The words “incels,” “alpha” and “manosphere” never crossed Abby Eckel’s mind when she was pregnant with her two sons. Now that the boys are 8 and 10 ― on the cusp of their teenage years ― keeping them away from the manosphere is sometimes all she and her husband can think about. “It’s literally the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do, because I have to be, I feel like, ready 24/7,” Eckel , an online content creator, told HuffPost. “I have to remain vigilant every moment I’m around my sons.” The manosphere ― a dark rabbit hole where YouTubers and bro podcasters mask their misogyny in self-help, fitness tips and “pickup artist” -style dating advice ― offers young men a sense of community and purpose. The message that women are lesser beings and that you’re being denied your rights to sex or a relationship is particularly potent for boys who feel ignored by mainstream society. Eckel and her husband monitor the boys’ online activity. They keep the lines of communication open and try to steer them toward healthier models of masculinity. But there’s little they can do to stop the influence of other boys who’ve been radicalised online. “The hardest thing is that the largest influence is not parents, it’s their friends,” she said. “We’re trying to raise them to be leaders and empathetic, but then they walk out of this house, and society is working overtime to undo that.” She can’t control what the kids’ friends watch or listen to: The shy friend who starts to identify as an incel, building his identity around his perceived inability to attract girls at school. Or the loud friend who, looking for dating advice, stumbles upon a clip from Andrew Tate ― the kickboxer turned popular male supremacist podcaster who believes women are a man’s property and that rape victims should “bear responsibility” for their sexual assault. (In spite of facing multiple criminal charges of rape and human trafficking in both Romania and the United Kingdom, Tate’s mainstream influence is growing, thanks in part to his being platformed and supported by the likes of Tucker Carlson and Donald Trump Jr. Barron Trump, the president’s 19-year-old youngest son, is also reportedly a fan .) Influencer Andrew Tate, pictured here at a UFC event in Las Vegas, is a leading figure in the manosphere, a collection of online spaces focused on men's issues and masculinity. Countering all of these outside influences is “exhausting on a scale that I was never prepared for in raising sons,” Eckel said. “I never considered any of this would be a possibility when I was pregnant with either of them,” she said. Payal Desai’s sons are even younger ― 5 and 9 years old ― but she’s already worried about one of them stumbling down the pipeline of misogyny or equally dark views through TikTok, YouTube shorts or a seemingly innocuous gaming chat. Desai’s parents are shocked by it all. They raised their kids in the 1990s and early 2000s, when such male rights-centered ideologies were more nascent and harder to come across. When boomer and Gen X parents worried about the media negatively influencing their sons, the conversation was centered on whether violent video games contributed to mass shootings in the wake of the Columbine High School attack . ( They don’t, research continues to show.) “When I talk to older parents, including my own, they’re pretty shocked by all this incel and red pill stuff,” Desai, who runs a parenting blog, told HuffPost. “Not because misogyny is new, it is not, but because the delivery system is so targeted and constant. It is engineered.” The kids’ grandparents are surprised by how young boys are when they first encounter it, and how easy it is for these messages to feel normal if parents aren’t actively involved. Parents who raised kids in the '90s are surprised by how young boys are when they first encounter it, and how easy it is for these messages to feel “normal” if parents aren’t actively involved, said Payal Desai, a mom of two young boys. The manosphere message is nothing new, but it’s never been so accessible. The modern manosphere has been quietly lurching toward the mainstream for decades now, according to David S. Smith. He’s a lecturer in psychology at Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen, Scotland, and author of the forthcoming book “The Incel Mindset: Entering and Exiting Inceldom.” Seduction guides and pickup artist methods (popularised by books like Neil Strauss’ bestseller “ The Game ” and a subsequent reality show about pickup artists) have existed for decades, and men’s rights groups have been around since the sexual revolution of the 1970s, fighting for their right to patriarchy and women’s subordination. “The pickup artist community in the early 2000s acted as a lynchpin for the manosphere, arguing there’s a war on traditional, natural masculinity, there’s a hierarchy of both men and women delineated by their market value, and one of the central ways we can qualify a man’s value is through competition,” Smith explained. Today, it’s incredibly easy to find male rights influencers waxing poetic about all of this in bite-sized video clips in between sports and video game discussions. “If a young man wants to understand dating, and a lot do, it’s just a TikTok search away,” Smith told HuffPost. “In my research, I’ve come across a lot of men who first go into pickup artistry or incels through looking up something fairly banal, like, ‘how do I know if a girl likes me,’ and were soon met with red pill and black pill content.” The “red pill” and “black pill” terminology originates from the 1999 sci-fi film “The Matrix,” where the protagonist, Neo, faces a pivotal choice between two pills. For incels and men’s rights influencers who’ve co-opted the language, taking the “red pill” signifies an “awakening” to the belief that society has a systemic bias against men. To take the “black pill” is to recognise that your subordination is permanent. In internet parlance, you’re doomed to be “forever alone.” Pickup artist methods, popularized by books like Neil Strauss’ “The Game,” helped usher in some of the elements of the current-day manosphere. With algorithmically driven social media sites like X, content like this gets boosted and normalized. For boys who feel like outcasts or unappealing to girls, it’s comforting to know you’re not alone in being “forever alone.” “Social media gives young boys in-groups and clearly delineated out-groups: women and other more romantically successful men,” he said. It’s empowering in some ways, too, because “they form insular echo chambers in message boards and chats where people who disagree are banned.” There’s always been sexually disgruntled and romantically alienated, insecure men, but they wouldn’t necessarily meet each other or have an outlet to give voice to their thoughts. Now, thanks to the red pill community, they do. “It also begins in a negative feedback loop where they can become increasingly unlikable and convinced of their inability to fit in, so they become more reliant on the group for support, and thus less able to connect with others, so they keep visiting, which makes them feel worse, and so on,” Smith said. “It’s a downward spiral.” What can parents do to counter the manosphere? Sheldon Reisman , a therapist and owner of Therapy Cincinnati, thinks parents have a right to be concerned about any fringe idea that becomes normalised, including red pill content. Still, he stressed that parents don’t need to panic about their sons being exposed to manosphere or incel views. Instead, they just need to communicate. “Keeping open lines of communication with our children, helping them talk about these ideas without becoming panicked or upset, will allow them to work through what they really think,” he said. Asking critical-thinking questions helps children determine what they actually believe and why they believe it. “From there, we can attempt to help them see a different, bigger perspective and guide them toward ideas that are rooted in truth,” he said. “Otherwise, they will not learn how to critically analyse ideas and could fall prey to whatever ideologies feel good in the moment.” Eckel, the mom of 8- and 10-year-old boys, gave a good example of how important nonjudgmental open communication is when dealing with issues like this. A few months back, her older son called his younger brother a “pussy” after hearing the word from a friend. Instead of defaulting to “Oh, we don’t say things like that” or “we don’t watch streamers who say things like that” she opts for questions like, “Oh, why did you think that?” or “Hm, where did you hear that? ” “It was really hard for me to check my emotions in that moment, but I’ve found that leading with curiosity and providing a safe space for them to talk to me about things is the best thing,” she explained. "Keeping open lines of communication with our children, helping them talk about these ideas without becoming panicked or upset, will allow them to work through what they really think," said Sheldon Reisman, a therapist and owner of Therapy Cincinnati. With the above example, her older son wasn’t even sure what the word meant. “And so I had to explain that, OK, pussy is another word for vagina, and vagina is seen as weak by some, and who has vaginas? Mostly female-born people have vaginas. So therefore, it’s equating women to being weak because they have pussies. That started a much larger conversation of, why?” You have to be the one explaining these things to them, because if you don’t, somebody else will, Eckel said. If your kids are older or you worry they’ve fallen deeper into incel ideology, they need you to listen to them even more, said Smith. While violent tendencies of incels get highlighted in the news ― the mass stabbing and shooting by incel cult hero Elliot Rodger near the campus of the University of California, Santa Barbara in 2014, for instance ― more often than not, incels turn their anger inward; acts of self-harm and suicide threats are especially common among the group. That’s not surprising, given that there’s very little actual support in incel communities. Their forums are often hyper competitive, acting as a misery economy. “Everyone wants to be the most screwed, and therefore the least screwed,” Smith said. “While they’ll often share very personal things with each other, which they wouldn’t speak to their family or friends about, they also don’t seem to like each other very much,” Smith said. “I think part of this is the subverted hierarchy they operate in, where the most ‘trucel’ is the one least able to change their situation. For supposed ‘fakecels,’ it’s more a personality failing.” (A “trucel” is an incel who has never experienced any form of physical intimacy. A “fakecel” claims to be an incel but they’ve had some romantic or sexual success.) So while finding others who are alienated may be a comfort at first, incel forums aren’t really a place for emotional support or the promise it’ll get better. That’s an opportunity to seize for a parent who’s willing to listen or offer nonjudgmental concern. "I think the biggest misconception is that talking about gender, consent, power and empathy 'too early' will confuse boys," Desai said. "But if we know the internet is already going to be having these conversations with them in a very toxic way, we need to get ahead of it. " As opposed to inceldom, the manosphere ― personified best by a podcaster like Tate ― is loud, confident and designed to feel “cool.” The only way to approach and counter that is to be proactive instead of reactive, said Desai, the mom of 5- and 9-year-old boys. “We talk about feelings, boundaries, empathy, respect, friendships, consent, and the conversations began way before puberty, way before dating,” she said. She treats these conversations and lessons like any other life skill. Because she’s building that foundation early, she’s a lot less worried about them being pulled into spaces that thrive on insecurity and fear as teens. She’s even boiled it down to a list for parents of young boys. Her biggest pointers? Normalize empathy as a strength. Give them an emotional vocabulary so they don’t mistake vulnerability for weakness. Talk openly about media, influencers and what “power” actually means. Show them what healthy masculinity looks like, don’t just tell them what not to do. Make sure home is the place where they feel fully accepted. “Kids don’t go searching for belonging in toxic corners of the internet when they already have belonging and acceptance at home,” she said. For Desai and her husband, that latter point means dispelling traditional gender roles and norms that box boys into unreasonable “rules,” she said. (“If my son wants to paint his nails, he is free to do so,” she explained.) Basically, parents need to start early, stay curious and keep informed. You can’t control the algorithm, she said, but you can build the kind of internal compass that helps boys recognise when something feels off, disrespectful or rooted in hate. “I think the biggest misconception is that talking about gender, consent, power and empathy ‘too early’ will confuse boys,” she said. “But if we know the internet is already going to be having these conversations with them in a very toxic way, we need to get ahead of it.” Related... If You Think Incels Are 'Gross, Basement Dwellers', Your Smug Politics Are Part Of The Problem I Entered The World Of Incels. Nothing Could Prepare Me For What I Found. From The Manosphere To The Red Pill: Adolescence Terms (And Emojis) Explained