[jamestnz]

> Like that paradox for self-help groups: anyone in the forum who was actually successful in self-help wouldn't be on the forum anymore.

This is exactly the view of Canadian woman "Alana" who initially coined the respectful, non-perjorative term "incel" as part of a self help group for people who had reached college+ age but, for one reason or another, not entered the dating world. They were not "losers" or "virgins"; they were "involuntarily celibate".

The term started off as "invcel" (for Alana's Involuntary Celibacy Project) but was shortened to "incel" for aesthetic reasons. She was a closted, queer, academic, socially-awkward woman who eventually made the transition from "awkwardly not dating, to awkwardly dating", and having made that transition, identified with others who had not, and wanted to help others still in that situation. It wasn't until later that the whole thing got taken over by weird misogynist extremists.

Alana says the big mistake she made, back when she started a movement in her 20s, was that she overlooked what she now calls the "student government problem": You can’t build a movement of people whose whole reason for joining the movement is to leave it. It’s not just that the people who find love then go disappear. It’s that you don’t get to have what every other movement takes for granted — the old guard.

Instead, the people who stayed in Incel were the ones who got stuck — the people who felt the most bitter, the most abandoned. When young people showed up with questions, the people who should’ve been there to give them hope they’d moved on. Even, eventually, Alana.

I highly recommend the following podcast interview with Alana: https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/76h59o