I think you might be right that the term incel has gone through some concept creep over time. What I’d call “classical inceldom” definitely had a fatalistic core - people who believed that nothing they did could change their circumstances. In those spaces, self-improvement wasn’t just seen as pointless, it was actively discouraged. There’s a strong crabs-in-a-bucket mentality, where even small expressions of hope - like saying a waitress smiled at you - are treated as betrayal. That kind of remark gets torn down because it suggests there is hope, and hope runs against the entire premise of the community.

So while I don’t necessarily disagree with how you’re framing things, I think it’s important we clarify what version of incel we’re each talking about. Otherwise, it’s easy to talk past one another while thinking we’re arguing about the same thing.