The Original INCEL
From Edgar Allen Poe all the way to Netflix's Adolescent: Same circus, but this time the clowns have claws
A couple of days ago, the Gotham Awards announced their breakout television series: Adolescence. It’s a four-part limited series on Netflix written by Stephen Graham (Snatch, This is England) and Jack Thorne (Wonder, The Aeronauts). Graham also plays the father to the adolescent in question. The show centers around a 13-year-old boy accused of murdering a female classmate. Each of the four episodes are single shot masterpieces that rotate between the various characters (family, detectives, psychologists, and so on). Full disclosure, I’m about to sit down and watch episode four. So, don’t worry, NO SPOILERS below.
For the past year, I’ve been working on a script idea concerning the concept of INCELs, which stands for INvoluntary CELibate for those who recently got an internet connection. It’s an online community of men who consider themselves to be so unattractive that women will never have anything to do with them. The movement hit the media spotlight in 2014 with the Isle Vista mass murder where Elliot Rodger murdered 6 people and injured 14 others. Before doing so he released his manifesto, a document that reeks of mental degradation, self-aggrandizement, and privilege fueled by a toxic internet culture. It seems Instagram isn’t only negative for young women.
Adolescence is a study in the recent iteration of the Incel issue, now fueled by an even more toxic community, the Manosphere. It’s a pro-masculine, anti-feminism (read anti-female) movement propped up by the likes of weak men like Andrew Tate, Myron Gains, and “thinkers” like Jordan Peterson. No links are provided here, but I highly suggest, if you have a son, you take a look at their search history. YouTube’s algorithm, in particular, seems to be built for pushing this poison.
My research into this subject started partly as an exercise in character and world-building for the piece of fiction I was writing. However, it’s taken me back to some of my early moments as a youth, thankfully in the years when the internet was primarily in its nascent stages and thought more of as a novelty by most, and a tool by a rare few.
As an adolescent, I bought a copy of The Unabridged Edgar Allen Poe. Poe, a romantic in an age of industrialization and transcendentalism, was worried about being shunned by his peers and ignored by women. His first published piece was credited as, “By a Bostonian.” He wrote poems about his plight as a young man attempting to find love. He felt so shunned by the opposite sex he married his 13-year-old cousin at the age of 27. Thankfully, laws have mostly caught up, but if you’ve been following the recent stories around Andrew Tate, it sounds like a similar song with a different tune.
Here’s an excerpt from Alone.
ALONE
From childhood’s hour I have not been
As others were—I have not seen
As others saw—I could not bring
My passions from a common spring—
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow—I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone—
And all I lov’d—I lov’d alone—
Poe was 19 or 20 when he wrote that. Now an excerpt from The Happiest Day.
THE HAPPIEST DAY
The smile of love—soft friendship’s charm—
Bright hope itself has fled at last,
’Twill ne’er again my bosom warm—
Tis ever past,
From the mind of an 18-year-old boy. Doesn’t he sound happy /s? You can trace this line through Poe’s work, not just his earlier pieces. For Annie, one of his last poems published in 1849, six months before his death, is about his unrequited love for a married woman. Here’s an excerpt:
FOR ANNIE
The sickness—the nausea—
The pitiless pain—
Have ceased, with the fever
That maddened my brain—
With the fever called “Living”
That burned in my brain.The moaning and groaning,
The sighing and sobbing,
Are quieted now; with
Horrible throbbing
At heart:—O, that horrible,
Horrible throbbing!And ah! of all tortures
That torture the worst
Has abated—the terrible
Torture of thirst
For the naphthaline river
Of Glory accurst:—
I have drank of a water
That quenches all thirst:—
I ate this stuff up as a young man, but it was delivered to me through the lens of horror. The first novel I read of my own volition was Stephen King’s Misery. I kept it hidden under my bed at the age of thirteen, afraid my parents would find it. King introduced me to Poe. Then, in my freshmen year of high school, I had the most amazing English teacher who read The Bells aloud in class. It was a full-throated, guttural, screaming affair. That afternoon I went downtown and bought my copy of Poe’s work. I still have it on my bookshelf.
Now, a parent of two (boy and girl), working through this recent iteration of male self-loathing dressed up in tight gym shorts, beards, expensive watches, and fast cars, I can’t help but see that we all go through periods of self-doubt, gender and sexual identity aside. The difference now is the influence, the message, the platform. What was once seen as abhorrent has become celebrated. What was once considered excess has become the goal.
We can change it, but it will take a recognition of what we have allowed our society to become. We have to shed light on those that are trying to influence this next generation. They are the same snake oil salesmen of old, but now they have blue check marks.
Good luck out there…
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a little extra …
If you’re looking for a balm to the these toxic messages, I’d suggest a deep dive into Scott Galloway. He’s leaning hard into positive messaging for young men. Here’s a recent cut where he eviscerates Elon Musk and those who idolize this type of behavior.