I like to think of myself as an agreeable individual, although my agreeableness is sometimes obscured by my penchant for adversarial (but friendly) debate, and by my propensity for uttering smart aleck remarks.

Years ago - before there was an internet, before anyone would have even dreamed that an individual might someday be able to actually own a computer, let alone one that would fit in a shirt pocket - I was involuntarily celibate, so I can understand some of the bitterness that modern “incels” feel. At the time that I was going through that experience, there was no incel “community.” In order to form a community, incels needed an internet.

I don’t have the contempt for modern incels that is often expressed by others. While I don’t know a lot about the modern incel community it seems to me that its members are reinforcing one another’s bitterness, and that is not helpful to them.

I once wished that I could live in a world where one could just walk into a room, choose a partner and go have sex. Alas, that is not the world we live in and it never will be. We must all adjust to the world we live in, not the one we wish for. In a more constructive community, incels would help one another come to terms with the world as it is rather than reinforcing one another’s bitterness.