The Black Pill, a retrospection...

LongSault

Fapstronaut
Introduction

It all started back in 2018. I was sitting at a computer at college, browsing MGTOW content on YouTube, as I had been doing since two years prior to that point. That day (which was in April), I saw some interesting looking videos in the recommendations feed to the right of the screen. They were part of a series entitled "What Attracts Women," by a British native going by the moniker "FaceandLMS." The LMS stands for Looks, Money, Status, the three things a man needs in order to be considered attractive to women.

Within a few days, I was hooked on this material. I was soon listening to every "blackpill" or "true force loneliness" YouTuber I could find (and back then, there were lots of them). Whether it was FaceandLMS, Heed and Succeed (who in fairness, was much more amiable than most of his counterparts), Incel TV or Wheat Waffles; I began religiously downloading their content from the internet and listening to it at work, at work, or wherever I happened to be at the time. From my point of view, I had finally found not only the answer as to why I wasn't attractive to women, but why I had ultimately failed to make anything out of myself in life. Furthermore, I now had justification to stop trying. After all, what's the point in improving yourself if you never had a chance at success in the first place?

Later that month, I had started a new job, working the humble position of a print associate. Then one day, my boss came running, telling me that someone had run over multiple people at the Yonge and Finch intersection in Toronto (we were in Etobicoke at the time, a borough further west). One of the victims had the same name as my boss' wife, so he had relatives calling to find out if all was well (FYI, it was a different person). The perpetrator was a mentally ill man named Alek Minassian, who praised Elliot Rodger on Twitter (now X), calling for a so-called Incel Rebellion.

True to form, Canadian news networks such as the state-sponsored CBC began pushing many news stories about incels, describing them as a group of online misogynists at best and potential terrorists at worst. To me, they were funny (not what happened at Yonge and Finch, but rather their YouTube videos); FaceandLMS had a good sense of humour in his videos, using clips from dating shows like Take Me Out to illustrate why some men were attractive and others were not. Yet despite the funny content, I also found myself growing increasingly depressed as I [retroactively] applied incel philosophy to my past experiences. Suddenly, the reason women had rejected me was because I was ugly. It was the reason why I was bullied in school, why I didn't get certain jobs, why bad boys always won with women while I and others like me were left in the lurch. It was why I hadn't made anything out of my life and why all my efforts at self improvement were/would be in vain.

Part 2 - Mickey

By July of 2018, I had joined the now-infamous incels forum. It was a place where people with a similar mindset could congregate and share their feelings... provided they towed the official incel narrative. Those who didn't (according to a very vague criteria reminiscent of the French Reign of Terror) would lead to members being banned. This was obviously an echo chamber, but even pointing that out would have one labeled a coper or blue-pilled. The warning signs were everywhere, yet I managed to ignore them. People always ignore flaws from those they happen to agree with, a fact not limited to political circles.

One user on the forum called himself @MickeyonAcid. I didn't know much about him, other than the fact that he was likely a Utah native in his early twenties. He didn't sound like he was gainfully employed, but he described himself as very unattractive with crippling acne, with his only saving grace that he was six feet tall. We got along okay at first, but by September he began expressing suicidal thoughts, penning a sad thread entitled We are inherently unlovable because we are ugly. In his tagline, he presented his ultimatum: If he was not able to ascend (that is, either have sex or enter a committed relationship) by his next birthday (January 25), then he would end his own life. As of the last time I visited the forum, his last comment was December 29, 2018; no one has heard from him since.

People expressing suicidal thoughts is a dime-a-dozen on the incels forum, let alone in incel circles as a whole. Such sentiments are often responded with quips like "See you tomorrow," or "If you didn't livestream it, it didn't happen." And then there's the cope or rope meme that incels love to push, meaning that one should find a way to live in their misery, or suicide would inevitably follow. Despite the light-hearted take on suicide, I was very distraught with the idea that Mickey and others like him had or were threatening to take their own lives. I've known at least two people who killed themselves in high school and how devastating it was to their families. However, the reason Mickey - more or less a stranger on the internet - affected me so much is because of our private messages. Having absorbed lots of MGTOW content two years prior to discovering the so-called black pill, I remained convinced that a man didn't need women in his life to be happy (as MGTOW's so often claimed). Unsurprisingly, Mickey didn't find that very convincing, while finding my attitude apathetic and callus. He made it clear how he felt in no uncertain terms, but by the time I saw the error in my ways, he was already AWOL.

Part 3 - Low Point

To "repent" of my indifference, I not only embraced the so-called black pill thinking in its entirety, but I even began repeating out loud to family members and colleagues at work in 2019 (while omitting specific lexicon such as black pill, incel or coping). Imagine going to work and listening to your colleague give you an earful about how ugly he is and how meaningless life is. Unbeknownst to me, several of my colleagues had reported me to Human Resources, concerned that I would 'harm myself.' HR never approached me about these comments, but many colleagues slowly but surely began to keep their distance, which only served to reinforce my belief that my looks repelled people. Meanwhile, I saw no reason to improve my physical appearance, which led to neglect in my hygiene and grooming routine. I let my beard and nails grow, which probably made me look as horrible as I felt. All while telling myself that any form of self improvement wouldn't make a difference, unless I had won this genetic lottery that so-called Chads seemed to be blessed with.

In fact, I also fell prey to another form of thinking, which stated that my only saving grace was getting plastic surgery. So many in the incel-sphere touted surgeries such as leg-lengthening, hair transplants, rhinoplasties and jaw implants as ways to make oneself more attractive. It was a complete 180 from the attitude that I used to have, openly mocking celebrities with their atrocious botox and ozempic enhancements that ruined their faces, while also expressing confusion at their seeming lack of self awareness on how ugly their surgery made them look. Oh how things changed.

Part 4 - Change for the Better

By 2020, I had lost my job due to the COVID lockdowns that swept the country, and it soon dawned on me that things needed to change. I had no money saved and no emergency fund, but fortunately my family helped me through that rough period. They also encouraged me to go back to school, making it clear that the economy was changing and there was no way I would be able to get by with the few skills that I had. Grudgingly, I went along with their advice, enrolling in 2022, though still not knowing what direction to take in life (while still convinced that it wouldn't make a difference). However, by mere chance, an employee at the college told me about an opening, and after a few interviews, I got the job, which I've held since. I now not only have a clear direction for my life, but a whopping three career goals, all of which I'm gaining experience in through volunteering or on-the-job experience.

However, old habits die hard. I still touted that I was ugly to my colleagues, though not with the same zeal as I had years earlier. My supervisor quietly pulled me aside and explained that she wanted me to cease this negative talk that she has overheard. That's when she told me something interesting: she said that out of all the students she interviewed, my interview was the best of them all.

That one remark had me thinking: if looks are paramount, and I'm ugly, then why did I get the job over so many other candidates who supposedly looked better or were taller than me? In fact, I have quite a few colleagues taller than me (I'm 5'10", by the way) and some who are better looking. Yet when there's new openings or special events, my supervisors skip them over and ask me to do it. Meanwhile, students always want to talk to me when they need help instead of my colleagues when I'm on shift, and they even admit this openly. Even weirder, some female students have asked for my number, as opposed to the other way around. It's happened so much that I had to complain to my supervisor (as this is technically not allowed). Apparently this has never happened to any of my colleagues as far as I know.

Meanwhile, I have friends who own businesses that have waived my fees for their products over the past few years (sometimes as a birthday gift, other times just because they were feeling magnanimous). Imagine going to a restaurant and pulling out your card to pay, only to be told that this time it's on the house, or that an employee decided to cover the charge because of something I did. According to the black pill, this can only happen to so-called Chads, something I'm clearly not. How could this be the case if the black pill is true?

About two months ago, I began volunteering at a soup kitchen. We went to a Public School for a local trunk show, which was attended by many members of the community. What I saw was very unblackpilled: Guys with dad-bos, balding and no chiseled jaw or negative canthal tilt showing up with their wives and children. East and South Asian men married to white women (and they weren't over six foot or "giga-chads" in their own right), despite incel claims that such men are rice and currycels respectively. Rather, these were normal, functional people living their daily lives, not Tinder users or contestants on Take Me Out. In other words, when I went out into my daily life, I saw plenty of so-called sub-8 (men under an 8 out of 10 in looks) not only with their girlfriends, but also married with children. I saw the exact same thing at the sporting events that I photographed over the past two months. Clearly, either you don't have to be a Chad to get married or have a relationship, or most women are comfortable not being with a so-called Chad in the first place.

The final nail in the coffin came a few months ago. A colleague of mine was showing me photos of Zac Efron before and after his jaw surgery. Instead of thinking that he looked hotter with this junk stuck in his face, she laughed saying that he looked like the Handsome Squidward meme. Wait, what? You mean that even with surgery, women still think that you look ridiculous? She also went on to criticize bodybuilders who use steroids as disgusting to look at, a sentiment I was forced to agree with.

Part 5 - Refusing the Black Pill

Eventually, about a month ago, I looked back on my past and reflected, concluding that all the evidence was too much to ignore. The treatment and favour I received from friends, the advancements at work, the normal couples that I saw in public and the revulsion women had towards so-called "looksmaxxed" men was damning enough. It simply didn't follow the pattern that incels had laid out. Sure, some incels provided "evidence" of what women want in a man, but many of the examples that they gave as evidence were from entertainment and social media, both of which are magnets for dysfunctional and shallow people.

Sure, some women do in fact have high in the sky expectations for their ideal partners, but why are incels upset about these women, let alone trying to attract them? If anything, any man with common sense would avoid such women (and the place/platforms they frequent like the plague, not resorting to surgery/gym attendance to get their attention or propping their expectations up as a gold standard.

In fact, the black pill community goes a few steps beyond this and asserts that this fascination with Chad is an evolutionary standard built into female biology. This is a very interesting claim to make; it's like saying that the surgically enhanced women that porn addicts masturbate to are the product of an evolutionary standard. This is obviously false, as the brain is being exposed to hyperbolic images that have warped one's perception of what is either real or attractive.

Lastly, I think the biggest problem with the black pill community is that they became victims of their own acumen. On one hand, they accurately point out the harmful effect that internet culture and modern media/advertising have had on younger generations and their idea of relationships. However, much like Karl Marx, they diagnose a real problem with a terrible solution. In this case, they encourage men to play into the very body dysmorphia inducing trends in order to live up to (and therefore vindicate) unrealistic standards. It's pouring gasoline on the fire and wondering why the flames are now an inferno.

I haven't even mentioned other problems with their ideology. Encouraging white men to travel abroad to southeast Asia to meet women is poor advice. Traveling anywhere without understanding the language or culture can lead to miscommunication, scams and other dangers (not knowing where rough areas are, etc). Not to mention the goal is sex tourism; one guy apparently went to Southeast Asia and impregnated several women there, only to be praised by the incel community as a legend rather than being deplored for this high risk, degenerate behaviour (not to mention the risk of exposing himself and others to hepatitis or other STDs).

Of course the jokes about suicide (even encouraging it in some cases), the beatification of Elliot Rodger and Alek Minassian (no matter how tongue and cheek) and perpetuating under achievement as a form of seniority in their circles didn't endear me much to the community as a whole. It soon became obvious that we were better off parting ways.

Epilogue

Interestingly, abandoning the black pill was actually quite easy for me. Around the time that I did, I was under a lot of stress due to exams, so I walked away from YouTube (I've already abandoned all social media) to better concentrate. Meanwhile, as I've stated in previous posts, photography took up so much of my time (and still does, with two concerts this weekend!) that I not only stayed away from black pill content, but I even managed to kick a 20-year porn habit. While I do have some occasional health issues here and there, I've never felt better in my life. My job is wonderful, I've formed incredible friendships with amazing people and my photography has taken me to places that I would have never otherwise visited (including Paris next month, if everything goes according to plan).

However, if I had stayed in front of the computer and absorbed incel content all day, let alone MGTOW, anti-woke talking heads and others online, I wouldn't be on this path today, forging a better future for myself. I would still be an angry guy looking for someone/something to blame, while convincing myself that I was justified.

Oh well, I needed to write this for some reason.
 
Well done for getting out of the distorted mindset, and well done for enlightening those of us who know precious little about these particular internet cesspools.

Your post surely contains good advice to all young men on these forums.
 
I’m glad that NoFap has a solid counter-redpill/blackpill community in it. People who can question the world we live in without going to the extremes of spreading misinformation and hysteria. This was a great read, I’m glad to hear you’ve experienced some massive growth!
 
Thanks for sharing. I've always had my heart out for people who have found themselves sunken into the incel/blackpill community. Obviously life circumstances can put someone in a place where the ideology is very attractive, even if it makes their life worse, even if many of the ideas that community espouses are off-putting or even reprehensible, that doesn't mean the people in it are inherently bad, they're just in a bad place. It's always been troubling how much push-back I've gotten when I present some humanizing compassion to this group of people, often having the response be that they're inherently broken or that they get what they deserve(something that if they'd heard would only reinforce their ideas). I was certain though that with the current atmosphere on the internet, there should be a fair deal of them that get on the right track and find themselves able to get into a healthier perspective. It was truly heartening to read your story :)
 
Such a great read, thank you. I would love to speak with you further about what you wrote? I think your perspective would be beneficial

I'd be more than happy to discuss this further. Honestly, looking back at the black pill ideology now, it feels so alien to me now, but I have to admit that I barely scratched the surface when I wrote this post.

I’m glad that NoFap has a solid counter-redpill/blackpill community in it. People who can question the world we live in without going to the extremes of spreading misinformation and hysteria. This was a great read, I’m glad to hear you’ve experienced some massive growth!

You make a very interesting point. In all honesty - and this may seem counter-productive - I do agree with the black pill way of thinking in specific respects. For one, I do believe that there are a lot of things in life we can't control (that's fairly obvious), and I also agree that physical attraction does play a huge role in dating and relationships. However, I think that the black pill goes to extremes on many occasions. For example, their notion that one must be a "Chad" is completely ludicrous; it seems more like this meme is the product of body dysmorphia and extreme internet/social media culture. Notice how to prove their point, incels mainly cite social media videos and memes to demonstrate women's proclivity to date so-called Chads, but in real life you see guys who look nothing like this happily married with children. Furthermore, the female entitlement often mentioned also appears to be largely confined to internet culture and modern social media influence, though again not a reflection of most normal couples. At some point I had to tell myself Wait a minute! I'm seeing couples (including young couples or new parents) that shouldn't exist according to the black pill. Not to mention the idea inherited from the adjacent "MGTOW" belief that women are biologically wired to exploit men, a view which seems more grounded in personal hurts and generalizations as opposed to scientific evidence.

Speaking of which, I began to notice that when incels are rightfully told they lack hard evidence, they respond that modern institutions (i.e. universities) are too politically correct to conduct such a study, which to my ears means that they feel vindicated in spreading unsubstantiated claims based largely on circumstantial observations. Notice that couched in this assertion/excuse is the Manosphere-adjacent belief that established institutions are anti-male, reinforcing a victim narrative often championed by these internet subcultures. Finally, starting several months ago, I decided to give up the black pill content altogether, which was one of the best decisions that I made in my life. I was able to see that the internet is not real life, and that the real problem with the decline of relationships has less to do with the pseudo-science of the black pill and more to do with a series of multi-faceted social issues that need to be tackled with objectivity and nuance that the black pill often lacks.

Now, to be fair, I could technically say the same about NoFap philosophy as well. I've become slightly frustrated with the NoFap belief that one will gain superpowers if they abstain from PMO for a specific period of time. I think the 90-day reset is very overrated (I believe recovery is heavily dependent on the individual person). Meanwhile, this notion that women will swoon over a man for "retaining [his] semen" is quite laughable. So obviously ideological thinking or confirmation bias can exist no matter which set of ideas one may subscribe to.

Thanks for sharing. I've always had my heart out for people who have found themselves sunken into the incel/blackpill community. Obviously life circumstances can put someone in a place where the ideology is very attractive, even if it makes their life worse, even if many of the ideas that community espouses are off-putting or even reprehensible, that doesn't mean the people in it are inherently bad, they're just in a bad place. It's always been troubling how much push-back I've gotten when I present some humanizing compassion to this group of people, often having the response be that they're inherently broken or that they get what they deserve(something that if they'd heard would only reinforce their ideas). I was certain though that with the current atmosphere on the internet, there should be a fair deal of them that get on the right track and find themselves able to get into a healthier perspective. It was truly heartening to read your story :)

I agree that compassion is necessary, but it's not always well-received by incels themselves. You're right; many incels are in a bad place, which is sad. However, I think the best thing for them is to distance themselves from the internet culture and those who are lost to it and experience other areas of life where that toxicity hasn't penetrated. It's not easy, but in this day and age it's largely doable for many. Only when you can separate incels from that toxicity will they be prepared to listen in my experience.
 
I agree that compassion is necessary, but it's not always well-received by incels themselves. You're right; many incels are in a bad place, which is sad. However, I think the best thing for them is to distance themselves from the internet culture and those who are lost to it and experience other areas of life where that toxicity hasn't penetrated. It's not easy, but in this day and age it's largely doable for many. Only when you can separate incels from that toxicity will they be prepared to listen in my experience.

Very true. I know typically they shrug off most forms of sympathy, but I also don't blame them. I've been in a similar head-state, for very different reason, but I relate. When I think back to times that I was/am like that I can only describe it as "curmudgeonly and indignant". I think any one of than can improve their lives and/or the lives of those around them, we all can, but it will always be a matter of giving up old habits and taking on better ones. You can agree with something whole-heartedly, but dwelling on those ideas can also do nothing to help, which is the case here and in a lot of other trap communities. I've always had half a mind to try and make some material directed at laying out a path forward for this type, but honestly I am not in a great place myself yet, so I don't feel I have any room to talk. Maybe one day when I get my life sorted, for now I need to work on laying my own foundation, gathering and building.
 
Now, to be fair, I could technically say the same about NoFap philosophy as well. I've become slightly frustrated with the NoFap belief that one will gain superpowers if they abstain from PMO for a specific period of time. I think the 90-day reset is very overrated (I believe recovery is heavily dependent on the individual person). Meanwhile, this notion that women will swoon over a man for "retaining [his] semen" is quite laughable. So obviously ideological thinking or confirmation bias can exist no matter which set of ideas one may subscribe to.
Yeah NoFap community has been problematic for a while. I feel like that while most of the long-term users understand how addiction works, a lot of newcomers don't and have high expectations when starting out. I don't know the actual data but I feel like an outnumbering majority of NoFap accounts get deleted, forgotten, or abandoned within 6 or so months of joining because they don't see immediate success.
 
For example, their notion that one must be a "Chad" is completely ludicrous; it seems more like this meme is the product of body dysmorphia and extreme internet/social media culture. Notice how to prove their point, incels mainly cite social media videos and memes to demonstrate women's proclivity to date so-called Chads, but in real life you see guys who look nothing like this happily married with children. Furthermore, the female entitlement often mentioned also appears to be largely confined to internet culture and modern social media influence, though again not a reflection of most normal couples. At some point I had to tell myself Wait a minute! I'm seeing couples (including young couples or new parents) that shouldn't exist according to the black pill. Not to mention the idea inherited from the adjacent "MGTOW" belief that women are biologically wired to exploit men, a view which seems more grounded in personal hurts and generalizations as opposed to scientific evidence.
Yeah I agree with you there. In real life women really don't give a shit about all the Chad qualities, they often look for many different kinds of men. Seems like social media makes things seem a lot different because usually the "Chad"-type dudes that incels refer to are big on social media. But I'm telling you right now that I already know of and have seen a massive number of guys who get girls not from their money or looks. Sure, the most attractive dudes tend to get attractive girls, but also less attractive dudes get girls as well. This is because they are manly, but not the manliness that incels despise. Manliness like being a gentleman, having confidence, showing manners, being wise and funny but not annoyingly so. I'm in college right now so I might have a more biased viewpoint, but still, this is what I'm sure applies to the working world as well. Social media has really fucked up the Millenial and Gen Z generations.
 
Back
Top