The Onion

And to make it worse, you get no help with it

Yeah this was my main problem with it was it was just very surface-level. Like I'm glad it's being brought to the table for discussion for mainstream audiences, but it felt a bit glossed over like something I'd heard from an NPR story on video games; "did you know about this thing called incel culture? it's all the rage with the youths."

I don't know what the solution is or how I want to see it conveyed, but I recall Polytechnique doing a better job at instilling horror in me from incel culture than Adolescence, albeit it was more subtle, and that was from 2009.

Human beings have brains that were forged during hardships and ice-ages to make us inclined to form groups for survival. Those same drives make us desperate for a social identity, to the degree that we literally can die without social identity. (A fascinating field of study btw.)

This has made the internet the most dangerous tool we've ever created, because it has allowed people to deconstruct the very notion of group identity and exploit the drives in our own brains to connect with others. This is why we have so much absurd bullshit now, so many conspiracy theories, flat earthers, incels and redpill grifters, science-deniers and chemtrailophiles. People are finding their own, almost random group identities to connect with, groups that often have no real connection to reality, and just offer validation for people's feelings.

Validation for feelings is the next most important thing for humans, because it reflects how our brains actually work. Most people are under the impression that the brain is the seat of intelligence, that brains are calculating machines that work out problems and come to logical conclusions. Even if you don't think this, you have most likely at least become comfortable in trusting what you work out in your head.

But brains are not reasonable or rational, there was no such thing in the ancient world that shaped our brains. That world was just threats and signs of threats. If your ancestor had a brain that could accurately connect the sign of a threat to an actual threat, they would likely be prepared and survive. See a paw-print by the watering hole? Maybe there's a predator around.

That same tool now functions the same way in a vastly different environment, and it tells us wild stories that aren't even connected with reality to explain the things we feel. The brain notices you feel fear, it looks around and pieces together things to explain that fear. Feel sad? Brain digs around and starts randomly tying strings together to explain it. No reason, no logic. This is where much of our mental health epidemic is coming from, unchecked brains doing what nature intended them to do, in a world nature never intended.