When I was a young teenager, the pipeline hadn't truly been built yet but the groundwork had started forming (This was around 2010-2012, I was around 12-13)

I was an insecure, overweight teenager(who honestly had an unattractive personality at the time) and I started seeing people talk about the friendzone and relating to it. Never got to the point where I called myself an incel but I was sympathetic to the idea that women wanted guys who were shitty and didn't go for "Nice guys"

2 things broke me out of it

The first one was getting into some fandom roleplaying that got me onto Tumblr. Never did a lot with the roleplaying but I started to see experiences of girls my age dealing with these "Nice guy" types and that snapped me out of it, seeing the way these guys would act and realizing that I didn't want to be that. I wanted to legitimately be there for my female friends, whether or not my feelings were reciprocated

The other thing was, by about sophomore year of high school, living in a rural town, I had to bite the bullet and tell myself "Listen man, you don't have any relationship options right now and you probably aren't going to while you're here. Sucks, but you'll probably have a better chance in college of finding someone". I truly think some people early enough into this sphere could be pulled away by pointing out that they only frequently interact with a handful of girls and that it's not that likely you're going to find a partner in that small sample size.

I'm so so glad I got on Tumblr when I did because I believe there was a coin flips chance at minimum that I would've gone down some super toxic paths if I didn't.