I just watched Adolescence - terrified!

Terrifies me too and I have a DD. She also has a Dad that is misogynistic and openly shows his respect for Andrew Tate, Russell Brand, Putin & Trump so I’m really up against it! 🤣 but I will win!

I spend every opportunity building her self respect, boundaries and explaining what is acceptable and what is not. I’m also watching Adolescence and my DD know I am so I’ve appropriately explained some of it to her. Along with the dangers of Snapchat, WhatsApp, insta and all the other shit things in the world.

That’s all we can do as parents I guess but I’m with you op.

Apparently 30% of incels have autism. My SIL has aspergers and adhd (DH also has asd and adhd). There is a 8 year gap, dh never really used social media before uni and deleted all his social media years ago (he was born the year the berlin wall fell). He also had a girlfriend at sixth form and met his wife (me) at university. Basically always been in a relationship.

It's interesting, I am not saying my dh would ever have been an incel but like many boys he worried about not having a girlfriend until 18 etc and that was when most people didn't have smartphones and boys and girls mixed more IRL. How would he be like if he was younger like my SiL. Of course what helped my DH was that he was more academic (SiL failed gcses) but it is said Jamie did well at school too.

Yes its very ideological.

Normally the netflix/hollywood mandate is to replace white characters with random black/etc ones for "diversity " purposes, which is how we end up with latino Snow Whites, and shows set in Victorian England or feudal Scotland where half the characters are black.

And yet for this particular show, the main character was race swapped from being black, to white. So a story which is really about black gang/knife crime (which is overwhelming the main driving force behind teenage murders) becomes an excuse to hand wring about the evils of white working class kids, Andrew Tate, and is used as another pretext for government censorship of the internet.

99% of the teenage boys I teach think Andrew Tate is a weirdo (not their terminology, but you get the picture!). Of course, negotiating things like getting your first girlfriend is tricky, so is working out “what kind of model of masculinity do I want to be?” Your DP/DH is essential here, to talk about the fact that being a boy/man is fine, it’s all about how you treat others.

In the classroom, I found gentle mockery of the more neanderthal members of the class was the most effective, coupled with a warm appeal to their better nature: “Ernesto/Taiye/Jonathan/Imran, if you ever succeed in persuading a woman to go out with you, you will find she’s much less likely to put weed killer in your tea if you do your own laundry” followed up by “come on, Andrew Tate must feel so worthless that he thinks he has to buy women. You’ll never be in such a sorry state - you’ve got far too
much going for you to get sucked into that nonsense”.

Oh that’s an interesting take!
There’s a link with trans and autism (which explains the black and white thinking, and also the obsessive nature of it all), and I’ve often wondered if there’s a similar link with incels. There’s a real lack of critical thinking, whatever it is.

Not saying that autistic people are bad. I’m autistic and recognise how easy it would be to slip into these ways, particularly if your chosen tribe validates your views 100%.

I’ve also wondered if there’s an element of the internet, allowing autistic people to connect much more easily hasn’t been entirely successful for us, and seems to be behind some of the tricky things going on at the moment (I know how that reads, but as an autistic who has had to withdraw from most autistic online spaces due to what I would call radicalised extremism, it really makes you think!).

well, I'm glad that's the case because I use purple heart emojis a lot and was worried I'd been signalling I was horny!!

I voted YANBU, but I don’t think anyone should be panicking.

I’ve since spoken to a few teachers, and found it interesting that there’s a mix of opinions. Some say it doesn’t reflect at all on their experiences, some felt it was very well portrayed, interestingly from some there is a mix of opinions when working in the same schools. Some of my son’s teachers come across as weak and ineffective, others stronger and more likely to have a positive impact on children, so I think that’s down to personality, and that will change how they view certain situations.

It’s the same if you talk to people about porn - some love it and see no issue, some hate it and only see problems.

I think we’re at a point where we have to somehow address what’s going on. It’s being brushed under the carpet too much. How girls are taught from a very young age to make way for boys, being made to take responsibility for their behaviour.
When porn comes on the scene, earlier and earlier, it’s too easy to access porn that would have been off limits to most pre internet, so young boys, even those with excellent parents who have great parental controls, can view porn that teaches them that violence during sex is normal, that women should largely submit to this violence and even enjoy it. That dangerous practices like choking is fine.
When sexual red flags in schools are routinely dismissed as boys lacking the social skills to treat girls with respect. When bullying is ignored. It all passes as acceptable and normal, when it shouldn’t be.

You can be the best parents in the world, but when your perfect son goes to secondary school, in this world where porn and the manosphere are huge and influential, you can’t rely on your son’s early years to keep them, and girls in their lives, safe. Yes you can limit screens once home, but that only shelters them so much.

What actually needs to happen is for decent men to become louder. To call out the shit that men very often banter about. To call out the disgusting stuff that men often joke about when referring to women. Call out this nonsense that feminism, and women’s desire for equality, is somehow oppressive towards men.

Right now there are very few men calling this stuff out, and very often those aligning with women to speak up for/with them have placed themselves in order to access them in a predatory way.

At the moment the expectation seems to be on women to fix it all, and this is easy to see in rl. Mens’ talking groups and mental health orgs are so often set up and run by women. Men need to step up and put things into place to stop the growing vacuum that allows the Andrew Tates of the world to take that space. They are not helpless babies, so why rely so much on women having to fix things for them?

Internet should be heavily regulated, particularly for under 18s. No child should be able to access porn ever. This stands for 4/5g networks as well. You shouldn’t have to rely on parental controls, which are easy to change, and useless if your child’s friend has no controls, to prevent children from seeing porn. I also think things like choking and slapping should be classified differently, (I’d like to say banning but that doesn’t work) so it’s more difficult to find and isn’t as mainstream as it currently is.

It’s a man’s world though. They’ve created this. They need to take responsibility and make it better.

@madamweb my experience with my teenagers was the same. They think AT is an idiot, the knew nothing about incels, the emojis, the manosphere, the 80/20 thing. They said their school is nothing like that, they would be punished for behaving like that. They have good relationships with their teachers.

I dont recognise myself in the parents. My children are: boy turning 14, boy 15 and girl 17. They are all in bed at 9.30, no screens in the rooms, tight restrictions on phone use and gaming. The dont bring their phones to school, they have activities most evenings and when home they do some study and then watch tv in the living room. No phones in the living room either so very little phone use in the evening. Myself and DH rarely use phones, all phones stay in the kitchen and kids only use them to message friends or call for a chat, they dont scroll on social media and dont sit with their phones messaging on snapchat or whatever app for hours.
DH and I work long hours but are very engaged in our kids lives and have great chats with them on drives to training/matches where we talk about school and friends. We get loads on info on these drives and keep a good eye on their moods.

The hype is odd but use it for good..an end to permissive parenting and weak schools. More focus on the poison of social media for children..tackling misogyny in boys.

Remember that the "masculinity" shit spewed by Andrew Tate etc. is extremist ideology. It is not the norm. It should worry all of us that such extremist ideology is freely available and distributed so easily. Please don't imagine it is the norm for young people to be influenced to violent action by it. But please be vigilant that your children aren't wandering these streets (virtual and real) alone and with no boundaries. Because it is certainly fueling and justifying violent action against women, girls and boys who don't follow the same ideology.

There are other male role models who counter this extremism and offer a very different version of boyhood and masculinity (whatever that means!) I loved this conversation between Paul Bruson on his podcast "we need to talk" with Jordan Stephens of Rizzle Kicks: d

Not in a million years, but I know parents - ‘good’ MC parents - who do, for various reasons, including that the kid is doing okay at school, that they aren’t really paying attention to their online time, that they aren’t sure how to limit their kid, that they’re working shifts and aren’t always around, that their child ‘socialises’ like that, that other kids seem to be doing it, kid is a bit out of controland at least they are at home… and on and on…

friend told me he has no idea what their D.C. do online because the kid says their laptops and phones are ‘private’ and the parents don’t have the passcodes! So they just talk to the kids and trust them to do the right thing and hope for the best. As their kids are 14 and 15 however, and the younger one is in all sorts of trouble in general, I think that they’re bloody mad to allow them so much freedom around devices.

My sons 13. We have very very open and honest discussions. I ask him his opinion on things, I ask him to give me his thoughts on topics and not reply in the way he thinks I want him to. I value his opinions, I value our ability to debate and challenge each other. I never ever preach.

I find the approach of listening to him and valuing his opinion has allowed this honest and open relationship. Nothing is off limits nor should it be.

I asked him Sunday if he had watched anything by or regarding Andrew Tate and he had, I asked what he thought and to be fair his response didn’t surprise me - Andrew Tate is a loser, DS says his friends and he preaches to try to remain relevant by being controversial and it’s best that he is ignored and that’s what he and his mates do.

Yes watching the programme made my son feel very privileged if that is what some schools are like.

Sure there's some mucking about, I mean I was a straight A teen and even I mucked about or had giggles, we aren't robots, but they all get on and learn too.

I thought the depiction of all the teachers as rather pathetic and apathetic was wildly slanderous. There are some amazingly committed (and robust) teachers at my son's school. He hero worships his maths teacher for starters!

I agree, WTF is going on.

It's a TV programme. And one with quite "a level drama project vibes" at that.

Keep talking to your boys, keep spending time with them, make sure they don't spend their whole life online, be aware of their peer group, nurture their talents and support them in things they struggle at.

We have two teenage boys and they both think Andrew Tate was an idiot. One of them asked to watch Adolescence and couldn't follow chunks of it because they had no idea what an incel was or what all these emojis were.

And his view on the school "maybe some schools are like that?"

You are in the perfect position to plan your approach to digital access carefully. Put pins on all your smart tv apps so that kids can't access YouTube, adult content or games via the tv without your permission. Set up a separate WiFi for kids use which has strong filters. Set up content controls on you alexa devices. Start seeding it now that your kids won't have smartphones till they're older, and they won't have social media at all until 14/older. Let them know that includes Discord/Twitch. Set up online gaming controls so that they can't accept or send friend requests without a parent's password so that you have control of who they play online with. When you do get them a phone either give them a brick phone as a starter device, or put controls like family link on it with a limit on time in the phone, and enforced phone lock at night. Have firm rules that no devices are in kids bedrooms - no tv, pc, laptop, gaming console or phones. If they're online it needs to be in a shared family space. Configure your WiFi to block tiktok, insta etc. You can Google how to do this quite easily. Regularly check search histories, photo galleries, you tube watch history etc. You can't control what they see with friends or outside the home, but you can set boundaries at home and thereby give your kids a clear message that the Internet is not a playground.

It seems like a programme that features young people but more aimed at anxious parents. Soaps have these sort of plots too. Most actual teenagers just want to see people their age mucking about and having a laugh.

This is a really good point. I sometimes think we forget to acknowledge worrying behaviour from girls, which absolutely does exist and is also getting worse.

atmywitsend1989 · Today 09:49

BeDeepKoala · Today 01:51
The amount of crazy people freaking out and trying to base real life policy decisions on a fictional TV show is absolutely wild

The exact story itself is fake but there are plenty of young men like Jamie. Mums SHOULD be vigilant about this! You can't stay unaware of what teenagers and children are getting sucked into these days, and right now it happens to be the andrew tate crap

Mums? Just Mums?

Alot of teenagers I know don't recognise this behaviour to be honest. It's good to open the conversation with your kids but I don't think every teenage boy is going to relate to this at all.

I think it depends entirely in the school and background of the children. As I said I haven't watched it but having worked in PRUs, with children whose homelife makes them vulnerable and disenfranchised, I do recognise a lot of the risks that are being talked about.

I watched it and was unimpressed, but thought maybe I’m not the audience- work in vawg, brought up boys and girls in a firm moral framework to be aware of toxic relationship patterns and beliefs etc.
But I’m now wondering if there is something more sinister going on. The ‘wrong’ police procedural stuff, the chaotic school, the fact the protagonist had an engaged dad at home. Even the fact that the case was based on black kids and pointing it out invalidates any criticism, it just all feels off.
Onviously sex based violence is firmly sex not race based by the way and the recent cases were outliers, it just feels really muddy and I don’t think we’re getting the whole story and who’s pulling the strings.

You think teens are nodding their heads at Adolescence? I think they’re cringing at depiction of school and the students.

I haven't watched it because I'm expecting it to be a difficult watch as mother to two young men. I will because it sounds important, but I'm having to steel myself.

My "boys" are now 21 & 24 and I think decent young men, good kind people and productive to have in my home, but there are elements of how DS1 is with his GFs that I don't love and DS2 is a recluse who spends far too much time online...

My gen z sister in law is exactly like Jamie in episode 3 in terms of aggressiveness, emotional volatility, low self esteeM, overwhelming urge to be liked, desire to provoke emotional reactions. She also has the addiction to tech and stays up all night on the computer and sleeps all day. She is 27( but has done this since 15 or possibly even younger). However cos she is a girl, instead of being the manosphere, it is trans. She got expelled from school at 15 and her story is she was trying to get out a door and the obese headmaster was in the way. Sounds like she assaulted him.

When he screamed look at me, I had such a sense of deja vu, SIL screamed the same at me. And when psychologist broke down and cried, I remember feeling like that too (she is much younger than me too).

I don't know if it's just online radicalisation or Jamie was meant to have sociopathic traits. If that is the case I am really scared about my SIL. Am pregnant so feel more vulnerable. Dh agrees, he says he is often scared of his sister and he is a guy 8 years older than her!