Monday, May 5, 2014

The Red Pill: An Early Analysis

Someone responding to a comment I made on a message board suggested I check out something called "The Red Pill" on Reddit.  As far as I can tell it gets its name from the scene in the Matrix where Morpheus tells Neo he can either take the red pill and learn the truth about his existence or take the blue pill and live the comfortable lie.  The parallel being that by taking the red pill you learn the truth about dating and women's true nature.

It's an interesting place.  Aside from being a den of anti-feminism (in both the good and the bad way), there's a lot of jaded, bitter posts, but there are also some posts with some very useful kernels of truth.  

People misunderstand things like The Red Pill.  They are usually lampooned as places where sexists look for an excuse to air their misogyny.  Perhaps some posters are there for that reason, but from what I've seen it's largely a place where guys who were very passive with women try to cope with the idea that their passivity was unattractive.  Or they try to cope with the fact that everything they were told about dating and women was a lie (or at least not as true as they thought).

For example this video clip from the HBO show "Girls":





If you think what the male character in that scene did was "cute", or "hot" or "sexy", or if you would actually say that to a girl in that context (really any context), you are part of the problem that has given rise to things like The Red Pill.  

The misconception is that guys who frequent The Red Pill are nothing more than aggressive douches looking for any way to get into a girl's pants.  But the reality is that these guys are who I think they are, they could use a dose of aggressiveness, because they were most likely extremely passive before.  

I know a guy like this.  He hangs out with a lot of girls and does things for them.  Gives them rides to the airport or wherever they needed to go.  He watches their kids.  All kinds of stuff.  And yet he doesn't try to make a move on them despite being interested.  He's the type of guy who could use some aggressiveness in his demeanor.  

It's not all great though.  There's a lot of misguided attacks on women.  Implying they're not good at physically demanding jobs, not good at math, can't be in positions of power or authority, shouldn't be working outside the home and are in large part just sluts looking for an ego stroke from beta men and good sex from alphas who treat them like dirt.  

If that's your takeaway from life I can imagine things must suck from that perspective.  You have to undo every fiber of your being and turn into something you're not and don't want to be just to have a chance to get a date or a relationship or sex.  That has to suck.  And I can imagine it would make you bitter or angry.  

The biggest takeaway I guess is that people seem to be talking past each other.  Women misunderstanding men, men misunderstanding women.  I'm not sure if I'll continue to read the posts on The Red Pill, but I'm convinced it's neither the answer to all my problems nor the manifestation of evil itself.  




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