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Pentagon Adopts Incel-Speak

theguardian.com

47 points by zabzonk 15 days ago · 36 comments

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4cant 15 days ago

FT: [Workers are 'friction-maxxing' to resist AI](https://www.ft.com/content/fd5e65df-83c7-42f3-9658-377c99df4...)

Economist: [Should You Be Fibremaxxing?](https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2026/02/20/...)

Bloomberg: [Fibermaxxing Is a Diet Trend Even Nutritionists Can Love](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-02-11/high-fibe...)

The Incels have took over all media last month!

dwroberts 15 days ago

They are using this style of speech, because it serves their aims of recruiting young people to go fight and die in stupid conflicts like this

YZF 15 days ago

TIL: “involuntarily celibate”

I've heard the word incel used all over but didn't know where it came from. I did have some idea of what it meant ofcourse.

People are so divided into these echo chambers they make up their own languages. Soon the different groups won't even be able to communicate with each other.

  • jl6 15 days ago

    Self-sorting into echo chambers has definitely already happened and discourse is definitely already hampered by lack of consensus on what words mean.

  • actionfromafar 15 days ago

    I think that's the case already. Did you know Trump is the imperfect vessel of God?

    That means everything, no matter what happens, is fine. Because if Trump is found to be ever-more imperfect, it's OK. Because vessel of God part.

jl6 15 days ago

> “You’re hitting yourself in the face with a hammer. That feels very manly. It’s very strong,” Walker says.

Is this an actual thing that kids do or just a moral panic because some loon did it once for clicks?

assbuttbuttass 15 days ago

The incels have grown up and now work at the Pentagon

rasur 15 days ago

It's annoying that they class themselves as "Involuntary" Celibates, because as far as I can tell the "in" part of "Involuntary" is doing a lot of heavy lifting.

Volcels is way more accurate.

  • jfengel 13 days ago

    Yes, that.

    They are convinced that women are terrible people who deny them sex for no reason. Not surprisingly, women don't want to have sex with men who hate them.

    Breaking out of that loop is nigh-on impossible. It's hard to mask that belief, so even if they try, women get a bad feeling about them. They don't feel safe, and women are extremely vulnerable during sex; women don't have sex when there's any chance you might hurt them.

    Once they've hooked up with other incels, they spend their time goading each other into higher levels of hatred for women, making it even harder for them to find a woman who will demonstrate what actual human women are like.

    It is both simple and incredibly difficult to just accept that women are people. If you can do that -- or even fake it -- you can find out how to actually enjoy women as people, and not just the guardians of sex.

simianwords 15 days ago

I believe incels and looksmaxxing are different with some overlap so I don't know why guardian is conflating the two of them.

But I think there's a lot of truth in what these two communities say. The reason their slang catches on is because they attach to words what people subconsciously believe anyway.

  • postflopclarity 15 days ago

    "what people subconciously believe" != "lot of truth"

    the State should not be boosting the rhetoric of what mostly amounts to a bunch of hateful losers blaming their problems on women.

    • simianwords 15 days ago

      whats hateful about looksmaxxing?

      • postflopclarity 15 days ago

        is this bad-faith naivete ?

        obviously, in isolation, there is nothing hateful about wanting to improve your appearance. but if you spend any time at all on these forums in which "looksmaxxing" discussions tend to occur, the hatred towards women (and other groups) is profuse and apparent.

      • stvltvs 15 days ago

        The culture surrounding it is all very cynical about women. It's also dripping with self hatred.

        • simianwords 15 days ago

          sure but i don't think its so bad that the government should refuse to use their slang.

          they also promote agency and self improvement as a community.

      • dwroberts 15 days ago

        There is a lot of physiognomy/phrenology nonsense loaded into these beliefs, which ties back to other (loaded/potentially hate-linked) pseudoscience like eugenics

        • simianwords 15 days ago

          its literally the opposite of eugenics because looksmaxxing is about self improvment and agency. eugenics is about genetics.

          • sigmar 15 days ago

            "It's about bad genetics... That's why people in Indian aren't considered the best aesthetically.. These arranged marriages aren't allowing the best genes to prevail" - clavicular[1]

            I'm not sure why you'd go out on a limb to defend the guy singing songs glorifying hitler. But you do you

            [1] https://x.com/WyronGaines/status/1995013476289245573?s=20

          • dwroberts 15 days ago

            They talk about things being down to 'bad genes' all the time. I don't think you're discussing this in good faith you're just sealion'ing

            • simianwords 15 days ago

              Why would a forum whose main purpose is self improvement and “max” ones looks, say that things come down to genes? If it were about genes, why wouldn’t they just accept it and crib about it instead of trying to get better at it?

              You have absolutely no idea what this movement is about.

      • DiabloD3 15 days ago

        Looksmaxxing is a known alt-right dog-whistle.

        The alt-right is obsessed with form over function combined with a grossly outdated view of masculinity circa the 1940s. Alt-right media focuses on disenfranchising younger men by convincing them vanity, narcissism, and by proximity, racism and sexism, is desirable. They are also into outdated, inherently Nazi, concepts like phrenology and physiognomy, and sometimes just openly discuss eugenics and participate in it (see Elon Musk, et al).

        Looksmaxxing is, essentially, about becoming a shitty person. You work on yourself, become better looking, but find that even less people want you around because of how you decided to curate your life and your personality... and instead of leaving this cult, they blame everyone else and become weaponized incels, who commit acts of violence to get even with the society that rejected them.

        The guy who shot Charlie Kirk was deep into this cult, for example; he followed prominent hatemongers and alt-right influencers, attempted to participate in looksmaxxing, and also posted racist and sexist things, parroting the things he heard from the influencers.

      • actionfromafar 15 days ago

        Self-hate?

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