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Notes -
I haven't watched the show or plan to, but your description of the phenomenon surrounding it reminds me a bit of the Netflix show Jessica Jones from about a decade back. Not nearly as big a deal in terms of being talked about for ideological messaging as Adolescence, but I ran into more than a few mentions by people about it as some great demonstration of "rape culture." When I watched the show, it was a decent superhero dramedy that was so extremely far removed from anything approaching social reality that the notion that it was some meaningful social commentary to anyone who's not actively trying to twist it that way seemed utterly absurd.
Which, I think, points to why the people talking about these shows this way are doing so: they're actively trying to twist it that way. The mainstream ideology that these people follow posits that fictional works always and inevitably have political and ideological meaning, which is why the followers so often decrt media that has the wrong messaging and also try to create media that has the right messaging. This show Adolescence seems to have enough features that allow them to see the correct patterns that properly flatter them and their messaging, and it's apparently well made to boot, so they latch on to it.
The funniest possible thing to happen now would be the writer(s) of the show being proven beyond a reasonable doubt to be unremorseful sexual predators.
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