OP-ED: Charting the Incel Mind: @hoe_math and the Pseudoscience of Male Despair

My phone sighed as I received another DM from my mom. Moments later, a text followed: "Check your TikTok."

She sent a video from @hoe_math, followed by the message: "NO F***ING WAY." The clip opened with a woman asking, "Where does the jump happen…where men run ahead?" The video quickly cut to a laptop and a deadpan voice: "I'm so glad you asked."  

Self-assured yet completely out of frame, the faceless content creator pointed to Kohlberg's Stages of Moral Development chart. "It happens right here," he said. "The average adult male lives in the fourth stage: law and order morality, which involves, you know, doing the right thing, and keeping law and order, you know." And what does that mean, exactly? "Like putting a fence on the border…stuff like that." 

He made sure to note that, "the average adult woman stays stuck it the good boy/nice girl stage forever…this involves mostly doing and saying the things that make other people clap for you."

Men, he concluded, are more "rational": "because they do things like pay off debt instead of traveling, or whatever," he added, presumably from the comfort of his home. This position is "higher and superior" to where women preside, which is "somewhere in between the selfish level and the social-oriented level," on his homemade graph.

He failed to cite his sources for these bold claims. He also neglected to mention that he was completely appropriating a framework originally designed to track child and adolescent moral development, a faulty basis meant to provide sweeping verdicts about the ethical standing of adult men and women. 

Then came the stats.

He pulled up a benign figure on poverty levels among single mothers. "Hey, did you know that single fathers raise better families than single mothers?" he asked, as if speaking to a family-oriented kindergartner. "Yeah… that's because they're real grown-ups." 

You could almost hear him patting himself on the back. 

He jabbed at the woman who had posted the original TikTok. "You sure did say a lot of words in your video, none of them were accurate, though," he scoffed, steeped in smugness. "Your video would be an example of this lower level morality, and my response to you would be an example of the better level of morality."

The comments were a cascade of praise. 

"This explains so much"

"Single dad here. FACTS" 

"I love this guy, he's becoming my favorite TikToker"

"Flawless delivery every time" 

"That makes so much sense"

"Man I love your work. Don't ever stop"

"Genius" 

"Facts" 

"Love the content, mostly because it's factual" 

"This guy is brilliant" 

"All women should see this" 

"Run for president" 

I discovered a red-pill circle jerk.

WHO IS @HOE_MATH?

A man who is awfully proud of himself to be hiding behind a pseudonym. 

@hoe_math is an anonymous content creator who moonlights as a data messiah for romantically disoriented, heterosexual men. His niche? What he calls "the economics of promiscuity" — a slick fusion of cherry-picked psychological studies, pickup artistry, stitched together by five-dollar buzzwords that sound vaguely academic until you look at them twice. 

His YouTube bio says he is "History's manliest and most hilarious sex genius." Launched in August of 2023, @hoe_math has developed 694K subscribers and 104,606,125 views on YouTube alone. On TikTok, he has amassed 606.8K followers and 12.9 million likes, with Instagram trailing closely behind, with 405K followers. "I explain the world hoes first," his bio says. 

His self-published book, The Primordial hoe_math Collection, opens with a never-ending, all lowercase paragraph about how he is now, "dictating your thoughts.” After flexing the fact that you are holding his book, he asserts plainly, "I HAVE YOU." 

"This is a book about the economics of promiscuity, revolving around the social and  monetary pressures and effects that are thrust upon us due to a transforming distribution  to access to boobs."

Excellent.

@hoe_math presents himself as a polymath: part scholar, part stand-up comic, part oracle of erotic despair. He's been "formally trained" in Communications, Psychology, and Political Science, and has "independently pursued" studies of spirituality, evolutionary psychology, and persuasion. 

His main selling point is how he has "totally transformed" himself. He went from "fat to fit" and boasts lifting weights at an "intermediate level." He even disclosed that he went from "creep to Casanova, easily racking up a body count that he does not recommend." 

His third-person speech continues on the following page: "about @hoe_math." There, he makes it clear: if you're offended, good. In fact, he says his alias is designed as a "filter" to weed out "those more invested in signaling social correctness" than understanding "the truth itself" and "the practical functions of our world."

He knows he is called an incel (someone who is "involuntarily celibate"). He calls his critics "triggered wokesters," brushing them off because "@hoe_math knows the way, and his followers agree." 

His "wisdom" is illustrated through the honorable medium of "scribbled drawings of horniness explanations," and he insists that the information in this book is "not to be regarded as trivial." 

Page after page consists of colored pencil sketches—the sophisticated writing utensils used by history’s manliest man — aiming to share "the idiosyncratic contemporary sociological phenomena emerging from the increasingly libertine progressions of the decisions through which we chose to smash together out generative substances." 

Sure, whatever. 

THE CRUX:

The rise of "toxic-masculinity" influencers like @hoe_math reveals how easily pseudoscience and emotional manipulation can flourish online, especially when dressed up as objective, data-driven analyses. Through simplified charts and a condescending tone, @hoe_math connects with heterosexual men who feel alienated and dissatisfied in an ever-evolving, progressive world. His content and confidence offer the comforting illusion of certainty in a socially destabilized world, providing a sense of control to sexually aggrieved men by stapling black-and-white answers on a subject that cannot be adequately explained through a colored-pencil grading scale.

“ZONES v.3” BREAKDOWN

In an age of information overload, clarity stands out. @hoe_math capitalizes on this by presenting complex social dynamics scribbled into colorful, hand-drawn diagrams and charts, offering a semblance of order in a chaotic world. 

Look at @hoe_math's viral Zones v.3 chart — his self-declared "magnum opus," featured in his book, and promoted on YouTube as "the most useful relationship map in history." The cluttered page outlines "what men are looking for from women and what women are looking for from men." From the man's perspective, women are slotted on a totem pole based on “attractiveness” and “attachment.” At the top are keepers (girls you'd "claim"), sleepers (girls who are "temporary"), and finally, sweepers (the girls you "forget"). Each is marked with a symbol — a diamond ring for keepers, an unmade bed for sleepers, and a broom sweeping a rug for sweepers. The lower a woman ranks on the totem pole, the background turns cherry red, with sweepers placed where male attraction is at its lowest, and the "attachment" axis sinks into the negatives. 

To be a true "10", a woman must check three boxes: body, personality, and most notably, purity. @hoe_math defines purity as: "modesty," "innocence," "loyalty," "a clean history,” and “minimal male friends.”

And men don't fare much better. According to @hoe_math, women judge men based “security” and “attractiveness.” Those deemed secure but unattractive, land in zones labeled "Creep" or "Blah" — framed as pitiful, try-hards that women are repulsed by. In the chart's lowest quadrant, the "Not-People Zone," men lacking looks and status are drawn as ghosts, drawing upon a cruel inside joke within @hoe_math's fanbase that these men are essentially considered "dead" to society. By contrast, women are shown to crave the "bad boy," marked with a red "XXX" and a list of traits: "dominance," "aggression," "stoicism," "power," "income," and "mystery."

The message of Zones v.3 is clear — dominate or disappear. 

It is incel logic in infographic form: a grim taxonomy of desire, the projection of rejection, and misogyny disguised as data. Cloaked in gridlines and graphic design, @hoe_math presents his worldview as objective truth. These categories are not just reductive; they entrench toxic stereotypes and promote a binary view of human relationships that ultimately hurts both men and women. But it works, visually and virally.

THE AESTHETIC OF “CERTAINTY"

In a seemingly impossible and chaotic dating world, the Zones v.3 chart offers everything an insecure person would want: clear answers as to why she didn't text back, why he didn't commit, what women want, and what you must do to get there, holding your hand through heartbreak one generalization at the time.

Ultimately, though, what @hoe_math sells isn't truth — it’s comfort through the guise of “certainty."

@hoe_math's diagrammatic approach follows a long tradition of visuals used to feign objectivity. Edward Tufte, a statistician and designer heralded as the "da Vinci of data", warned against "chartjunk": an overwhelming amount of visual elements, typically thrust upon viewers to distract and obscure meaning. "The purpose of decoration varies — to make the graphic appear more scientific and precise, to enliven the display, to give the designer an opportunity to exercise artistic skills," Tufte wrote. He noted that taking the overbearingly illustrative route "comes cheaper than the hard work required to produce intriguing numbers and secure evidence," ultimately impressing viewers through visuals to distract from imperfect claims of truth.

@hoe_math follows the cheaper route, relying on a kaleidoscope of colors, gradients, graphs, axes, stick figures, squiggles, and arrows to appear empirical and grounded. Sometimes, he cherry-picks scientific studies. More frequently, he sidesteps responsibility completely, providing zero evidence, citations, or footnotes. Instead, he relies on his deterministic voice to prey upon the perceived inadequacies of his audience.

After all, the confident "bad boy” is not his target demographic. 

The heart of @hoe_math's content—the graphs, the book, the TikTok and YouTube mansplainers—is just a flowery ego stroke meant to impress himself and garner a pack of lonely viewers.

HOW DID WE GET HERE?

@hoe_math's oversimplified take on dating does not exist in a vacuum. As the #MeToo movement gained momentum in 2016, it exposed widespread and systemic inequality in relationships, workplaces, and social expectations, prompting a public reckoning with male entitlement and abuse.

Suddenly, traditionally "masculine" behaviors were being questioned, and for many men, this sparked unease: How should I act? What is acceptable? How do I express desire, or merely exist, without crossing some new and unfamiliar line? It has been found that this post-#MeToo wave of "guilt, confusion, and signaling" is particularly noticeable amongst young men. Instead of looking inward, Generation Z men are said to instead embrace "victimhood," with many experiencing "an identity crisis."

This sense of disorientation created the perfect soil for blossoming, reactionary voices.

Enter the egomaniacs: bold, charismatic, "alpha-men" who speak in absolutes and reject nuance in favor of demeaning stereotypes. They brand themselves as championing "hard truths." Many of these influencers, like Andrew Tate and Jordan Peterson, position themselves as counter-cultural saviors, providing aggrieved men with a newfound agency by offering a playbook that's rooted in patriarchy, generalizations, and overall dominance.

This is where the term "red pill" comes in — borrowed initially from The Matrix, where swallowing the red pill symbolizes waking up to an uncomfortable truth. Major contemporary male supremacist movements—PUAs, men's rights activists, The Red Pill, and Men Going Their Own Way (MGTOW) adopted the term "red pill" to describe their "realization" that men do not hold systemic power or privilege. Instead, they blame feminism, for it "exploits and deceives men", ultimately destabilizing the natural order. Because of this, masculinity must be reclaimed through discipline, social dominance, and control. Online, this notion spread like wildfire, with "red pill" content evolving into an ideologically charged community that overlaps with antifeminism and misogynistic views.

Sadly, this content isn't  niche. It has been algorithmically optimized and pushed out to millions. This, is the "manosphere." Platforms like TikTok and YouTube reward content that sparks engagement, allowing inflammatory content creators, like @hoe_math, to reap the benefits of this system by posting content that begs you to engage through likes, comments, and shares, which spirals viewership all the more. 

This material hits like a dopamine shot for men unhappy with their romantic situation. The more content you consume about women being shallow, or the modern-dating-scene being rigged against you, the more videos you will see reinforcing that belief. With algorithms causing a positive feedback loops, viewers become trapped into echo chambers of negative and pessimistic thoughts, further pigeonholing unhappy men into an increasingly unhappy corner of the internet.

Meanwhile, women have become increasingly scarce in traditional dating pools. In "red pill" communities, this statistic is chalked up to hypergamy: the belief that women are only interested in the top 20% of men. Yet, this shift reflects a broader trend: young women are opting out of romantic commitment altogether. Instead, they're pursuing higher education, while remaining more single than ever. According to Wells Fargo Economics, young women are "increasingly pushing back [against] marriage or forgoing it all together," with the number of never-married women skyrocketing roughly 20% over the past decade.

Many within the “manosphere” took this shift personally, falling deeper into algorithm-driven rabbit holes that stoke their deepest insecurities while offering a confirmation bias that echoes their pain.

And what happens when a person feels backed into a corner? Their first instinct is to find someone to blame.

BUT WOMEN DO IT TOO?

While women, too, engage in online gender critiques, the stakes are generally lower. Often exaggerated or tongue-in-cheek, like "men with podcasts" memes, "ick lists"  or "bare minimum" jokes, women take on a humorous, derogatory stance to dating men. The real harm comes when figures like @hoe_math distill complex human behavior into rigid, harmful categories.

Women's online critiques often embody irony, humor, and self-deprecation. They exaggerate and poke fun at the absurdities of gender dynamics, such as the viral question: "Would you rather be alone in the woods with a man or a bear?" There is room for hyperbole, such as the unanimous selection of the bear, and even irony, such as women exhibiting toxic behavior and labelling it as "women in male-dominated fields." Though these jokes and i sometimes go too far, there's almost always room for levity and contradiction. Heterosexual women's critiques often feel messy, light-hearted, and human, grounded in hyperbole and shared experience, not moral authority. 

Even at their harshest, these jokes are born from the reality of navigating systems that consistently favor men: economically, socially, and culturally.

@hoe_math, however, punches both down and sideways. He is painfully serious. His tone is flat, certain, and unforgiving. His diagrams are not jokes, they're frameworks. He creates a taxonomy of femininity through his drawings, not a critique of a dating moment. It is new age essentialism: "women are like this, men are like that." There are no citations, no context, no erasers, and no curiosity or openness for change — just absolutist claims meant to fuel the delusions of sexually discouraged men. The same can be said for the tarot card readers on TikTok who flood the feeds of breakup-stricken women with phrases like, "no hashtags" and "if you're seeing this, then it's for a reason," then proceed to tell you how your ex is writhing over what he did and giving vague descriptors that feel just right.

Though women's critiques may sting, they rarely calcify into ideology. There is no funnel from "men are trash" TikToks to "buy my course on how to dominate your boyfriend." On the other hand, @hoe_math is part of a larger, monetized machine that turns male hurt into doctrine, selling it back as truth. His diagrams are the gateway drug, and what follows is the red-pill path: confusion, gathering so-called "knowledge," the rolling boil of resentment, and finally, a hollow sense of power and authority. Content that drives this flow of thinking was not created to build intimacy, trust, connection, or make any attempt to bridge men’s romantic gap. Instead, it creates distance, defensiveness, views, likes, and a need for control: traits born from rejection and insecurity that resonate, specifically, with incels.

“SO WHERE DOES THE JUMP HAPPEN…WHERE MEN RUN AHEAD?"

Not between Kohlberg's Stages of Morality.

Not between creeps and casanovas.

Not for me to definitively answer.

@hoe_math and his followers will not find what they’re looking for in a graph or in his book — because the romantic connection they crave requires the very labor his content avoids: self-inquiry, accountability, compassion, and imagination.

In a world where connection is posed as a high-stakes gamble, it's easier to download a worldview than sit with your own thoughts and pain. @hoe_math sells his ego through a sickly guidebook: the charts, the jargon, the faux-clinical tone— all meant to feel like knowledge, but really, it’s just his license to stay angry.

That's the grift: rage is easy, intimacy is hard. The answers worth having live where the algorithm cannot reach: in contradiction, nuance, raw moments, and nerve-racking first dates.

Though certainty may look sharp on a screen, it's just the echo of someone too afraid to be vulnerable in the real world — and that's the biggest shame of all.