What is the “Red Pill”? – A Comment on the “manosphere”, incels, as well as men’s issues.

Yesterday, we had a bit of a discussion about Doom Pill content and other stuff since Roger from Contains Moderate Peril wrote an amazing article on “Doom Pill Content” over on his site which works as an Addendum to my post over here. Initially, that article also referred to the “Black Pill” but after correcting that the discussion about how the “Black Pill” and the “Doom Pill” are different things kinda ended up evolving into this discussion. Today’s post is hence addressing what exactly the “Red Pill” and, by extension, the “Black Pill” is as well as what “Red Pill” content is supposed to be. I’ll also briefly talk about some other topics that are associated with the subject. At this point, however, I also wanna talk about r/MensLib which is a subreddit that I’ll mention later at the end of the post as well where people can talk about men’s issues without counterproductive tribalism. It’s honestly a great place. So, check it out!

Content Warning: I’ll talk about incels, sexism, misogynists, Pick-Up Artists, the “manosphere”, and other stupid people in this post that all kinda belong to this “red pill ideology”. This means that I’ll list examples that may be possibly triggering. If you don’t have the spoons to read about pick-up artists (I mean, who does really?), don’t read ahead!

So, to answer the question in the title here: The “Red Pill” is a rejection of and the opposition to the “Blue Pill” in the context of men and women, dating, and even politics. It’s a bit rough to explain as there isn’t “one” definition that explains it all that well. Rather, it’s probably easier to define what a “Blue Pill” is and then go from there. The Blue Pill, after all, represents the mainstream or the status quo. At the moment, according to red pillers, women are “hypergamous maters” who are generally “highly deceptive towards men” while “most males are seen as disposable”. Modern Society is apparently gynocentric. Women hold all the power in the dating market while men have to try their hardest to simply get a number. “Accepting” this “harsh reality” means taking the red pill. The Blue Pill means that you follow the “normie fake-stream media” and their truths – at which point the ideology gets somewhat political and quite anti-feminist and male supremacist. When I say “red pillers”, I don’t mean that there is one group that identifies as such. Rather, red pillers are what some people call themselves or what people call others with that sort of mindset and ideology. The red pill as an ideology has been adopted by a bunch of different groups, ranging from volcels (voluntary celibates), incels (involuntary celibates), PUAs (Pick-Up-Artists), MGTOWs (“Men Going Their Own Way”), MRAs (Men’s Rights Activists), the “manosphere”, as well as other groups of anti-feminists, male-supremacists, sexists, misogynists, etc.

Generally speaking, red pillers are the ones that believe that women rule the world and that men face a “harsh reality” that they need to accept in order to grow. On YouTube, TikTok, Blogs, and other platforms, you’ll find examples of people essentially saying things like “women only go into medical studies to get married to a doctor” or “women will try to get pregnant from you so that you’ll need to pay child support” and other stupid paroles like that. There are also cases where people try to give advice to other red pillers in the form of books, videos, and courses. Pick-Up Artists, for instance, will tell you to manipulate women into having sex with you either by mimicking their body language, performing excessive body contact, lowering their self-esteem using insults and backhanded compliments or even by calling their number immediately after you got it just to make sure it’s not a fake number. I’ve even heard something along the lines of “If she says no, that means that […]” and I probably don’t need to end that sentence, right? It’s all the same.

Arguably, this all is a very toxic ideology where people getting rejected blame that on others because they’re hurt. It’s fragile masculinity at its finest. Instead of dealing with your feelings, it’s easier to insult and blame women, saying that they’re all [insert any derogatory term here] so that you don’t get hurt, I guess. There are people that got hurt or rejected or who made a bad experience – and when they were at their lowest, they stumbled across this “manosphere” stuff and red pill content. Suddenly, it makes sense. Suddenly, you got answers. There is a whole rabbit hole that you can go down into and just like with other problematic ideologies (anti-vax, homoeopathy, etc.) and even sects (Scientology, etc.), it’s easy to fall prey to these people that make money by selling you books and courses for their own gain. Pick-Up Artists will tell you that there is this special trick you can use and when you do it, you’ll fail… When you fail, you turn to them which is when they’ll tell you about another trick that you learn in their courses… And those cost money. PUAs prey on hurt people that made bad experiences and because you’re at your lowest, you’ll let your guard down – which is how they get you.

But of course, I don’t want to defend red pillers, incels and other people like that. A lot of it comes from a place of hurt and from suffering but not all of the red pill ideology stems from fragile masculinity or money-making schemes. There are also people out there that just believe in harmful ideologies like male supremacy and stuff like that. It’s bad. Sexism is still a thing in 2022 and despite all the trouble that women have to face, some men think they’re oppressed – which is where MRAs come in… and that’s a whole thing that I don’t really want to get into today.

And well, while the “Red Pill” emphasizes your “game” aka strategies to manipulate, pressure, and harass women to have sex with you, the “Black Piller” is more fatalistic. It’s people that gave up completely. It’s pessimistic and all about your looks. The Black Pill focuses on things that are out of your control that prevent you from ever being in a happy relationship or from ever having sex. The Black Pill – just like the Red Pill – believes in women controlling the dating market and women oppressing men… But black-pillers think that “looks” are the only part that matters.
**Careful!!! Sarcasm!!!** “If you’re short, you don’t get love. It’s just because you’re short. It’s not because you called this girl you met a slut or that she said no to you because she’s taken. No, it’s clearly just because you’re short.” **Sarcasm Over!!!**

So, that kind of summarizes it all. Red Pillers are essentially people tackling men’s issues in arguably the wrong way. When it comes, however, to the right way to do it, I can actually recommend a Sub-Reddit that is pretty darn cool. The “r/MensLib” Subreddit is a community free of counterproductive tribalism and doing a great job of tackling men’s issues in what’s probably one of the best ways. Men’s issues are discussed here and the community trying to build a dialogue on the real issues facing men through positivity, inclusiveness, and solutions-building. Its mission is to:

• “Examine and address issues men face, individually and in society, through discussion, information-sharing, recruitment, and advocacy
• Model a healthy and effective men’s issues movement, grounded in academic intersectional gender studies, that focuses on solutions, positivity, inclusivity, and mutual support.
• To explore and revisit traditional models of masculinity, in order to promote the development of men as better and healthier individuals, participants in their relationships, and leaders in their communities.”

So, rather than enforcing ideas and boo-ing people for being “soft” or showing feelings, it’s a subreddit where people give genuine advice and actually care about each other. If you have an issue, you can ask for help there. If you wanna educate yourself on certain topics, that’s a great place. Especially now with the situation being overturned, I see a lot of posts where people ask how they can support women in this time and what they can do, for instance. It’s an actually progressive and positive place for people to face their issues and learn to deal with them without putting others down and without attacking women and honestly, I’d recommend checking it out!

Hope you enjoyed this post today. I wanted to talk about r/MensLib as well at some point but I didn’t know where to start and where to end. I also wanted to talk about incels and all of that but I didn’t want it to just be a negative post if that makes sense, so I kinda combined the two and hope that went well? Let me know what you think!

This post was first published on Indiecator by Dan Indiecator aka MagiWasTaken. If you like what you see here and want to see more, you can check me out on Twitch and YouTube as well.