Increasingly, the internet has become the realm in which people develop their personalities, worldviews and identities. The material we touch leaves a residue so sticky that our fingerprints are left everywhere – an insight into our thought processes being illuminated in the form of Google searches or 'likes'. The questions we are too embarrassed to ask anyone else are captured permanently in the cobwebs of our search history.

Beyond the plastic surface of white-picket-fenced, unrealistically happy group pics on Facebook, sharing has emancipated a rawer emotional form. Online spaces can provide an outlet to vent our darkest thoughts in cathartic diary form, at no one in particular – 140 characters at a time. They can provide the mask of an egg icon to spit the venom we'd never want to be seen spitting. We can say things we like the sound of, unaccountably enjoying the thrill of appealing to the conscious or subconscious thoughts that are never allowed to escape into speech for fear of social penalty.

The mask of anonymity has unleashed a liberation of expression – shining a light into the darkest corners of our skulls and freeing the thoughts that we would never let escape its confines to land on our lips. A peculiar chasm has ruptured any continuity between the online and the 'public', sanitised realm – with pockets of insularity emerging on social media as people find a once inaccessible home for their expression. In the concentration of these pockets, our exposure to contrasting views is not only at an unprecedented volume – but a burning intensity.

I have explored the darkest corners of the internet to find these raw reactions, to read the 'socially unacceptable', 'politically incorrect' expressions of those who feel disoriented by the rapidity of online social justice movements. I met the 'Red Piller'. 'The Red Pill' is a forum on Reddit for people who claim to have been 'woken up' to the 'reality' that women today have special privileges while men are being oppressed. For 'The Red Pillers', misandry is an active cancer, suppressing the 'true nature' of women's desires – that what they really want, is some good old-fashioned subjugation.

Alienated, disillusioned men retreat to this space to loathe women and indulge in their 'enlightenment'. Its sub-topics include "Be The Patriarch", how to "experience the non-stop attention, validation and abundance that today's young women have", complaints that women are becoming sexually deviant, and theorisation as to "why women lose interest in nice guys". One popular subreddit critiques third-wave feminism for only being there to "allow women to fuck the top 10-20% of men", complaining that they "want the rest of us to fuck off and die for "not being the 'alpha Chad'". The essence of the whole forum is captured by an advice post on mind set: "Just Remember That You're Better Than Them (women) At All Times".

Online, you can find toxic outlets for the vitriol that people are too afraid to spit in person. In my experience, it is becoming increasingly socially unacceptable to overtly (although not implicitly) express the view that women are inferior to men. This seems to be true in the experience of the 'Red Pillers', too, with one user stating that the "first rule of Red Pill" is to "never talk about Red Pill", warning that "the blue pill machine demonises RP as misogynistic and will only hurt your reputation if you openly hold these beliefs." With previously unspoken thoughts seeping into visibility, below-the-surface or simmering fears have a new potentiality to manifest themselves in a powerful way. A 'Red Piller' captures their paralysis, explaining that "struggling with WTF is going on in male / female dynamics" was their impetus for retreating to the forum.

The disparity between the nature of expression online and that of the public realm elucidates that the rules of the game have changed. Where this will take society, depends on how we choose to play it. Those in power can determine how far expressions of fear as hatred in the shadows of the internet seep into the mainstream as divisive antagonism. Already, with a get-clicks-or-die journalistic culture, populists have proven that fear is a fertile condition for hate. The increasingly Trumpified, neo-conservative language of threat and fear is permeating all facets of Western culture, and gender politics is not immune. The inevitable fear in response to the flash-intensity of social change is being exploited to elicit roars.

Katie Hopkins is cleverly reductionist and cunningly simplifying in declaring on Question Time that "women, actually, don't want equal treatment" and "couldn't handle it if they got it". Her track record of exposure from sensationalism suggests that this statement was not much deeper than professional attention seeking. Milo Yiannopoulos similarly raised his profile in holding a match of hatred next to the petrol of disorientation as his fans hurled abuse at Leslie Jones because her identity did not fit in with their vision of how 'ghostbusters' should look.

It's not only the Milos or Katies who profit from inflaming social tensions. Student journalists at our university regressed to sensationalising women discussing anti-depressants and contraceptives as a feminist "drug ring" – alienating people further from engaging with student representation and risking the welfare of young people to generate clicks. The nature of social media is polarising, it's intense and, like the 'Red Piller', makes you wonder 'WTF is going on'. I listened to 'The Red Piller'. What they taught me is that we must refuse to trade in the currency of fear.