Tinder taming and Incels and blogging

So Takshashila has launched a new group blog called “Pragati Express”. It’s basically old-style blogging, with lots of links and short posts and not necessarily making a coherent argument – rather than blog posts that try are basically attempts at writing OpEds (like how blog posts in a lot of places have turned out to be).

I’m one of the contributors for this blog, and wrote my first post today. Copy-pasting it here below the fold!

And thinking about it, I’m so glad about this attempt at reviving old-style blogging – I see that the bug of making blogposts coherent and and wannabe-OpEd has bit me as well, and my posts have been getting longer and more serious.

Hopefully  I can bring back the joy into my blogging.

When I read Amit Varma’s post on Incels, I couldn’t help but think of this pieceI’d come across while doing research for my book Between the buyer and the seller.

Written by Dustin Silgardo in Man’s World, this piece talks about Incels (yay, now I can use that word!) in India, and how dating apps such as Tinder have suddenly laid (no pun intended) bare the possibility that a large section of Incels in India can’t get dates because nobody wants to date them.

Silgardo writes:

In the online dating world, where men outnumber women by close to three to one, men, thus far protected by the perceived power a patriarchal society heaps upon them, are being forced to face an inconvenient possibility: perhaps they are just not that attractive.

And this:

Indian men, on the other hand, are sheltered from this truth and are cocooned by the promise of a dainty woman served to them on a platter, via an arranged marriage. This complete lack of awareness that Indian men seem to have of their own sex appeal is quite apparent from some profiles on Tinder.

Go read the whole piece. It will give you excellent insight into the world of Indian Incels.

And while you’re at it, read the part of my bookwhere I used this article by Silgardo as well! And hopefully you’ll like that, in which case you might want to read my whole book(tongue in cheek)!

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