If you’ve had the misfortune of interacting with a Generation Z female, you might have heard them use the phrase “the ick.” For example, if a fat greaseball with zero social skills tips his fedora to a woman and says, “m’lady,” she’ll describe the encounter to her friends as having given her “the ick.”
The ick describes an uneasiness, sense of disgust, or anxiety that a woman experiences when something from reality crashes into her otherwise meticulously maintained fantasy world. No, you’re not so attractive that losers won’t still attempt to hit on you. Do they think you’re in their league? Maybe. Or maybe they read too much pick-up-artist blogs. Or maybe you are in their league and you’re in denial. After all, Gorloc The Destroyer thinks he’s a 10 as a woman. Whatever the case, reality knocketh.
This is possibly one of the greatest distillations of the feminine conceptualization of the world. We have to thank Zoomers for boiling down what people have written blogposts, essays, and even books outlining as the female emotional reactivity to externalities to two simple words: the ick. A terminally short attention span actually generated something useful.
The phrase doesn’t just have implications for social interactions. It also holds great explanatory power for female political motivations, particularly on the Left. A picture of a sad Syrian kid who just wants to live on the German taxpayer’s dime? The ick. Let him and all of his fighting-age cousins and siblings in. A black man being confronted by a mob of angry White people after he tried to steal something out of somebody’s backyard? The ick. White people have too much stuff anyways. Parents protesting drag queen story hour? The ick. Those poor trannies need to share their story with the world, including vulnerable children.
There’s no attempt to entertain the reasonable objections from the other side. The only thing that even approaches the level of “reasoned argumentation” is the repetition of canned slogans that were seeded by media and entertainment. When a leftist harpy says, “no human is illegal,” what she’s really saying is, “sad brown people give me the ick.” We have to let them in so that the media will stop showing her the footage and pictures of sad brown people that provoke this ick.
In healthier days, the ick factor might have actually been beneficial. The ick is, after all, attuned to social norms. If you have a healthy society with good values and religious fervor, a woman’s going to get the ick when she sees some guy wearing a dress, and she’s going to demand that somebody make the ick go away. She’s not going to go through some John Stuart Mill moral utilitarian flow chart of whether this decreases the good of the commons enough to warrant imposing limitations on the guy in a skirt. It makes her unhappy, and she’s going to complain about it bitterly until somebody does something about it.
Our problem is that this has been inverted. She’s now complaining about the people complaining about the guy in the dress. What was meant to be a visceral, innate, and instinctive reaction against things that violate tradition has become a tantrum in the name of perpetual revolution. We have to recognize that when leftist women agitate for various causes or things, the root lies with the fact that these things trigger an emotional revulsion against the correct position. They have no arguments to make or justifications to advance for their position. It’s based purely on emotional phenomena. Unfortunately, women are allowed to exercise electoral power based on their emotional phenomena. That gives me the ick.
An interesting examination of the “ick” phenomenon. But his writing can use some tightening up:
“No, you’re not so attractive that losers won’t still attempt to hit on you.”
??? Double negative? Triple negative?
“Do they think you’re in their league? Maybe. Or maybe they read too much pick-up-artist blogs. Or maybe you are in their league and you’re in denial.”
What?
From my experience, NO ONE (except me, aparently) hits on ANYONE out in the wild
I went out with several Zoomer girls who were like 19-23 or whatever, and they worked at hip trendy stores (EG Spencer Gifts) and they told me that despite working there for a period of literal MONTHS, I was literally the ONLY guy who asked them out
Don’t know the age of the writer (presumably not a Zoomer) but he was off base with that assertion
I’ve found the more attractive the woman, the more likely she is to say yes and give over her number— or at the very least, the odds are the same as anyone else
Online dating causes men to severely underestimate their SMV (Sexual Market Value, yes I know it’s a really autistic term) and women to severely overestimate theirs
Yeah, well, I’m not sure your criticism holds water in this case, but I’m open to correction. For my part, and for the record, I’d be very satisfied if our writers would stop referring to a he or a she (singular) as a they or a them (plural). That would go a long way in separating us from the likes of The Root, linguistically speaking.
Good article. Women are not interested in pursuing the truth but rather what avoids making them stick out.
Maybe the “fat grease ball” was brought up to be polite to women and that’s just who he is. She’d probably get the “ick” if he just walked by and didn’t give her the time of day also. Who cares. Suck it up buttercup.
I’ve got way more important things, and some not so important things to do than worry if some prissy Missy is upset and has the ick. Here’s a novel idea. Put the phone down. Go outside. Go fishing. Plant a garden. Read a book. Get a life. But most importantly grow the f#%k up.
Satanic inversion is the root of a lot of our stumbling toward utopia as well as our inability to look far enough back to appreciate that the Current Year is not that unique.
That all sides can’t help but to fixate on what some girl “thinks” or says or emotes or demands from the commons is proof that we have become worshippers of women. Golden calves of progress.
How we produce generations of unbearable shrews and manjaws and stronk wahmen who go on to successful careers of holding us all hostage to their unbridled hindbrain while abusing and leveraging their gifts from God as men cheer them on is a mystery indeed!
We struggle to fence off what’s left of what better men built while ignoring what’s already inside the wire.
The fight seems to be over who gets to define the pedestal and not that the pedestal needs to be dismantled.
The “ick” for me is not the banal musings of fattened princesses of progress but rather the presumptive men of the various factions of the opposition who themselves can’t seem to resist a woman talking into a camera about her various feelz or wants or deep thoughts by Jane handy that wouldnt even make it past the prelims in the Innotrobe Corporate Motivational Poster writing contest.
That’s what the kids call “cringe”. And the kids are definitely not ok.
The shorthand of extremely online Adderall crushers and post-Covid pupae of future bug people is reflective of a very dangerous deficit of deep thinking, quiet reflection, and the transmission of heritage wisdom and tradition that was learned the hard way already to prevent exactly what’s coming.
But at least that means when we own the enemy on “X” we can smile knowing we avoided all the awkwardness of real life too.
The olden days of the manosphere covered all of this but the Real Men in the room were too busy tearing down what was left of masculinity and divine hierarchy because the truth of female nature and Biblical Marriage is The Ick. All their lawyer daughters agree too. So sue me!