Nate Cox

I am not a current or ex incel—I came from the front page out of curiosity—but I feel the need to weigh in on this.

I have a black belt in a mixed martial art, I’ve been active in it for many years as a student and as a teacher, and I strongly feel that martial arts can offer a positive improvement to just about every person.

I joined martial arts because I was severely depressed going through a divorce and custody battle; I was going from work to the bar and then home. My life felt meaningless and I very literally woke up one day and realized that if I didn’t change something I was going to kill myself. I joined a local dojo that day.

Martial arts is special. It certainly gives you a place to vent out some frustrations in a safe, productive way… but if you find yourself a good dojo it can be so much more.

Martial arts boosted my confidence massively; it made me feel better about myself and who I am by giving me regular positive interactions with many other people. Belts are earned from hard work, and the experience of being handed that next rank provides a measurable improvement to guide you.

Eventually you start to be the upper belt and get to guide newer people through the same benefits you’ve seen, which feels great. If you go as far as me you may get to stand in front of the class as an expert and feel the healthy respect of a group of people, earned through dedication and the relationships you have formed with them.

Martial arts made me a better person, and better man, a better father, and helped me live a more well rounded and happy life.

Normally I end this little rant there, but if you are an incel and you are looking to get out I will add one more benefit: women go to class too, and if you want positive role model women to help break you out of a cycle of negativity I can think of no better example than an upper-belt woman who you can interact with in a structured environment. Most people in a dojo are pretty chill and happy to help, they also tend to have high confidence in the upper ranks and aren’t looking to prove anything anymore. It’s a pretty fantastic way to form new friendships that will challenge everything the incel community has convinced you is true.

It’s a sad time to be alive when people genuinely believe that being openly hostile and combative is the same thing as constructive criticism.

Banning seems totally reasonable to me. Nobody is obligated to put up with that shit.

It makes me so angry because children are vulnerable and trusting; exploiting that to get them to believe in nonsense is evil.

I really blame Musecore for this, and all of the social engineering that big tech has been doing for years to make profiting off of selling user submitted content seem acceptable.

I miss the golden age of the late 90’s when tabs were easy to get and free.

…what?

This was one company spying on the users of its competitor via unofficial means. Even in the furthest stretch of the corporate boot licking bullshit that “you signed up for the app so you deserve to be spied on” exists in, I don’t see how this scenario is covered.

Mission workshop bags. I love mine, it looks as good today as when I got it.

Especially since I’m pretty sure printing text message transcriptions doesn’t actually print out a scaled-to-page high definition blue bubble.

I haven’t seen this couple, I have no idea what they look like, but the terms used to describe them (“abhorrent”, etc) indicate that some people are very emotionally engaged in this. I therefore assume that the guy has a big wiener and his wife is hot, because the response reeks of jealousy.

The religious ceremony has no legal bearing at all, which is why in order to get married legally you have to go to the local government and get a marriage certificate. You can have the city ordain your marriage right in the civic center, no religion required.

Well, the mobile game industry has very successfully set a precedent that mobile games are cheap, which is basically the problem. It’s hard to break into a market at ten times the cost of existing products… regardless of how reasonable it is.

Though to be honest I’d love to see a future where buying a license to play a game grants that license everywhere. I’ve bought too many games multiple times to play it on different consoles for whatever reason. Maybe that’s part of the complaint here.

Honestly it’s the monetization systems. I’m sure there are some fine mobile games out there, but they are drops in an ocean of low effort microtransaction factories.

The status quo right now seems to be gacha style games, which tend to be a thin veneer of probably anime fan-service girls over a deceptively addictive slot machine. The point isn’t to make a fun game, it’s to get whales addicted to the loot boxes so they pour fortunes into the game a few bucks at a time.

I doubt that most people actually care that a game is played on a phone, they’re just tired of watching the mobile game industry race to the bottom of the integrity barrel; and they’re afraid that the undeniably successful profiteering is going to continue leaking into every other medium.

Kids are indeed a huge time/emotion/frustration sink that eat much of your life, and yet somehow still totally worth it.

But, I wouldn’t go so far as to say I don’t feel like I need friends. Children are very emotionally rewarding in a certain spectrum, but adult companionship is still a general need.

I have a black belt in a mixed martial art focused on self defense in the real world, of which one of the primary pillars is “never be on the ground”.

Wrestling is excellent for subduing a single opponent, but is not suited for dealing with multiple attackers. You can be the world’s greatest wrestler and perfectly lock your opponent out, but it doesn’t help you when his buddy comes and kicks you in the back of your head.

We assume that in any self defense encounter you will need to defend yourself against more than one person.

I wish that they would add real controller support to NW. I started playing at launch but I really prefer the recliner gaming of consoles and the new wave of pc handhelds like the steam deck. I sit at a desk all day for work, I don’t want to game there too.

You can rig steam up to play NW with a controller kind of but it does get annoying with the trade offs.