Massive overreaction to a TV show

Beowulfa · Today 12:29

The "historical reality" shows Victorian Farm/Edwardian Farm are still an enjoyable watch. Clumper the Shire horse was a star.

Yes - they were great - and the Tudor Farm one.

But I don't see those as reality TV so much - more like 'living history' documentaries with no personal stuff from the expert presenters.

It has raised much more discussion about behaviour of teenage boys and thoughts about what can be done. Many parents previously thinking it’s not my son are now thinking ‘could it be my son’. The growing misogynistic behaviour of boys in schools shows that it must include some boys that are being brought up in respectful homes (as in homes that teach respect) so with parents who could have reasonably thought ‘not my son’ but something somewhere has gone wrong.

It is a piece of fiction. One that pertains to a growing problem, but still fiction.

I was concerned to hear it being described, or maybe I should say misdescribed, as a documentary by the Prime Minister, of all people.

Focusing on the real world inspiration for this show might be more useful.

It shouldn't need a fictional show to draw attention to the toxicity of Tate and his fellow arseholes. There's plenty going on in the real world to expose.

I personally find it disturbing that there are even grown adult people who cannot see how truly pathetically inadequate he and his like are. He acts like a teenager who idolises his abusive misogynistic father. Spouting stupid shit in the hopes of winning daddy's nod of approval. He's just creepy as fuck. He has made fame and fortune out of never growing out of that "daddy look at me" phase. I somehow picture his dad as a broke loser, sitting in a broken deckchair with a beer in his hand and grease stains on his dirty muscle vest while he gives his kids a nod of approval because they called some girls sluts in front of him. I'm willing to bet the Tates saw their dad hitting their mother and probably other women and calling all women whores. I can smell it on them and on plenty of these manosphere types.

The young boys who get sucked in by this ultra-misogyny are going to end up alone if they don't see the light. How many women's lives are they going to mess up along the way is an even bigger concern.

OP, actually I kind of agree the reaction to the show has been hysterical, as if it explored neveer previously discussed themes. (It doesn't). It's had very good PR I think.

If someone people found it thought provoking though, fair play!

I think the way it was shit in single takes was the most note worthy thing. Not the topic, which is discussed to death in my opinion - one would think 90% of teens and ore-teens are teetering on the brink of a porn-and iintetnet-induced psychopathic outrage, the way some people discuss them. (I accept some are - but this is not news).

The media spent ages telling children not to talk to strangers, then suddenly every one
talking to strangers online daily.

we have the main steam media to thank for Tate, he would of been small fish, yet now thanks to the lovley media, many know of him

Yes, they work together.

in a sense no different than the brain washing from the main stream media

The drama doesn’t show us how or why the Andrew Tate brainwashing occurs. That would have been interesting.

Cheekysnake is right.
I know today’s parents get a lot of stick but I see an awful lot of parents not parenting. They hand their very young children screens on what seems like a constant stream. They don’t talk to their children, they ignore them, again pacifying them with screens. What was once seen as a parents responsibility is being passed to schools. I cannot see how parents who are so quick to let their young DCs sit in front of screens for hours on end, would suddenly stop those same children from viewing online content as they grow older.
They are not suddenly going to take a full in interest in their secondary school age children are they? These are the parents who will allow their DCs to watch online content, to sit alone in their room. They will let their DCs go to friends houses where they have no idea what they will be doing. They are not going to suddenly be parents who do activities with their DCs like I did and my friends did with their DCs.
I see it constantly at work. Parents handing pre school children screens to keep them quiet rather than engaging with them. No wonder these same children will grow up gleaning information from online sources. It’s bad enough for those who do actively engage with their DCs.

@Tiswa I had that exact conversation with one of my kids a few weeks ago, but it was about paedophiles - they have always existed, but social media has made it possible for them to find each other in ways they couldn't before. It has also given them unsupervised access to children in large numbers all over the world, then when they find a child who is susceptible to grooming who can be persuaded to participate, they share that information and multiple people then contact that child. This is the reality of what we've done with this technology. And it was all so predictable.

Exactly I agree @CheekySnake and there is not just this element there is cyber bullying/nude photos//Suicide forums.

The internet can be a very scary dark place and allows connections to be made that were never there before

I didn’t think actually it was that brilliant I found it clunky and at times dull! But that doesn’t mean the underlying messaging isn’t relevant for everyone.

The online stuff is the environmental factor.

What has happened is that parents have mistakenly thought that children were safe playing on their computer in their bedroom. They are at home, their parents know where they are, they are safe from being run over/kidnapped/attacked, and at the same time, especially with difficult to parent children, online spaces are so good at holding attention that the children are quiet and undemanding. At the same time we've got a society where it's normal to hand the responsibility for parenting to someone else, almost from birth. We have fallen into this trap because it's made life easier.

Then when children begin to explore what are natural but potentially dangerous interests, like sex and violence, it's invisible. Parents are supposed to step in and hold children back from too much, too soon, and from the more risky behaviour that their naturally curious teenage brain wants them to partake in. But with online spaces this hasn't happened. We've just left them to be parented by algorithms that identify the things the child is curious about and encourage that without limits.

But isn’t it leaning a little towards that idea that yes he was almost born and with the propensity for it and nowadays with the rise of social media and the likes of Andrew Tate mean that the environment is there for them to turn without the need for external factors in the environment.

That before parents could try and do as much as they possibly can to make sure that the environment is right so it doesn’t turn them but social media means that there is a whole very large variable that often they are unaware of.

My daughter goes to private school. The Andrew Tate thing has been a huge issue with the boys. The school is trying to get a grip of it, but it’s hard.

I don't think it was about the victim or the murderer. It was from the perspective of the parents, the police and the psychologist. Trying to make sense of it all, which is also why we never really saw exactly what Jamie was looking at online and found out about the emoji's along with the policeman. The message was to become more aware of what's going on for our kids.

Yes, that’s what i felt. He comes across as a psychopath not like any young boy. His anger doesn’t feel justified and seems to be part of his personality.

Jamie isn't a normal child, though. He's a child with a violent predisposition growing up in a culture that, at the moment, is grooming those boys into committing heinous acts via their smartphones. Boys like Jamie have always existed. It's not new.

He's not a nice boy who spent too much time online, he's a horrible boy growing up in an increasingly misogynistic time. Horrible boys get upset when they're caught and have teddy bears too.

Which makes it like every other drama where women are disembodied victims. It unwittingly feeds into a misogynist narrative - also the way the father treats his wife and daughter who seem to walk on eggshells around him. It may be realistic but some of us are as sick of witnessing it on TV as we are of seeing/dealing with it in real life.

That's the whole point though. It wasn't about her. It was about him and his attitude towards her - that she was inconsequential, not a person and didn't matter

It's not relevant to you. Great.

It's relevant to many people.

Do we only make shows and talk another shows that are reverent to YOUR life?

I agree that was the point the program was making, but I disagree with the posters saying ‘could be any family’. The family in the show is of course fictional anyway, but actually also far from optimal. The father is not a good role model and the mother appears inept. They show little interest in their son and fail to set any boundaries.

I think the program raises some very important issues but I don’t think it’s worth scrutinising the family too closely.

Also agree that ‘posh private’ doesn’t necessarily = good (and private doesn’t necessarily = remotely posh either!) but that doesn’t mean there aren’t good ones out there if you look hard enough.

The majority of men believe they are better than women.
Ask your male relatives to name a sports person, or an author, actor, poet, mp, scientist, human rights activist, anyone they admire. Then come back when the vast majority of them have named females in all categories.

I disagree that only deprived downtrodden families produce misogynistic men. Off the top of my head are 3 clear examples: Trump, Musk, Johnson. All sexist with misogynistic traits.

But I think that was the point @ProfessionalPirate that actually the family doesn’t have to be what we expect poor male role models can be a father you weren’t thinking off and actually it can happen in a posh private schook

in fact many of the variables can exist there