Review - INCEL
Indie '25 - Lap Nine
The first thing you have to understand about evolution is that it doesn’t give a fuck about you.
~ INCEL, Pg 6
Here I am, coming at you again with my ninth Indie '25 read. This time I sampled the bleak satire of ARX-Han’s novel INCEL, which was frankly unlike any novel I have ever read before.
Let’s jump down the shame-spiral and see what it stirs, yes?
INCEL follows the thoroughly depressed twenty-two year old ‘anon’ as he chases down the goal of losing his virginity before his next birthday. Failing to do so will result in his own suicide, which he has all planned out already; he’ll simply pick a fight with the biggest, baddest dude he can find and get himself killed.
A first year grad student in evolutionary psychology, anon’s nihilistic perspective on the world hinders him at every turn as he’s come to believe that human mating rituals boil down to ruthless Darwinism wherein all males are in constant competition for access to females, and losers (like him) get the short end of the stick. Not without hope though, he has convinced himself that he has discovered a life hack in regards to human mating behaviours that will allow him to achieve his goal of having sex with a woman.
However, as his self-imposed deadline crawls closer, his goal becomes an all-consuming obsession that sends anon into a tailspin that accomplishes nothing but the further destabilization, deepening the cracks in his already fracture psyche.
On the whole, I feel a bit mixed about INCEL after finishing it. On the one hand, the style and prose are a masterwork that are beautifully written and articulated. It’s definitively different and unique from other fiction on the market, unabashedly itself in a sea of pandering fiction that toes the line as though it’s afraid to offend anyone. On the other hand, the majority of this book confronts uncomfortable topics from the POV of a deeply troubled individual. The character anon presents himself to the world as the average white American male, but lurking under the surface of his everyday appearance is the sort of twisted ideologies that have corrupted the minds of countless young men who are chronically online. Themes of suicide, depression, racism, misogyny, violence, and sexism that one might typically find in a siliceous forum in a dingy corner of the internet do not necessarily make for a sympathetic main character, but I don’t think we were precisely meant to sympathize with anon. He’s the sort of person who really only inspires pity, even if that pity is spiced with contempt.
The term incel (if you haven’t been on the internet in the last decade and somehow don’t know) is short for involuntary celibate. Usually referring to a man, the term brings to mind the image of a certain sort of person that most of us have undoubtedly come across in our travels. They struggle with romantic or sexual relationships, usually placing the blame of such things on things that are outside their control. Ranging from timidly repugnant to deranged and dangerous, incels are largely incapable of meaningful introspection; unable to cope with rejection, they find community in online forums with other incels, where they all feed the cyclical beast of loneliness, rage, and misanthropy. Usually this includes the perpetuating of harmful stereotypes or making general threats towards those they see as their oppressors (mainly, the women who want nothing to do with them, but also the men who are able to have functional relationships with said women). Stubborn, sulky, hostile, and generally nihilistic, they’re their own worst enemies in the dream to not be involuntarily celibate.
And anon fits right it.
Undoubtedly intelligent, yet a severe overthinker and ruthlessly self-critical, anon leads us through his day-to-day as he tries to conquer the goal of having penetrative sex with a woman. At twenty-two, he has the statistics handy for how many men his age are still virgins and all the sexual frustration to go along with them. Though, “sexual frustration” might be a bit of an understatement. At the time we meet him, anon has a veritable heap of rejections under his belt from the tried and true methods of connecting with a member of the fairer sex, and as a graduate student of evolutionary psychology he is preparing a model based off of human mating rituals, planning to use a more algorithmic approach to creating the fabled beast with two backs.
There are a slew of topics related to the complexities of the human psyche explored in INCEL; the academic ramblings can be a bit cumbersome and overbearing at times in terms of pacing, even to the point of feeling regurgitated, but they offer some interesting insights nonetheless that are obviously heavily influence by someone who spends too much a lot of time on internet forums like Reddit or 4chan. That said, it is anon’s attempts to apply his systematic algorithm that will result in sexual encounters in the real world instead of just keeping it in his own mind that is the star of the show. The results are fairly definitive, but the trials are where a lot of the awkward humour of INCEL comes from. anon learns quickly that there are too many variables in real life that his model can’t account for—Most of which are his own personality defects that make themselves well known through the veneer of whatever mask he dons for whichever girl he is currently chatting up. And what’s worse is he doesn’t fully understand why his academic approach isn’t working, nor does he understand why he doesn’t understand. This existentialism makes the humour short-lived as each subsequent rejection sends anon spiraling with the tides of shame and humiliation that remind us that this troubled young man is a suicidal ticking time bomb. Simultaneously, each failure only bolsters and reinforces his problematic internal rhetoric, which in turn leads to move failures. It’s a vicious cycle and not completely unrelatable.
Hope does not die in a single day—it’s something life flays from you a little bit at a time.
~ INCEL, Pg. 25
The other side of this is that the use of an algorithm to try and initiate a sexual encounter with something, changing small bits about one’s self to try and appear more appealing is so creepy, having a definite predatory edge as he premeditates interactions with different types of woman. Saying this and projecting that while talking to a sporty girl, acting like this or reining in that while interacting with a goth chick. It all feels so clinical and false, which is part of the reason why anon comes off as a bit of a blank slate as he shifts through different faces on his mission. If it weren’t for the access to his internal monologue, we might have no idea about the things that make a person like this tick. However, through the internal monologue one can see where his troubles stem from, even if anon himself cannot. The undeniable pornography addiction, a lack of closure from his previous failed relationship with his briefly mentioned ex-girlfriend Elizabeth, the trauma he’s suffered at the hands of bullies in adolescence, the toxic friendship he maintains with the equally (if not more) damaged Jason… anon engages in coping mechanisms instead of facing his demons and it all keeps him stuck in the loop.
In life, whatever hurts most is what stays with you the longest.
~ INCEL, Pg. 114
In fact, the only semi-healthy relationship that anon has is with his older sister Rachel, who is the only one to call him out on his behaviour, which goes as well as you might expect it to. These brief glimpses of who he truly is are somewhat heartbreaking; at his core, anon is just a sad, scared little boy who never healed and chose to carry his issues with him into adulthood. Does this excuse his behaviour? Of course not. But it does make him something more akin to an authentic person, and if he had just been a more genuine person to begin with he would probably have better luck with relationships than he has up until now.
At the end of the day, nobody wants to stare directly into the void, people will believe whatever it is that makes them feel good.
~ INCEL, Pg. 241
Overall, would I recommend INCEL? I think so, but it would have to be to the right person. It’s viscerally unapologetic as a deconstruction of radicalized individuals, overtly offensive as it needs to be to get the message across, but in a politically charged world I don’t know if everyone would be able to see past the increasingly unpleasant layers to get to the bitter, gooey center of INCEL. In any case, I don’t regret reading it; in fact I think it’s a noteworthy piece of fiction that stares into the abyss of modern masculinity in both a mocking sense and in a way that is somewhat profound. I realize that is somewhat polarizing and doesn’t actually offer any true recommendation or condemnation, so I guess you’ll just have to grab a copy and figure it out for yourself.
This one was a pretty heavy read and I might need to pick up something more lighthearted next… Any suggestions? Walk on down to the basement and fire them to me. Or just come to chat about the post as this book was worth chatting about.
Otherwise, thanks for reading my ninth indie review of the year and we’ll see you back here when I hit double digits!
Cheers!
I appreciate the effort you put into this review - glad you connected with the novel!
Hmmm -- I recommended it back when you first asked for suggestions -- but *The Princess Seeks Her Fortune* is indeed more light-hearted.