A Review of @former-incel blog
@former-incel is a blog run by a 36 year old autistic white man who calls himself a “former incel”, someone who was an incel in his youth but stopped being one at some point. He claims that the existence of the blog has multiple purposes, firstly, to explain to current incels where they are going wrong, and secondly, to help parents and friends prevent young people from becoming incels. The author of the blog aims to achieve that through stressing the importance of accuracy as the central virtue regarding personal, social, interactions. From his perspective, this includes accurately understanding social cues, accurate assessment of personal qualities, and accurate understanding of social causes.
Despite these seemingly constructive elements, it is my assessment that a close examination reveals intrinsic qualities to the contents exposed that undermine its potential practical utility in regards to the stated goals of the blog. To demonstrate this, I undertook the efforts to analyze the vast majority of the blog entries, particularly, from his first post ever in May 15 to the last one from that year in December 31, categorizing his multiple uses of the term “incel” and assessing the employment of fallacies across his posting history.
The term “incel” is a contraction of the words “involuntary” and “celibate”, its original usage was coined to connote individuals who experience an inability to form social connections that lead to sexual encounters, but since then, numerous politically charged definitions have come to be, frequently used by different parties with varied purposes. Some that describe, for instance, individuals that identify themselves not only as incels but as members of a specific political movement with extremist characteristics, because of this, among people that are not deeply familiarized with the subculture, the usage of the neologism might be potentially too broad, vague, or incorrect.
The blogger’s personal history as a self‑described incel during his teenage years that shapes every aspect of his writing. He is explicit about his autism, his age, and his political leanings, which that could be inferred to be left‑wing with anarchist sympathies, he is also quite vocal about his life experiences of abuse and neglect across his interactions with his social circle and family, something that he attributes contributed to his life as an incel. His stated intention is to offer guidance born of lived experience, yet the blog consistently fails to distinguish between autobiographical testimony and universally applicable advice. The result is a body of work that presents highly specific conclusions about a complex social phenomenon, involuntary celibacy, without adequate justification, without engagement with countervailing evidence, and without the epistemic humility that genuine accuracy would require.
The blogger uses the term “incel” to refer to at least five distinct categories: people who adhere to a misogynistic internet subculture; people who adhere to an incel subculture more broadly; right‑wingers; autistic or socially awkward men who have trouble communicating; and people victimized by parents or authority figures in childhood. He never justifies why he prefers these politically loaded definitions over the literal meaning of “involuntary celibate,” which simply describes a condition of wanting but being unable to find a sexual partner, regardless of ideology or internet usage. A man who has never used the internet could be described as involuntarily celibate if he has never been able to find a partner despite wanting to, yet the blogger never acknowledges this fact. This definitional fluidity allows him to slide between sympathetic and condemnatory framings without accountability, making his guidance untargeted. It remains unclear whether he is addressing misogynists, autistic men in need of social coaching, or lonely people in need of practical dating advice, he jumps from definition to definition, often using multiple on the same post.
Over the course of the 155 posts of that have been revised, the term “Incel” is used as a proxy to refer to men with autistic or socially awkward characteristics in 80 (52%) of them, while only in 60 (39%) posts it can be understood he refers to men experiencing actual involuntary celibacy. In the same sample, 48 (31%) post contain usage of the term to refer to men that participate in internet subcultures focused around misogyny, in 39 (25%) posts he uses the term to somehow refer to people that have been victimized by authority figures such as adults, teachers or parents in their infancy, this is a weird fixation of his that only in some tangential way could relate to the concept of being an incel, while in around 14 (9%) posts he uses “incel” as to literally mean right-winger.
On the topic of fallacies, bulverism permeates the blog. The blogger routinely assumes his conclusions are correct and then explains why those who disagree are wrong, without ever demonstrating why his own perspective is right. His stated mission is to explain where incels go wrong, but he never establishes the standard by which “wrong” is measured beyond his own intuitions and personal history. The closest he comes to a principle is “accuracy,” yet he never defines what makes an interpretation accurate, nor does he provide a methodology for verification. He advises incels to treat their theories like scientific hypotheses, but he does not apply this standard to himself. There are no falsifiable predictions or acknowledgment that his sample size is literally one person. The degree to which he commits this fallacy suggests he is not genuinely concerned with proving himself right, despite his stated intentions. Examples of such a fallacy can be found in around 87 of the 155 posts assessed, which is around 56% of the total sample.
A pronounced left‑wing bias shapes the entire project. The blogger explicitly conflates being a “good person” with opposing Trump, fascism, and authoritarianism. He argues that incels deserve nuanced understanding and chances to change because they may have fallen for harmful propaganda, yet he declares that Trump supporters have had enough chances and should be condemned to a life of ostracism. This double standard is never addressed. Common sense dictates that voting for a particular candidate or holding a political stance does not allow one to make conclusions about moral character, yet the blogger disagrees to a terminal degree. Furthermore, he ignores the existence of self-identified incels who hold left‑wing political views, as well as research finding left leaning majorities in certain incel forums. By treating the incel problem as inherently right coded, he reveals that his project is less about understanding involuntary celibacy and more about sorting people into political tribes. Examples of such a bias occur across 63 of the 155 posts analyzed, 41% of the 100%.
The blogger consistently engages in bad faith. Most of his interaction with incel ideas comes through screenshots from r/IncelTears, an anti incel subreddit dedicated to mockery and engagement farming, rather than through direct dialogue, steelmanned versions of opposing arguments, empirical data, or engagement with incels who might push back on his interpretations. The few askbox exchanges visible on the blog show him explaining his position rather than testing it against meaningful criticism. He is not receptive to alternative interpretations, corrections, or active pushback. This approach undermines his stated mission, it is common sense that if one genuinely wants to help people understand where they are going wrong, one must engage with the strongest versions of their arguments. Instead, the blogger selects the most extreme and easily dismissed examples, refutes those, and treats the matter as settled. This is the second most common objectionable behavior across the blog, with 107 instances that across the total of 155 posts fall under such description from my perspective, that is around 69% of the total posts considered.
Faulty generalizations appear throughout his writing. He presents highly specific causal chains as nearly deterministic: authoritarian parenting leads to incel ideology; autism creates social struggles that create the incel pipeline; exposure to unrealistic media depictions of sex makes men feel like losers and drives them toward having unreasonable expectations. While these may be contributing factors for some individuals, he presents them without acknowledging that many people with authoritarian parents, autism, or media exposure do not become incels, and that many incels may not share these backgrounds. Furthermore, despite his left‑wing politics, which typically emphasize systemic analysis, he focuses almost exclusively on individual psychology. He ignores structural and material factors such as dating app algorithms that disadvantage certain men, economic precarity making relationships harder, loneliness epidemics affecting both genders, and demographic imbalances in specific communities. This the most common fault of the blogger, over 136 out of the 155 posts analyzed falling under this label, that is 87% of the total of posts.
The blog fundamentally fails its stated mission because it is more interested in sorting people into moral and political categories than in understanding involuntary celibacy as a condition with multiple causes, manifestations, and solutions. The blogger treats ideological and political alignment as evidence of personal growth. His framework lacks falsifiability, and offers no pathway for someone who adopts all of his “accurate” beliefs yet remains involuntarily celibate. While certain elements retain potential practical value for people in conditions similar to his, the overall project is undermined by definitional incoherence, rhetorical fallacies, political bias, bad faith engagement, and a lack of self-doubt.
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