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Culture War Roundup for the week of November 9, 2026

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I think if you were to make prostitution legal, you'd find that the porn-addicted incel would not participate. Too much social anxiety. That's right, not even confident enough to get sex that's being paid for, with all the removal of uncertainty that entails.

Yes. Look at Australia, New Zealand. Fully legal. We still have incels. They can fuck a 100 prossies (RIP wallet), they'll still remain incels. And they're not even necessarily jobless losers, just no game and a crippling aversion to social risk-taking.

Incels are a misnomer. In many cases they are voluntarily celibate because the women actually available for them to date or sleep with are beneath them (in their eyes). The correct term for incels are "people with status dysphoria." The incel's problem isn't "not getting laid," which is why he doesn't visit a prostitute. His problem is he is a loser, he knows it, and all his acquaintances (not friends, of course) know it. No amount of business transactions are going to solve that.

I think your description is true of most femcels and some male incels. However, I think the number of men with whom literally no woman in the entire world would voluntarily have sex with under any circumstances is greater than zero. I doubt a woman meeting that description exists.

Eh, I'm sure such extremes exist, but I suspect the average incel in 2026 would just be an average man in 1986. Usually, people think of this meme, but the profiles are actually closer to college educated men from stable homes with stable incomes. In the real world, your dating pool shouldn't include literally every similar-aged woman within commuting distance. Realistic standards are still standards. Why would you rationally put up with women with substance abuse problems, serious emotional baggage, neurotic personalities, destructive ego patterns and extreme disagreeability, when you would promptly cuss out a man should he display even a fraction of those things?

We're quick to mock a terminally online schizoid who's fully crashed out and conjures neurotic conspiracies about gynocratic world order gatekeeping his dick from pussy. But we're considerably more indulgent toward women whose every interaction with the world is similarly coloured by grievance, and who are only a few inferential steps away from blaming you (YOU, personally) for being an agent of the patriarchy that brought about that resentment. I would never tolerate any of that for some mid pipe. Remaining single and miserable can be preferable to entering a relationship that makes you even more miserable.

Although I do think @PutAHelmetOn 's descriptor "status dysphoria" is apt. Stealing this.

I suspect the average incel in 2026 would just be an average man in 1986

What makes you say that?

Let's try to build a profile of the "average incel" in 2026. I found this study from May of last year, which surveyed over 500 American and British incels about their beliefs, identity characteristics, socioeconomic status and so on. It found:

  • Roughly 30% had an AQ-10 score that would meet the clinical referall threshold for an autism assessment (compared with the 1% of the population).
  • More than one in three met the criteria for moderate depression or anxiety.
    • One in five claimed to experience suicidal thoughts nearly every day.
    • Half of participants selected the highest response for all three items pertaining to loneliness
  • 50% lived with their parents

Do you think the "average man" in 1986 was an autist who lived with his parents and contemplated killing himself every single day?

I'll rephrase that: "physically" average. Many of those things are downstream of environmental factors, as in, things they cannot control. Put another way, they wouldn't be living with parents and battling serious depression in 1986. I earn more than the NZ median, and still live at home.

I am sceptical. For one thing, I suspect rates of obesity among 2026 incels would be dramatically higher than among 1986 men.

Fair, but I'd still argue that's (partly) downstream of factors that didn't exist in 1986. Less digital overload, less loneliness, etc., meaning, obese incels already blackpilled before they became obese and simply don't have the incentive to make themselves presentable anymore. Anecdotally, if you looked at my friends (all mid-20s college educated white males), you can't "tell" that some of them are incels.