it. Yeah remember ice cream club? Oh yeah, I
remember ice cream club? And then you walk away. Studies
(20:59):
show that if you talk to people who feel the
same way you do, even about something relatively benign, even
if your feelings aren't particularly strong one way or the other.
If you already have that initial tendency or baseline opinion
and you talk with people who have similar beliefs, afterwards,
you will tend to have your belief in that thing
(21:19):
more extremes. So you might walk into some some conversation saying, oh,
are you guys talking about Ben and Jerry's chocolate peanut
butter fudge striped toffee explosion. I made that up And
they might be like, oh, yeah, it's pretty good, and like, oh,
what do you like about it? And as you start
talking about it, yeah, I think about that aspect, and
then you walk and you walk back and you're like,
(21:40):
you know what, that's my favorite ice cream flavor. Not
only is it my favorite, it's the best, possibly the
best ever. Yeah, there ever was that ever existed under
the sun, and other people just don't get it. You know.
That is an example of group polarization. The extremity principal
psychology shows us that people who holds similar beliefs tend
(22:01):
to congregate, and as people a similar beliefs speak with
one another. These beliefs tend to become more extreme. So okay,
so this is what happens with people who like fish
the band. Yes, shout out to our producer, Josh. Yes,
this this happens with bands. I'm totally kidding. I think
fish is great. Fish is fine, but I don't see
(22:25):
what the fish people see in it, you know. And
I think part of that is possibly the community and
the communal nature of going to a fish show and
being around your quote unquote people and you know, and
then if you if you took all that away and
just listen to their albums, I don't think it would
be the same experience if you're doing it in isolation, right, Yeah,
I agree, And I think you know to be fair
(22:47):
world pretty well outside the fish bowl. I mean, they're fine,
they're fine. Any of us even been to a fish show. Now.
I've had fish food ice cream by Ben and Jerry's,
which is great. Quite little fudge fish are awesome. The
closest for me is d n B Dave Matthews band.
I had that happened with me. You Got You Got
Red Pills Crab. Yeah, and I hated Nirvana because of
(23:09):
my insular d MB group. Matt, Matt have you been
have you been rehabbed? Though? Are you? Are you still
a Dave Dave ite? I'm better now. I still like
Dave Matthew. You can like both. Yeah, my songwriting smart? Yeah,
yes it is okay, Okay. Also I said some that's fair,
(23:30):
but that's these are These are innocuous examples, right. Studies
show that after these conversations happened, uh, both you listening
and the people you've spoken with will walk away agreeing
more essentially with your opinion, will be as the Simpsons
would say in Big End. This holds true for opinions
(23:50):
about sports, teams, ice cream, bands, like fish, other snacks, films,
philosophical beliefs. This also here's where it's weird. This also
holds roof for stuff we don't like. Let's say that
you think Police Academy for is the weakest film in
the entire franchise. Would ever think that? I don't know, man, yeah,
I wanted a herrowin example, and you interact with people
(24:13):
who share that belief after this conversation, you will likely
think even less of what is arguably one of the
most breathtaking cinematic achievements in this our modern age. I'm
tearing up just thinking about it too. Man. It's like
mob mentality, where you have a bunch of people that
are maybe a little bit racist, and then you start
getting them talking to each other and they manufacture like
(24:33):
this problem that doesn't even exist, and then nearly the
magnitude they think it does, all of a sudden, there's
devils everywhere and you gotta kill them. Yeah, you's gotta
kill them. They go from they'll create new problems that
don't exist. I love that you said that they go
from you know, well, I think this stereotype about the Germans,
or I tend to think the French are somewhat arrogant.
(24:56):
And then you know, a few weeks later, after joining
the right Facebook groups, they're like, hang the Welsh exactly. Yeah, well,
and this kind you're talking about a drift towards extremism, really,
and it doesn't just happen in these little things. It
happens in the big things, in the big communities and
religious communities, yeah, quickly, in political communities, especially on Facebook.
(25:19):
And it's exactly. It's exacerbated and accelerated by this social
media bubble that people just live in, and that is
what the in cell community is. If nothing else, it
is a bubble. You know. It's like when you only
watch Fox News, or you only watch CNBC, MSNBC or whatever,
and you choose to curate your experiences and blot out
(25:40):
any outside experiences, You're gonna become a more extreme version
of that thing. It's just gonna happen. And uh, digital
platforms play a huge role in this. There's no question
that Twitter played a huge role in the radicalization of
people who later went on to join Islamic insurgencies. There's
no question that Facebook and Russia played a huge role
(26:02):
in in making people in the US drift toward more
extreme beliefs, not just political stuff anyway. Again, there's a
book called Foundations of Geopolitics. It's the playbook for what's happening.
Read it has nothing to do with this episode. It's
weird plug, weird flex but okay, good but weird flex,
good book. Yes, they're just so so we see this. Um,
(26:26):
we did a video earlier, I think, um years back
on radicalization in Isis. But this this stuff still plays
a huge role. Just because you're not seeing a video
of someone getting beheaded doesn't mean this isn't dangerous when
it happens in other places, other communities, other bubbles. So
what does the in cell community believe? Now, let's let's
(26:50):
look at their modern beliefs. First off, shout out to
our house. Stuff works, DNA, how do humans work? Let's
in cells are very m adamant about this. Yeah, you
know all that stuff that you grew up around. Oh yeah,
there's a soul mate for you, somebody out there waiting
just for me. Equal Yeah, remember the whole thing, like
(27:11):
they're all these fish in the sea. There are enough
fish for everyone, I guess, and there is someone for you.
Well that is some bull crap, buddy, what poppy cock?
That's not very nice. Tell me more. Well. Attractiveness, you
know that thing when somebody's like, hey, I like you,
I like the cut of your jib, I'm digging this vibe. Yeah,
(27:34):
that's not an individual per person real thing. There's no
individuality involved. It's just a clear cut set of measurements
that are that are just in a couple of factors
and they are exhibited a couple of things. That sounds
very familiar. Yeah, vaguely eugenic in nature. But let's let's
let's go on, let's test these water. Speaking of genetics,
(27:57):
let's talk about your height, your bone struck sure, your
wrist size, your skin color, your forehead size. Yeah, let's
let's talk about that, because that right there is the
heart of what makes you attractive. Uh. There are some
socially uh accrued things that can get you an attractive
or can create a chad nous within you. Yeah. Most
(28:21):
of that is money, just money, wealth, and but there
are a couple of other things power, influence, prominence, being
a celebrity in general that can cause you to have
chad dom even as a founder of Facebook, like Bill
Gates for instance. Correct, it would be an example. There
are other factors. Let's see just a few. Um, personal initiative,
(28:44):
if you work out a lot, if you eat a
healthy diet, if you dressed well, making some of these things,
like if you actually make a self improvement in one
of these areas, it can be called max ing. Yeah.
But that's the thing though. In this community, term is
inherently kind of a negg, right, It's sort of like, oh,
you're how cute You're you're trying to lift yourself up
(29:06):
out of your pathetic squalor you're trying to dress Max
or looks Max, but your risk will still be exactly. Yeah,
that's that's one of the that's one of the inherently
I think contradictory things. There's also similar to it's distant
relation the world of pee ways or pickup artists. There's
(29:28):
this inherent belief that everything is programmatic and that if
one does action A, action B, a result B rather
will inevitably and immediately follow um. Super producer Paul was
telling me, I'll fair about a show on Netflix he's
watching I Believe called You, where one of the characters
is somewhat of an in cell type and actually does
(29:50):
pick up get a girl, but it's exclusively using these
kind of manipulative pickup artist techniques, and the inner monologue
the whole time is sort of like expressing disbelief, you know,
sort of like wow, it's really working, kind of you know, um,
but it's it's very much a bit of a of
a mark con kind of situational. Have you seen that?
Have you guys seen that? I have? Not? Okay, well, uh,
(30:14):
I don't want to ruin it for anyone. It's it's
worth watching. It is very lifetime ish. Actually, it's like
Lifetime after Dark kind of thing. But I'd be very
interested to hear what you guys think after concluding the
word I would use is problematic, and I think it's
I think it's a great comparison you're making. So one
of the great debates, just like just like you said,
(30:37):
one of the great debates in the in cell community
revolves around this um to do or not to do
question about whether one should attempt to max in one
way or another, right, get a get a better job,
dress better, maybe join a club like Toastmasters where you
learn to speak to other people, or instead to rebel
(31:00):
against this society. An attempts somehow to fundamentally change or
in this view, correct the status quo. This leads to
something called the beta uprising or the in cell rebellion,
which which we promise will get to. That's just a seed, uh,
that's we're just planting that acorn to grow into a
really bioke as this episode continues, Okay, beta uprising, Beta uprising,
(31:25):
and and what goes along with is too is in
the same way that maybe someone um who's having depression
would not take kindly to you just saying come on,
just get over it. Just get out of bed. You'll
be fine. You know you've got anxiety, go exercise, you know. Um.
In the in the ContraPoints video, she I believe coins
the term. I don't think this is in the community
Chad splaining when most in cells are not receptive to
(31:48):
being told to just get their ship together and try
and improve themselves. Um, and that idea of maxing is
looked at often with scorn and has some form of
fakery or as being not true to your in cell roots,
which they all still despise and think that they are
less than. It's so it's very uh counterintuitive the whole thing. Yeah,
(32:09):
there's double thing. And there's also this is something that
you pointed out from the from the contra Points video.
There's also this idea of catastrophizing. Could you tell us
a little bit more about what that is. Yeah, it's
something that I think we can all relate to on
some level at some point in our lives. But it's
just this kind of cyclical negative thinking UM with anxiety
(32:31):
and depression throwne in there. Um. Psych central dot com
describes it as an irrational thought a lot of us
have and believing that something is far worse than it
actually is um and it can take two different forms,
making a catastrophe out of a current situation and imagining
making a catastrophe out of a future situation. So it's
one of these things where the the extreme transition from
(32:53):
problem to we're all going to die, everything is hopeless
and pointless is a real stress, whereas the steps between
the individual spots on that spectrum maybe aren't as much.
But when you finally get to the end result where
your mind goes, you realize that this is very rational,
like the slow boiling of frauds. I would say that
I am highly guilty of catastrophizing about my own life. Yeah,
(33:16):
and I think it's something any most people have experienced
on some level or another. I i am have been
as well, and it had to work at it to
not do that. But it's inherently part of this whole
black pill worldview is that we will never find happiness,
will never find love or sex or kindness of any kind,
will always be treated as these outsider pariahs, and therefore
(33:37):
are doomed to a life of isolation and misery. What's
that line that from the invisibles everything is true, nothing
is permitted. Right. Oh yeah, I think that is it.
I don't know if it's verbatim, but it sounds right. Yeah,
there's a thematic similarity. So we've got the world painted
more or less right, we've got the gist, the bare
bones of this. Let's explore the most important aspect I
(34:03):
guess in the in cell community, or at least philosophically,
women and men. According to in cell belief, humanity works
on this adapted version of the Parado principle, the principle
it's called, and this means that around twenty of the
dudes in existence, if that get or obtain at least
(34:25):
eighty percent of the women, yep, get or obtain. Women
are thought to be both intellectually and morally inferior in
this in this worldview hypergamus, meaning that they sleep around
a lot from their teens to around age thirty, and
there is also some very creepy stuff about underage people
(34:46):
in the in cell community. But at the same time,
this double think occurs because despite the fact that women
are supposed to be markedly inferior, they are at the
same time enormously powerful due to, as you said, met
their perceived control over sexual relationships. And this is so
similar to other discriminatory world views. A racist, for example,
(35:07):
will also argue in terms of double think. Probably the
most prominent and disturbing example from World War Two was
that the Nazi Party and Nazi people who held Nazi
beliefs thought that Jewish people were inherently, irredeemably inferior, yet
literally in charge of the planet. So how do you
(35:27):
how do you hold these two ideas in your head?
In any group like this, the target of discrimination most
must be portrayed as fundamentally less than but also, for
some enormous reason, incredibly powerful. Women therefore function, according to
the in cells best as objects. And you know we're not.
(35:49):
We're not gonna do some song and dance and pretend
like the world is not riddled with misogyny. This, this
did not come out out of whole cloth, you know
what I mean. This came from somewhere. So that's how
they think of women, objects that are somehow inferior but
also all powerful and in charge of everything. Yeah, but
(36:12):
then what about the dudes? What about the dudes? Well,
there are several types of male and it's all based
on really a misunderstanding of mammal hierarchy and studies that
have come out a while ago about this kind of thing.
And it's it's phrase. As you've heard before, alpha's and
beta's really those are the two primary ones. But then
(36:33):
there's a third called the omega, which sounds awesome. Yeah,
but let's continue, all right. So in alpha is essentially
a chad. It's a high status male who gets all
the sex he wants just whenever he feels like it.
He just kind of points and then that's that's it. Alternately,
(36:53):
a an alpha may refer to a male's tall and
muscular body type. Like if you sit look at someone,
it's that guy looks like an alpha. That's what you're
talking about. You have a muscular dude, right. Essentially, that's it,
um And this the thought is that this alpha is
just irresistibly attractive to all females, not just Stacy's who
(37:16):
as we kind of mentioned before, but also Becky's which
I don't even know if we mentioned a Becky. Becky's
are just more average looking, possibly a little nerdy females,
sort of a female equivalent of a beta. Yeah, exactly
a beta. So yes, in this case, both alpha and
beta females. I guess, um, I find the alpha male irresistible.
(37:38):
And these guys sit at the absolute top of the
human sexual food chain, right right. And there's a very
bitter comparison drawn here to uh, the dark triad and
the idea of being a bad malay you know this
(38:00):
again in this in this view or from this perspective,
and alpha is different from a bad boy due to
their restraints. So unlike for instance, Christian Bail in American Psycho,
these guys are able to not instantly immediately sexually assaulted
in murder everyone. But that makes them even more desirable.
(38:23):
It's a very very strange, circuitous logic path there. And
then we talked about I know we mentioned the Stacy's,
but Stacy's are kind of classified as being sexually promiscuous
lived the life of luxury. Never have to work instantly
arousing bodies with large brass curves that are attractive to
(38:44):
Chad's right, um, And this also is a sign that
they are fertile, right And this is a very agist community.
So the life of a Stacy is limited and stops
at age thirty according to most insults. Then we've got
the beta, right, the guy the beta guy is not
(39:07):
that great in relationships. Again, they use the word females,
which is it's funny um our. Our colleague Louren Vogel
Bomb pointed this out to me years ago, and it
still haunts me whenever people say female, I can't not
picture of for Angie, Yeah, you have to ask her
(39:27):
about it. I mean, it's such a clinical way of
looking at a human to categorize. Has anyone ever called
you a male? That's so weird that I would seem
very strange. And you have the some people say female
and conversation and it's you don't bad at eyes much.
But it still is inherently kind of clinical and strange.
I think most times when guys get called male, it's
(39:48):
either in a doctor's office or when there's an a
p B out, you know, male suspect. So so the beta,
for some reason, for one factor or another, is not
confident enough or competent enough to be at alpha. Maybe
because he doesn't buy into bad boy behavior, maybe because
(40:13):
of his something unchangeable about his physical appearance or his
social position. And they are often portrayed as the settled
down types, so in seldom would believe that once a
woman is hit what they call the wall around age thirty,
they seek a beta mail to financially support them, typically
through marriage, while they still pursue alpha's on the side.
(40:36):
And then, if they really want to paint urban legend
horror story of it, the beta male U ends up
taking care of someone else's child while the former Stacy
or whatever you wanna call it, whatever you wanna call
this person while they go off to pursue their adventures.
That's a terrible life, but still they argue it is
(40:58):
better than the worst of the worst. Yeah, the omega um,
that is, the guys with absolutely zero chance of ever
having sexual intercourse so far as they believe. Right, So
this is this is the kind of the the lowest.
These are the people who end up advocating some of
(41:21):
the more insane or fringe beliefs, at least people who
perceived themselves this way. And we talked about the way
that women are divided, right Stacy's, Becky's, Norman's Uh. Do
we mention the term roasty? No? Okay uh? And then
there is I would feel free to urban dictionary. I
would say watch the video Noel has mentioned multiple times
(41:44):
here and you'll learn about it. So there's also this
I think I mentioned earlier in this very agist but
if anyone were to ask me, hey, Ben, what is
the what is the peak desirable age to an insult?
What's the peak desirable age for a mate? Then I
(42:07):
would say it's gross because often people will advocate being
attracted to very very young teenagers, and these are guys
in their thirties and forties. We just have to mention that.
Now this is just scratching the surface. But we have
to look at Now we've got this philosophy, right, we
(42:29):
understand the universe, we understand the the crucial or pivotal relationship,
the debates around it. But how does this long winded
background on philosophy work out in the real world. To
answer that, we have to look at modern actions. First off,
these communities are being banned online left and right. Well, yeah,
(42:51):
and for good reason, right, I mean, not only are
they violating rules of whatever subreddit or whatever message board
they're on, especially concerning incitement to violence, and another really
big problem they have is hate speech. It just continues
to happen. And there are also other things. I mean,
(43:13):
when you get into some of the suicide uh talk
that occurs in a lot of these I mean, you're
not only are you violating rules in terms of use
and all that stuff, you're you're becoming a danger if
you're talking about suicide openly, like the way it happens
in these it's crazy too, because that's that's also part
of the language of these communities that they have a
(43:35):
name for it. It's called suey fuel. And a lot
of times people will post these um, you know, very
hopeless like kind of memes or whatever where it's like
there's some from from the video where it's like an
image of a bunch of women staring at the perspective
of whoever the viewer is with disgust and saying, like
(43:56):
the that feeling when you're the ugly guy and you
walk into a room or whatever. It's stuff like that
that just kind of like inherently makes you feel worse.
And they kind of when they get called on people
that post this stuff, they say, oh, it's just gallos
humor and it's certainly not trying to incite anybody to
do anything. But yet these boards are also filled with
actual suicidal ideations and people posting, whether they be cry
(44:19):
for Christ for help or what have you. That's a
very real part of it too, and advice on how
to do it right. So usually when one forum is banned,
another one will rise up beta style to take its place.
And now that we're talking about this idea of beta rising,
let's let's explore the beta uprising. The also known as
(44:42):
the in cell rebellion. The more extreme parts of the
in cell community call for a beta uprising. This would
be defined as collective action by people identifying both as
Beta and Omega too through acts of public violence force
a change in society. The logic and detail of this
plan shift, with the primary goal being to create conditions
(45:04):
wherein the in cells do not feel so oppressed and
can either uh force or induce women to sleep with them, or,
in some cases, for the very very misogynistic angry individuals,
UH just force women to live in some sort of
servitude right, or even mass killings. This is dark, deplorable,
(45:29):
very nasty stuff. But unfortunately, as long time listeners to
this show no and as the as the three of
us know, UH, it is not particularly anomalous. In the
vast cesspit of opinions on the Internet, there are people
advocating all sorts of horrible, horrible, horrible things. Sometimes they're trolling,
(45:52):
sometimes they're serious. Sometimes it is a dark Catharsis. But
things change when the digital trash talk and dark ideation
creates real world consequence. And the Insul community has done
just that, and we'll learn about it right after award
from our sponsor. Here's where it gets crazy, so in
(46:21):
seldom put on its big boy shoes terrorism wise. In
recent years, multiple young men identifying with this belief system
have conducted mass murders, and we have several examples. Unfortunately,
the first and most well known, I would say it
would be the case of Elliott Roger, who on May
(46:42):
um in East La Vista, which is part of Santa
Barbara County, California, murdered six people, injured fourteen, and took
his own life in his car. Yeah, the attack began
when he stabbed three men to death in his apartment,
and then he drove to a sorority house and he
tried to get in but he was unable to. He
then shot three women outside, two of them died, and
(47:03):
he drove past a nearby delhi and then shot to
death a male student who was inside that Delhi. Then
he began to speed through the area through Olivista and
he shot and wounded several other pedestrians. He hit people
with his car. Um In the end he exchanged gunfire
with police, and he did that twice actually as he
(47:23):
was going to all of these places, and he received
a non fatal gunshot wound to the hip. But in
the end, at the very end here he he crashed
his car into a parked vehicle and police found him
dead with a self inflicted gunshot wound to his head.
And before setting out for this sorority house, shortly after
(47:45):
he had stabbed three people in his apartment, he uploaded
a video to YouTube titled Roger's Retribution. In the video,
he details his attack plan. He states that he wants
to punish women for set actually rejecting him, and to
punish sexually active men and couples for essentially having sex.
(48:05):
He feels rejected. He doesn't know. He's like, I don't
see what you don't see in me. I am the
supreme gentleman. This moniker becomes important. It sticks around. Before
he does this, he sends a written document to about
thirty four people in total, his friends, family, and his therapist.
It is a long manifesto titled My Twisted World The
(48:26):
Story of Elliott Roger. In this manifesto, he claims that
in his ideal world, he would quarantine all women that's
not the term he uses in concentration camps, and says
that the vast majority of the population in these camps
would be starved to death deliberately. This would be an
(48:47):
efficient and fitting way to kill them all off. I
would have an enormous tower built for myself and gleefully
watch them all die. He also dreamed of a quote
pure world where man's mind can develop to greater heights
than ever before. Future generations will live their lives free
from having to worry about the barbarity of sex and women,
which will enable them to expand their intelligence and advance
(49:09):
the human race to a state of perfect civilization by
cutting out more than half of the human population. That
last part I'm adding because that's true. That's how the
numbers work. Absolutely no. And that's the thing too, that
that I meant to mention earlier. There are obviously shades
of in cells within this community, the most extreme being
abject hatred of women um and the maybe lesser extreme
(49:34):
being the more self loathing. I'm sad that women don't
find me attractive and then I'll never find happiness. But
they don't necessarily automatically take it to that level of
make women are sex slaves and uh or kill them right.
And this is not a defense of Roger in any case,
but he did have a very long history of mental
(49:55):
illness as well, which we we see often in in
these shooting deaths or in these mass murders. Upon his death,
when the story of the tragedy hit the news, the
Insuldum community began worshiping Elliott Roger to one degree or
another as a martyr. Unfortunately, uh he inspired other people
(50:20):
and just to go out here on a limb and
say this. We are speaking about the in cell community
as one community. We do not mean that every single
individual who perhaps identifies in one way or another as
an in cell believes that this is the right thing.
Oh no, yeah, exactly it is. If you go online
(50:41):
and you look at the message boards, you may feel
that way that every single person on this board thinks
this guy did the right thing. Um, I assure you
that that that is not the case. But in certain
subsets of this community, he is held up and revered
as some sort of proto messiah almost or something. Yeah,
it's the yeah, harbinger of the revolution. Well, we are
(51:05):
anything but absolutist, and that would be an absolutist worldview
to take, I believe. Uh. We also have to remember
that in the age of the Internet, when you're reading
the printed word and then is often posted anonymously, you
don't It's very difficult to divine the sincerity or motivation
(51:26):
for a piece of writing or a piece of communication.
But this martyrdom is real and it inspired more people.
And the next example would be a guy named Chris
Harper Mercer. In October one, Chris Harper Mercer, six year
old student at Umpqua Community College near Roseberg, Oregon, shot
(51:50):
nine people and then injured eight others. He was wounded
when the police arrived, and then he took his own life.
Before the shooting, he studied the actions of earlier shooters
such as Chow and such as Roger and cited these
people as his inspiration and influences and his um He
(52:13):
also had a history of, you know, unfortunately mental illness,
which again is not a it's a huge factor, but
it's not an excuse and it is certainly never a justification.
The timeline continues up to last year. There were there
were several instances here. Here's two of them. One in Canada.
Alec Menassian on April eighteen drove a rented van and
(52:38):
sped through the North York City Center business district, targeting
pedestrians with his van. He killed ten, he injured sixteen.
This was the most deadly attack of its kind in
Canadian history. Yeah. And prior to the attack, Menascian had
been active on several forums and in self front said
that it's called for some kind of rebel million and
(53:01):
also saluting the aforementioned supreme gentleman Rogers. Yes, so the
name came back. And there's another example to just from
as recently as November. Right, that's right, open pronouncing this
name right. Actually, I don't really care if I am
H Scott Paul Berry berre L Beryl Beryl b E
I E R L E. Not heard it spoken. Um.
(53:22):
But on November two, uh, this forty year old gentleman
um shot and killed two people and wounded five others
at a midtown yoga studio in Tallahassee before he took
his own life. Um. And he also cited Rogers as
an inspiration. Yeah, it's true. He also not only did
(53:43):
he cite Rogers an inspiration, but he had this long
history of groping women and had been in legal trouble
with this before he These guys also have some four
chin posts you can find. But this is well, this
is the most publicized phenomenon, real world consequence of this community.
(54:06):
And again, this community does not move in lockstep. Uh.
This is far from the only case. There's a very
high likelihood that people some people identify as in cells
have committed unsolved sex crimes because there is glorification of assault.
Given that some self identified members of the community have
(54:27):
gone online to brag about everything from intimidation to outright
sexual assault, including planning this stuff, by the way, and
advising each other on how to do it, it's disturbingly
likely that several members of the community have actually committed
acts of sexual violence. And again, in many cases these
could just be Internet trolls or people telling tales for attention,
(54:50):
but the frequency of these sorts of posts and the
anonymity right makes it unlikely that all of these are
pranks or works of fiction. And then there's the the
thing that I find incredibly disturbing, which is beyond an
individual act of sexual assault, and that is the concept
(55:11):
of what they call the redistribution of sex notably hit
the mainstream in a New York Times article. But the
belief is this more extreme members of the community will
call for things like the legalization of sexual assault or
some sort of state supported program to force sex, meaning
Uncle Sam or some you know um Orwellian big brother
(55:34):
kind of thing would make again, more than half of
the population sleep with the other half. Again, this idea
argues that men are the only real humans, and therefore
the human right to sex applies primarily and virtually solely
to men. This idea of systematic rape is it's a
(55:57):
real thing which baffles me. And this is this stuff,
the very stuff that Roger the and the original shooter
we talked about, talked about in his manifesto and in
his video that he made before carrying out some of
these these crimes. Yeah. Absolutely, And at this at this
point the story continues, it's again important to note that
(56:21):
there are tons of involuntarily celibrate people of all ages, genders, creeds,
and so on across this planet of ours. And these people,
while quite possibly unhappy with their sex lives, are certainly
not out to harm anyone. They're just looking for human connection.
And it's also we haven't really talked about the age
range of these folks because I used to call what's
(56:44):
being described here as just being an awkward, gawky teen
or something. You know, like, at what point did it
become kind of weaponized in this way? Right? And I
think the bubble quality that we're talking about with the
social media bubble, and especially when you factor in some
mental illness, mental health issues, and this kind of as
it's described in the Counterpoints video death cult model that
(57:07):
we have here. So this this notion that since Helia
never gonna win, then you might as well go for
suicide or worse, murder suicide revenge, right, right. And it's
it's crucial to note that the difference here is that
this online community is radicalizing isolated people and this is
(57:29):
creating real life murderers. One of the most common questions
I'm sure a lot of us were wondering this to
the course of this episode. One of the most common
questions people ask when they learn about this community is
why don't in cells just uh engage with sex workers? Right.
In many places, prostitution is legalized or decriminalized, so would
(57:51):
that be uh solution. The in cell community largely seems
to be against this, and there are some fantastic articles
by sex workers who say that this is not This
is not safe for sex workers. I also think it's
kind of missing the point because a lot of what
these people crave is the companionship that comes with sex,
(58:13):
not necessarily the sex act itself, um, more of the
companionship and the genuine closeness and uh intimacy which which
we kind of now we even gloss over. But it
feels like that point is maybe lost. That it's all
made about these little horn dogs that just can't get
what they want. But surely we all can relate to
the idea of being alone and not having anyone love
(58:35):
you and give you kindness and tenderness or whatever that
could kind of make you go a little nuts. I
could see that. Yeah, if if you're okay to watch
something a little more mature online, watch that ContraPoints video,
and the very first thing that it starts with describes
exactly what we're talking about here, the desire for intimacy.
(58:56):
That's what I mean by human connection. Yeah, for sure, sure,
that's it is true. You know it's not sex for
the sake of sex could easily be a transactional interaction,
especially when you're considering that someone's paying for it right. Also,
there are tons of social factors that we don't have
(59:20):
time to get into today. Uh. We are available if
you want to write to us with questions or feedback.
We'd love to hear from you. We want to thank
you for listening to this, and we want to hold
this up as an example of how online communities can
have real world consequences. And just to point this out,
I personally can identify with that feeling of being down
(59:45):
on yourself, not believing anything good about yourself when someone
compliments you, that feeling of believing the worst about yourself. Like,
whoever whoever craps on me the most is probably the
right person because they're telling me the truth. Wait wait wait,
people compliment you guys, um uh every every now and
(01:00:06):
again again, Like Ben can't hear it. He it doesn't
register in his ears, and it doesn't register in my
ears very well either. I almost cannot hear that. I
think it's a very human thing though, to always trying
to be to to to tend to be your worst
critic and your worst enemy. And because you know yourself
(01:00:29):
better than anyone else, therefore you must know the deep,
the deepest roots of your inadequacies. And then it's almost
like this idea of seeking out those negative comments, the
ones that cut to the core, and that you say, oh, yeah, see,
I was right all along because this is what I
already believed. What these people they're saying it's nice. I
don't believe that. Therefore, um, you know, it's it's not true.
(01:00:51):
It's a tough world out there. It's a tough world,
and it's a hard balance to strike, right. It's about
mental health and mental wellness and being good to yourself.
And not to chat explain or anything, but I do
feel like this is a mental health issue in a
lot of ways. Yeah, if you are feeling that way,
there's nothing I or anyone here could say to you
(01:01:12):
to probably make you feel better in this moment if
you're feeling this way right now. But there are people
out there who really do care about you and really
do think you're a great person. Whether you want to
believe that or not, it's true. I think there's probably
a lot of undiagnosed depression and anxiety and social stuff
that's going on here too. I'm gonna bring us to
(01:01:36):
a lighter note. Everybody hates to hear you are Not
Alone song coincidentally written by R Kelly. A lot of
people don't know. I just found that out. UH. To
end on a lighter note. If you feel like reaching
out to someone and you just want someone to chat with,
I would like to introduce you to something called call
(01:01:56):
a Swede. Sweden has this number until give you in
a second where you can call people and get connected
to a random Swedish person. It is four six seven
seven one seven nine three three three six, so it
might be a little bit of an adventure right in
your day, I believe. I don't know if it's still open,
(01:02:18):
but give it a ring and if that number doesn't work,
you can contact us UH directly via phone. Yes, we
are one eight three three st d w y t K.
Leave a message if you're feeling some type of way.
We will have your number so you might call you back.
Who knows you know you can. Also you can reach
(01:02:39):
us on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. You can reach the
best part of this show, your fellow listeners on our
Facebook community page. Here's where it gets crazy and uh,
you know, I'll say it. If you want to reach
out to someone, you can find me directly on Instagram.
I'm at ben Bulan and I'm at Embryonic Insider and
you can reach us an argument conspiracy at how stuff
(01:03:02):
works dot com. M M m
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