1275: Incels | Skeptical Sunday

1275: Incels | Skeptical Sunday

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Jordan Harbinger: [00:00:00] Welcome to Skeptical Sunday. I'm your host, Jordan Harbinger. Today I'm here with Skeptical Sunday co-host, writer, and researcher Nick Pell. On The Jordan Harbinger Show, we decode the stories, secrets, and skills of the world's most fascinating people and turn their wisdom into practical advice that you can use to impact your own life and those around you.

Our mission is to help you become a better informed, more critical thinker. During the week, we have long form conversations with a variety of amazing folks, from spies to CEOs, athletes, authors, thinkers, and performers. On Sundays, though it's Skeptical Sunday, where a rotating guest, co-host and I breakdown a topic you may have never thought about and debunk common misconceptions about that topic, such as astrology, acupuncture, weddings, the death industry, fast fashion, reiki healing, and more.

And if you're new to the show or you want to tell your friends about the show, I suggest our episode starter packs. These are collections of our favorite episodes on persuasion negotiations, psychology, disinformation, junk science, crime, and cults. And. That'll help new listeners get a taste of everything we do here on this show.[00:01:00]

Just visit Jordan harbinger.com/start or search for us in your Spotify app. To get started today, let me paint a picture. A 25-year-old compulsive gamer with cystic acne lives in his mom's basement. He only turns off call of duty to go on four chan, an internet message board, and talk about how much he hates women and minorities.

He's a big fan of Elliot Roger, the guy who decided to kill six and injure 14 out of his hatred and malice for the opposite sex. I'm talking about incel. You might be familiar with the phenomenon, or maybe you just heard the term and you're not really sure what it means. Today I want to tackle the heart of the question about incel.

Who are they? Really beyond the media caricatures? Does what we think about them square up with reality? And what does this all say about men dating and loneliness in an age where we're more connected than ever, yet somehow all feeling totally alone? Here to help me unpack the lonely truth is writer and researcher Nick Pell.

Nick Pell: Yeah. You uh, you gimme all the fun ones. When do I get to do bananas or something? Man,

Jordan Harbinger: you don't, man. You're my go-to [00:02:00] guy for exposing the shadowy underbelly of the internet. Sorry dude.

Nick Pell: No, it's fine. This is what I, uh, get for cultivating a relentlessly dark set of interests and living almost entirely online.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, but also you're good for stuff like incel or antisemitism. Or the lost looks maxing episode because you helped bring some balance to what are decidedly unbalanced subjects.

Nick Pell: Yeah. I sort of hate one dimensional takedowns of things that are more complex. I mean, the point here is to satisfy people's curiosity with reality, not caricatures

Jordan Harbinger: fair.

So in cells, they're just, but total losers who can't get laid and have decided to punch the wall at women about the whole thing. Right.

Nick Pell: Well, in general, the answers to these kinds of questions require more than a yes or no answer, which is why we dedicate an hour or more sometimes to unpacking these subjects.

There's some history involved here, as per usual, the term incel dates back to the late nineties, and to disappoint any incel who might be out there [00:03:00] listening. The term was coined by a fo.

Jordan Harbinger: Okay. I'm probably going to regret asking, but what is a fo

Nick Pell: It's their term for women.

Jordan Harbinger: Okay.

Nick Pell: It's a shortening of fem. I think the general idea is that women are sort of not really human in the same way that men are.

They're these automatons or just act out of instinct and have no deeper emotional feeling like men do.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. So men as the romantic gender and women as the remorseless. Machiavellian sharks. That's a new one.

Nick Pell: You know, it's not too far off from what German philosopher Schopenhauer had to say. And uh, many in cells will sometimes quote his text on women if they're a little more intellectually savvy.

Jordan Harbinger: And you've read this, I'm guessing,

Nick Pell: have I read the most important German pessimist philosopher of the 19th century? The man who inspired Nietzsche and Michelle Welbeck? Yes. In any event, the connection between incel and Schopenhauer. It's more of a case of them, like finding out that he said things that support what they already [00:04:00] believed in this movement, having any kind of intellectual heft to it.

So the term incel was coined by a woman in the late nineties who we only know as Alana. Uh, and it was a gender neutral term. She was using it to describe her experience and you know, presumably other people's on her blog, it just means involuntary, celibate, somebody who wants to have sex but isn't. And now you have fem cells, which is kind of a different community, but not really any less toxic.

Jordan Harbinger: So that's female in cell, right?

Nick Pell: Yeah. We're just going to focus on the male of the species for the purpose of this episode, because fem cells a whole other rabbit hole and it's, you know. Who even knew what that was before I mentioned it.

Jordan Harbinger: Right, right. Okay. So where do they meet? I get the sense that these guys are not getting together and having meetups at the local Starbucks or the Elks Club or whatever.

Nick Pell: Uh, forums. Mostly they were banned from Reddit. I

Jordan Harbinger: see.

Nick Pell: Looked for incel subreddits. The only ones I found were banned.

Jordan Harbinger: Speaking of Reddit, I [00:05:00] have a funny aside man. Sorry to derail you. So we did the episode on dick size recently, a couple weeks ago, and I was like, oh, I'm going to post this on the Reddit forums where people complain and go like, is my penis big enough?

Right. Because that's like what we answered in the episode. I posted it on like average dick problems and all, you know, penis question, all these weird subreddits that like apparently exist and have thousands of members, by the way. And all they do is talk about dicks. And then I posted it on a couple of other subs, like small dick problems was one of 'em.

And I come back from lunch today and it's like you have been banned from small dick problems. And then it was like, you have been mute, you have been muted, and you cannot reply to this message. And I was like, this is the most small dick energy thing that I've seen. Like I'm banning your podcast about dick stuff because we don't allow podcast posts in here.

And also I'm muting you so you can't reply. Ha ha. And I'm like, oh. Yeah, that's other forums were like, Hey dude. Like mods would message and go, Hey, we don't love [00:06:00] crossposting. Can you add a little context? And I was like, oh, that's a very good response. Average dick problems, moderators, small dick problems, just like immediate nuclear option.

And you can't even say anything back. Ha ha. I was just like, ah, the problem might not only be the PPE guys, it might be the thing that's attached to it. I just thought that was like the most ironic thing that I got banned and muted from there. And that was the most ridiculous response that I got. And the, the podcast was completely reasonable if people heard it.

And it was actually kind of designed to make some of those guys feel better, but yet they just rejected it out of hand. And I was like, I think I see the problem that you guys might be dealing with a symptom of it anyway.

Nick Pell: As we get deeper into this episode, these comments will become strangely relevant.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh really? Okay. Okay. Yeah. Keep it coming then.

Nick Pell: Yeah. I mean in, in terms of like maybe the problem is not the dick, it's the person it's attached to.

Jordan Harbinger: Yes.

Nick Pell: Yeah. They were banned from Reddit. Incel is kind of like, sometimes it's self applied and there's actually, our guys will get mad if somebody claims to be an incel but isn't, or [00:07:00] they don't, don't think he is or don't think he has to be, or I don't, it's very strange.

Sometimes it's applied ironically, you know, I'm such an incel. Or you know, like when people who aren't autistic call themselves autistic because they are socially awkward and have some niche interest or something like that. You know, used kind of comically. People have also started throwing it around as a swear word in a manner similar to how fascist gets supplied to like anything and everything.

Jordan Harbinger: I get called this whenever I do an episode that might offend a certain group of people. I won't say the group because I don't need more emails saying ha incel. But, um, it's basically if I say something like, I had an episode with this guy, this psychologist Orion Taraban, and he talked about like, here's what red pill gets, right?

Here's some dating stuff, here's some evolutionary psychology. And people were like, you guys are incel. And I was like, uh, that's funny. 'cause we're both talking about like our significant others and the dating stuff and the years of dating we've done and brought this experience. But it was like, no, [00:08:00] the fact that you think X makes you an incel now, even though that can't actually be true in our situation.

Nick Pell: Well there's living, breathing proof that you've had sex at least twice.

Jordan Harbinger: Yes, exactly. And I assume both of them are mine, so they do look like me, so I've got that going for me. But yeah, like dude, I've seen people call Elon Musk an incel and doesn't he have like four dozen kids? So like not an incel, I guess, you know?

Nick Pell: Right.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

Nick Pell: The incel communities start off as being like the supportive groups for these guys, which, you know, if you want to have sex and you're not, it's a bummer.

Jordan Harbinger: Mm-hmm.

Nick Pell: Some of these guys are awkward. And the groups reflect that, but they're more of a support system for dealing with the feelings that come with that feel Window Girlfriend or TFW, no gf

Jordan Harbinger: Geez.

Nick Pell: Which is also, uh, the name of a movie about in cells that I haven't seen and kind of refuse to see, but

Jordan Harbinger: Gotcha.

Nick Pell: I've heard is very [00:09:00] good. You know, and some of these guys, they're looking for a way out and they're looking for support and kind of a roadmap to get out of their and sell them.

Jordan Harbinger: Okay, so what's the way out?

Nick Pell: Well, there's different strategies. There's looks maxing, which you and I have talked about on the looks maxing episode that I'm going to keep teasing the audience with, and, you know, looks maxing in short is ways of taking the raw material of the looks that you currently have and doing everything you can with them.

So working out, dressing better, better skincare. There's more extreme versions of it, like pulverizing your jaw with a hammer.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh yeah, I forgot about that. He's, by the way, he's not kidding or exaggerating about this by the way that, Ugh. Yeah. Just imagine shattering your cheekbone with a hammer so that it grows back more chiseled, no pun intended.

Nick Pell: Or cutting the fat outta your cheeks in a bathroom, or, yeah. Anyway.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

Nick Pell: You know, I don't think that this is a toxic impulse in and of itself. I don't think that women typically choose their partners on the basis of who is the best [00:10:00] looking guy in the world. But you know, if you're obese and you have cystic acne and zero social skills, working out, clearing up your skin, joining a club, making some friends, these are not going to hurt your chances with women.

Even if you're just kind of average looking, you know, it's not a problem as such. But if you're average looking and then you go get some next level gym body and a flattering haircut, that's not going to hurt your chances with meeting attractive women. But at the end of the day, you're still going to have to talk to her.

So if you're not cultivating social skills alongside it, none of this is probably going to help. 'cause social skills are, I would argue, somewhat more important in for men trying to meet women than it is for women trying to meet men, which is about to get me called an incel maybe. But

Jordan Harbinger: yes, exactly. I was going to say, that's the kind of thing that gets you called an incel around here.

But it's true. And also, I mean, look, haven't we all met the guy who's like, dude, I had a friend also named Jordan in high school. This guy had more Riz than anybody [00:11:00] I've ever met in my life. And he always had just stunning women with him. And he would be like, oh yeah, have you met so and so? And I would be like, well, yeah, I know her.

Why? Oh, I'm going to go for that. And I remember like the first few months of knowing him, I would chuckle to myself and be like, good luck, dude. You are not even in the remote like league of people who would be allowed to talk to a woman like that. And then like two weeks later, he is like, Hey dude, do you want come and get some dinner with me and Catalina and I.

Is it your date? And he's like, oh, she's my girlfriend. She'll be cool if you come along. And I'm like, what is going on? Right? And like he did not have the things you're talking about. He was just, he had crazy riz and so like you, you really can do a lot with social skills. And the thing was, he just ignored all of his disadvantages.

He just straight up was like, these don't exist, they don't matter. That to me was incredible. That was like a life lesson. Just seeing someone like this. Anyway, I'm, I'm digressing here. I, I feel like this type of self-improvement, right? Hitting the gym, getting, what is it called? A glow up a little bit, right?

That, yeah. That was a big part of the [00:12:00] early incel movement. Right? It was, I remember back in the day some of the message boards that became incel boards, like PUA hate pickup, artist hate, they were about guys who had tried the things that I used to teach, for example, and like didn't see success or had gotten scammed on a course.

JHS Trailer: Yeah.

Jordan Harbinger: Not by us, but like had gotten scammed on a course from like some other person was like, this all is a bunch of lies. Let's clown on these guys. 'cause they took our money and didn't give us any results. And I was sympathetic to that. 'cause they were, there was a lot of scams. But then it became like, by the way, this whole thing is hopeless and nobody gets results with this stuff.

And I was like, well, that's not true. And it devolved into this craziness. But like, I, I guess my question is how does the incel space. Go from like, Hey, we're trying self-improvement stuff and we're commiserating to, hey, we're trying self-improvement stuff, but a lot of it's bull crap and a lot of scams.

And then it became like, actually we're all losers and we should just all kill ourselves and we should be like the most nihilistic, cynical people on the internet. When people say [00:13:00] incel nowadays, that's what they're talking about, right? The sort of like dark underbelly of the internet. They're not talking about dorks like me who are like, Hey, I bet if we learned how to like talk to women, we could actually do it and it would work.

You know, they're talking about like this dark underbelly of guy who's given up even on that.

Nick Pell: Yeah, no, they're not talking about just like sad, lonely man who's not getting laid,

Jordan Harbinger: right?

Nick Pell: That's not what this term means anymore. Part of it is just ossification. The guys who are upwardly mobile just don't have much incentive to hang around anymore.

I mean, some of them are maybe doing a mitzvah by, you know, giving a hand up to the guys who were,

Jordan Harbinger: yeah, here's what worked for me. Yeah, I did a lot of that and that's, that was how I started my business. Right. Because I was like, I'm learning stuff that's working. Let me start a podcast that talks about this stuff.

And you're right though, a lot of clients that I had in my old business. The guys who really got it, you would eventually lose touch with them because they didn't become repeat customers a lot of the time. They didn't hang around in our forum anymore. 'cause, you know, and I, I still get emails from people that are like Jordan Harbinger.

No way. [00:14:00] I listened to your podcast in 2008 and then I met my girlfriend who became my wife, and I totally lost track of you. And I remember being like, that's kind of the best thing that can happen. Right? Like, I would love it if you listen to my show now, but I don't want somebody who's still asking me for dating techniques 15 years in.

That's unfortunate and very weird,

Nick Pell: right? Yeah. You solve the problem and, and you leave. Leave. Yes. And I think that's one of the things that was like, I mean, I took Jordan's course because I worked for that mm-hmm. Company that shall not be named. And, um, I actually was like really, um, impressed by how it was like.

Mostly for guys who were like, you know what I'd really like is to like get a girlfriend. You know? It wasn't like, oh, I just want to like bang a bunch of girls. It was like, I'd like a girlfriend, you know? But yeah, you solve the problem and you leave for the most part.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

Nick Pell: You don't want to be hanging around these guys much after there's talk of the movement, you know, migrating to four chan and that being the place where all this [00:15:00] toxicity comes in.

You mentioned it in the intro, but Yeah, I just don't think it's accurate. I'm not really sure where they're supposedly migrating from because they have plenty of their own forums.

Jordan Harbinger: So for those who are unaware, four chan is Nick, correct me if I'm wrong, it is the absolute sewer cesspool of the internet.

There's everything from casual misogyny to deep fake porn and other content that is. Actually insane that you don't or cannot find on other places on the internet. And I mean, think of the craziest subreddit that you can find of like people sticking weird dolls up their butts or something. And four chan has like 10,000 times more of that.

And every flavor, pardon that, me using that word of that, that you could possibly think of and, and many things that you would never think of. And it's just like a race to the bottom. Like it is scraping the bottom of the barrel in so many ways. And, and it's mostly images. Is that correct or is that wrong?

Nick Pell: This is a function of which boards you go to on four chan. Four chan is an [00:16:00] anonymous image posting board with a bunch of sub boards, kind of like Reddit. But it, I think it's, I always kind of explain it as like it's the opposite of Reddit. Like as on Reddit, everyone's pretending to be smarter than they actually are.

Jordan Harbinger: Right?

Nick Pell: And four chan is full of smart guys pretending to be morons because they think it's, oh yeah. Funny to act like an idiot on the internet. People talk about four chan as if it's like the gathering point for all the mouth breathers on the internet. It's like you've either not been there or you're not getting the joke.

Jordan Harbinger: That's true. I've gone in there several times for research and I'm like, wow, this person took a bunch of data and made an infographic about like some obscure topic and posted it, and then a bunch of other people are making memes based off that infographic. So at the very least, these people knew how to like crunch data, turn it into a visual, make the visual funny, using graphic art programs, and then clown on that particular guy's actual really good work with like a high quality air quotes meme that all these [00:17:00] people get.

And it's very much like you have to be a thinker to get a lot of this stuff. It's not all just like, here's my butthole, LOL. Right. It's not like that. That's the rest of the internet.

Nick Pell: Yeah.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

Nick Pell: I'm a four chan defender and, uh. I mean, on four Chan's, like 2006, 2007. I mean, I'm, I've been on four chan like forever.

Yeah, there's a term for that, but I'm, I, I probably shouldn't use it on your show.

Jordan Harbinger: Maybe not. I'm curious what it is though.

Nick Pell: Uh, but the four chan is out there. They know. They know. Anyway, back to the incel philosophy. There's an overlap between in seldom and Manosphere ideas, which like a lot of things on the internet began as this sort of grab bag that did include some toxic misogyny, but also was much more heavily dominated by like bonafide male-oriented self-help.

And then the toxic elements kind of drove out the more nuanced aspects, and now it's just garbage. [00:18:00] But 15 years ago it was like, yeah, there was garbage and there was stuff that was really good and there was stuff that was mediocre and there was stuff about, you know, this or that or the other. It was a total grab bag.

Now it's just women are bad and men are awesome, and if you're poor, you're a loser. And but you know, it didn't used to be like that. And the trajectory, I think, is very similar in that the toxicity chases out the more positive, noble life affirming elements of it, leaving behind just the toxicity.

Jordan Harbinger: This is such a metaphor for one of the reasons I stopped teaching the dating stuff.

Because we would be, like you said, the guys who would come in would be like, I just want a girlfriend. I want to get married and have kids. And like a lot of the other companies that were out there teaching it, especially some of the red pill stuff was like, use bitches bro. They're all terrible and blah, blah blah.

And I was like, I got so sick of being like the, the drop of water in a barrel of oil, right? Um, and being like, no, we're the white hat drug dealers. You know, it just didn't work. And [00:19:00] then also, you're right, like the toxic stuff, you'd be like, Hey, you know, if you just worked really hard on yourself, you would deserve what you want.

And then the guys would go, huh, that sounds hard. What I'm going to do instead is complain about how the guys who have good genetics are always going to be a winner and then clown on you for giving me any advice to the contrary where I could maybe take some agency here. And I was like, why am I basically begging this moron, this loser mentality guy to like get his shit together?

His, it doesn't matter to me. If you live in your mom's basement forever, I'm trying to help you. And they'd be like, ah, LOL dork, trying to help me. And you're just like, all right, bye. Right. The toxicity just chased out anybody who had more than two brain cells to rub together because it was an awful place to be.

Nick Pell: No, that's true. That's absolutely true.

Jordan Harbinger: Everybody quit crying on Reddit. Reality has better graphics. We'll be right back. This episode is also sponsored in part by BetterHelp. Every January we all get hit with that New year, new you nonsense. And I'm like, Hey, I can barely keep track of current [00:20:00] me. Thank you very much.

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Jordan Harbinger: This episode is also sponsored by Wayfair. Every year, when January rolls around, Jen and I get this itch to reorganize and declutter. Aside from aesthetics, when your space is cluttered, your [00:21:00] mind feels cluttered too. It's like this low grade background stress. So this year we tackled one of our biggest pain points, the mudroom shoe situation.

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Jordan Harbinger: Don't forget about our newsletter. Wee bit wiser. It comes out just about every Sunday. We really love writing it. You guys seem to [00:22:00] love reading it.

We get a lot of responses to this. It is a great companion to the show. A little bit of wisdom from an episode from us to you, Jordan harbinger.com/news is where you can find it. Now, back to Skeptical Sunday, but there is kind of a tipping point where this stops being an unfairly maligned movement of guys who are just lonely.

They're just looking for a way to find a girlfriend, and it becomes what we now know, this festering sewer of hatred against women.

Nick Pell: Yeah, I think the Elliot Roger attack is as good a place as any to Mark as the

Jordan Harbinger: Yes.

Nick Pell: Caught off point of that. Yes.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. So for those who are, again, mercifully unaware, Elliot Roger was an incel who went on a rampage killing in California in 2014.

Essentially because he was angry at women and he made really cringey awkward videos about all of this.

Nick Pell: Yeah. Incel call him the supreme gentleman, Saint Elliot and er. Yeah. To give you kind of a sense of who's kicking around in these these days. The thing is, he's actually a pretty good avatar for what we're talking about because he's [00:23:00] not a bad looking guy.

No. He came from money. The only thing keeping him from absolutely crushing you with women is that he had a total lack of social skills. I mean, you wouldn't really go so far as to like call him handsome, but looks are not his problem.

Jordan Harbinger: Right.

Nick Pell: Looks are not the thing. Holding him back, he's fine looking. He was diagnosed with autism.

He was also on Prozac and, and Xanax. Anyway, Elliot, Roger, he had a lot of social isolation and while he did make some half-assed efforts to do something about that, they were very half-assed. He thought that screenwriting and inventing were shortcuts to riches. And then he gave up when he realized there was actual work involved.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh, okay.

Nick Pell: His parents were very supportive. They paid for his apartment and his college education, but he immediately flies into a rage when his black roommate tells him that he lost his virginity at 13.

Jordan Harbinger: Is his roommate being black? Is that relevant? Like, why would this bother him? [00:24:00] Also, this guy's all over the place screenwriting, inventing, like, he's clearly not passionate about any of this stuff.

He just wants to what? Find out how to get rich so he can, because he thinks that's the primary lever of attraction with women. Am I jumping all over the place?

Nick Pell: No, no, that's reasonably accurate. Um, he ha he also has this whole line of resentment about how like black men get all the attention from pretty blonde girls on campus.

A lot of where this goes from here is just. Gross resentment towards anyone who's happier with their life than he is. He starts hating everyone. In Santa Barbara where he was going to college, especially couples, he followed a couple outside of Starbucks after he saw them kissing and threw his coffee on them.

Jordan Harbinger: Scary.

Nick Pell: Yeah. That's assault.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

Nick Pell: He sees himself as a man of culture surrounded by Philistines. He hates all couples. He decides that getting rich is the only way that he's ever going to get a girlfriend. So he starts buying Mega Millions tickets and then breaks his computer when he doesn't win.

JHS Trailer: Oh [00:25:00] gosh.

Nick Pell: There's other incidents like the Starbucks one. He shoots a bunch of teenagers with a super soaker filled with orange juice while they were playing kickball.

Jordan Harbinger: He's a jerk. This is not a good guy.

Nick Pell: No, no, he is not. This is absolutely not a case of, oh man. I feel bad for him, and I wish it hadn't come to that.

Like this guy was a time bomb waiting to go off. There was no way this was getting fixed. His parents hired life coaches for him and counselors, all kinds of stuff. You know, he had all kinds of family support. This is 100% not an example of someone who did not have any opportunity to lead a normal life.

He had everything going for him. Everyone was trying to help him out before he decided he was going to kill people.

Jordan Harbinger: Was he part of the incel community in any meaningful way? I mean it, it's one thing to be a crazy guy with a manifesto. I'm assuming he had one of those, because rampage killers usually do, especially narcissistic ones.

Nick Pell: Yeah, he did. He wanted to put women in concentration camps for artificial insemination and to create a world where most men [00:26:00] did not even know about the existence of women.

Jordan Harbinger: That's so disturbing, to say the least. And so weird. So weird. Like, this thing triggers me because I can't have a girlfriend. Thus, let's put them in concentration camps and dot, dot, dot.

Handmaid's tale, the whole thing. It's like, and you think about that as a normal guy and you're. Nah. Part of like the highlight of my day is hanging out with my beautiful daughter and my wife and like seeing young couples having a good time and like looking at attractive women and being like, wow, life is great Ama, isn't it amazing over like, and he's the complete opposite of that, that it's scary that there's people like that out there, honestly.

Nick Pell: Yeah. It's also kind of comical. I mean, it's like this is something out of a William Burroughs novel. On the one hand, yeah, it's super twisted. But on the other hand, it's sort of like darkly hilarious that he put this in a manifesto as if this had like, this is not going to happen.

Jordan Harbinger: Right.

Nick Pell: You know, this is never going to happen.

Right,

Jordan Harbinger: right.

Nick Pell: And he's sitting there, you know, like he's [00:27:00] Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber. Right. There's your Unabomber, uh, reference for the episode. Writing this brilliant, well-crafted, deeply thought out manifesto. That's what he thinks he's doing here. And it's like it is disturbing on one level, but on another level it's like, this is funny in a way because it's so bizarre.

It sounds made up.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. It's like if you were writing this guy as a character in a movie, I'd be like, eh, it's a little on the nose.

Nick Pell: Right? It wouldn't sound believable. If this was an episode of Law and Order, you would be like, man, they went a little overboard this week. You know?

Jordan Harbinger: But then it's Law and order, and you're like, eh, typical Law and Order episode.

But anyways, who writes these things? But he was connected to the incel community, right? He wasn't just some lone nut who couldn't get laid and finally snapped because of a host of psychological problems. Totally unrelated to his lack of success with women.

Nick Pell: Yeah. He posted a lot on PUA Hate, which you mentioned.

Yeah. And Forever alone. Both of those are in cell forums.

Jordan Harbinger: Great branding on Forever Alone. Surprised that domain was available, although then again, who wants to name their company that? So [00:28:00] there's that

Nick Pell: He bizarrely reached out for support@thebodybuilding.com forum, which, um, oh

Jordan Harbinger: God. Why?

Nick Pell: I really don't know what he was thinking there.

Because that place has all the compassion and support of a high school football team's. Yes. Locker room guys. I

Jordan Harbinger: need, I need help with women. Like of course you do. You freaking loser. I mean, I would just be terrified to post anything there. And I'm 45.

Nick Pell: Like the one big success story they had was, I wrote about this ages ago, but it was this dude who's, uh, whose handle on there was wet breasts and he was like, he was like my 600 pound life bariatric bed obese.

And they like bullied him into losing 400 plus pounds. He was able to go lead a normal life, and then I think he scammed a bunch of people outta money went to jail.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh, okay.

Nick Pell: But he did lose a ton of weight because the bodybuilding.com forum guys were like, you know, mocked him until he lost weight. So that's their benevolent contribution to the world, I suppose.

Uh, but yeah, so he does all this and then he goes and he kills six people.

Jordan Harbinger: Elliot, Roger. Yeah. [00:29:00]

Nick Pell: Yeah. Now White Press Elliot Roger killed six people. Two of them were his roommates. Two of them were members of a sorority that he targeted in his plans, and one of them was a friend of his roommate. And one of them was some random dude at a deli.

And the irony here is that he killed more men than women, especially if you include himself. You know, he shot himself when he was done, as they often do.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, of course. The peak level of cowardice, uh, always called, sort of capped with that, uh, pardon the pun. So this is an extreme case, but it's also the most famous.

Are there other similar examples of, I guess, incel violence on this scale?

Nick Pell: There's a specific category of terrorism called, not so surprisingly, misogynist terrorism, and there are 12 of these since 1984. I hate using Wikipedia as a source, but they have a page on misogynist terrorism and there's 12 incidents listed on it.

That's all of the ones that the editors knew about. It's not just the ones with articles. So I'm kind [00:30:00] of like, okay, with using 12 as the number, because I couldn't find another comprehensive list of it. But if people have it, you know, I'm, I'm always willing to be corrected. 12 is, of course, 12. Too many. But when someone starts talking about incel terrorism, keep in mind that we're talking about 12 incidents in the entire world over a span of 40 years.

I don't think we need to get into the nasty weeds of each and every incidence, but yes, I ofa massacre. No one really is I self-identifying as an incel after this, unless they have some deeply messed up feelings about women in general. Like it's not a thing that like, oh, I'm a sad lonely man. I'm an incel.

You don't see that after Elliot Roger. It's all just like, you know, put women in concentration camps because I can't get a date.

Jordan Harbinger: Right. It's like the most psycho level of stuff. Okay. So what are some of the messed up attitudes that you, you mentioned messed up attitudes that these guys have or messed up feelings.

Tell [00:31:00] me more about that. And man, I do feel like you're right though it, it also goes beyond just negative attitudes about women because there's some pretty toxic stuff in there about men while we're on the subject, but can you unpack that a little?

Nick Pell: Yeah. I think it's fair to say this is a more all-encompassing, toxic belief system that extends beyond just women at its core in incel, involuntary, celibate.

You know, this just means that you're not having sex, but you wish that you were. And like there's lots of terms that mean more than their literal dictionary definition and incel is one of them. You know, there's the dictionary definition of it and it's like, well, but really it kind of means these sketchy guys who hate women.

The deeper theory and ideology here is that dating is monopolized by Chad's. Like, you know, you, I say Chad, you think some tall buff blonde guy and Stacey's and she's his, you know, beautiful, perfect girlfriend and these are the [00:32:00] beautiful people and they don't date down in terms of look, so you're just outta luck.

Jordan Harbinger: Got it. Anyone again, who's ever known a really funny fat dude with a smoke show for a girlfriend just knows that this is not true. Going back to my buddy Jordan from high school, like he just didn't need to be tall and or attractive physically really at all.

Nick Pell: Yeah. We all know that guy. He's an outlier.

Sure. But the point remains like I think men are much more likely to choose a partner based on looks.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

Nick Pell: And women are more into what you would call status or aura or riz. Like they have something going for them beyond just being attractive. It could be money, whatever. Like there's tons of starving artists out there with super hot wives and girlfriends, and it's not because women are gold diggers and they only go for guys with money.

You know, it's like if these guy's a talented artist that counts, you know? That's it. Like, I'm in love with him 'cause he makes this wonderful art. Or he like, you know, drives a cool car. Like, you know what I mean? Like,

Jordan Harbinger: hopefully not that shallow, but Yeah.

Nick Pell: Right. But my point is, you know, you [00:33:00] get my point that like your friend isn't, she's not just like, oh, he has a wonderful personality.

It's like, no, he, he's like an over the top larger than life.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

Nick Pell: Insanely charismatic.

Jordan Harbinger: Everyone

Nick Pell: liked him.

Jordan Harbinger: Everybody

Nick Pell: right? Everybody likes him. You know, and it's like, and yeah, for some guys it's, they have that kind of personality for other guys as they're in the band. For other guys it's this or it's, or it's that.

Being a good looking man is generally not enough to get Aha. Girlfriend. You usually have to have like, and I don't think it really is ever enough because I don't think it's the thing that really attracts women. Like they might go, yeah, he's a good looking guy, but like, so what the world's filled with them.

What else does he have kind of going on under the hood?

Jordan Harbinger: Chad's and Stacey's. This is going to be another one of those weird online subcultures with a lot of inside terminology. Are there key terms that they use that might be helpful for us to understand them?

Nick Pell: Well, I told you about Floyd's. Uh, yeah. Black pill isn't exclusive to the incel community, but it basically means a [00:34:00] nihilistic worldview.

In the case of incel, that nihilistic worldview would be. That genetics just determine everything. And if you're not, you know, a Chad, by nature, you're doomed to a life of loneliness. Or you need to spend all your time and energy trying to attain it by smashing your jaw with a hammer and cutting the fat outta your cheeks with a exacto knife or whatever.

Jordan Harbinger: I gotta wonder how much of their attitude is a self-fulfilling prophecy for these guys. Right? Like, if you believe that, are you really going to try to beat that? No. Right. You're not going to try and like, learn riz and be social and like lose a little bit of weight. 'cause you're, you, you're just going to go, well, I'm not tall enough and I'm not, I'm not a shed, so why bother?

Nick Pell: Yeah. And you're, you're totally right. Of course, in the incel community it's sometimes is a badge of pride to be black pilled. Like you're accepting the reality of despair rather than pieing for this supposedly unrealistic dream of, you know, getting a girlfriend one day. I think that this gets at the very core of why people get into [00:35:00] this subculture.

It provides a very simple answer to their very complex pain. Mm.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. Right. And at the same time, it also says that they don't really have to do anything about the situation because it's outside their ability to, to change.

Nick Pell: Well, there's looks maxing. Right, okay. You know, like the going to extreme measures to improve your looks, but kind of the only solution that they offer for the most part, because they do bake into the, even the ones who are like, oh yeah, I'm going to chase after it.

You know, it's baked into their analysis that like, the only way that you can get a girlfriend is to get super ripped and get, you know, change your appearance basically. And PS change your appearance to meet this very, very narrow definition of what all women find attractive. And it's like, you know, I can tell you that much like men, women are all different people and some of them find some things attractive and some of them don't find things attractive.

There's no like one [00:36:00] guy who's attractive to every woman on planet Earth. There's girls who are into chubby guys. There's guys who think short guys are hot. You know, there's girls who are into bald guys. There's all over the place. What women are into. There's not like, you're not just going to look like you're a men's fitness cover model, and that's the only way that you're ever going to meet a girl who finds you attractive.

It's just this is not how it works.

Jordan Harbinger: I get what you're saying, but you're not really doing a lot to dissuade me from the idea that these guys are all violent losers in their parents' basement, online, and bitter about the fact that they can't get late.

Nick Pell: Most of them are just mad on the internet. I mean, the violence is really the exception.

Jordan Harbinger: Okay.

Nick Pell: I also don't think it's fair to say that they're only mad about sex. I think when you get down to it, they feel excluded and there's possibly quite probably in many other cases, a very good reason why they're being excluded. They're probably weird and awkward and unlikeable.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. It's harsh, but yeah, I get it.

Nick Pell: I've gone through. Intense periods of loneliness in my life, and never once did I feel the need [00:37:00] to start an account on incel forums, like PUA Hate and talk about putting women in concentration camps.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, same. That's fair. That is fair.

Nick Pell: But again, this is a fixable problem. Stop being such a weirdo. Take an interest in other people.

Join a club, learn a new skill, get offline and meet people in the real world. Focus less on getting chicks and more on just being an interesting, engaged and likable person. You know, none of this happens overnight, but I suspect that like Elliot, Roger. A lot of these guys get enraged when they're not lining up dates with strippers and porn stars after their first Brazilian Juujitsu class.

Some of them may be socially engaged, they're just bad with women. Like, you know, you ran an entire business for guys who were, who had a social life, but they just weren't very good at talking to women.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, yeah, exactly. It wasn't these specific guys, it was more my clients were very much more [00:38:00] normal.

Right? Yeah,

Nick Pell: yeah. No, your guys were different because they accepted responsibility for the situation and they decided to do something about it. That that, you know, to some degree required a hard look at themselves and their own shortcomings and a willingness to, yes, to do something about them. And it wasn't just, oh, I'm going to go to the gym and get 20 inch arms and women are going to be fainting in my presence.

Or I'm going to just go on a, on some internet forum and vent my spleen about how the world is unfair because I'm five foot three.

Jordan Harbinger: If your idol is a mass murderer, maybe it's time to pick new hobbies. We'll be right back. This episode is sponsored in part by Quiltmind. If you're not on LinkedIn, it's probably a mistake not 'cause it's so cool, but because it's practical.

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homes.com. We've done your homework. Thank you so much for listening to and supporting the sponsors that support this show. All the deals, discount codes, and ways to support the podcast are searchable and clickable over at Jordan harbinger.com/deals. Now for the rest of Skeptical Sunday, is there a connection between mental health.

And the incel phenomena because with our Elliot Roger example, there's clearly something wrong with this guy that just, he could have gotten a girlfriend by some miracle a day later and it just, he's not going to get fixed. Right? This is not going to fix the problem. How common is that [00:41:00] phenomenon that, that it's not just a problem with women per se, or like the guys are just unattractive and they don't going to, it seems like it's an overall mental health problem where there's like a set of mental health problems in the incel community.

Nick Pell: I think you're right, but the issue is that it's hard to kind of quantify the overlap here. I mean, you can say on the one hand that guys who take to incel forums to deal with this problem have mental health issues, and I think you're probably right. But not everyone who has the incel problem does that, and not everyone with mental health issues is an incel.

I mean, Elliot Rogers had some kind of autism spectrum disorder and there are tons of people, millions of people on the autism spectrum who are, as we speak, leading very fulfilling and engaged lives. They have friends, they have girlfriends wives, they're good parents, they're active in their communities.

So I don't know, like it's so difficult to quantify that overlap, and we have no [00:42:00] idea who these guys are on these forums because they're anonymous or pseudonymous.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. Is there any kind of data on who is using incel forums, like anything at all?

Nick Pell: We have one study of any significance, and it was conducted by the British Home Office.

It provides a very broad demographic view of these guys and who they are, but not much else. Everything that you're about to hear anytime I'm quoting a number statistic, it's from this one study in the British Home Office. The average age is 26. About half of them live with their folks, but 26% live alone.

These are are very high statistics for their age cohort to be either living alone or with their parents. And a whopping 25% of them screened positive for autism spectrum disorder traits. That does not mean that they have an autism spectrum disorder. It means that they, they had traits of autism spectrum disorders.

Jordan Harbinger: What's the racial [00:43:00] dynamic like? Because I know in most people's minds this is, this is a bunch of white dudes, right?

Nick Pell: The racial demographics of the UK are much different than they are in the United States. But the home office study found that only 58% were white and 42% were non-white.

Jordan Harbinger: I have to admit, I'm surprised by this, but this is in the uk, right?

So maybe it's just a lot different here and that's skewing my perspective, or I'm wrong. That is possible.

Nick Pell: Off the top of my head, I believe the UK is significantly whiter than the United States. Yes. So that would, it would be even

Jordan Harbinger: more mixed here.

Nick Pell: Right? We don't have the data, uh, on, you know, the side of the pond as they say.

There is this weird racial dimension to the incel thing where everyone is convinced that they're in the race. That's not getting any girls, black, white, Asian, Hispanic, Indian, whatever. Everyone is convinced that their race is a curse. Like that's the thing that's preventing them from getting a girlfriend.

Jordan Harbinger: Is there any political dimension to it? I [00:44:00] know that the manosphere is pretty right coded these days, and it seems like there's an extreme or extremist masculine supremacist dimension to all this.

Nick Pell: Well, there might be, but this study from the UK shows us actually, most of these guys identify as moderately left.

So the Labor Party mainstream, basically the political culture of the UK is somewhat different from the United States. But to put it in terms, you know, listeners in the United States, who I'm assuming most of the listeners can understand, they're just like, they're moderate Democrats according to how they self-report.

Jordan Harbinger: Mm-hmm.

Nick Pell: You know, self-reporting is always limited because it's based on self-perception and which is not always accurate, but that's how they reported in this British study.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. You always have to be careful with that. Again, our dick episode, we were like, oh, this study says th Oh, it's all self-reported.

Well throw this thing in the trash.

Nick Pell: Yeah.

Jordan Harbinger: Like, no man would ever lie about the size of his penis, would they? No. Okay. I mean, [00:45:00] why would you even do a study like that? Anyway, go on.

Nick Pell: Yeah, but I mean, the only way you would really do it is by like, I mean, it would be a whole other study where you'd ask them like a hundred questions about what they think about.

This or that

Jordan Harbinger: politics. Maybe you could suss it out. I think for what the, the whole dick thing was a little more straightforward. And no pun again, no pun intended.

Nick Pell: I didn't see a breakdown of how many identified as moderately left in the study. It was either many or most. It was really vague. Many could mean 16 out of a thousand.

I think I saw, I think I saw it represented both ways. There was one thing I read about, it said many and one said most, so who knows? I think the takeaway here is that this is much more complicated and also I think that to a certain extent, these guys are siloing off the incel thing from the rest of their lives.

Jordan Harbinger: I'm guessing that most of these guys are going to be broke as a joke, but you're about to tell me that they're all rich tech entrepreneurs or something like I, all my stereotypes that I thought I had [00:46:00] nailed were way off on this.

Nick Pell: The British Home Office study doesn't provide any information about their income.

We do know that 80% of them are not employed or in education full-time.

Jordan Harbinger: Okay.

Nick Pell: So they may not be needs, but they're not full-time employed or full-time in education.

Jordan Harbinger: Got it.

Nick Pell: Only 4% of them are in full-time employment. But this is another chicken egg thing. Are they awkward creeps because they're not working full-time or are they not working full-time because they're awkward creeps?

Jordan Harbinger: That is pretty bleak, man. And I know you mentioned Neats. Um, I know we have this segment of the population in the US as well. To be clear, it's called Neat, NEET, not in education, employment or training, AKA, not really going anywhere. Probably living in their parents' basement kind of thing. Like they're just not moving forward.

Nothing. And they're not doing anything. And it's disturbing because it's actually not a small number of people. They're going nowhere. They're aimless. A bunch of aimless [00:47:00] men in their twenties, thirties and forties. That is potentially a very dangerous segment of society. I think the term Nick would use is powder keg.

Am I wrong?

Nick Pell: No, it is. It's absolutely powder keg. Like, yeah. The military fighting age, men who don't feel like they have any stake in society, have no hope for the future and nothing to live for. You do not want a bunch of these guys in your society.

Jordan Harbinger: Right?

Nick Pell: It is not safe socially to have too many of these guys sitting around because they get attracted to extremism and you know, like the extreme of the extreme do dangerous things.

It's dangerous. I suspect that there's this kind of feedback loop with a lot of these guys who are neat or neat adjacent. They have trouble finding a job because they're a little awkward, but they get more and more awkward the longer that they don't have a job because they're not out being around people having to be normal.

You won't be surprised to hear that [00:48:00] 86% of the men in the British study reported having been bullied. But hey, I've been bullied and I'm not an incel.

Jordan Harbinger: Okay, Nick sex Pel over here.

Nick Pell: Yeah. Put that on my tombstone buddy. This is probably the most depressing stat, but one in five that's 20% reported. Having daily suicidal ideation over the last two weeks.

Jordan Harbinger: That seriously sucks and you're making me feel bad for incel, which I, you know, I kind of didn't really want to do on the episode, but yeah, that's really dark.

Nick Pell: Yeah, it's sad. I think there's a happy medium you can come to and say that this is tragic, but their biggest problem is that they can't get out of their own way.

Like I said earlier, you know, assume they have an autism spectrum disorder. So do millions of other people who aren't just leading functional lives. They're leading vibrant, exciting, fulfilling lives. Having an autism spectrum disorder or [00:49:00] major depressive disorder or some other, you know, non-trivial problem is not an excuse to give up and become a loser who spends all day on PUA.

Hate talking about how much he hates Floyds. If you want help, you know, an incel or somebody you think is trending in that direction, give them a little tough love. Get them to log off and maybe bully them to find some other less antisocial use of their time.

Jordan Harbinger: Why do you think these guys seek help on internet forums rather than through more traditionally and potentially more helpful resources?

Because it seems like if you're circling this drain, go get a therapist for God's sake.

Nick Pell: I think that there are some people who are so socially maladjusted that they don't know. What's the proper way to seek help and what isn't? And beyond that, you can recite the usual litany of reasons. People don't seek professional help for mental health issues.

They, they don't have the resources, they're afraid of the stigma against seeking [00:50:00] help. They reject the concept of therapy in general.

Jordan Harbinger: What kind of hope is there for these people once they get, you know, I don't want to say trapped in these communities because obviously they're the ones who are doing it and they have agency.

But I think that once you cross that line, it's a bit like quicksand where you just, you get sucked in. Is that a fair assessment of the situation?

Nick Pell: Yeah, I think that's more or less fair in general. I'm, I'm sort of curious about how much of the incel phenomenon is just guys punching the wall online. I mentioned, are they siloing this off from the rest of their lives?

I think in a lot of cases they probably are. They go online, they punch the wall, they rage, and then they go back to being normal as soon as they close their laptop. I really think a, a non-trivial portion of these guys go log on, rage, log off, and then touch grass and kind of act semi-normal for the rest of their time on earth.

And hey, you know what people are just sort of barely waking up to [00:51:00] is that the entire internet is one big echo chamber. The algorithm is curated to show you what you think you want at any given moment. And it turns out that a lot of what you want to see is rage bait. Do you know what Twitter shows me more than anything?

Jordan Harbinger: What does X, formerly known as Twitter show you more than anything?

Nick Pell: anti-Semitic. Leftists.

Jordan Harbinger: Sure.

Nick Pell: Protestants, who really, really hate Catholics.

Jordan Harbinger: Okay.

Nick Pell: And people who are still following COVID protocols, like they're the last imperial Japanese soldier in the jungles of the Philippines fighting for the glory of the emperor in 1965.

Like that's what Twitter wants to show me because it knows that, that's what pisses me off. The algorithm shows you what you engage with and what you engage with is probably going to be something that makes you mad. I built an entire career around this at one point in my life. So this is not really news to me, but some people still need to be told or at least reminded.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. But how did that work [00:52:00] out for you?

Nick Pell: Well, about, as well as crying on an insult forum is working out for these guys.

Jordan Harbinger: Right. Okay, fine.

Nick Pell: Uh, the other thing is that there's a sense of being in an ingroup and having a shared jargon. Probably the closest thing to the incell phenomenon is the Q Anon movement.

Mm. The black pilling aspect. There's the whole us versus them. The weird inside code. Mostly, I think the common denominator is that you have no agency and everything is just faded to happen a certain way, and it explains everything. You know, it just explains everything for you.

Jordan Harbinger: These kind of internet cults around conspiracy theories are surprisingly common online.

So what makes this relevant to the rest of us? If it's a niche internet cult, will any of us normies ever even come into contact with these folks or their beliefs outside of four chan?

Nick Pell: Maybe, maybe not. I mean, I, I think it's kind of the bleeding radical edge of what people have called the male loneliness epidemic, uh, by no.

[00:53:00] Some people, including your listeners, will dispute that such a thing exists. But I do know that a lot of guys, at least subjectively feel lonely. And guess what? If you feel lonely, you're lonely. That's what loneliness is.

Jordan Harbinger: Mm-hmm. Yeah. It's a feeling.

Nick Pell: It's a feeling. I think the risk of violence is small, but the violence is, I think, disproportionate in scale to their numbers.

As I mentioned earlier. You know, having multiple generations of fighting age men who feel that they have no stake in society and nothing to lose is an absolute powder keg. People have literally no idea how dangerous this phenomenon can be.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

Nick Pell: Because they're used to living in these safe, secure, affluent, liberal, democratic western societies that they very much take for granted, and you should not, because there are multiple examples of stable societies with broad middle classes and [00:54:00] nice places to live.

To kind of boil it down, they were like that one week and the next week they were hell on earth and there is nothing special about where you live that prevents it from being that. With regard to the incel phenomenon, tying it back to this, the more hopeless men you have, the more incel you're going to have.

And you know, the radical edge of this, these are the guys who are going to start acting like Hezbollah in Beirut. Not the guys who just mope back and forth to and from work every day. You know, like, oh, radicalization. And it's like 35 people. 35 people could break a lot of dishes if they're motivated enough.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

Nick Pell: That's the issue. And so, yeah, I think society has a stake in there being fewer of these guys around.

Jordan Harbinger: But you don't think there's a lot of hope for the guys on the forums. F from the sound of it, you don't see any way out for them really. So what's there to be done about any of this? I mean, we're not going to have state mandated girlfriends.

Nick Pell: No, no, we're not. I think [00:55:00] some, someone proposed that. Um, but you know, I'm

Jen Harbinger: sure they did. Yeah.

Nick Pell: They're X in cells out there, but you don't hear about them because. First of all, who the hell wants to be the spokesman of for the X incel community? And second of all, because they're almost by definition, leading normal lives that aren't really all that remarkable or interesting.

They build social skills, they join communities. They get some kind of purpose in their life that isn't plastering the internet with toxicity for 17 hours a day. And they move on. And it's like this weird, embarrassing thing that they used to be into, you know, fitness, therapy, religion, mentorship, hobbies.

These are all very low hanging fruit. Can anybody become handsome? No, but I do suspect there's some truth to the idea that you're not ugly, you're just poor

Jordan Harbinger: me. Meaning what? Exactly.

Nick Pell: I mean, look at Elon Musk before he had Bunny, his hair plugs went a long way. So much of what makes [00:56:00] someone attractive is how they present what they have.

So the looks maxers are onto something. If you take care of your skin, you get a better haircut, hit the gym, give yourself six months to a year and boom, tons of people probably won't even recognize you. Beyond that, your problem with women is probably not even your looks. It's probably that you lack social skills or maybe you just lack social skills as they apply to women.

There is a different set of social skills for chumming it up with the guys because I'm going to, you know, let everybody in on a very controversial secret. Men and women are different.

Jordan Harbinger: Fire up those angry emails. People can't say that anymore.

Nick Pell: Yeah. Women are not just men with boobs. Sorry. People. I think mocking in cells can backfire, but if you're friends with one of these dudes, I mean, I don't know man.

I had this friend who was like. Practicing Germanic [00:57:00] paganism and doing like weird rituals to Thor and stuff. And I, like, I, I, I bullied the crap out of him about it. And he's an orthodox Christian now. So

Jordan Harbinger: The Jordan Harbinger Show does not endorse bullying your friends into or out of different religions.

Okay? Bullying them to get off the computer, fine. Bullying them out of a cult, probably also fine bullying them into your cult. Slow down folks.

Nick Pell: I mean, bullying may be the wrong word, but yeah. Uh, men respond to disapproval from other men, especially when it's men that they respect or admire. I don't think it's at all inappropriate to apply a little negative reinforcement on a friend who has decided to wallow in his own misery with a total lack of self-reflection.

I mean, let your conscience be your guide here.

Jordan Harbinger: Sure. I think you're right about that. There's mean bullying where you're just terrorizing somebody and then there's like giving your buddy a hard time about something that you should absolutely be giving him a hard time about to motivate him to get his shit together.

Nick Pell: Right? And you [00:58:00] also offer support. You know, Hey, why don't you come to the gym with me? I'll, let's sign up for a karate class together. Or Let's go to the driving range on Saturday and hit some balls, or go on a hike, or whatever. I think men tend to do better with activity centered hangs, and that's, you do that and then they start, you know, opening up through the course of those hangs on a long hike or something.

These are also the kinds of things that can get them involved in other communities that are probably not just healthier, but a lot more fulfilling for them personally. Then endlessly posting on forever alone. So like hiking's a kind of a lazy example, but like, yeah, you know, like I found a passion for hiking because my friend dragged me on a number of hikes and now I'm in this trail runner group and oh whoa, what'd you know it, there's girls that are into this too, or just like other guys that I can become friends with.

And that boosts my competence and gets me off of PUA hate for the day. I absolutely detest and abhor these attempts to like reframe masculinity and [00:59:00] like turn guys into these domesticated liberal house pets. So this is some kind of like new masculinity, but at the same time, masculinity is definitely not about whining on a forum and throwing your life away.

While you tunnel deeper and deeper into this pit of self pity and, and complete despair.

Jordan Harbinger: I think the main takeaway here is that not all these guys are monsters or memes. They're just lonely guys who have a very toxic way to explain why they're lonely and a very toxic community that reinforces both their feelings of loneliness and their antisocial explanation of why they're lonely in the first place.

At the same time, dating is now difficult, man. You used to meet people through friends or family, or even through shared activities. Now someone is going to decide in half a second if they want to swipe right on you, or if they want to move onto one of the other 500,000 people in their area that they could be dating.

And that means a lot of people, men and women, are struggling to figure out how to find partners that [01:00:00] might make their lives more fulfilling. The problem isn't living in that reality. We all do. The problem is when you abdicate agency for how that reality impacts your life, and then you start blaming other people for your problems.

Our chiseled, jacked billionaire is always going to have desirable partners probably, but that doesn't mean you can't find someone to be happy with. That will enrich your life, and ultimately, that's what this is all about. It's not about celibacy as such. It's about guys feeling super lonely and pursuing terrible pseudo solutions and their quest to do something about that loneliness.

Thanks as always to writer and researcher Nick Pell for helping me separate the rejection from the radicalization. Thanks, Nick. Thanks to you all for listening. Topic suggestions for future episodes of Skeptical Sunday to Jordan@jordanharbinger.com. That's me. Advertisers, deals, discounts, ways to support the show, all searchable and clickable at jordanharbinger.com/deals. I'm at Jordan Harbinger on Twitter and Instagram. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn and this show. It's created in association with [01:01:00] PodcastOne. My team is Jen Harbinger, Jase Sanderson, Tadas Sidlauskas, Robert Fogarty, Ian Baird, and Gabriel Mizrahi. Our advice and opinions are our own.

I might be a lawyer, but I'm sure not your lawyer. Also, we try to get these episodes as right as we can. Not everything is gospel, even if it's fact checked, so consult a professional before applying anything you hear on the show, especially if it's about your health and wellbeing. Remember, we've rise by lifting others.

Share the show with those you love. If you found the episode useful, please share it with somebody else who could use a good dose of the skepticism and knowledge we doled out today. In the meantime, I hope you apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you learn and we'll see you next time.

What if everything you've been told about building wealth is total bs? Scott Galloway joins me to dismantle the myths and lay out a brutally honest roadmap to financial security in today's economy.

JHS Trailer: The greatest bump in mortality for men is one, when their spouse dies, and two, when they stop work and when they lose their social fabric and their purpose, they get inactive, sometimes depressed.

[01:02:00] And when you get inactive and depressed, your brain kind of sends out a hormone or a message saying, oh, it's time to die. This person isn't adding any value. Supposedly for every additional year you work, your life expectancy actually goes up. So what they don't teach you is the smart thing to do is the moment you have assets.

Start diversifying. And here's the thing, you don't need to be a hero. You don't need to find the needle in the haystack. Figure out what you're good at. Find a way to save more than you spend. Realize how fast time is going to go and diversify. This is what you become passionate about, is when you get to our age, you become really passionate about taking care of your kids.

You become really passionate about taking care of your parents and being able to take your spouse to really wonderful places. You become passionate about the absence of stress from your relationships, that not having economic security injects into every relationship. Success and entrepreneurship is your ability to endure rejection, ability to endure failure and entrepreneurship is really just a synonym for salespeople.[01:03:00]

Don't be an idiot. Follow these simple equations and you're going to be fine. Develop economic security for you and your family by finding something you're great at. Make some money, save some money. Understand how fast time is going to go and diversify.

Jordan Harbinger: If you've ever wondered why working hard isn't enough, check out episode 1074 with Scott Galloway.