Classes, study halls and career fairs … that’s what college is all about, right? While the primary purpose of college is educating and preparing students for future careers, even the most academically prestigious institutions advertise lively school cultures and playful student life on and around campus. In popular perception, the “college experience” has become synonymous with tailgates, fraternity parties and mingling with the opposite sex. Dating is seen as a big part of that experience. Yet, the college dating environment has become plagued with casual incel ideologies that impede on many students’ socialization and pose legitimate dangers on college campuses.

Incel is an extreme label to many. It means “involuntary celibate,” describing primarily young men who find themselves unable to attract women sexually. Incel communities are known for hostile attitudes toward women and the “more preferable” men they date. And they are often tied to extremism and violence against women.

The label of “incel” is inaccurate and unfair to put on the majority of students. However, many students frustrated with a lack of success in the realm of dating, adopt subtle incel rhetoric. One such example is the fictional 80/20 rule of dating. This myth peddles the idea that 80% of women are only interested in the most attractive 20% of men.

Some aspects of the 80/20 rule might be rooted in truth – certain characteristics inevitably cause some men to find more success in the realm of dating – but looking at the nature of many relationships proves the rule false. This myth has more often become something young men tell themselves to excuse their dating woes. It becomes easy for young men to abandon the dating market, concluding that their lack of success in dating comes from the fact that they never had a chance in the first place.

In college, many factors can contribute to feelings of the social inferiority that fuel incel rhetoric like the 80/20 rule. Nearly every university is home to numerous social organizations, such as clubs, fraternities and athletic teams. Students outside these social circles may view those inside them as having advantages in the dating market, subsequently leading to feelings of resentment toward groups who “win the dating game,” and the women with whom they win.

Students struggling to date are then often quick to blame the prevalence of hookup culture in college. With the perception that hookups are happening all around them, some students gain a sense of sexual entitlement. They cultivate a feeling that attending college will automatically result in numerous grand sexual encounters with ease. When students who ultimately struggle to find sexual partners see their classmates and neighbors engaging in hookups, they sometimes label the trend as akin to a rigged game: superficial and exclusionary.

While hookup culture is prevalent in college, holding it to blame for dating misfortune is simply baseless. In reality, hookup culture does not dominate college dating to the extent many believe. An NBC News study found that only a mere 8% of college students had hooked up in college, but had not gone on a traditional date or been involved in a romantic relationship.

Additionally, a study by the University of Portland shows that college students today are no more sexually active these days than they were in the 1980s. The idea that hookup culture has grown to dominate the college dating market is false.

For many students, blaming external factors like hookup culture, the 80/20 myth and “dominant” social circles for their romantic misfortune begins a never-ending cycle of self-pity, resentment and social isolation. This cycle reflects incel rhetoric steeped in sexual entitlement that leads many young men to adopt a victim mentality regarding interaction with the opposite sex.

While most students do not fit the implications of the incel label, subtle incel ideologies have become more common and even normalized on college campuses. At its most extreme, the anger and resentment that stems from incel ideologies has been responsible for countless acts of violence against women, posing a foreboding warning of the dangers of radicalization that can so easily stem from current social attitudes.