From The Red Pill To Manosphere: Adolescence Terms (And Emojis) Explained

I’m only two episodes into Netflix’s Adolescence and I can’t stop thinking about it. The show follows the chilling case of 13-year-old Jamie, played by teen actor Owen Cooper, who is arrested on suspicion of murdering his classmate, Katie.

In the first two episodes, we see police break down Jamie’s front door to arrest the teen, who wets himself while his sister and mother weep on the floor. The tearful teen is then taken into custody while his family, including his dad (played by Stephen Graham), scramble around to try and figure out what’s going on.

As more details emerge of why Jamie has been arrested, we watch as police show a clip from CCTV in which a teenager stabs a girl in a local car park. It starts to become apparent that the young teen, who we initially believe couldn’t possibly commit such a violent and horrific crime, did in fact do it.

Police later realise that Katie had been sharing certain emojis on Jamie’s Instagram photos which alluded to his beliefs and online presence.

In one scene, the lead detective on the case DI Luke Bascome (played by Ashley Walters) visits Jamie and Katie’s school to speak to pupils there. He discovers the true meaning behind some of the emojis Katie had used, when his own teenage son, Adam, pulls him to one side and breaks it down for him.

Adam, played by Amari Bacchus, explains: “The red pill is like ‘I see the truth’. It’s a call to action by the manosphere … She’s saying he’s an incel, Dad.”

In the same exchange, Adam tells his father that Katie left a dynamite emoji on Jamie’s Instagram posts, which represents an exploding red pill, and alluded to him being an incel.

Also brought up on the show was the 100 emoji, with the 15-year-old explaining that it refers to an 80/20 rule where “80% of women are attracted to 20% of men” and that “you must trick them [women] because you’ll never get them in a normal way”.

If you’ve watched The Matrix, you’ll recall the scene where Neo (played by Keanu Reeves) is given the option of taking a red pill, which would help him understand what’s really going on outside of the Matrix and escape from the illusion.

Or he could take a blue pill and live in the illusion, blissfully unaware of reality.

The term “red pill” has now been adopted by certain groups – specifically, men’s rights groups – to refer to “waking up to the truth”.

The pill emoji, which is actually yellow and red, may be used to identify people in this group, as can the kidney bean emoji, which Metro points out is similar to a coffee bean, “a symbol rooted in derogatory memes mocking women online”.

Discussing how ‘red pill’ has been adopted in these circles, researchers Megan Kelly, Alex DiBranco and Julia DeCook wrote for New America: “The major contemporary secular male supremacist movements … all use this terminology to describe their ‘realisation’ that men do not hold systemic power or privilege.

“Instead, they awaken to the ‘truth’ that socially, economically, and sexually, men are at the whims of women’s (and feminists’) power and desires.”

The manosphere is “a collection of websites, social media accounts and forums dedicated to men’s issues, from health and fitness to dating and men’s rights”, according to Robert Lawson, associate professor in sociolinguistics at Birmingham City University.

While this doesn’t sound like anything out of the ordinary, there are plenty of manosphere communities where explicit anti-women and anti-feminist sentiments are widely shared. And this is where things take a turn for the worse.

Lawson explained in a piece for The Conversation that the language of the manosphere “creates a culture of exclusion, denigration (mainly of women, but also of other men), male power and entitlement”.

These sexist ideas are pushed onto young men and teens – and you can easily see how a child, or teen, with low self-esteem may then get pulled in.

The linguistics expert suggested that for police and other authorities, language can be an early warning system to identify men at risk of carrying out male supremacist violence – like that of Jamie in Adolescence.

In addition to red pill/blue pill chatter, he highlights other phrases to watch out for, such as: “alphas and betas”, “Chads and Stacys”, “Cuck” and ”(N)awalt”. You can read more about these phrases here.

Incel stands for involuntary celibate – men who describe being unable to attract a romantic or sexual partner, and tend to blame women as a result.

Author Chris McQueer recently wrote for HuffPost UK that for some “this is because of how they look” while for others “it’s because women aren’t attracted to them because they are of low status”.

Incels are basically the opposite of alphas/Chads, which McQueer describes as being, in his mind’s eye, “a successful, tall, handsome, promiscuous man”.

But they often share one very disturbing commonality: a dislike, and sometimes “visceral” hatred, of women.

After delving deeper into online incel communities, McQueer said many of their upbringings were “littered with abuse, poverty, bullying, loneliness and often learning difficulties”.

“To me, it painted a bleak picture of lost boys searching in the wrong places for a bit of human interaction,” he wrote.

“And ready to prey on these boys were far more sinister men. These men encouraged the boys to blame their problems on women and to seek retribution for it. They detailed ways in which to make the women they may encounter in their day to day lives uncomfortable.”

Discussing Adolescence’s uncomfortable themes, particularly the rise of online misogyny among children, actor Stephen Graham said he hopes people will be more “mindful of the fact” it’s not just parents and schools educating children.

He continued: “There’s influences that we have no idea of that are having profound effects on our young culture, profound effects – positive, and extremely negative.”