Man, incels are messed up in more ways than one

In this fascinating article about incels getting plastic surgery to help them get girls, we learn yet more about the twisted minds of that cult-like subculture. I think it’s fine that people who want plastic surgery can get it, even if some of them are clearly getting a little too obsessive about it (multiple surgeries to tweak slight asymmetries? Get over it. Everyone is asymmetric to some degree). If they’re doing it to appeal more to women, they’re operating on the wrong organ. This one paragraph says it all.

Mike recently got a jaw procedure called BSSO, plus a hair transplant. After the surgeries, he met two girls at his other job, teaching comedy, whom he considered “cute,” and he took this as a sign of success. Now he’s investing in cryptocurrency in hopes of getting more procedures with Eppley [the incel’s favorite surgeon]. In a recent forum thread, he posted a selfie specced out with angles and degrees, measurements of his features; he then found a photo of Tom Cruise and gave it the same treatment. (Mike’s jaw angle was 69.02 degrees; Tom’s was 76.31.) “I want to solve this woman thing,” he told me.

Women aren’t a thing to be solved. A jaw angle isn’t an objective measure of your attractiveness. Cryptocurrency isn’t going to get you rich. Your problem isn’t your skull, but what’s inside it.

The article has photographs of various incels and their ideals. They all look fine, although I sympathize with people who find their looks unsatisfactory. It doesn’t matter how much money Eppley makes off repeated surgeries, or whether they end up looking like Tom Cruise — it’s not going to fix their problems. Maybe one step forward would be to get off those self-loathing incel forums?