The kid seems so innocent. The grown-ups can’t understand why he did it. A 13-year-old boy – the protagonist of Adolescence, the Netflix drama written by Jack Thorne – stabbed and murdered a female schoolmate in a fit of sexist rage, having been radicalised by social media. The series has been wildly successful, reigniting a public conversation about young men and online misogyny. But the drama itself, and the murder it depicts, isn’t what’s most shocking about this story.
What’s shocking is that anyone is shocked. After all, there is nothing remotely fanciful about its plot. Boys and men have been committing acts of misogynist terrorism long before they began to be hypnotised by online cults.
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