Adolescence - aibu to think this is more a story about bullying?

[Apricotfuzz]

Aibu to think Andrew Tate has nothing to do with it, I don't understand the emphasis on this strange moral panic. Isn't the bullying behaviour the real trigger? Why are we talking about Tate rather than our out of control kids who behave atrociously

Rejection seems to have been the trigger.

Your post is exactly the reason that Adolescence was made and needs to be seen by everyone, until they get what is happening to our young men and girls. It is insidious.
Please watch it again.

Please don't be vague and ambiguous like that. If you feel it is underscoring a vital message - then why wouldn't you make it clear. What have I missed?

I've not watched the show yet. I only know bits and pieces. Are we saying the girl bullied the boy?

That it is precisely about the likes of Tate and other misogynistic influencers telling boys that women are nothing and they aren't allowed to reject you and if they do it's OK to physically assault (or in this case kill) them.
That our kids aren't safe up on their rooms when they have access to this crap they are spewing.

It isn't ambiguous at all.

The trigger was a girl rejecting a boy for a date at the fair. He thought she would accept him because she had been brought low and made 'weak' by boys sneering at her for being flat chested, after circulating topless pictures of her. Where do you imagine a 13 year old boy would get the idea he was so entitled to a date with her, that he punished her refusal with murder?

The girl calls him an incel by the use of the emojis she uses in reference to him online. He can't handle her rejection of him when he wants her to go out with him and stabs her.

What have you confirmed is happening to our boys and girls and what is there beyond a tv show to PROVE your summation. And precisely what numbers ( by population, by ethnicity and broken down by geological location) of boys and girls is this actually happening to in real life.

I have said on other threads - we should not be demonising our boys.

This is all fiction though.

The most effective video for safeguarding I ever watched was about how a teen boy became involved with right-wing, mysogninstic, older men.
Like teens everywhere,

• he was open to influence from adults; in a normal scenario, teens want to learn from adults

-he was angry at his parents -his views were very b&w and the older men, without any agenda or related knowledge, supported these As per the video, the older men were not actually looking to 'radicalise' him, they did not have a 'cause' and were not trying to recruit him for any purpose - they had none - but were including him and treating him as an 'adult'. He felt 'heard' and 'validated' so he picked up their antiquated, mysoginist views which amplified his anger about how his parents had dealt with his mother's affair (his dad took her back)

Yes, the piece of fiction (based on real life events) that the OP invited us to discuss, so not sure what your point is?

This is fiction, but the actions of Axel Rudakubana or Kyle Clifford aren't. The TV show is just a story, but one of a boy killing a girl, because he's grown up to believe he's entitled to her. Yes, bullying happens, but insulting or shaming someone who is harassing you isn't that.

Ok, this is what I think. Not vague.

A big part of Adolescence is the 80/20 rule, a debunked incel theory that claims 80% of women only date the top 20% of men, spread on line and fuelling resentment and entitlement in young boys.

Jamie is repeatedly mocked for being “an incel,” pushing him further into online spaces that offer him a sense of belonging but at a huge cost. Yes, that’s bullying but it’s the knowledge that the girl has, of incels, red or blue pills etc that is the most damaging. That comes from Tate and social media.

The rejection by a group or girl would, in the past have resulted in a few sad days and then a return to normal life. The internet changed everything.

Social media offers mainline validation of their feelings and Tate et al, amplify and mould them into women haters.

Social media is radicalising young men faster than ever, exposing them to influencers who promote violence and hatred towards women. Pornography addiction is warping perceptions of sex, consent, and relationships from an early age. It’s in games, chat and their screens.

Jamie says about her being ‘flat’ but he could ‘generously overlook that’. He approached her because they bullied her and made her weak, so she was easy prey, easy meat.

Schools have an increase in sexual harassment, misogynistic bullying, and abusive behaviours among boys as young as 10.

I was a teacher for a long time and I find it terrifying.

They're cagey about it because they know they behaved badly

Perhaps we watched different shows. I was hoping you could describe the scenes and plot details that make this this clear - because it seemed obvious to me that retaliation for bullying was the prime trigger

Neither was a 13 year old boy radicalised by andrew tate.

Axel was possibly mentally unstable and appears to have been in to Islamic terrorism and school shootings and the other is a story as old as time far before Andrew tate.

Ps I have no time for tate or his message but I do not believe that all the teen school boys are radicalised by Andrew tate and his ilk and I do not believe that all the teen school boys are a danger to girls

I do believe that the messaging around this fictional tv show that we are seeing on social media (Inc here) and even in Parliament is damaging to our children - possibly even more than what is happening online.

What? Jamie's mum had an affair? Which episode was that in as I must have missed it?!?

No indeed. But we should be protecting them. Andrew Tate is real. Incel culture is real. Teen boys access their content online, often through innocent gateway content about fitness or career success. We know this because adults who live and work with teens are aware those boys know who he is, and they reference him. They are vulnerable to having their minds messed with at an impressionable age. We don't fully know how many children have accessed or been influenced by this content, but most responsible parents would want to protect their sons from being one of them. As a mother of sons i genuinely can't understand why some people are so keen to stick their head in the sand about this risk to our boys.

"Pornography addiction is warping perceptions of sex, consent, and relationships from an early age. It’s in games, chat and their screens."

I completely agree with this. But this predates Tate - and I wonder if creating a folk-devil of him neatly side steps all these wider issues of the environment that make young people susceptible to his messaging. He's a symptom, not a cause. But it seems more convenient for everyone who wants to run around blaming him instead of looking at the wider issues

Umm, no, I'm not saying anything about the plot of Adolescence but that young people of all persuasions are open to influence and for reasons that parents wouldn't necessarily identify.

The reason boys are vulnerable to it are surely because its broadly in accord with their lived experience? They tap into something that is truly felt

Put your phone down and watch it again OP, actually pay attention, watch it properly, listen. To have this takeaway it’s quite obvious you’ve either not watched it properly or not bothered to listen

I work in a ‘nice’ secondary school and I hear the chat on the corridors, red pill, blue pill, sigma, chad etc. It’s endemic and part of wider social culture now. It’s also evident in the way some (obviously not all) boys react in terms of behaviour management when comparing a female or male teacher.

Did you miss the part in the drama where Jamie asks Katie on a date? Because the timeline was Katie calls him an incel, he asked her on a date and is rejected, he kills her. If the murder was retaliation for being called an incel, how do you explain that in between the two incidents he wanted to date her?

No I thought the bullying storyline was more that the adults in the story presumed he was being bullied by her when they knew about the emojis. When really , it's not bullying if a girl points out something that is real about a boy. The boy in the programme did hate women and girls. That was the story. He wasn't being bullied.