‘Have you watched Adolescence yet?’ - Life imitates art for Kemi Badenoch

Right-wing British Twitter, or X as it is now known, is flooded with culture-war memes about the Netflix show Adolescence, in something of a backlash to the breathless, near-fawning reception that has greeted the fictional show about male youth’s susceptibility to online misogyny.

Amusing in their preposterousness, the memes include images of police cars pointing loudspeakers out their windows at lone passing walkers: “Have you watched Adolescence yet?” blares an officer. Another shows Pope Francis recently greeting King Charles. He asks the same question. Some images show weary newborn babies being asked the question immediately upon their arrival into the world.

My personal favourite was the meme about William Frederick Eames, a 19th-century painter whose most famous work imagined a scene from the 17th century English civil war. In the painting, a royalist boy is questioned by parliament-supporting Roundhead so...
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