This discussion has taken a turn, which is fine but it's important to distinguish between two issues:
A. Red-pilling and the embrace of toxic masculinity;
B. Stagnating economic or educational opportunities for boys
1. I think there are a lot of people on this thread contending, with various degrees of explicitness, that these two phenomena are linked, and specifically that A is a reaction to B. That's not necessarily true, right? It's an optimistic theory that XY individuals will become "men" -- that is, respectful, caring and supportive of other people -- when their economic anxieties are resolved and they find stable, satisfying employment. Until then, they are vulnerable to being red-pilled by people taking advantage of those anxieties.
But that's not necessarily the relationship between those two factors. It could be that A is causing B, which is an unsettling prospect, but one that I think is probably a significant causal pathway. Or it could be that both are happening, but there's no causality between them.
Notice above I used the phrase "economic anxieties." I think that's a fair encapsulation of much of the discussion in the last page or two. If that reminds you of the exhausting conversations from 2016-18, when we read countless profiles of run down rural areas where the jobs left and the people only turned to Trump because of the bitterness created by the lack of economic opportunities -- well, that's the point. And I think most people have come to accept that the appeal of MAGA isn't really about that at all. That's merely a symptom.
I'm not any more convinced that incels or the red-pilled more generally are economically anxious. By and large, incels are not economically desperate. The stereotype of guys who live in basements with little education and no job isn't wholly false, but those also aren't the guys slurping up Andrew Tate's misogyny. The majority of incels or "bros" have college degrees and above salaries. Some have graduate or professional education.
2. It's worth considering the primacy of Asian men in incel culture. I have no idea whether Asians are actually disproportionately incel (good data is hard to find about this community, not surprisingly), but they are prevalent enough to have their own moniker: ricecels. And it was a ricecel who killed all those people in California (Isla Vista).
These men often have good jobs and good educations, and feel as though they should be successful with women. Why aren't they? By their telling, it's because people think they have small penises. According to my son, whose male friends are almost all East or South Asian, this is a persistent fear. I've also talked with Asian men, and seen them on incel forums, and the small dick anxiety is real. It probably creates a feedback loop, in which stereotypes about SDs create unattractive SDE. It sure doesn't help that Asian men are shorter than average in the U.S.
And Asian men are also angry about interracial dating because they think that white men steal their ladies. They think black dudes have it great, because they have a whole pool of women to choose from. After all, white guys rarely go after black women (that's one of the rarest interracial combos), and studies of dating sites have shown that black women are the least sought-after demographic. Asian women, by contrast, were found to be the most attractive -- while Asian men are often found to be the least sought-after group. So short black guys can find a lady; short Latino guys can find a lady; but Asian men are at the bottom.
To me, this suggests that red-pilling is less about economic or professional anxiety, and more about sexual or romantic anxiety.
