From Counterpublics to Criminality: How the Internet Radicalises Boys Against Women

The rise of digital media has transformed misogyny from private prejudice into an algorithmically amplified public ideology. What began as an appendage to real-world sexism has evolved into a digital subculture that recruits boys, radicalises them, and causes tangible harm to women. Online communities now offer not only language and validation, but also justification for violence.

This article explores how online misogyny is shaping masculinities in India, why it remains largely unaddressed by digital policy frameworks, and what a gender-just approach to online safety might look like. It traces the emergence of new masculine counterpublics across online forums, situating them within India's broader context of rape culture and misogyny.

Introduction

The recent release of Adolescence (2025) on Netflix has unearthed an issue as old as digital space itself: misogyny, gendered hate speech, and violence. What began as an extension of real-world sexism is now a digitally native cult that recruits boys and causes very real harm to women. The show follows a 13-year-old boy who, after being mocked online and labelled an “incel” by a classmate, turns to misogynistic forums for validation, and ultimately murders her. The show may be fiction, but the trajectory it depicts is all too real.

What we are witnessing is a quiet evolution, unfolding in bedrooms, gaming lobbies, and group chats. A generation of boys is coming of age in online cesspools of misogyny, absorbing harmful values from algorithms and influencers; desensitised, disconnected, and unaware of the harm they help reproduce.

Andrew Tate, a British-American influencer notorious for promoting misogyny and domination as masculinity, is a central figure in this space. Though banned from major platforms and facing international criminal charges, his rise has sparked global concern about how easily online culture can radicalise boys into violence.

But Tate is only a symptom. He belongs to a sprawling digital ecosystem—known as the "manosphere"—with its language, idols, and scaffolding ideology. These are not just communities but classrooms where masculinity is taught as dominance, grievance as truth, and feminism as the enemy.

The Digital Radicalisation of Young Men

In India, where formal sex education remains minimal and gender discourse taboo, digital platforms have become the default school of masculinity. With little guidance, adolescent boys turn to YouTube, Telegram, and Reddit for ideas about sex, power, and manhood. Algorithms reward rage, influencers peddle misogyny as motivation, and what results is not merely ignorance but ideological capture.

The Indian internet is growing its repertoire of radicalisation. A study by Dehingia et al. (2023) found that nearly 2% of Indian tweets between 2018 and 2021 contained misogynistic content, amounting to millions of posts, many spiking during the COVID-19 lockdowns. Subreddits like r/OnexIndia openly mock feminism and vent rage at women.

In these spaces, South Asian men are often referred to as “currycels"—a racialised twist on "incel" that encapsulates both sexual frustration and internalised racism. As MEL Magazine (2020) reports, this term reflects a hierarchy even within incel culture, where whiteness remains the ideal and Indian men are cast as undesirable and disposable.

A New Language of Hate

This ideology speaks its language. Terms like "simp,” “sigma,” “feminazi,” and “red pill” have entered teen vocabulary as memes, but they carry with them a worldview where empathy is weakness and male dominance is nature. These terms flatten complex questions of identity into digestible jokes that desensitise and divide.

Platforms like YouTube and Instagram repackage misogyny in local idioms. Bhattacharya et al. (2020) analysed over 20,000 Indian-language comments and found that hate against women was often framed as humour or critique, allowing it to pass under the radar of moderation. Farrell et al. (2019), in their study of six million Reddit posts, note that manosphere rhetoric has grown more sophisticated, evolving from slurs to full-fledged belief systems.

Movements like "Men Going Their Way" wrap misogyny in the language of productivity and self-help, selling boys a narrative in which they are victims of feminism, women are gold-diggers, and consent is a competition to be won. These ideas move fast, are reinforced by peers, and shape how young men see themselves and others.

Digital Predators

At the centre of this machine are older men—“mentors” who offer young boys not only advice but belonging, validation, and a worldview. Many run monetised coaching programs, sell supplements or peddle ideology through branded content. The promise is always the same: power, control, and access to women. This isn’t incidental—it is a business model. For decades, female pain and insecurity have been monetised: diet plans, overpriced cosmetics, shapewear, clothes to “hide” or “flatter” our bodies. This is much the same, as long as there is male pain, there is profit to be made by turning it against women.

Their product and branding are misogynistic, but their content is not just sexist, it is predatory. This is not grooming in the traditional sense of sexual exploitation. Rather, as Sugiuara (2021) describes, it is an ideological grooming. These men prey on insecurities about dating, masculinity, or success and offer up misogyny as a coping mechanism. These men prey not on vulnerability in order to exploit sexually, but to radicalise.

Renström and Bäck (2024) found that young men who feel socially rejected are especially susceptible to these influencers. The more pain they're in, the more seductive the ideology. These boys begin to idolise older men while resenting women, infantilising the latter and revering the former.

As Frye (1983) once wrote, most straight men expect servitude from women and admiration from other men. The manosphere exploits this dynamic, mirroring cultic recruitment, camouflaging bait as brotherhood, dissent as betrayal, and outsiders (women, LGBTQ+ people, liberal men) as enemies. In India, it is layered further with rhetoric around shame, family honour, and “real manhood.”

From Digital to Real-World Violence

Online misogyny doesn’t stay online. It metastasises into the real world. In 2014, Elliot Rodger killed six people after publishing a 141-page manifesto blaming women for his loneliness. In 2018, Alek Minassian killed ten pedestrians in Toronto and called it retribution for incel injustice. They are now lauded in incel forums as heroes.

Halpin et al. (2024) analysed incel discussions around Marc Lépine, the man who murdered 14 women in Montreal in 1989. These posts admire and justify him with a chilling logic: men are victims, feminism is war, and violence is an act of defence.

India’s Double Bind

In India, this radicalisation doesn't exist in a vacuum but plugs into existing structures. Misogyny is not new here; what’s new is how scalable and networked it has become.

As Sobhan (2025) reports, Indian women face growing digital threats—revenge porn, rape threats, doxxing—all circulated on platforms like WhatsApp and Telegram. In a country where marital rape is legal and public officials regularly make misogynistic remarks, incel logic doesn't feel fringe; it feels familiar.

Sugiura (2021) explains how incels frame themselves as victims of “sexual injustice,” often fantasising about revenge. In India, these fantasies are not just gendered but casteist and communal. Riddhi Likhe (2025) observes the overlap between incel ideology and Hindu nationalism, particularly in the vilification of Muslim and Dalit women.

This is India’s double bind: digital incitement thrives precisely because structural impunity already exists.

The Role of Legal Systems

The internet is advancing, but our laws are not. Violence now scales at the speed of software, while policy remains slow, vague, and outdated.

Platforms bring new tools of harm: deepfakes, leaked chats, and AI porn. But our legal vocabulary is stuck in "obscenity" and "public indecency." The result? Harm unfolds faster than the state can name it.

If the internet is where masculinities and identities are now made, then it ceases to be a communication space—it is a political one. And it must be regulated as such. We need laws that name misogyny explicitly. Violence does not begin at the act—it begins in the idea.

Education, too, is critical; we must ensure that youth learn algorithmic transparency, platform accountability, digital literacy, consent, caste, and masculinity, not just as moral issues, but as questions of power.

Finally, we must stop placing the burden on those most at risk. Reporting buttons and safety features are not enough. The system itself must shift.

Conclusion

We are not just fighting trolls or influencers. We are fighting for young men’s right to imagine power without domination. For women and queer people to exist online without fear. And for a digital future that doesn’t reproduce the violence of the offline world, but reimagines something better.

References

Bhattacharya, S., et al. (2020). Developing a multilingual annotated corpus of misogyny and aggression. arXiv. https://doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.2003.07428

‘Currycels’ and the Unsurprising Racism of the Incel Community. (2020, July 9). MEL Magazine. IIPS. https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/currycels-and-the-unsurprising-racism-of-the-incel-community

Dehingia, N., et al. (2023). Violence against women on Twitter in India. PLoS ONE, 18(10). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0292121

Farrell, T., et al. (2019). Exploring Misogyny across the Manosphere in Reddit. WebSci'19. https://oro.open.ac.uk/61128/1/WebScience139.pdf

Frye, M. (1983). Politics of Reality: Essays in Feminist Theory. Crossing Press.

Halpin, M., et al. (2024). A soldier and a victim: Masculinity, violence, and incels' celebration of December 6. Canadian Review of Sociology. https://doi.org/10.1111/cars.12460

Kaur, G. (2022, August 23). Incel Extremism in India. GNET. https://gnet-research.org/2022/08/23/incel-extremism-in-india-a-view-from-the-global-south/

Likhe, R. (2025, February 14). The intersection of Incel culture and Hindu nationalism. IAR. https://www.iar-gwu.org/blog/the-intersection-of

Renström, E. A., & Bäck, H. (2024). Manfluencers and Young Men’s Misogynistic Attitudes. Sex Roles. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-024-01538-2

Sobhan, S. (2025, June 3). Indian women face growing threat of incel culture, misogyny. DW. https://www.dw.com/en/indian-women-face-growing-threat-of-incel-culture-misogyny/a-72771798

Sugiura, L. (2021). The Incel Rebellion. Emerald. https://doi.org/10.1108/978-1-83982-254-420211002