When an Emmy Led Me Somewhere I Did Not Expect

The other night I watched a young man, Owen Cooper, walk across the Emmy stage to accept an award for his role in Adolescence. I had not seen the show but the way the crowd reacted made me curious. Curiosity can be a gift but sometimes it takes you places you do not expect.

I pressed play on Adolescence and from the very first scene I was uncomfortable. The tone was raw, unfiltered, and unapologetically masculine in ways that felt jarring. By the time I reached the end I realized my discomfort was not just about the acting or the story. It was about the world the show was pointing toward. At that point I still could not name it.

It was only later that I learned more about what I had stumbled into: the manosphere and incel culture. Before this I honestly had no idea these communities even existed. What I discovered is a cluster of online spaces built around ideas of masculinity, power, and gender dynamics. It is a world where certain beliefs are reinforced through repetition, memes, and yes emojis.

I had always thought emojis were playful add ons to texts: a smiley face to soften a sentence, a heart to show appreciation, a flame to hype up a friend. But inside the manosphere and incel forums emojis become something else entirely. They are signals, shorthand for beliefs, and sometimes weapons of mockery.

Here are some of the most common ones:

• 💪 does not just mean strength, it stands for alpha masculinity.
• 🟥 is not just a red square, it is the red pill, a badge of awakening to the so called truth about women.
• 🔵 is the blue pill, used to mock anyone who is seen as naïve or brainwashed.
• 🤡 is shorthand for clown world, a dismissal of feminism or social progress as ridiculous.
• 👑 instead of admiration is often used sarcastically, as if to say all women think they are queens.
• 🚩 does not just mean warning, it gets slapped on almost anything women do that men in these groups dislike.
• 🐍 is used to paint women as deceptive or untrustworthy.
• 🐒 is shorthand for branch swinging, the idea that women move from man to man without loyalty.
• 🍆💦 goes from a silly symbol for flirting to a crude brag about sexual conquest.
• 💅 becomes a way to mock women as vain or shallow.
• 💀 is especially common in incel spaces, used to express despair, nihilism, or even hopelessness about life and relationships.
• 🪦 pushes it further, a tombstone symbol used when fatalism or self hatred takes over.
• 💯🔥80/20 references the belief that 80 percent of women are attracted to the top 20 percent of men, often paired with symbols of strength or sexual appeal.

What struck me most is how these communities take something as universal as emojis, symbols meant to connect us, and twist them into coded language that reinforces division.

Watching Adolescence felt like peeking behind a curtain. It showed me not just a performance worthy of an Emmy but an unsettling mirror of a culture I did not know enough about. By the time I finished I realized that my initial discomfort was the point. The show, intentionally or not, pushed me into a conversation I had been only vaguely aware of.

And here is the thing: once you see it you cannot unsee it. Emojis, television scripts, social media posts, they are not just harmless background noise. They are often part of a larger language, one that reveals how people see themselves and others.

I started with curiosity about a performance. I ended with curiosity about a subculture. And now I am left with the reminder that stories, whether told on a stage, a screen, or in a string of emojis, always mean more than they seem at first glance. For parents especially, this is a reminder to pay attention to the digital worlds your kids move through, because sometimes what looks like a harmless symbol is actually carrying a much heavier message. That awareness matters, because the same coded language that fuels online bonding can also fuel online bullying and harassment.

More than anything, I see this as a cautionary tale. The manosphere and its darker corners like incel culture are not just abstract internet trends, they can have devastating consequences for impressionable young men and for the families who love them. Recognizing the signs early and talking openly about them is one of the most important ways we can help protect the next generation.

Uncomfortable Thursday all,

-srt