Back in my day, if we didn’t like something about ourselves, we … well, we didn’t take a hammer to our faces, that’s for sure. Yes, friends, I’d like to introduce you to the incel trend of taking a hammer to your face to make it … better? I don’t know. I feel like this is one of those situations where they’ve reached the outcome we all root for but perhaps the road there was the most unexpected one.
This strange fact was unleashed upon the world via a U.K. documentary, and it just came to my attention because now it’s trending on TikTok, too. Per MSN:
The interviewee stated: ‘All the women in the world want the best looking men. If you understand the truth, you can then start to take actions to use it in your favour. It’s not uncommon for people in the looksmaxxing industry to get a hammer and you think, “Ok, what part of my face would I like to improve? My cheekbones, my jaw, my chin, my orbitals.”’
[…]
The incel demonstrated over his mask how he would use the hammer to tap on his face ‘up and down’, which he said in his view allowed people to ‘almost sculpt their face out of marble’, claiming that their bones ‘just grow’.
Needless to say, the “incel” is just some guy and not a doctor. I felt the need to point that out even though you knew it in your heart already. Also, of course, they call the silliest thing possible the silliest name possible (looksmaxxing). I can’t with these fools. What else could we expect from a group of misogynists who are mad that they’re “involuntarily celibate” because the women they think are the most attractive won’t have sex with them?
Here’s a fun embedded tweet for reference:
Can’t the youths go back to eating Tide pods? Somehow that seems less catastrophic?!
Gotta be honest, “bonesmashing” may be more descriptive, but it doesn’t have that special misguided incel magic touch that “looksmaxxing” has, so I think it should be referred to as the latter, don’t you?
I don’t particularly want to go down a TikTok rabbit hole to make sure all the people hitting their faces with a hammer are incels and not idiots doing it for clout or the lolz, but at least for some people, this is actually a thing they believe and think will somehow improve their social standing. Spoiler alert, it will not. It will probably only get you very near your out-of-pocket maximum for your health insurance deductible, possibly cause permanent damage to your face, and if you’re very lucky, let you keep all of your teeth in the process.
Again, I cannot stress this enough: Hitting yourself in the face with a hammer is a bad idea unless you are a cartoon character in the midst of a caper, and even then, it’s usually funnier if you step on a rake that thwaps you in the face.
So look, Incels are awful human beings and they get what they get, but also, the healthcare system is overwhelmed, at least in America, and the last thing we need is emergency rooms getting clogged up with hateful morons who’ve knocked out their teeth and given themselves concussions, all in the name of … honestly, I don’t know why they’re doing this. To look like “a Chad”? They’re just shallow misogynist buffoons, and to be honest, I don’t even try to empathize with incels, but here’s a quote from the above source for at least one of their reasons:
‘I wanted to be good looking, quickly, fast. It’s like walking down a street and you just see trainwreck after trainwreck after trainwreck because I know what good looking people look like. Just like that. The best looking people in society, they’re always treated the best. You’ve just got to open your eyes and see it,’ he replied.
You know, beauty is subjective, but I will admit that an as*hole is universally regarded as an as*hole, so the as*hole above has a point there. He may just be under the impression that the reason people don’t like him is the way he looks and not the way he acts and treats people.
What’s the takeaway here? I don’t know. I guess if you use incels as your barometer for investment advice, go buy stocks in hammers. For everyone else, use this as a good reminder to not hit yourself in the face with the hammer.
(featured image: JazzIRT/Getty Images)
