#manosphere

Firstly, they didn't have Jamie cartoonishly espousing his beliefs like a cartoon supervillain, because they did their research, and knew these boys are being carefully taught by the adults in the manosphere to hide their power level. They showed the full reality of what Jamie had become under the tutelage of the manosphere by letting their teachings silently guide his actions.

Second, they almost completely removed Katie from the conversation. That was so important because men would have jumped all over that to devalue the messaging by calling it another piece of feminist trash centered around women. Men were center stage in this, portrayed in respectful honesty, flaws and all.

Jamie's dad was legitimately an alright dude, but he had his family walking on eggshells with those tantrums of his, and I imagine the truth of that was such an uncomfortable but necessary glimpse in the mirror for men. My brother has never laid hands on a woman in his life either, but he has that same inability to emotionally regulate when he gets angry, and I think it was important for men to see what it looks like for the people around them to deal with. By centering the male experience in an honest way, in making a piece of media men might not completely dismiss outright, they get to see what they look from the point of a spectator's view, and that's so goddamned important.

Third, they left a lot of stuff about the Red Pill confusing and vague. This is going to spur parents to do more research, which is so fucking necessary, and it's going to keep the manosphere from saying, "Well, this and this and this is completely misconstrued." This is important because if we want legislation passed to protect young people from the Manosphere, we need to focus on the long term damage over time done to the psyche, on the actual damage they're doing to young boys, rather than focus on criticizing rhetoric they've got meticulously built dialog trees to defend. We need to build a case that the Manosphere is full of predators absolutely breaking the psyches of young boys for money.

This is easily one of the best shows I’ve watched in a long time. Netflix consistently delivers when it comes to miniseries, and this was no exception. But what makes Adolescence truly remarkable is that it tells a story that needed to be told.

We see the online radicalization of young men and boys every day. And because of the work I do on this topic, I can tell you that what’s visible - the parts we see on Instagram or Twitter - is just the tip of the iceberg. The real, insidious radicalization happens in the shadows: in private group chats on WhatsApp, Discord servers, and locked Reddit threads. It’s a thousand times worse than most people realize. So when the show actually name-dropped the word "manosphere," I was stunned. No one ever talks about it, despite how much it impacts young people - especially boys.

Beyond the subject matter, Adolescence was incredibly well-written. The way it handled the school environment, the interactions between parents, and the way adults often fail to grasp the coded language and social hierarchies of online spaces, it was all so nuanced, so painfully real.

This is the kind of content we need more of. I am begging Netflix to stop churning out serial killer shows that glorify their subjects. Instead, we need more stories like this.

And beyond the writing, the acting and directing were on another level. Stephen Graham was phenomenal. Every time he was on screen, I was in tears. And when I found out this was Owen Cooper’s first acting role? No experience at all? Just some random kid? He blew me away, especially in Episode 3. The entire cast delivered such raw, powerful performances.

Also, the fact that every episode was filmed in a single continuous shot...wow. I didn’t even notice at first, but once I realized it, it became clear how much it added to the story. It intensifies the realism, the claustrophobia, and the sense of inescapable momentum.

I’ve seen people say that parents of young boys should watch this. I disagree. The manosphere and the rise of online misogyny isn’t just about young boys. It’s about all of us. We contribute to it when we ignore it, when we allow it to continue unchecked, when we don’t talk about it. This isn’t just a show for parents. Everyone needs to watch this and understand the devastating real-world consequences of the misogyny that festers online.

The ambassadors of the centrist manosphere praise women’s advancement and the feminist cause while insisting that men’s economic and vocational anxieties are more naturally potent. This ambivalence reveals the weakness of their side. The right-wing manosphere knows that masculinity is a series of dominance signals beamed from behind iridescent Oakleys and the wheel of the most enormous pickup truck you’ve ever seen; it is a smirking multimillionaire who “DESTROYS” a young woman at a college-hosted debate; it is—must it be said?—an AR-15, openly carried. Manliness in the Trump era, Susan Faludi has written, “is defined by display value,” which exhibits itself in a “pantomime of aggrieved aggression.” Upon this stage, men’s biggest problem is feminism, and the solutions are straightforward: restrict reproductive rights, propagandize about traditional gender roles, etc. The squishier centrist side has no such certainties. Galloway, in both his podcasts and “Notes on Being a Man,” presents masculinity not as one side of a fixed binary but as a state of mind and a life style, one equally available to men and women, and therefore impossible to define. (It’s a feeling, and we know how Trump supporters feel about those.) Within this amorphous framework, men’s biggest problem is, likewise, a feeling—an unreachable itch, or a marrow-deep belief—that men should still rank above women in the social hierarchy, just not as much as before. This belief may be misguided or unconscious, but it is nonetheless insuperable, and it must be accommodated, for the good of us all. What these pundits are nudging us to do, ever so politely, is accept that women, in the main, are accustomed to being a little degraded, a little underpaid and ignored and dampened in their ambitions, in ways that men are not and never will be. The “female-coded” person, to borrow Krugman’s terminology, may feel overwhelmed by child-care costs, ashamed that she can’t acquire a mortgage, or hollowed out by long hours as an I.C.U. nurse, but such feelings do not disturb the order of the universe. This person’s duties to protect, provide, and procreate are real, but they do not take the capital “P.” This person’s opinions matter, but not decisively. The Times pundit Ezra Klein has lately suggested that Democrats consider running anti-abortion candidates in red states, even though more than three-quarters of Gen Z women support abortion rights. Rights, like jobs, can be gender-coded, and these rights are valued accordingly.