NETFLIX’S new hit series Adolescence has sparked fears about a potential real-life incel rampage, but an expert said pornography could hold the answer to impede violence among young men.

The streaming giant’s psychological crime series about a 13-year-old boy murdering a classmate has received critical acclaim, skyrocketing to Netflix‘s top 10 TV Shows since its debut on March 13.

However, the show and its incel stereotype has caused concerns about a copycat committing the acts in real life.

The incel group, an online community of sexually inactive and isolated men, was first thrust into the spotlight over a decade ago.

On May 23, 2014, Elliot Rodger went on a rampage in the Isla Vista, California neighborhood.

Rodger, 22, killed six students from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and injured 14 others before turning the gun on himself.

As the bloodshed unfolded, Rodger emailed a manifesto to his parents, Peter Rodger and Ong Li Chin Tye, titled, My Twisted World: The Story of Elliot Rodger.

He also uploaded a video on YouTube titled, Elliot Rodger’s Retribution.

The manifesto outlined his motive, his hatred of women and his miserable life as an incel – an online group of young men who consider themselves unable to find a romantic or sexual partner.

Elliot Rodger is lionized by some in the incel community, and since his heinous act, there has been more mass killings by lone wolves across the United States, according to experts.

William Costello, an incel expert and doctoral researcher at the University of Austin, studies the complex issue and said that portraying incels as violent monsters may make great television, but in reality, it harms the community of young men more.

Costello said that there’s a greater chance the incel group won’t even act at all, a lot of it is online misogynistic and toxic ranting, which can be “taken with a pinch of salt.”

While there’s a current societal problem with violence among young men, this hasn’t trickled down to incels, and it could be because of the Male Sedation Hypothesis.

“One peculiar finding is that there’s not as much incel violence, as you would expect – ideologically motivated violence like Elliot Rodger – compared to other extremist groups,” Costello said.

“In evolutionary psychology, for decades, a very clear trend [has occurred] that whenever you have more single young men in a society, they cause an awful lot of harm, usually going about in gangs.

“They’re doing anything they can to elevate their status, to get a mate, whereas now you’re seeing rising rates of singlehood, but no corresponding rise in violence.

“So, what’s happening to these otherwise troublesome young men?”

RACY SOLUTION

Costello shared one hypothesis where he sees raunchy videos as a solution to curbing violence in young men.

“One hypothesis is that they could be sedated by the online world, such as pornography, which would give them a fake cue that they’re achieving evolutionary success, the human mind can be tricked fairly easily,” he said.

“Pornography might be taking the ‘state of striving’ edge off and actually buffering against the violence or it could just be distracting.

“But these otherwise troublesome young men are just not going out into the world committing violence, they’re being edgy on the internet instead.

“For the most part, they’re shouting at each other in anonymous forums, this is not the same as going out into the world and acting in offline violence.”

Television dramas like Adolescence could make the situation worse rather than raise awareness about the incel community to the public, the expert added.

“What’s very worrying for me is the explosion of attention that the incel topic gets with Adolescence. It ticks all our boxes for cognitive attention,” Costello said.

“The incel story – it’s dangerous, it’s about sex, it hijacks tribal psychology and our protectiveness about women.

“It really pushes all our buttons. If a media story links to incel violence, that’s the way it will be framed.

“So given that it gets so much attention, you have a lot of future potential spree killers, who are looking for a cause that will give them a lot of attention.

“Suddenly you’ve got a cause that will get you one of the most watched Netflix TV shows ever.”

The expert added, “It will be discussed in the British Houses of Parliament. It will be shown to every kid in a UK school, then that’s kind of seductive, it’s frightening for me to think there’s probably people out there who are thinking that way, that’s scary.

“Adolescence gets some things right and wrong, one potential harm is that it actually incentivizes would be spree killers by giving them a lot of notoriety.

“At times, an incel might break from reality and go down in a blaze of glory, but with most of what is said on these forums, you have to take it with a pinch of salt.

“It’s not like there’s loads of hidden incel violence that’s happening out there that isn’t being picked up on.”

ALT-RIGHT MISOGYNISTIC PROBLEM

The expert explained, “I think society as a whole, we can understand better the nature of incel psychology, makeup of the group, level of stress and their mental health.

“In the media, we’re just seeing incels as this rabid misogyny, toxic masculinity, one-dimensional analysis.

“I know that the incel storyline is a button pusher for people, so it’s no surprise that every television program is going to have an Intel storyline in the next couple of years.

“But where it gets problematic is when those fictional TV shows are used as policy informing interventions like with this new government, so it tells you a little bit about the people in power at the moment.

“I don’t mind TV shows making whatever they want, but when we’re elevating those shows to informing policy, it seems a bit knee jerk.”

While Costello argued that in the main incels are no harm offline, another expert, Eran Shor, offers an alternative opinion that the group should be viewed as a terrorist political movement.

Shor, an associate professor at McGill University’s Department of Sociology, in Montreal, Canada, has published papers on the issue.

He said the likes of Elliot Rodger should be viewed in the same bracket as radicalized muslims, which has spawned the likes of Al Qaeda.

“Elliot Rodger is probably the first to really go out there and declare himself with his writings and the videos he left behind him. He’s admired, an absolute hero to many people in the movement,” Shor said.

“There’s been other incel killings in the US and Canada since then, but he will always get mentioned, almost like the founder of using violence to achieve something, people are still citing his name, he’s still very much a figure that’s revered.

“The incel movement is often thought of as loners online. First of all, they’re not loners. They’re a community. For them, this is a real community, with a lot at stake for people who are members. It’s very real to them.

“When we’re thinking about defining terrorism in the last two decades, then part of it is the target. It needs to be civilian targets, who are not armed.”

The associate professor continued, “A really important part of it is also it is not just airing grievances, but using or threatening violence, it has political goals, they may not be realistic.

“But, for example, the Al Qaeda September 11 attack – it doesn’t appear to be a very realistic goal.

“So I don’t think we should judge these things by how realistic the goal is, but rather, do they have these goals? Do they think violence is the way to achieve these goals?

“And if we think these elements exist [in incels], then we should start thinking about these things similarly.

“If they are using violence against unarmed civilians, and also doing it for political goals, then this is getting close to how we think about other types of terrorism.”

For Shor, he said that those in power and societal leaders need to do more to scrutinize incel behavior, so it can be confronted, and hopefully rehabilitated, before there’s any bloodshed.

He added that incel violence on innocent people “is not rare”

“We need to start to recognize this is a problem,” Shor declared.

“Governments and authorities should be monitoring the more dangerous elements of these incel movements, invest the same kind of resources that you invest in preventing other kinds of violence, once you realize that this is not a sporadic, lone wolf.

“These are people who are reading things online, getting suggestions online, have a community that supports them, so when we think about other kinds of political violence and terrorism, like Islamic radicalization.

“There would be a monitoring of mosques and its leaders, they’d be looking out for the influencers, this is the same sort of thing.

“We need to offer them integration opportunities. And this is not just because you’re trying to prevent violence by the way, we’re trying to get a large swath of subjects.

“Young men who are frustrated, depressed, confused, largely out of society, and trying to reintegrate them into society.

“There’s a tendency to treat incels as these crazy enemies of society because they are misogynistic and can be violent, and talk in ways that you and I probably disagree with.

“Do you just vilify them and we should hunt them down? Or, do you say, how do we reintegrate them?

“How do we get them rethinking about some of their convictions and thinking another way. We need to help them.”