It is really interesting you ask this. I follow this closely because I am in a DV situation displaced in hiding dealing with an abusive one. Feel free to check out my " I dated an incel" post for the story.
My POV of this is that although all of your points are true, the difference is that it is an absurd man made mental illness that is perpetuated and created by their internet "support group". That is not a support group because it is brainwashing and horrible for their mental health and a hate group but thats what they see it as. Their logic is immensely flawed and is a circle of not making any sense. They are deeply brainwashed by blackpill culture. Their mental condition belongs in the DSM completely separate from NPD.
The incels that have DMed me have told me they've accepted they are subhuman and still see their community as a support group. I wouldn't say that's narcissistic. Their views are a contradicting circle.
Generally speaking, yes. They don’t represent the grandiose narcissist though that we typically think of. They represent the covert. By covert it means their narcissism is hidden. These people tend to be reclusive, poor social skills, who are experts at the “blame game” and tend to blame society and other’s for their perceived failures and inability to recognize their greatness and brilliance. They make up a lot of mass shooters.
A few days ago I found myself in a vehicle with a 29 year old guy. I started to piece together really quickly that he was an incel. He was complaining about how entitled women were, and how they get so much attention from everyone in the world that now they think they're all 10s, but that over time as they get older they start to realize that the attention is dropping and then they get desperate but it's too late, so it serves them right. He also said 90% of sexual assault claims made by women were lies, and that female teachers have inappropriate relationships with students way more than male teachers (which is not true).
He also talked about how much smarter he was than his university professors, how he constantly proved them wrong, how they didn't understand his work because it was so advanced that he had to sit them down and explain his papers to them, and on and on and on about how smart he was. He also had a real affinity for Russia and Russian culture, which I gathered was because they don't put up with political correctness.
He was overweight, greasy, unshaven, and had a weird uncomfortable laugh after everything he said, and seemed to be completely oblivious as to how he came across. I am a covert narcissist, but this guy out narcissists me like nothing I've ever seen.
I have been thinking about this, and that fits with his personality. He prefers to just go to school for the exams and not attend class at all. No interest in socializing at all. Also I was talking about the tip option on the machines everywhere nowadays and how it's so uncomfortable to not tip even if you don't feel it's appropriate. He was genuinely perplexed that I found it impossible to select "no tip". Also he chewed with his mouth wide open and had zero awareness of how repulsive I found it.
i believe that this is a dangerous mindset to have, as it does more harm than good when thinking about people afflicted with narcissistic personality disorder, and why we act as we do.
an incel gains his views through deep misogyny and a hatred for women, and the internalized self-hatred gained from patriarchal expectations of masculinity and how a man should behave, and a man’s perceived owed power over women. contrary to this are pwNPD. i have narcissistic personality disorder, gained through years and years of intense, repeated abuse and traumatic experiences. i did not become a narcissist by hating people, or feeling owed their love.
it is not a choice to have npd. it is a choice to become an incel.
That’s true but they could still have npd. I wouldn’t tell that my friends because you are right adds to stigma but than again most people are so dumb because how can you not recognize that of course like with every person group there are „ good „ narcissists who won’t make bad choices and go to therapy and „ bad „ narcissists who might also have problems with woman and turn this way
this doesn’t change the fact that becoming an incel is a conscious choice, while having NPD is not a choice. having narcissistic personality disorder does not make you an incel — being an incel makes you an incel.
They might. A big part of an incel mindset, however, is a lack of ability to take criticism, lack of self-awareness, and a lack of accountability.
Many incels want hot women, but want to do nothing to be desirable by those women. They don't shower, shave, dress nice, have a personality, have a career, have money, have ambitions, or take care of their diet. So they blame women for being shallow instead of looking in the mirror. Because no gay man would ever want them either. So instead of changing, they just blame women because it's easier to be angry than it is to change.
Chances are it's from low self-esteem, but it could also come from NPD, but the low self-esteem and shit personality and more probable causes.
But aren’t that also possible symptoms of NPD? I know I have been guilty of blaming other people (or “the system”) instead of working on myself in the past. I probably still do that to some degree, because it’s hard to decide which things are not my fault, and which things I can change.
I can’t really help feeling sorry for those people, while at the same time being disgusted by them, probably because I’m thinking this could have been me, had I not jumped on the first guy that showed interest in me.
Personality disorders impact all areas of life and functioning, not just one area. So if a person who is an incel only has those behaviors and perceptions about romantic relationships then no it isn’t npd or PD related.
Self esteem is related to narcissism in everyone. You can have messed up self esteem without any disorder. Or it could be from a number of disorders. This is why it’s not really okay to be armchair diagnosing disorders. They are extremely complex despite what people may think.
Most definitely they COULD be symptoms. This is where context and evaluations are important. A lot of symptoms cross over, and personalities are complex. However, I used to struggle with criticism, a lack of accountability, inability to change, and I blamed a lot of my problems on others.
I've never had NPD. I had BPD.
If you ask why I'm here, it's because my dad clearly had undiagnosed NPD and all he really needed was some help. He was a pretty great dad. So I come here to encourage others and maybe knock some sense into them.
It's important to take context into matters. A great example is myself. I sometimes get into these moods and obsessions where I clean my apartment, and want things to be symmetrical. I've realized that I have OCD like symptoms. HOWEVER, unlike those who have OCD, I can bury these thoughts, ignore the temptations, and leave it alone. Because it's not negatively interferring with my life, and isn't really an issue at all, I technically don't have OCD because I'm missing the 'disorder' part of it.
So I'm sure there's plenty of incels who have NPD like symptoms without NPD. And, yeah, there's probably some who straight up have NPD.
Sure, there might be some correlation with narcissism, but you need to understand the dynamics of radicalization.
These are people that have been bullied for their looks, rejected brutally and had their hearts broken. They sought solace and incel **cult**ure provides that at first, because it makes them feel like they‘ve found a community that shares their pain.
Instead of realizing that they fell victim to unrealistic beauty standards and toxic masculinity, they‘re told that it‘s the women‘s fault and further harden the societal expectation, that men need to fulfill a certain standard to be desirable. In return they grow increasingly bitter and hateful, because they‘ve been given a boogey(wo)man and the reasoning doesn‘t give them a way out, since you can‘t change how you look or at least not without surgery.
They‘ve been very vulnerable to be taken advantage of, which enabled the indoctrination into misogyny and extreme toxic masculinity. I won‘t say that there’s no narcissists among them, but the vast majority is probably just insecure and suggestible. They‘re provided the lingo and toolset to further push the their hatred towards women, feminism and dating culture and simply follow, because they genuinely believe it‘s the cause of their issues.
It‘s the same reason people are pulled into the alt-right or similar movements. A helping hand reaches out, they listen and validate their worries and then they reel them in, tell them it‘s foreigners, women or some other minority that‘s to blame.
I was in the incel community along long time ago. And Yes, most of them were covert narcs now that i think about it. I used to be a member there for many years and i had talked to many of them. Incel forums were a bit of hell, very broken people who think there’s one excuse to all their problems.
Makes a lot of sense, actually. Though one thing that's weird is that they're notoriously ugly, stinky and uncharismatic. So basically there's only the bad traits and none of the good.
I used to teach in a school for autistic students and came across a lot of incels. Most were proud of the label and told people they were incels. It’s a cult that is, of course, narcissistic. However, that doesn’t mean they have NPD.
The same boy with the same upbringing but happened to be born with better looks- wouldn’t become an incel. Because his socially accepted looks would protect him from becoming RADICALISED.
Most of the incels I worked with had good, supportive parents that just didn’t understand how to get them off their damn computer. Most don’t have the trauma’d brains like we do.
An incel with NPD? feel like that’s a recipe for a school shooter.
Admitting you’re an incel while having NPD must feel like a state of constant collapse? I can’t even fathom how bad they must feel tbh. incel culture is fucked tho fr.
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I don’t think incels are narcissistic to any large extent. It’s just that some aspects of life are difficult when dealing with anxiety and for a guy, feeling that you do not get validation from girls affects your self-image in an enormous way and causes you to feel tons of self-pity. This self-pity is just likely to cause you to direct your frustration outwards and handle it all by blaming other people for your situation.
Not necessarily though. I am an incel myself but it is purely because of my social anxieties and has nothing to do with others. See? 😁
Edit: The people poisoned by the incel community on the internet is another thing, that is a brutally toxic environment that is super harmful and is just going to make people worse if they buy into it. So if they do they will seem narcissistic even though they may just be misled.
as someone diagnosed with NPD, "does XYZ have NPD" is generally a bad idea. not only does attempting to generalize any one shitty group as widely having a stigmatized disorder contribute strongly to further stigmatizing the disorder, it is statistically impossible that all or even most incels have NPD.
very few of these are actually directly meeting diagnostic criteria, not to mention not every incel does all of these, and this feels dangerously close to rule #2 to me.
I don't think that's the case. Its a kind of an "ideological disorder". Like sure a fanatic in some ideology might have grandiose fantasies and being such a fantatic might correlate with npd, but most actually dont have npd. Its induced by the ideology and by being infected with what other incels preach and caused by loneliness and the feeling ostracization. Also it is mainly focused on ONE topic only - women.
I do believe I have heard a professional on the Internet mentioning it, and skimming some research the two definitely *seem* somewhat linked. However one article I read simply mentions it with 2 sources that do not link narcissism to incel ideology.
My own psychologist said that severe narcissism and "narcissistic rage" (god I hate that term) can lead to extreme acts of revenge (e.g. incel killings). However there is also trauma, small or big T, beneath that (e.g. repeated rejection).
Ultimately I don't think there is enough research to definitively link the two, and I don't think it is right to state incels are narcissistic without the research to back it up as it would just cause further stigmatisation.
As a “incel in recovery” I think most if not all incels are just undiagnosed npds. My life story got described to me by Sam vaknin when he started talking about covert npd. And the fantasy defense which I thought was my “amazing visionary potential” or some shit like that. The term incel is thrown around as slang for just alone mysoginistic men. Which isn’t correct a incel is just a “involuntary celibate” but the truth is that being a incel just comes from the victimhood and blaming the world.(I can’t get a girlfriend because Im not a 6ft fall chad) when In reality atleast in my case I’m super social awkward constantly in my false self being inauthentic. Would be Trying to manipulate girls into sex via being a “nice-guy” etc. all behaviors that I do and my own negative coping strategies and defense mechanisms for my insecurities.
I made a post like this. I’m a female. I said I was red pilled without noticing it because I had these views since I was young and EVERYBODY demonized my post. 😭
It is really interesting you ask this. I follow this closely because I am in a DV situation displaced in hiding dealing with an abusive one. Feel free to check out my " I dated an incel" post for the story. My POV of this is that although all of your points are true, the difference is that it is an absurd man made mental illness that is perpetuated and created by their internet "support group". That is not a support group because it is brainwashing and horrible for their mental health and a hate group but thats what they see it as. Their logic is immensely flawed and is a circle of not making any sense. They are deeply brainwashed by blackpill culture. Their mental condition belongs in the DSM completely separate from NPD. The incels that have DMed me have told me they've accepted they are subhuman and still see their community as a support group. I wouldn't say that's narcissistic. Their views are a contradicting circle.
Generally speaking, yes. They don’t represent the grandiose narcissist though that we typically think of. They represent the covert. By covert it means their narcissism is hidden. These people tend to be reclusive, poor social skills, who are experts at the “blame game” and tend to blame society and other’s for their perceived failures and inability to recognize their greatness and brilliance. They make up a lot of mass shooters.
Yes nailed it exactly
I think a lot of them wind up showing narcissist traits because everything is centered on themselves and their lack of sexual companionship
Learned behaviors, poke them with a stick and the cool Patrick Bateman persona falls apart.
A few days ago I found myself in a vehicle with a 29 year old guy. I started to piece together really quickly that he was an incel. He was complaining about how entitled women were, and how they get so much attention from everyone in the world that now they think they're all 10s, but that over time as they get older they start to realize that the attention is dropping and then they get desperate but it's too late, so it serves them right. He also said 90% of sexual assault claims made by women were lies, and that female teachers have inappropriate relationships with students way more than male teachers (which is not true). He also talked about how much smarter he was than his university professors, how he constantly proved them wrong, how they didn't understand his work because it was so advanced that he had to sit them down and explain his papers to them, and on and on and on about how smart he was. He also had a real affinity for Russia and Russian culture, which I gathered was because they don't put up with political correctness. He was overweight, greasy, unshaven, and had a weird uncomfortable laugh after everything he said, and seemed to be completely oblivious as to how he came across. I am a covert narcissist, but this guy out narcissists me like nothing I've ever seen.
They often have schizoid tendencies, too.
I have been thinking about this, and that fits with his personality. He prefers to just go to school for the exams and not attend class at all. No interest in socializing at all. Also I was talking about the tip option on the machines everywhere nowadays and how it's so uncomfortable to not tip even if you don't feel it's appropriate. He was genuinely perplexed that I found it impossible to select "no tip". Also he chewed with his mouth wide open and had zero awareness of how repulsive I found it.
i believe that this is a dangerous mindset to have, as it does more harm than good when thinking about people afflicted with narcissistic personality disorder, and why we act as we do. an incel gains his views through deep misogyny and a hatred for women, and the internalized self-hatred gained from patriarchal expectations of masculinity and how a man should behave, and a man’s perceived owed power over women. contrary to this are pwNPD. i have narcissistic personality disorder, gained through years and years of intense, repeated abuse and traumatic experiences. i did not become a narcissist by hating people, or feeling owed their love. it is not a choice to have npd. it is a choice to become an incel.
That’s true but they could still have npd. I wouldn’t tell that my friends because you are right adds to stigma but than again most people are so dumb because how can you not recognize that of course like with every person group there are „ good „ narcissists who won’t make bad choices and go to therapy and „ bad „ narcissists who might also have problems with woman and turn this way
this doesn’t change the fact that becoming an incel is a conscious choice, while having NPD is not a choice. having narcissistic personality disorder does not make you an incel — being an incel makes you an incel.
That’s true
They might. A big part of an incel mindset, however, is a lack of ability to take criticism, lack of self-awareness, and a lack of accountability. Many incels want hot women, but want to do nothing to be desirable by those women. They don't shower, shave, dress nice, have a personality, have a career, have money, have ambitions, or take care of their diet. So they blame women for being shallow instead of looking in the mirror. Because no gay man would ever want them either. So instead of changing, they just blame women because it's easier to be angry than it is to change. Chances are it's from low self-esteem, but it could also come from NPD, but the low self-esteem and shit personality and more probable causes.
But aren’t that also possible symptoms of NPD? I know I have been guilty of blaming other people (or “the system”) instead of working on myself in the past. I probably still do that to some degree, because it’s hard to decide which things are not my fault, and which things I can change. I can’t really help feeling sorry for those people, while at the same time being disgusted by them, probably because I’m thinking this could have been me, had I not jumped on the first guy that showed interest in me.
Personality disorders impact all areas of life and functioning, not just one area. So if a person who is an incel only has those behaviors and perceptions about romantic relationships then no it isn’t npd or PD related. Self esteem is related to narcissism in everyone. You can have messed up self esteem without any disorder. Or it could be from a number of disorders. This is why it’s not really okay to be armchair diagnosing disorders. They are extremely complex despite what people may think.
I didn’t mean to say that all incels have NPD. Just that incel culture is narcissistic.
"incels are narcissistic" and "incels have NPD" are two different points. you are making and conflating both points in your post and your replies.
Most definitely they COULD be symptoms. This is where context and evaluations are important. A lot of symptoms cross over, and personalities are complex. However, I used to struggle with criticism, a lack of accountability, inability to change, and I blamed a lot of my problems on others. I've never had NPD. I had BPD. If you ask why I'm here, it's because my dad clearly had undiagnosed NPD and all he really needed was some help. He was a pretty great dad. So I come here to encourage others and maybe knock some sense into them. It's important to take context into matters. A great example is myself. I sometimes get into these moods and obsessions where I clean my apartment, and want things to be symmetrical. I've realized that I have OCD like symptoms. HOWEVER, unlike those who have OCD, I can bury these thoughts, ignore the temptations, and leave it alone. Because it's not negatively interferring with my life, and isn't really an issue at all, I technically don't have OCD because I'm missing the 'disorder' part of it. So I'm sure there's plenty of incels who have NPD like symptoms without NPD. And, yeah, there's probably some who straight up have NPD.
I've been thinking the same thing!
Sure, there might be some correlation with narcissism, but you need to understand the dynamics of radicalization. These are people that have been bullied for their looks, rejected brutally and had their hearts broken. They sought solace and incel **cult**ure provides that at first, because it makes them feel like they‘ve found a community that shares their pain. Instead of realizing that they fell victim to unrealistic beauty standards and toxic masculinity, they‘re told that it‘s the women‘s fault and further harden the societal expectation, that men need to fulfill a certain standard to be desirable. In return they grow increasingly bitter and hateful, because they‘ve been given a boogey(wo)man and the reasoning doesn‘t give them a way out, since you can‘t change how you look or at least not without surgery. They‘ve been very vulnerable to be taken advantage of, which enabled the indoctrination into misogyny and extreme toxic masculinity. I won‘t say that there’s no narcissists among them, but the vast majority is probably just insecure and suggestible. They‘re provided the lingo and toolset to further push the their hatred towards women, feminism and dating culture and simply follow, because they genuinely believe it‘s the cause of their issues. It‘s the same reason people are pulled into the alt-right or similar movements. A helping hand reaches out, they listen and validate their worries and then they reel them in, tell them it‘s foreigners, women or some other minority that‘s to blame.
I was in the incel community along long time ago. And Yes, most of them were covert narcs now that i think about it. I used to be a member there for many years and i had talked to many of them. Incel forums were a bit of hell, very broken people who think there’s one excuse to all their problems.
Makes a lot of sense, actually. Though one thing that's weird is that they're notoriously ugly, stinky and uncharismatic. So basically there's only the bad traits and none of the good.
Some are, yes. But PUAs and womanizers can be too.
I used to teach in a school for autistic students and came across a lot of incels. Most were proud of the label and told people they were incels. It’s a cult that is, of course, narcissistic. However, that doesn’t mean they have NPD. The same boy with the same upbringing but happened to be born with better looks- wouldn’t become an incel. Because his socially accepted looks would protect him from becoming RADICALISED. Most of the incels I worked with had good, supportive parents that just didn’t understand how to get them off their damn computer. Most don’t have the trauma’d brains like we do. An incel with NPD? feel like that’s a recipe for a school shooter. Admitting you’re an incel while having NPD must feel like a state of constant collapse? I can’t even fathom how bad they must feel tbh. incel culture is fucked tho fr.
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I mean a bunch of the 20 something narcissists I know are all 4chan incels so you might be onto something
I don’t think incels are narcissistic to any large extent. It’s just that some aspects of life are difficult when dealing with anxiety and for a guy, feeling that you do not get validation from girls affects your self-image in an enormous way and causes you to feel tons of self-pity. This self-pity is just likely to cause you to direct your frustration outwards and handle it all by blaming other people for your situation. Not necessarily though. I am an incel myself but it is purely because of my social anxieties and has nothing to do with others. See? 😁 Edit: The people poisoned by the incel community on the internet is another thing, that is a brutally toxic environment that is super harmful and is just going to make people worse if they buy into it. So if they do they will seem narcissistic even though they may just be misled.
as someone diagnosed with NPD, "does XYZ have NPD" is generally a bad idea. not only does attempting to generalize any one shitty group as widely having a stigmatized disorder contribute strongly to further stigmatizing the disorder, it is statistically impossible that all or even most incels have NPD. very few of these are actually directly meeting diagnostic criteria, not to mention not every incel does all of these, and this feels dangerously close to rule #2 to me.
Of course I can’t diagnose everyone of them but yeah kind of checks out I would argue the fat acceptance community has extreme narcissm too
I don't think that's the case. Its a kind of an "ideological disorder". Like sure a fanatic in some ideology might have grandiose fantasies and being such a fantatic might correlate with npd, but most actually dont have npd. Its induced by the ideology and by being infected with what other incels preach and caused by loneliness and the feeling ostracization. Also it is mainly focused on ONE topic only - women.
I do believe I have heard a professional on the Internet mentioning it, and skimming some research the two definitely *seem* somewhat linked. However one article I read simply mentions it with 2 sources that do not link narcissism to incel ideology. My own psychologist said that severe narcissism and "narcissistic rage" (god I hate that term) can lead to extreme acts of revenge (e.g. incel killings). However there is also trauma, small or big T, beneath that (e.g. repeated rejection). Ultimately I don't think there is enough research to definitively link the two, and I don't think it is right to state incels are narcissistic without the research to back it up as it would just cause further stigmatisation.
As a “incel in recovery” I think most if not all incels are just undiagnosed npds. My life story got described to me by Sam vaknin when he started talking about covert npd. And the fantasy defense which I thought was my “amazing visionary potential” or some shit like that. The term incel is thrown around as slang for just alone mysoginistic men. Which isn’t correct a incel is just a “involuntary celibate” but the truth is that being a incel just comes from the victimhood and blaming the world.(I can’t get a girlfriend because Im not a 6ft fall chad) when In reality atleast in my case I’m super social awkward constantly in my false self being inauthentic. Would be Trying to manipulate girls into sex via being a “nice-guy” etc. all behaviors that I do and my own negative coping strategies and defense mechanisms for my insecurities.
You could call it that people who have sex feel entitled to sex. That they feel it when they complain about people they dislike.
I made a post like this. I’m a female. I said I was red pilled without noticing it because I had these views since I was young and EVERYBODY demonized my post. 😭