I too am an unfuckable hate nerd

a confession of shorts

You’re Beautiful

because you’re classically trained.
I’m ugly because I associate piano wire with strangulation.

You’re beautiful because you stop to read the cards in newsagents’ windows
about lost cats and missing dogs.
I’m ugly because of what I did to that jellyfish with a lolly-stick and a big stone.

You’re beautiful because for you, politeness is instinctive, not a marketing
campaign
I’m ugly because desperation is impossible to hide.

Ugly like he is,
Beautiful like hers,
Beautiful like Venus,
Ugly like his,
Beautiful like she is,
Ugly like Mars.

-SIMON ARMITAGE

I recently went to a singles’ mixer organised by my friend Louise Perry from the Maiden, Mother, Matriarch podcast. There I met Rob Henderson (he was a podcast guest, not one of the singles mingling), of the ‘luxury beliefs’ fame, whom I have been following and reading for some years now, and was excited to chat to him. I mentioned the unfuckable hate nerds piece, by William Deresiewicz, for the Tablet, that’s been making the rounds, which I first saw on his Twitter feed.

“The army of unfuckable hate nerds”—Marc Maron’s term for the mass of young men who pollute the internet with their misogyny. “They play video games all day,” the comedian said on his podcast, “then they watch MMA, then they spend the evening jerking off to … porn, then they put a few hours” into attacking women online.

I was a few Prosecco glasses deep into the evening and quickly found myself in confession mode. My issue with that article is that it misses how many women feel like unfuckable, hate nerds too. He looked at me, unconvinced, as people often do when I try to explain to them my affinity for incels and other basement-dwelling online weirdos. Coming out of my mouth, it sounds like I am fishing for compliments, trying to get my audience to state the obvious. How could I be an unfuckable, hate nerd?

the author now

The article in question offers a potent description of them:

What does it feel like to be a young man? It feels like you are Kafka’s cockroach, Dostoevsky’s Underground Man. It feels like you were drawn by Harvey Pekar or R. Crumb. You are an Untermensch, a particle, a stew of envies and resentments, a festering sore. You look, from below, at the happy and lovely and rich. You creep, alone, along a wall. You masturbate as if your life depended on it.

To be a roach, hairy and dark and angry and looking for a hole to disappear in. I know that feeling well. I was mercilessly bullied throughout high school when I was growing up in Greece, and it left a scar. In my first year, my mother signed my death sentence by buying me one of those trolley bags to use for school. She had read an article about scoliosis caused by the conventional school rucksack (i.e., the kind normal kids used). I stood no chance.

By my second year, I started moonlighting as a goth. My face was covered in acne, my hair was greasy and stuck to my forehead in what was a pathetic attempt at an emo fringe. I would wear black or some hideous shade of purple, almost exclusively from the boys’ section. No feminine item would touch my body except the XXL silk black bow I attached to the top of my hair, like a clown. I would struggle to walk properly because I was wearing two, sometimes three, belts around my waist and multiple cuffs on each hand, all covered in punk pyramid studs. My eyes would be hidden behind thick lines of eyeliner. I had purple and fuchsia streaks in my hair and spent every morning dutifully ironing the ends and teasing the top and back of my hairline to give it the classic Amy Winehouse look.

I am still bitter when I hear some people from my school who had what looked to me like a healthy social life complain about being bullied. When they say bullied they mean teased. They mean a guy who probably secretly fancied them pulling their ponytail during gym class or their girlfriends (wow, at least you had some) gossiping about them behind their backs. When I say I was bullied, I mean that for six years, on a daily basis, I was reminded that if my peers could exterminate me like a cockroach cornered with an aerosol, they would. They hated me. Or so they made me feel. The boys would push me down the stairs, throw my rucksack out the window, spit on me, call me names no self-respecting heterosexual teenage girl could ever bear to hear directed at her from the lips of boys without contemplating suicide or at least complete voluntary social isolation.

I would regularly eat my lunch sitting in a toilet cubicle, the only place I could find peace. I am still known for spending a suspicious amount of time in the bathroom, and I believe it is a remnant of that period. Bathrooms with locks were my one sanctuary.

My older brother went to the same high school as me, and for the three years we coexisted, I was so afraid he’d see how my classmates treated me and feel ashamed. I would often take the longer route to class to avoid him witnessing what his little sister looked like in the same vicinity as her contemporaries. I was the designated punching bag of all my class’s adolescent nerves.

The girls in my year were blossoming into elegant ladies, learning how to groom themselves to perfection, dressed in Juicy Couture velour tracksuits and Paul Frank 50€ t-shirts. They were soon getting their first kisses, and who knows what other naughty firsts - I sure wasn’t. Meanwhile, the only attention I was receiving from boys was to be reminded of how repulsive they all found me. They regularly wondered out loud why I didn’t kill myself.

For most of high school, I did not make a single friend. I spent every weekend quietly ashamed at my lack of plans. I would stubbornly show up to my school’s ‘proms’ even though the only place where I could find respite from the social agony that is not having anyone to talk to or dance with or be acknowledged by was, again, the bathroom. In the bathroom, I had an excuse to exist; I was busy queuing, reapplying lip gloss, fussing around with soap and paper towels. No matter how dark the main ballroom was, there were never corners dark enough for me to hide my loneliness and shame.

Yet, I persisted, going to any and all events I could get my anxious hands on. According to evolutionary psychology, loneliness for human beings is a bigger threat than being the subject of abuse. Loneliness meant certain death in the savannah, and tolerating harassment was unpleasant for our ancestors, but still preferable to isolation.

I never ratted on my bullies because I wanted them to like me. I admired the girls and fancied the boys. My male bullies were usually the most popular boys. Testosterone makes its arrival known in their bodies in one too many ways. Some of them were quite handsome. I recall finding them charming and funny. Surely a maladaptive evolutionary response on my part, that I carry with me to this day. I am miraculously resistant to rejection and nonchalant to insult. I was recently on TV, and a clip of me was shared on Twitter. I scrolled through the troll responses below with glee and chuckled at the ones who rightly pointed out that I have acne. These days, I get a perverse joy from being bullied, but more on that later.

I recall one day I was quietly sitting in my chair, stooping my face close to my desk, hoping the floor would magically take pity on me, swallow me and save me from the torture of being surrounded by my tormentors five days a week. One of the prettiest, coolest girls in my year passed me by. I rarely heard her voice as she was too cool for words, and anyway, why waste her breath on an insect like me? She was blonde, skinny, rich. The first one to get fingered. She took one look at me, pity quickly turning to rage upon noticing my oily fringe ‘you are disgusting’, she exhaled.

Another time, another blonde beauty asked if I had any gum. I did. From then on, rain or shine, I always had gum on me, even if it was the last god damn thing I packed, running out of a burning building. My face would light up when she’d leave her classroom to come find me at my desk to ask for another piece. Me? You pick me to be your purveyor of chewy sweets? Thank you, princess, I am at your humble service. My current Instagram name was coined by my high school bullies. I haven’t reclaimed it or anything, just kept it over the years because it was the only thing I was given by my tormentors. A perverse Stockholm syndrome. Any attention was better than no attention.

I remember a teacher talking to us about puberty when I was 13, saying how, at first, when kids arrive in high school, they are just kids. Still sweet and yielding. Then suddenly one summer passes, and girls start getting their periods, boys return from summer camp with fortified vocal cords and built-up shoulder blades. He said girls suddenly turn from awkward children to elegant ladies. I prayed to get my period fast.

However, even then, in my darkest years, I could not bring myself to hate myself. Years later, my brother developed a roll of film from an old-school camera, revealing dozens of ‘selfies’ I took that year. He mocked me (fair) for being such a loser that I spent what looked like a good few minutes with an analogue camera turned to my face, wearing sunglasses in some takes, pink, glittery lip gloss in all of them. But I was so pleased. I am filled with joy when I think about my ugly duckling younger self. Rejected and mocked by her contemporaries, yet still resolute, she is worthy of a full film being used up entirely to capture her visage. I suspect that side of me is what saved me from the eventual fate of all unfuckable hate nerds, who continue being unfuckable and stew in hate long into adulthood.

Then one day it happened for me. In my bathroom sanctuary before the last class, a hint of scarlet came through my knickers. A silver lining in my miserable existence. I left the bathroom triumphant, daydreaming hungrily on the bus ride home about all the graces that would soon be bestowed upon me. I went to bed that night like a caterpillar nesting in its cocoon, fantasising about the butterfly that would wake up in my place in the morning.

It took years and a change of context, as it often does. It took migrating to another country. One where being tanned with jet black hair is rare and reviled, where a heavy accent coupled with heavier politics, on a woman nonetheless, is catnip for the local men. I am referring, of course, to London. Unlike my high school, my university embraced me with open arms. British men looked besotted with me, and I could tell. I knew the difference. I wasn’t used to acknowledgement, let alone adoration. I was acutely aware of my change in status. I went from -1 to 10++. People started referring to me as a ‘BNOC’(big name on campus). I breezily hid my intense excitement, but inside my depraved ego was soaking up the attention like a malnourished orphan kitten takes to formula milk.

It was great fun at first. I did this experiment where I would go to a bar, and I would look at a guy for a few seconds, and then *puff* like magic, they would come to me, buying me drinks, paying me compliments. As I saw in the movies, boys were meant to behave around girls. Like I never experienced back home. No more name-calling and treating me like a freak. I was finally in the delicate-flower category, like those other girls at school. Me, an unfuckable hate nerd. I could have any man I wanted.

It took about a decade, but I can now edit that sentiment safely. I guess those still stuck in unfuckable hate nerd land are right, most women can have sex on tap if they wanted to, with men they are either not attracted to or who will treat them in hurtful ways. I can’t do that, though. I have spent a decade redefining myself in my post unfuckable hate nerd era. I no longer think I deserve to be bullied and to eat my lunch sat on a toilet. I no longer take the long route to avoid my bullies; I confront those little slags, and they run away.

So let’s dissect the reasons I claim rights to inceldom, shoulder to shoulder with unfuckable hate nerds, even though they think this is all a big, cruel joke at their expense. It’s not fair to expect women to have sex with men they are not attracted to; this would just be unpleasant for obvious reasons. Sadly, most women’s sexuality does not work that way, though I dearly wish it did, much like straight teenage girls in the naughties used to ‘wish they were lesbians!!@!@!1!’. I also don’t deserve to do that to myself, my darling unfuckable nerdy friends.

I was fully empathising with the article till I read this tweet by Marie Le Conte, and it is so true. I may well be an unfuckable hate nerd at heart, but I dutifully toil on activities that please others. I train with discipline and have the same lunch every day: protein and vegetables. I have laser hair removal, both painful and expensive. I put on makeup to appease my acne Twitter trolls.

In return, I can’t say I expect men to have the same level of self-care I do. I hesitate to say this out loud, but I would find such a routine in a man I’d like to date unattractive. I see my self-care rituals as part of my endearing, feminine neuroticism, and I prefer the men I date to be more Spartan in their grooming habits.

I do, however, expect them to put equal attention on pursuing their personal passions, of which I expect them to have many, as do I. I don’t care where they went to university, and I literally couldn’t care less if they have postgraduate education. Show me those women OkCupid’s data say have a preference for PhD graduates, and I will show you why lobotomy champions may have had a point after all.

What often happens, though, when you have finally become a woman that is superficially pleasing to a large percentage of men, is that you get a lot of fake interest. Men incessantly pretending to be interested in you, who only want to sleep with you. Or perhaps those who are blinded by your looks and very quickly find out they don’t equally love your personality - a sad but fair occurrence.

So what, you scream. At least you get attention, some affection and momentary sexual release. Sure. I also get to feel like I am being shot in the face. That is what it feels like when a guy I have feelings for sleeps with me and then disappears. It feels like I am stabbing myself in the back. So I don’t do it. Sorry. I'd rather be comfortable with who I am, a fuckable, unfucked loving and tender nerd.

There is also the other cruel realisation that slowly creeps up. If you are as attractive as everyone remembers you from your now-halcyon days, then you must be rejected for who you really are. It’s your personality that men can’t stand. Being young and good-looking means that you will also regularly attract the type of men you really, really, really admire. Absolute dream boats of men, those that manosphere podcasters are telling you have harems of pretty ladies at their feet. If you are the career type, like I am, you meet men from your vocation who are more successful than you, who at least appear but may well actually be painfully more intelligent than you. Funnier, wittier, with raw brain power your silly little mind can’t compete with. More polished. More high-flying than you’ll ever be. They don’t spend time scrolling on Instagram, taking selfies of their flexed midriff. They are out there changing the world while you are googling ‘how to style curtain bangs’.

They will easily poach you from your obscurity and enjoy your company like it’s their birthright. But when they dump you, what are you to make of it? I'll tell you what I make of it. I think if I am as attractive as they tell me, then it must be that they don’t see me as their equal. I am not clever or eloquent enough. They are probably out there committing to a woman with a real career. Maybe one who makes six figures, or who has a book deal. Definitely not a woman who writes blogs like these and posts them publicly on the internet for all to bear witness to her shame.

This shame I am still working through, my dear fellow unfuckable hate nerds, but I cherish it as it keeps me close to my former and always omnipresent younger, tender, unfuckably nerdy self. The one that survived to tell the tale. And it is why I am addicted to reading those manosphere pieces of inceldom that make their way to my mainstream twittersphere from time to time.

You see, I don’t have the gumption to own being a hot woman, to date like one. I cosplay as one and polished, shiny men who haven’t heard me speak for more than a few minutes, and who certainly haven’t read my blogs, get momentarily blinded by the tricks and mirrors I have learnt to employ over the years from observing actually hot women. Those who can date nonchalantly, who brazenly post about their ‘foodie calls’¹, who have a collection of simps² and feel comfortable accepting affection from men they are not emotionally invested in.

As Deresiewicz put it:

Women are sex objects, goes the cliché, and men are success objects. But success requires many years to achieve, if you ever achieve it at all. Young men, in that respect, are much like older women: Society has little use for them, barely deigns to notice them. I’m not talking about the advertising industry, or the entertainment industry; I’m talking about the day-to-day experience of living in the world. Young women often have a lot of social power, whereas, except for the fortunate few—the born rich, the strikingly handsome, the 6-foot-3—young men have none. Socially speaking, young men are shit, and nobody gives a shit.

Any young woman who is even moderately attractive will be courted, complimented, paid attention to, by women as well as men. Older men will buy them things. People will hang on their words even when they aren’t interesting and laugh at their jokes even when they aren’t funny. They will have entry into places—private clubs, backstage after a show—young men can only press their noses against. They will be able to advance professionally by batting their eyelashes at powerful men. Young men, meanwhile—those losers, those loners, those apes—are left to pick their psychic zits on the periphery.

There are positives, though, to not being a hot-girl-land native. The ease and luxury afforded to unearned youth and beauty are a double-edged sword. I am glad I was a late bloomer because when you are young and pretty, you notice the access you are afforded just for showing up too soon for personal growth to set in. The influencers who are flown to Dubai and wined and dined for free may think they are having a good time, but they are taught a powerful yet misguided lesson. The best value-for-money investment they can make is maximising their looks. Young men on the other hand, unfuckable nerds or not, are taught through rejection that their best route out of social obscurity is getting a successful career, making money, becoming or appearing intellectual, being funny, working on their athleticism or other equally universally respected pursuits that do not have an expiry date, and, most importantly, don’t have a hard ceiling for returns on investment. Eventually, ‘looks maxing’ will only get you so far, and young women with good looks are both blessed and cursed.

Many pretty young things get swept up by older, attractive men early in their teens, before they have time to develop their own interests and authentic personalities. When they are eventually discarded by their mature lovers, many are lost, having missed the crucial adolescent years of angst and self-discovery, and follow the habits and teachings of an older man who provided them with a blueprint for life that may not be what they would have chosen on their own accord. It is a miserable existence, and one many hot women suffer from.

After high school, I got a rebrand, and the hot, popular girls of my school befriended me. We started going on girls’ holidays together to the Greek islands. I can imagine my comrades in unfuckable hate nerdship watching my salacious Instagram stories with my hot girlfriends, jealous at the extravagant joy of our hot girl summers. My own former unfuckable teenage self would have been shocked to see the social leaps I made post-graduation.

These holidays were ideal in some ways. But mostly, they included a lot of stress and misery. A lot of waiting for the girls to get ready, ambient anxiety about our looks that could never measure up to our mother’s expectations or our own internal critics, a lot of queuing and taking taxis from one bar to the other to follow some group or another of fickle men whose interest in us ended the moment their ferry set off, if not sooner.

This is why I still collect unfuckable hate nerds wherever I find them. Often the internet, often in events by the buffet, shoulders hunched over their phone. No lone wolf is scary enough to repel me from befriending him or her. The lives of those who never escaped the trapping of unfuckable hate nerdship give me perspective and keep me grounded. There is hollow pleasure in being paid attention, but I know it is not real power.

I am powerful now because I spent six years being an unfuckable, hate nerd, despite, and not because of, the fact that the next decade found me being a hot commodity.

I guess to some young men, I must sound like my classmates who claim they were bullied, but in my eyes, they were playfully teased. My life looks nothing like theirs. It’s filled- I meticulously filled it- with all kinds of productive pursuits and pleasures. But in my heart, there is always an unfuckable hate nerd. This is the part of me that takes intense, nostalgic pleasure every time I sense as much as an atom of bullying energy coming my way. It feeds my inner unfuckable hate nerd who is still struggling to accept her new position on the food chain. This is why I smirk whenever someone doubts me or attempts to put me down. Twitter trolls pointing out a pimple are nothing on a girl who spent years eating her lunch perched on a toilet seat.

1. A foodie call occurs when someone accepts a dinner date even though they aren’t romantically interested in the suitor, just to get a free meal.

2. Simp is internet slang for someone who shows excessive sympathy and attention toward another person, typically when that person does not reciprocate, in pursuit of affection or a sexual relationship.