Rather than focusing on whether or not he did it, Adolescence seems more concerned with the causes and consequences of the terrible killing as everyone struggles to figure out how a 13-year-old boy would kill another child.
Leading star Stephen Graham revealed there was a ‘true story’ behind Adolescence, as the actor said there was an ‘epidemic amongst young lads up and down the country’.
“There was an incident where a young boy [allegedly] stabbed a girl,” Graham told Netflix’s Tudum.
“It shocked me. I was thinking, ‘What’s going on? What’s happening in society where a boy stabs a girl to death? What’s the inciting incident here?’
“And then it happened again, and it happened again, and it happened again. I really just wanted to shine a light on it, and ask, ‘Why is this happening today? What’s going on? How have we come to this?’”
Adolescence discusses what the hidden meanings behind emojis are for the ‘manosphere’ (Netflix)
During the investigation into why the boy murdered his classmate detectives must decipher what the online language of phrases and emojis actually mean, particularly in the ‘incel’ world.
The son of one of the detectives explains to his dad what the ‘red pill’ means, with the character making the connection to The Matrix and saying: “The red pill is like ‘I see the truth.’ It’s a call to action by the manosphere.”
For many viewers, Adolescence will be their first proper introduction to the terminology and emojis used by the ‘manosphere’, a group of misogynistic online communities which try to bring boys and men round to seeing women as beneath them.
Another of the emojis explained in Adolescence is the ‘100’ emoji and how it fits into the ‘incel’ worldview.
Back in better times the ‘100’ emoji was usually more associated with the number it depicted, and taken to mean something like ‘100 percent’ or ‘absolutely’.
The incels have co-opted the 100 emoji, so what do they mean when they use it? (Getty Stock Image)
However, one of the characters in Adolescence explained that in the less pleasant parts of the internet the ‘100’ emoji is a reference to something called ‘the 80 to 20 rule’.
As the show describes it: “80 percent of women are attracted to 20 percent of men. Women, you must trick them because you’ll never get them in a normal way.”
Unfortunately, among some online circles there’s a belief that the vast majority of women are only interested in the ‘top’ 20 percent of men as a way to explain why they’re not getting dates.
In their concocted incel worldview most women are not interested in most men, which is one of the ways incels tell themselves it’s actually women’s fault they can’t get a girlfriend when they get rejected.
The actual origin of the ’80 to 20 rule’ is 19th century Italian economics and is concerned with how 20 percent of the population owned 80 percent of the land, and has nothing to do with the gremlins of the manosphere cooking up reasons why it’s a woman’s fault for not being interested in them.
