Hit Netflix Series Adolescence, exposes the dangerous Incel culture promoted by Andrew Tate

Police obtain a shockingly graphic video of a 13-year-old student stabbing a fellow classmate to death in a car park.

This is the scene that closes the first episode of Adolescence. Yet it could easily be a headline from today’s newspapers. The Netflix special shines a light on the dangers of online incel culture and the radicalisation that many young people are at risk of today.

Despite the series being only four episodes long, it makes a chilling impact. Each episode is shot in a single take—an impressive technical feat that requires every department, from sound to camera, lighting, and actors, to deliver a flawless performance in synchronisation. With no cuts to break the scenes, the stakes are kept high and the tension palpable. The audience is on the edge of their seat for all four hours, until the final, shattering close where Jamie finally admits to his gruesome crime.

The question that viewers are left with throughout the series, and even at its conclusion, is: Why? Though this is somewhat answered with a slight nod to bullying, it is wholly unsatisfying in explaining how a seemingly normal 13-year-old could go on to commit such an act. The answer lies in a far more sinister reality that pervades the internet. It is the same force behind various mass shootings, online misogyny, and the Andrew Tate phenomenon.

‘Incel’, short for involuntary celibate, refers to men who desire sex but are unable to find willing partners. In Adolescence, this is mentioned in the context of the 80/20 rule—the idea that 80% of women will only choose the top 20% of men. Incels, in turn, blame women for their sexlessness and begin to harbour feelings of resentment and violence toward women and girls. This ideology has often manifested in real-life crimes, such as the infamous Eliot Rodger, who killed six people in 2014, or Jake Davison, a man from Plymouth who murdered five people, including his own mother, in 2021.

These cases, along with Jamie’s fictionalised story, lie on the extreme end of the spectrum. However, the root cause behind them all is the same: dangerous online misogyny. Andrew Tate is a social media personality famous within the ‘Manosphere’—a collection of blogs, websites, and forums that promote masculinity and, often, misogyny. A former professional kickboxer, Tate has carved out an online space for himself as a self-proclaimed guru for young boys and men. He advocates for a return to “traditional masculinity,” focusing on wealth creation and personal health—famously going viral for the meme, “What colour is your Bugatti?”

Yet there are far more sinister aspects to his messaging, including statements such as “women are a man’s property,” that rape victims should “bear responsibility” for the attacks on them, and that men should “boom [women] in the face and grip [them] by the neck. Shut up, bitch.”

Tate is currently facing a new lawsuit, filed in March 2025, as his ex-girlfriend has accused him of sexual assault, battery, and gender-based violence. He also faces rape charges in Romania and has been accused of similar crimes in the past. With such a figure at the forefront of many popular online platforms, it creates the perfect gateway for disillusioned young men to transform into more dangerous personas.

Nevertheless, Tate is only part of the problem. Standards for young people are becoming impossibly difficult to reach. Social media is flooded with people who seem to have the perfect body, the perfect job, millions in the bank, and holidays in picturesque locations every other month. The shoes cannot be filled, and many young men are left believing that if they don’t make it into the top 20%, they are doomed to live lonely, loveless lives.

Adolescence has finally raised a conversation that has gone relatively unheard over the past decade. We need to radically reconstruct the discourse around masculinity. Young boys and men are in desperate need of a positive, healthy understanding of what it means to be a man in the modern age. In the absence of that, the space will be filled by radicals like Tate—and violence against women and girls will only continue to rise.