A mother said her son was ‘red pilled’ like in Netflix‘s Adolescence when he was just 11 years old and has spent the last four years trying to change his mindset.
Rachel Parker noticed her son Spencer, now 15, repeating misogynistic things he had heard influencers say online.
When the schoolboy casually told Rachel ‘women are gold diggers’ she said she immediately challenged him and asked where he’d heard it.
The schoolboy explained it had been discussed in videos by controversial influencer Andrew Tate which had appeared on his YouTube feed.
The 33-year-old said she had to intervene in conversations as recently as a year ago on subjects such as women ‘respecting their bodies’ and blaming men for ‘everything’.
She felt upset that Spencer was ‘turning his back’ on women, particularly given he grew up without a father figure.
But a few weeks ago the mother overheard him telling off a friend for referring to his mother in a rude manner and says she’s proud of the man he’s becoming.
In light of Netflix’s hit series Adolescence Rachel is warning parents of ‘red pilling’ signs and is giving advice on how to challenge concerning opinions.
Rachel Parker noticed son her Spencer, now 15, repeating misogynistic things he had heard influencers say online
The mother from Nottinghamshire said her son referred to all women being ‘gold diggers’ and believes he picked these views up from influencers like Andrew Tate
Rachel shared a TikTok video discussing how her son was ‘red pilled’ like in Netflix’s Adolescence
YouTube said they terminated channels associated with Andrew Tate in 2022 and remove content promoting Incel ideology.
The mother from Nottinghamshire said: ‘One day he randomly said, “well women are just gold diggers anyway”.
‘I remember thinking that’s weird for an 11-year-old to say so I asked him where he’d heard that and he told me that he’d seen some men talking about it online.
‘He watched normal videos of people playing video games and then out of nowhere this information started leaking in.
‘Because he watched one video of it, another one came in and then he liked that and then another one came in.
‘We would talk about other things that came up in these videos such as women ‘not respecting themselves ‘and women being on OnlyFans.
‘At that age he didn’t even know what OnlyFans was but he jumped on the hate train.
‘At one point said he was sick of everyone ‘blaming men for everything.’
YouTube said they terminated channels associated with Andrew Tate (pictured) for multiple violations of Community Guidelines and Terms of Service, including their hate speech policy
The term ‘red pilled’ refers to a scene in The Matrix where the lead character is given the choice to take the red pill. In Netflix’s Adolescence, it is explained that the ‘red pill’ represents an awakening to the ‘truth’ about gender issues. File image
The Netflix series Adolescence tells the story of how a family’s world is turned upside down when 13-year-old Jamie Miller (Owen Cooper) is arrested for the murder after he is radicalised online
Rachel said: ‘It kind of threw me for a loop because I have raised him to be aware of feminist issues and aware of the system that he lives in.
‘He mentioned watching Andrew Tate to me.
‘I never squashed any part of his personality to make him feel like he should have needed to find community in a place like that.
‘He was having to deny his own lived experience because he is essentially raised by women.
‘His dad’s not around so it’s been just me and my family that have raised him.
‘My sisters, my mum, my grandmas, they’ve all been really involved in his upbringing.
‘All of a sudden he was turning his back on us and picking these beliefs up.
‘It upset me more than anything and I wondered what I had done.
‘If I would have ignored that, that would have been the wrong thing to do.
‘Misogyny is everywhere anyway but recognising it and realising this is something I’ve got to tackle was probably one of the hardest things I’ve done.
‘It was the most important thing I’ve done as a parent as well.’
In Adolescence the main character is radicalised by Incel ideology. Rachel has watched the first two episodes of Adolescence with Spencer and they are planning on finishing the series soon.
Stephen Graham plays the role of Jamie’s dad in the hit Netflix show
In the Netflix series the main character exhibits misogynistic views and seems to have been indoctrinated into Incel ideology online
The term ‘red pilled’ refers to a scene in the 1999 film The Matrix where the lead character is given the choice to take the red pill which would lead him to understanding the illusion of The Matrix.
In Netflix’s Adolescence, it is explained that the ‘red pill’ represents an awakening to the ‘truth’ about gender issues.
Rachel watched the first two episodes of Adolescence with Spencer and they are planning on finishing the series soon.
She said: ‘He doesn’t normally put his phone down but he put his phone down to watch Adolescence and he was really engaged with it.
‘It was emotional for sure and I worry about children of this generation anyway and not just the girls, the boys as well.
‘The important thing when it comes to starting these conversations is to just start them.’
She said just a few weeks ago her son called his own mates out on the language they were using to talk about women and is proud of his reaction.
Rachel said: ‘He has now gotten to a point where he sees Andrew Tate as a caricature of the red pill movement.
‘He once liked him but now he thinks he’s a joke.
Being depressed, paranoid, anxious all make men more likely to become an Incel, researchers from the University of Rome found
‘He is now in a mindset of not wanting to be like those men he saw on those videos.
‘It was probably a couple of weeks back now that he was sat playing on his PlayStation with his friends.
‘One of them said a slur that means whore and my son jumped on it straight away.
‘He was like, “you do not talk about your mum like that. She deserves respect because she brought you into this world”‘.
‘He told him it was disgusting and suggested he go and apologise for saying that.
‘I was really proud of him for that, it shows growth.’
Spencer said: ‘Watching Adolescence, it was very interesting to see how it plays out when a boy is exposed to that stuff online and has to experience the social expectations of having a girlfriend, which is why I focus more on school work instead of that.
‘I now find this online content cringe. It’s so embarrassing to watch those people have these opinions so loudly knowing that people are going to believe it without question.’
YouTube said they terminated channels associated with Andrew Tate for multiple violations of Community Guidelines and Terms of Service, including their hate speech policy, in 2022.
Reuploading content from a channel following its termination violates YouTube’s policies and will be removed.
They say its long-held Community Guidelines make clear it does not allow hate speech on YouTube.
As part of this hate speech policy, YouTube removes content that promotes the Incel ideology, including the recruitment of individuals to the Incel community.
What is an Incel?
‘Incel’ stands for ‘involuntary celibate’ and is a term used by a certain group of men who blame their inability to form relationships and have sex on women.
Incel groups have been accused of inciting violence and misogyny online and numerous communities and subreddits have been banned over their content.
A cryptic Facebook message posted by Toronto suspect Alek Minassian just before the incident suggested he was part of an online community angry over their inability to form relationships with the opposite sex.
The now-deleted post saluted Elliot Rodger, a community college student who killed six people and wounded 13 in shooting and stabbing attacks near the University of California, Santa Barbara, in 2014.
In 2014, Elliot Rodger killed six people and wounded 13 in shooting and stabbing attacks near the University of California, Santa Barbara
Calling Rodger ‘the Supreme Gentleman’, the Facebook post declared: ‘The Incel Rebellion has already begun! We will overthrow all the Chads and Stacys!’
Chads and Stacys are names used in internet forums to denote people with more active sexual lives.
The reference to the term ‘incel’, meaning involuntarily celibate, was a term used by Rodger in online posts raging at women for rejecting him romantically.
The anti-women sentiment also recalled Canada’s 1989 massacre at the Ecole Polytechnique, an engineering college in Montreal, when 25-year-old Marc Lepine entered a classroom.
He then separated the men from the women, told the men to leave and opened fire, killing 14 women before killing himself.
In a suicide note, he blamed feminists for ruining his life.
