Only 14 of the 28 students interviewed requested to be anonymous when offered the opportunity. All names have been withheld to focus the article on their responses.
Netflix’s new show, Adolescence, has quickly become the platform’s most-watched series since its mid-March release. The show follows a 13-year-old boy whose feelings of sexual frustration and loneliness lead him to murder a female classmate.
Adolescence is a warning about the rise of misogyny among young men in the digital age. The series dives into the “manosphere,” a community shaped by right-wing figures like Andrew Tate and Joe Rogan, that draws vulnerable boys toward toxic masculinity and extremist ideologies. While these spaces offer young men a sense of belonging, they also reinforce harmful stereotypes and normalize violence under the guise of “manhood.”
A central aspect of the manosphere is incel culture. Incel is short for “involuntary celibate,” a term that gained traction in anonymous online forums throughout the early 2000s. Incel culture is founded in the belief that women wield too much romantic power and unfairly reject men who are entitled to love.
After I finished the series, one question lingered: is this reality or just sensationalized fear-mongering designed to attract views? To find out, I asked 26 male students and two female students at M-A about dating culture and the meaning of masculinity.
When asked to define masculinity in their own words, 25 of the 26 male students gave strikingly similar answers. “Someone who’s tall, muscular, and physically strong,” one said.
For many, masculinity is inseparable from physical prowess. “I consider myself masculine—I play football,” another male student remarked. “A masculine guy needs to be really buff and just big,” another said.
Alongside the urge to appear physically dominant, many students admitted feeling pressured to hide their emotions, fearing they’ll be seen as weak or unmanly. “If I were to cry at practice or during a game, I think I’d get kicked off the team,” a male student said.
Crying, expressing vulnerability, or talking openly about mental health were described as uncommon behaviors among men. “If a guy is sad, he’s not supposed to show it,” a male student said.
“A masculine guy wouldn’t have a ton of emotions,” another said. Many studies show that anger is the emotion men are often most comfortable with.
“My dad always told me boys don’t cry,” another student said.
These responses reveal how narrow and uniform definitions of masculinity are learned, not chosen, shaping boys’ beliefs about their worth. Many men then equate emotional suppression and their perceived sense of masculinity with their degree of romantic success. “Girls don’t want a guy who’s sad because they want to be the ones comforted,” a male student said.
The manosphere reinforces rigid expectations of masculinity, portraying emotional vulnerability as weakness and insisting that men must be stoic providers to earn respect. This ideology often feeds into a sense of entitlement among boys, who come to believe that fulfilling these roles guarantees them romantic relationships.
“My dad always told me boys don’t cry.”
“Everyone deserves to have a girlfriend. It’s just dumb because girls only want certain guys,” a male student said.
When these romantic expectations aren’t met, disappointment can morph into resentment toward women. “Women are impossible these days, even if I try to do something, she’ll just say she got the ‘ick,’” another male student said.
“I know I can get a girlfriend because I’m good-looking and nice. I’m not the one with the issue,” one said. Adolescence explores this entitled mindset, pulling back the curtain on a subculture where romantic failure is blamed not on lack of personal growth or social skills but on women themselves.
Many students interviewed shared stories of failed relationships or rejection. “I’ve never had a girlfriend, but I don’t think I’m ugly or anything,” a male student said. The student’s remark reflects a belief that he meets some expected standard of attractiveness, yet still lacks romantic success.
This disconnect can mirror the incel mindset, where individuals feel they’re doing “everything right” by conventional standards but are still excluded, leading to resentment or a sense that the system is unfair.
While many male students simply aired their frustration regarding dating culture, others went a step further, blaming their struggles on the unrealistic standards they believe society has forced upon them.
“You gotta be at least six feet tall to get a girlfriend,” a male student said. “If you’re not funny and confident, it’s an immediate turn-off to girls, but if you are confident, they’ll say you have an ego.”
“It’s not my fault I’m not that tall, but girls act like it is sometimes,” a male student said.
This outlook can lead young men to foster a quiet resentment toward women and a society they feel has set them up to fail. In their eyes, dating is an unfair system where only a select few men can succeed while the rest are left in the dust.
“Everyone deserves to have a girlfriend. It’s just dumb because girls only want certain guys.”
“It’s f*cking stupid, I swear. Talking to girls is rigged,” a male student said. Several echoed a similar sentiment: “Girls get to say they just hate all guys, but we know what would happen if I said that.”“I could take a girl out and pay for her and stuff, and in the end, she just says she doesn’t like me anymore,” another male student said.
These frustrations can be magnified by online communities that validate and amplify their anger, feeding into the broader incel mindset.
The incel mindset is characterized by a belief that physical appearance entirely determines romantic success, leading to deep resentment toward women, whom they often view as shallow.
Many incels see themselves as victims of genetics and societal norms, blaming feminism, dating culture, and “Chads”—attractive men—for their loneliness. This worldview is often reinforced in online echo chambers that reject self-improvement and promote misogyny, and, in extreme cases, violent ideologies. While rooted in real feelings of isolation, the incel mindset can foster harmful and anti-social beliefs.Fueled by online incel communities, what begins as subtle resentment over double standards can evolve into a more dangerous worldview, one that sees women as the enemy and romantic disappointment as evidence of a rigged system. In these spaces, vulnerability is replaced with blame, and isolation with toxic belonging.
Rooted in misogyny, content from the manosphere encourages men to adopt dominance and emotionally detach while navigating relationships. For some young women, these attitudes show up in everyday interactions—they feel men treat dating like a power struggle.
“It’s f*cking stupid, I swear. Talking to girls is rigged.”
“He would say all these nice things, like I was beautiful and he liked me so much, but when he was mad, he would immediately say things like, ‘I wanna make you cry right now,’” a female student said.
This behavior isn’t always overtly aggressive but often reveals itself when women assert themselves or challenge the established dynamic. “Things were fine and all great until I disagreed or didn’t like something. When I set my boundaries, that bothered him, and then all hell broke loose,” another female student added.
These moments of tension expose how the emerging manosphere can influence young men, even if they don’t explicitly identify with it. “It’s an epidemic that stems from social media,” a female student said. “Even guys from great families who teach them excellent values can get sucked into the online algorithms.”
While Adolescence is fictional, the violence it portrays is not. In 2014, college student Elliot Rodger went on a killing spree, proclaiming he needed to give girls “exactly what they deserve: annihilation.” Before the attack, he uploaded a 141-page manifesto and a YouTube video outlining his motivations, expressing intense misogyny, social isolation, and resentment toward women and sexually active men. He saw himself as a victim of a society that denied him sexual and romantic attention and framed his violence as a form of “retribution.”
The consequences of these ideologies extend beyond one’s feed and chat rooms. When left unchecked, it can harden into real-world hostility and hinder our ability to connect with and empathize across genders. After conducting interviews with almost 30 students for this article, I was left unsettled. What concerned me most wasn’t just the content of what my peers said, but how easily they said it.
“It’s an epidemic that stems from social media,” a female student said. “Even guys from great families who teach them excellent values can get sucked into the online algorithms.”
As a female student, I expected at least some hesitation, some concern for how their words might land. But many of the boys I interviewed, some of whom I’ve known for years, spoke openly about their grievances and blame toward women, even while speaking to one.
“I think women should be doing the cooking and cleaning stuff,” said one male student. The same student later remarked, “I don’t think I would date someone who didn’t want to do that stuff.”
While these men may not be incels, they still have the same underlying belief that women need to be kept in their place, that women are assigned rigid roles and their value is tied to how well they serve men’s expectations. These kinds of comments may seem casual or simply old-fashioned, but they echo the gender dynamics that are often glorified by incel communities.
Furthermore, these weren’t anonymous internet users hiding behind a screen. These were classmates, teammates, and friends. If this is what they are comfortable sharing out loud, I worry about what goes unsaid.
“You can’t rape someone you’re dating, they’re always consenting by dating you,” a male student said. I was stunned to my core. These comments weren’t just misinformed, they were dangerous. They reflected a broader societal failure to educate young people about consent, boundaries, and respect in relationships.
Every woman on campus knows that unsolicited sexual remarks about a woman’s body and appearance are commonplace. It’s as if these boys believe it is their right to comment on a woman’s body without any regard for her autonomy or comfort. Whether it’s objectifying a classmate or making crude jokes about a celebrity, the tone is often one of entitlement, as if women exist solely for their amusement or validation.
“You can’t rape someone you’re dating, they’re always consenting by dating you.”
This sense of entitlement extends beyond words and spills into actions. The other day, I witnessed a group of boys playing a “friendly” game, where the objective was to see who could be the first to look up the skirt of a girl sitting nearby. It’s disgusting, yet it’s laughed off, shrugged off as “boys will be boys.”
The culture these students are contributing to inherently facilitates the growth of radical ideologies, even if that is not their intention. It is time we stop ignoring the signs and start having the difficult conversations now, before these ideas grow into something far more dangerous.
After all, we are all still adolescents.
