Welcome to Sisyphus Highway: In Depth.

In recent episodes, we discussed Telegram, the Nth Room, deepfakes, doxxing, and telecom fraud. We saw how technology changes the organization of crime and gives new ground to different forms of offending.

But the internet has changed far more than crime or platforms. It has changed a generation’s environment for growing up, sources of information, and ways of understanding the world.

This episode begins with a group receiving increasing attention in recent years: incels, or involuntary celibates.

Many people first encountered the term through the British series Adolescence; others saw it in reports on violent crimes.Why has this group continually expanded in the internet age? Why do difficulties involving loneliness, frustration, and intimate relationships ultimately develop into malice or hostility toward women, and even into an ideology?

From Adolescence to incel communities, we discuss not only an online group but how a new internet-age culture forms and quietly shapes more and more people’s perceptions, emotions, and behavior.

 

- What do Adolescence and A Brighter Summer Day respond to, respectively?

- The internet’s “formless formation” of influence: how can we resist an invisible cultural force?

- The definition, typical psychology, and community characteristics of incels

- Violent rhetoric: the people who hurt them are also their idols

- Discussion of incels in China has only just begun and remains far from sufficient

 

- Adolescence (television series)

- A Brighter Summer Day (1991) (film)

- Laura Bates, Men Who Hate Women (book)

- Kate Manne, Entitled: How Male Privilege Hurts Women (book)

- Aurélia Blanc, Raising Boys to Be Good Men (book)

 

- Hosts: J and Kang

- Production: Arry and Lizi

- Music