In the summer of 2021, a 22-year-old man named Jake Davison walked through the streets of Plymouth, wielding a pump-action shotgun. In just a few minutes, he killed five innocent people, including his own mother, a three-year-old girl, and the child’s father. This massacre, one of the deadliest shootings in modern UK history, was not just an act of random violence. It was the result of radicalisation—the dark underbelly of the incel community and the manosphere, where misogyny festers and grows into something lethal.
What makes this even more disturbing is that Davison was trying to leave. He had been posting on r/IncelExit, a subreddit meant to help men escape incel ideology. But his story, like so many others, ended in horror.
Inside the online cult of inceldom
After the Plymouth shooting, I spent weeks embedded in r/IncelExit, trying to understand the mindset of men like Davison. The posts were chilling: young men drowning in self-loathing, trapped in hatred for women, and some desperately seeking a way out.
Some incels I spoke to were reformed, looking back on their past with shame. Others still seethed with resentment, their misogyny barely contained. For some, speaking to a woman about being an incel was like confessing to an enemy—an admission of weakness.
One of the few men I found who was genuinely trying to help was Liam, a former incel who remained in the forum to guide others away from radicalisation. He told me about a user who had developed a fetish for extreme, violent pornography—a clear warning sign.
“He said, ‘I’m developing unhealthy fetishes,’ and that triggered an alarm bell,” Liam recalled.
And this was one of the milder corners of the manosphere. There are far darker places online—places where incels don’t want to change.
The backlash against adolescence
The manosphere is in uproar over a new Netflix drama, Adolescence, which follows a teen boy radicalised by the manosphere and driven to commit violence.
On the subreddit r/TheRedPill, users are furious.
- “Big surprise, we turn boys into monsters! It takes place in the UK where a SWAT team arrests a teen boy for posting online. F****n UK.”
- “Anti-white male propaganda.”
- “Cancel your Netflix subscription. Torrent whatever you want to watch.”
They claim Adolescence misrepresents them. But it doesn’t. The manosphere tells men that they are victims, that society is against them, and that women are to blame for their misery.
This ideology doesn’t just lead to anger—it leads to violence.
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From hate speech to mass murder
The pattern is disturbingly clear.
- Jake Davison spent weeks in manosphere forums before his murder spree.
- Kyle Clifford, who raped and murdered Louise Hunt and her family, was searching for Andrew Tate’s podcast just hours before the killings.
- Axel Rudakubana, who stabbed three young girls at a Taylor Swift dance class last year, had a history of extreme misogyny.
If these men don’t want to be associated with murderers, they need to leave the manosphere. It’s like being part of ISIS and then complaining that the world sees you as a terrorist.
The manosphere Is a cult
If these attacks were motivated by religion, they would be called terrorism. But the manosphere is a religion—a cult with its own leaders, teachings, and ideology. The only difference is that its churches are online forums, and its sermons are YouTube rants and podcasts.
Everything in Adolescence is real—from the incel slang to the Matrix references, to the life-destroying consequences for those who fall too deep.
And the most frightening part? The rage. When Adolescence’s protagonist switches between self-pity and woman-hating fury, that’s not fiction. That’s what it feels like inside an incel’s mind.
If we want to protect women and girls, we must also save the boys before it’s too late.
