Manosphere

I don’t pry too much into the online life of my son. At 13, Sam is a good boy. He does well at school, eats his veg, loves his mum and captains his county cricket team. What more could I want? I suppose he could be more accurate when lobbing his pants at the laundry basket, especially considering he’s a spin bowler, but that’s a small detail. Last year, he started working out. He asked for weights and a pull-up bar. That was fine by me: boys have wanted big muscles since the dawn of time. Even my father owns a chest expander, that orangey-yellow and black one that was in every 1970s household. And Dad, who is now 91, taught history at Oxford and translates Goethe for fun, so it must be OK.

When I was four, the progressive teachers at my primary school thought it would be wise to teach us how to type on a keyboard. When it was my turn to key out the phrase ‘Biff and Chip’ on the computer, they discovered, to their horror, that I was already capable of effortless touch typing. I have been using computers, and by extension the internet, since before my earliest memories were formed. Not only did I grow up online, I did so during the early 2000s when there were virtually no safeguards or restrictions on what children could access. I pirated my first film, Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith, at the age of seven and bought my first (sadly wasted) bitcoin at 13.