A British academic has floated a controversial new idea for how to deal with incels — short for “involuntary celibates” — a fringe group of mostly young men online who rage about women, sex and society while staying terminally single.
These men also blame women for their lack of a sex life.
The solution? Speed dating coaching.
Dr. Andrew Thomas, a senior lecturer at Swansea University who has studied the incel movement extensively, told The Times that helping these men develop basic social skills could actually chip away at their toxic view on things, especially when it comes to women and dating.
“My perspective is that for a lot of these guys, there’s a huge deficit in knowing how to have any sort of social relationship at all,” Thomas said.
“And helping them with that puts them in a social position where it’s harder to hold the views that they have,” he continued.
Thomas also said that it’s “very easy to walk around hating 50% of the population if you’re never subjected to that half of the population.”
Thomas clarified that his suggestion isn’t about “getting these guys laid” — but about giving them the tools to form normal human connections.
He pointed to research from Singapore that suggests dating coaching might actually work — at least for some socially stunted men.
“Coaching them on dating skills improves their ability to connect, and that can lead to the formation of longer-term relationships,” he said.
The incel issue hit mainstream attention recently thanks to Adolescence, a buzzy Netflix drama that dives into the darker corners of the manosphere.
It’s ignited a new wave of concern from educators, lawmakers and parents about how young boys are being pulled into what UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer called a “whirlpool of hatred and misogyny.”
“But the moment you encourage these guys to go out and start re-engaging with family members, re-engaging with female friends — that can give them counterexamples of real women who are not one-dimensional, but three-dimensional. And then what has become a black or white view starts to turn into shades of grey.”
Of course, no one’s saying this will be easy — or that every incel is just one speed-dating session away from emotional maturity.
Even Starmer admitted there’s no magic fix: “There was no simple solution to stop boys from being dragged into a whirlpool of hatred and misogyny.”
