Incels and red pills: All the terms in Netflix’s Adolescence, explained

The new Netflix show Adolescence has opened people’s eyes to the influence of incels and the red pill community on young boys. Adolescence uses lots of different terminology to describe these online communities. But what do all these phrases mean? Here are all the terms in Netflix’s Adolescence explained.

Incel

Katie flat-out called Jamie an “incel”. The term keeps coming up in the show, either as a joke or an insult.

“Incel” is a portmanteau of “involuntary celibate”. It refers to men who are attracted to women, but can’t persuade one to go out with them. They start blaming women for this, and go down a road of misogyny. There are whole online communities on areas of 4Chan and Reddit and other chat forums where men encourage each other to blame women and feminism for their problems. Some men do refer to themselves as “incels”. But other people often use the term as an insult for people who are both single and sexist.

The manosphere 

Adam and other characters keep using the term “the manosphere”. This refers to the realms of the internet which promote misogyny. Chatrooms for discussing how feminism has ruined the world, blogs for “pick-up artists”, men’s rights podcasts, YouTube videos categorising men into alphas, betas and sigmas… all these things are part of the manosphere.

The beans and 100 emojis

Credit: Netflix

In episode two, Detective Inspector Luke Bascombe’s son Adam has to decode the meanings of all the emojis Katie left on Jamie’s Instagram page.

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Katie is commenting emojis frequently used in the manosphere to suggest that Jamie is an incel. The 100 emoji is a reference to the (deeply untrue) belief that men are fundamentally disadvantaged when it comes to dating, as 80 per cent of women are supposedly only attracted to 20 per cent of men.

The coffee beans and kidney beans emojis are used for identifying incels. The origin of this is a bit complicated… it seems to be a reference to the phrase “Women ☕” which is in turn a reference to a clip from the video game Team Fortress 2.

Red pill, blue pill

Katie also used a pill emoji, which Adam explains is a reference to “red pilling”, or being “red-pilled”.

The phrase “red pill” was used in philosophy years before people in the manosphere monopolised the term. It’s a reference to the Matrix film series, when Neo is offered to take a blue pill and go back to living his normal life, or take a red pill and understand how the world works. “Choosing the red pill” means that someone is opting to learn a hard truth. Now, people in the manosphere who believe they’ve cracked the truth about men and women call themselves “red-pillers”. The pill emoji is a call to action, urging people to “take the red pill” and learn about their awful misogynistic worldview.

Adolescence is on Netflix now. For all the latest Netflix news, drops and memes like The Holy Church of Netflix on Facebook.