Blackpill

The blackpill is a philosophy that argues that physical attractiveness is the most critical factor in determining men's dating success, especially in modern Western countries. A man's money, status, and social skills are argued to be other factors of secondary importance, which is known as LMS theory. An expanded or alternate definition proposes that a man's dating and life outcomes generally rely on genetically determined traits.

As a consequence of these beliefs, blackpillers often argue that men's dating issues require systematic rather than individual solutions, if there is any solution at all for the most disadvantaged males. Someone who holds a certain amount of blackpill beliefs is called a blackpiller or blackpilled.

History and extended definition

The blackpill emerged in opposition to the redpill philosophy. Adherents of this movement, influenced by pick-up artistry, generally promote self-improvement and various dating tricks as the solution for men's dating woes. The redpill also promotes an individualistic approach to dating that often blames incels and low-status men's attitudes for their lack of mating success. These differences in outlook frequently enable tensions between redpillers and blackpillers.

In general online parlance, the term 'blackpill' also refers to a harsh fact (see pill jargon). In this sense, 'blackpiller' or 'blackpilled' denotes someone with a pessimistic view of the world or a particular situation. This specific usage of the term is often detached from any explicit incel connotations.

The blackpill was heavily influenced by 'looks theory', which was promoted by a user of the now defunct PUAhate board. On incel boards on Reddit and blackpilled incel forums such as incels.is, influenced by chadfishing experiments and insights from online dating, the term blackpill increasingly referred to lookism with a good-gener bent. This was opposed to redpill arguments, which frequently asserted women responded most to a man's level of 'game'. For these blackpillers, ugly, 'genetically inferior' men have no chance of getting laid in an unconstrained mating context due to female hypergamy.

Etymology

The term blackpill was first used in November 2011 by a blog commenter named Paragon on the Dalrock anti-feminist blog. Paragon said only mass poverty could solve men's systemic dating issues, as he saw that as the only mechanism that could bind women to men short of eugenics. Facing dating difficulties in Ontario (Canada), Paragon moved from Canada to the Philippines, a less prosperous country than Canada, and married there. In Paragon's own words:

[…] to reconcile that there are no personal solutions to systemic problems—which can only resolve over evolutionary time.

And any solution will very much entail steep trade-offs, in that males can’t have their cake and eat it too—a prosperous population of deferred ecological pressures (like we currently enjoy), without an expectation that this prosperity will increase the mating latitude of females (dramatically perturbing the breeding population, to the point of near evolutionary instability).

One will always follow the other, as male consensus on these matters is practically impossible in terms of inter-sexual competition(as opposed to the broad accord females enjoy through an abundant wealth of sexual opportunities, courtesy of their reproductively limiting function).

The term was later adopted by OmegaVirginRevolt's blog, who attempted to use it to distinguish MGTOW related MRA from traditionalist or PUA influenced 'redpill MGTOW'.

Modern blackpillers agree with Paragon that female desire is inflexible and that psychology is mostly determined by genetics. They may disagree with him on the desirability of supporting a reversion to pre-modern economic arrangements as a solution to the issue, not least because of a greater focus on lookism as a cause of men's mating woes.

Blackpill communities

The first large blackpill communities were hosted on Reddit. /r/incels (a quarantine evasion of /r/truecels) was the first major incel community to use the term 'blackpill' and /r/braincels was the largest one. Most of the discussions there focused on slut-shaming and lookism, largely ruminating on experiments and memes from r9k, but also creating new ones, especially memes on lookism such as St. Blackops2cel. As of 2022, incels.is is the largest blackpill community, but it is explicitly an incel community, not a general community for the blackpill. The blackpill is also a fairly common philosophy on general internet forums such as 4chan and on lookism oriented self-improvement forums such as Looksmax.org. One can even see discussion of the blackpill on sites such as hairlosstalk.com, further indicating that the concept is not confined to the incel online subculture.

Blackpillers mostly believe in biological essentialism and evolutionary explanations for human social and sexual behavior. Many of these beliefs are not new at all, but draw from established scientific literature, e.g. on Briffault's law, Bateman's principle, Fisherian runaway and sexy sons hypothesis.

Blackpill science

Largely separate from other incel or blackpill communities, some communities like to share and read scientific studies on dating and human sexual behavior on /r/BlackPillScience (one of the few blackpill identified communities to not be banned by Reddit), which later lead contributed to the creation of the Scientific Blackpill article on this Wiki. These groups proposed a more extended definition of the blackpill, generally revolving around genetic determinism or the effect of inherited traits on dating in general rather than simple lookism. These communities weren't prescriptive in regards to the consequences of such lines of evidence, and were strictly moderated, which has likely contributed to their survivability on places such as Reddit that have proven hostile towards incel and blackpill communities.

Themes and common arguments

The following list contains typical themes, memes and shitposts found in blackpill communities. They largely overlap with themes from the redpill and the manosphere overall. Not all blackpillers agree with all of the positions and claims referenced here, nor are they necessarily factually or scientifically correct or proven by the Scientific Blackpill, nor endorsed by the wiki, but they are only collected for reasons of completeness and for the documentation of blackpill subculture.

Nature arguments

• Nothing can change female sexual desire (biological essentialism) in a free mating market, post-sexual revolution
• SMV is determined by things men cannot easily improve on such as looks, money, status, physical stature, race, IQ, and neurotypicality. It is argued that women don't care about a man's personality, which is often conflated with morality. Some argue that only looks matter. Some say stuff like 'confidence' etc. matters a little but much less than readily observable material factors. SMV is argued to be the same as dating success, and it is commonly argued that direct female mate choice is primary in determining a man's sexual success, and not other external factors, apart from rare circumstances
• Cosmetic surgery can drastically improve men's mating success
• That men's genetic quality is accurately determined by women at large (good genes hypothesis) and that this applies today; therefore incels have 'bad genes'
• Women like big penises
• Women care greatly about a male partner's height
• Forced sex is not so bad and many women like it, at least if the rapist is an attractive and/or high-status man. Popular BDSM themed porn aimed at women like "Fifty Shades of Grey" and the like are often cited in support of this position
• Women are hybristophilic and attracted to male dominance and displays of violence in general

Women bad

• Women are only capable of love in case of high status men. Basically that women can only love conditionally, which most wouldn't consider 'love'
• Women reject 80% of the male population, or would if they could perfectly optimize their mate choices
• Women will reject a man because he is a virgin, unless he is very attractive
• Women mostly have a horrible character, if any
• Women take joy in bullying at least as much as men
• Women only love what men can provide for them, financially or sexually
• Women's depression and loneliness are at best self-inflicted, at worst a means of getting attention. It is generally argued that women suffer less than men, as they live life on 'easy mode'
• Women love playing victims to get their way
• Women are sneaky and lie a lot
• Women behave like children
• Women exhibit a dual mating strategy, where men who financially provide for them are often cuckolded by more masculine or attractive men
• Women have a passive, transactional and opportunistic love style
• Women are solipsistic
• Women are particularly shallow about the looks of men, and care as much, or more about looks in a romantic partner than men do
• Women's sexuality is more primitive than men's, who are argued to be the romantic gender, but they conceal this to receive investment from male partners. Some argue that they are stuck r-selected past as they have been subject to less selection pressure

Society

• Men need sexual intimacy and romantic intimacy
• Inceldom is harmful
• Making women non-financially dependent on men for survival reduces them to their looks
• Polygamy in general is bad and always unworkable on a community level, as it creates incel men who are excluded from reproduction and sexuality
• Eliminating traditional gender roles destabilizes society through creating demotivated male incels, as women are claimed to 'ride the cock carousel' and engage in de facto polygynous arrangements with 'Chads' in contexts where they are free to select males and defer marriage
• The patriarchy would solve or mitigate inceldom to a substantial degree
• Wife sharing and other forms of extreme promiscuity are pathetic and necessarily chaotic
• Religions were right about women
• Rich men are often merely betabuxed
• Women are compatible with forced marriage as they naturally fantasize about sexual coercion
• Sexual coercion is a natural part of human sexuality
• Revoking women's right to vote would be a good idea

Many of these themes can be found in incel vocabulary and memes. Looks and status being necessary for men, but unevenly distributed, gives rise to beta and alpha males, Virgin vs Chad. Chad represents women's tendency to date up (hypergamy) and to prefer dominant men. The higher sex drive and more active love style in men give rise to beta orbiting. For women, Becky vs Stacy represent women's intra-sexual competition in looks.

Blackpills often means that "it's over" for incels with poor looks and low social status or other flaws—that is, that they have next to no chance of 'ascending' or attaining sexual and social fulfilment. The blackpill gave rise to various spin-offs with varying degrees of seriousness, for instance, the 'dogpill' or 'birdpill'.

Traditional conservatism

Reddit's incel boards were mostly apolitical, and the term "blackpill" mostly meant "it's all about looks and hence it's over". After the banning of /r/braincels, however, blackpillers left on incels.co were dominated by people who promoted certain traditionalist/social conservative ideas as the solution to male inceldom, specifically monogamy and general male domination of women. They attempted to incorporate this into the blackpill.

Traditionalist's arguments

Traditionalist blackpillers push for a return to traditions, sexual sublimation, monogamy and the 'natural subordination' of women. This is seen in accordance with the greatest happiness principle as even women themselves are thought to be currently unhappy, and desire being subordinated and manned around. The social conservatism and focus on sexual sublimation reminds of the philosophy of 20th century English ethnologist J. D. Unwin. Most traditionalist blackpillers are atheist, leading one to suspect the validity of their attachment to 'tradition, but some promote 'cultural Christianity' or other religions. Non-traditionalist blackpillers tend to be anti-tradcon.

Blackpill Feminism

'Blackpill feminism' was a Reddit community of radical feminist women who accepted the idea of immutable biological factors as determining sex differences, but instead of using this to promote patriarchy or monogamy, they instead promoted radical female separation. Blackpill feminists view men as biologically inferior and hence untrainable, in opposition to other feminists who seek to 'train' men to be more docile or agreeable to women. Issues spoken about by feminists, such as male sexual violence and patriarchy, were argued to be biologically determined. Thus they were 'blackpilled' in regards to fixing these issues, apart from recourse to extreme methods that generally involved deploying violence against men and reduction of their share of the population in relation to women. Their subreddit r/Blackpillfeminism was short-lived.

Blackpill vs redpill

The blackpill can be viewed as a reaction against other philosophy derived from the manosphere, the redpill. Although both philosophies are not fully cohesive and strictly defined, we can make broad distinctions between the two. Redpillers and blackpillers do share some core beliefs, most notably the belief in inherent female hypergamy (defined as women's desire to 'date up') and a generally cynical view of human and especially female nature that perceives most social relationships as essentially being transactional in nature.

They differ in several important ways, however, mostly because redpillers believe men can improve their dating situation through various social manipulation tricks and self-improvement strategies such as bodybuilding. As such, redpillers advise that men adopt an internal locus of control, or self-responsibility for one's dating success. However, some blackpillers do advise forms of self-improvement such as looksmaxxing, so this distinction is not always as severe as it seems on the surface.

The main difference here may be that blackpillers generally don't blame incels actions and attitudes for their lack of sexual success, whereas redpillers are often aggressively neoliberal in the sense of promoting 'bootstraps' and tough-love rhetoric to disadvantaged men. Redpillers typically seek to portray the blackpill as a 'loser mentality' that will repulse women, while blackpillers often see or portray redpillers as self-aggrandizing failures who exaggerate their sexual success for grifting purposes. It is commonly argued by proponents of the blackpill that redpiller's frequent hostility towards the blackpill is often motivated by self-interest, as if the 'blackpilled truth' of the dating market is known to men there won't be any market for PUA-type courses based on ideas that dating is 'hackable' via redpill type methods. Some prominent redpillers, such as Rollo Tomassi, however, do recognize the similarities between the two 'pills' and see blackpillers as simply representing defeatist redpillers. Despite this tension, there seems to be an increasing trend towards convergence of the two circles, with redpillers often adopting blackpill terminology and arguments.

The blackpill is also generally more biologically determinist than the redpill, and argues more strongly against social constructionist viewpoints which assert humans are not bound to their genetics. Blackpillers instead believe romantic success without 'tying women down' will always be mostly genetically predetermined (mostly only controlled through either evolutionary time, or eugenics, or efforts to 'cheat one's genetics' such as plastic surgery).

Finally, the blackpill places more of an emphasis on a man's looks as a determinate of his dating success, whereas redpillers generally argue that a man's behavior and social status is more important to women. However, some of this difference is merely because blackpillers often have very high standards for what is considered necessary for a man to physically stand-out in the modern dating market due to online dating and social media. Redpillers often agree looks are paramount for short-term mating but argue most men can easily self-improve to the point where they are considered reasonably attractive to a large enough portion of women for dating to be worth it. This point of view is often considered 'bluepilled' and delusional by blackpill proponents. As such, one can argue that many of the ostensible differences between the blackpill and the redpill depend on one's own experiences and perspective, and are furthermore more quantitative than qualitative in nature.

Proposed solutions

Believers in the blackpill have a wide range of opinions about what needs or can be done about the systemic issues outlined above:

• Monogamy and religion in general: Traditionalist believe one should return to the nuclear family. Some regard religion as necessary, while others propose atheistic monogamy.
• Socially arranged or enforced monogamy: Some propose sex communism and state-issued girlfriends as a solution to inceldom, however, others have objected that such projects seem unlikely to succeed socially/politically, as they are well outside of the Overton Window in all liberal democracies, at least, and as such would likely require an authoritarian state that was invested in solving the problem to implement successfully, and it is also seen as doubtful whether healthy relationships can form when a relationship is not "earned", but assigned by fiat. Both men and women often want to be proud of their partner choice. For that, both men and women need to know where they stand.
• State-promotion of monogamy: Blackpillers have proposed state subvention could pay male and female incels for pairing up (positive reinforcement). Similarly, it has been proposed to disincentivize promiscuity and singlehood instead, e.g. by taxing promiscuous lifestyle.
• Lowering women's status: Women's hypergamy means that for each man there needs to be a woman of lower status. This implies, to reduce inceldom, women's status relative to men needs to be lowered in general. Not necessarily as far that all women are below men, but many in the manosphere do advocate for this.
• Ignoring women and sex: Others believe a positive effect of taking the blackpill is that it liberates from false hope and from expending time and effort for what is, in essence, a futile goal. Taking the blackpill means acknowledgement unethical, shallow and unhealthy mannerisms in the dating scene or even wider cultural practices, such as narcissism and lookism (the halo effect and beauty-is-good stereotyping). Many blackpilled incels eventually complement or supplant the blackpill with the whitepill. Acceptance of the blackpill could literally mean adopting monk status and potentially joining a religious community that provides a sense of beloningness and status, or embracing one's singledom, freedom and independence (MGTOW, monk mode). For these blackpillers, the blackpill is mainly seen as a counterweight to the prevalent and bluepilled assumption that having a poor social and romantic life is mostly one's own fault and/or a matter of cultivating a positive personality. It provides a basis whereby one can reject day-to-day platitude and the commonly fraudulent "self-improvement" advice that is ubiquitous in media, advertising and the redpill.
• Nihilism, fatalism and incelicide: Some blackpillers say the damage done is irreparable at this point and advocate fatalism. Such blackpillers are often driven by essentialist views that female sexuality is so strongly biologically hardwired that it would require a civil war to undo the sexual revolution, or that it is simply not feasible and has also historically never been substantially better (which is false since the number of incels is likely at a historical peak). Some social Darwinist blackpillers promote fatalism and advocate incelicide. If nobody is left to be an incel, then the problem is solved. These kinds of solutions are of course, not ethically tenable. Also, if the core problem of the unequal distribution of female's sexual affections is left unresolved, then this would require a continuous purge of incels every generation.

Criticism of Blackpill communities

Claims the Blackpill is cultish

Blackpill memes on Reddit were largely shared for shitposting and venting, This is similar to the nihilistic shitposting culture that is common on other internet forums, such as 4chan, which influenced the blackpill greatly. Cultish elements may have developed due to some members taking the shitposting very seriously. Still, explicit incel forums like incels.co and the like have been portrayed as being more extreme and cultish compared to Reddit, e.g. with members explicitly luring in newcomers under the slogan to "learn about the blackpill" and "lay down and rot".

Blackpill proselytism and activism

Some of the most dedicated members in blackpilled forums actively seek to "spread the blackpill", which often involves using studies, online dating experiments and other forms of evidence to induce others to "swallow" the blackpill narrative, generally surrounding looks being important for man's dating success/or men's dating success being largely immutable in general. Some have likened this to cultish behavior.

These 'blackpill evangelists' engage in this behavior for several reasons. Some argue they do this to lessen feelings of shame or guilt among incels and relieve them from false hope, some want to change discourse in society, while others are vocal about trying to full-on "spark a revolution". Seemingly, the main thing that distinguishes the most cultish members from typical cults is their lack of congruent or zealous community philosophical leaders, which makes the 'ideology' rather reflexive and inchoate in general. It would be safer to argue that that the blackpill belief system is not completely coherent, as has been claimed, but rather a broad intellectual heuristic that is applied in reaction to what blackpillers perceive as the intolerable condition of the modern mating market. Thus, the more extreme forms of the 'blackpill' are closely linked to the rise of so-called 'salad bar extremism', wherein alienated and disaffected people tend to unify their grievances in response to the growth of the internet and social media. This could be why it is commonly perceived that blackpillers are 'alt-right', despite there being no clear or actual link between the two schools of thought.

On incels.co there are no leaders who promote the blackpill in such an organized way. The argument that blackpilled incels are an organized group that advocates extremist solutions to social issues has caught hold in academia, where it is commonly argued that 'incels' constitute some sort of extremist movement.

Claimed far-right links

The person who first formalized the blackpill, Paragon, believed in biological essentialism, which in modern times is generally linked to the political right. The first modern redpill/blackpill influenced incel boards anywhere were either founded or discussion-seeded by a self-described "neo-reactionary", who allowed the dicussion of violence on his forums, i.e. Caamib. He, however, rejected certain core ideas of the blackpill, namely lookism. His focus was on feminism as the sole cause of involuntarily celibacy. Reddit made it clear they would not tolerate that style of incel discussion, and so Braincels was populated next. Braincels was a previously dormant sub founded by an anarcho-communist named AnathematicAnarchist. The forum was not particularly traditionalist or alt-right. Braincels actively sought to minimize racism in their Reddit community before AnathematicAnarchist committed suicide, and they were largely hostile to the racialist aspects of the alt-right.

Criticism of the Blackpill itself

• Too much focus on looks: Superficial traits like looks, height, income, masculinity are at best weak predictors of sexual success as measured by e.g. partner count, with muscularity being the only consistent (but also weak) predictor of lifetime sexual success among a variety of superficial variables, so looks are unlikely to explain most inceldom except for extremely physically unattractive individuals perhaps. Men are also seemingly bad at accurately judging their own looks. However, looks do matter somewhat in terms of assortative mating as attractiveness ratings within couples (both short and long-term) are moderately correlated (r = .4), meaning very attractive people rarely mate with very unattractive ones.
• Cultural factors overlooked: Demographics of inceldom suggest that there is a trend toward less sex for both men and women, which is accompanied by a decline in risky behavior as well as a trend towards later marriage, i.e. less strictly enforced monogamy. Historical evidence suggests that marriage is a human universal, with most societies primarily practicing arranged marriage, so the complete absence of marriage may pose an evolutionary mismatch, resulting in inceldom, in addition to casual sex becoming less common as well. Further, environmentalist fears about overconsumption and overpopulation are discouraging procreation in Western nations.
• Too little focus on economics: Economic causes of inceldom like wealth inequality and economic stagnation come up short. Costs of living increasing discourage family formation. Millennials have only a fraction of the worth babyboomers had at the same age. Many blackpillers only focus on hypergamy as an economic issue, but the effect sizes of women dating up are typically pretty small (see hypergamy).
• Women are only way choosier than men in certain situations: Both sexes are very choosy about their partners. Evidence from online dating suggests that in terms of messaging patterns, both women and men aim up to roughly the same degree and few of either sex aim up excessively or unreasonably. Men are, however, substantially less choosy in case of casual sex, but when it comes to marriage (when the man needs to invest his resources), men are also very choosy. Some studies conclude that men prefer a good looking partner more than do women. Women are less interested in sex and initiate relationships less, which means by principle of least interest, women can overall date up (see Juggernaut law), but the effect sizes are not large.

• Traditionalism does not necessarily eliminate inceldom: In the 19th century U.S., even though divorces were rare and traditional gender roles were strict, around 70% of men below age 25 were unmarried. In Medieval population about 20% of the population was poor or destitute, preventing them from entering marriage contracts set by the male Lords. There also seems to be no correlation between how relatively rigid gender roles are and how sexually dissatisfied a modern country is. For example, Japan is the least sexually dissatisfied nation, but it has relatively rigid gender roles for a developed country. Japanese women are encouraged to work more female-centric jobs than in most countries and earn less than men more than in most developed countries, including Sweden and the USA. There is generally mixed evidenced on the relationship between traditionalism and quality of life as summarized in the tradcon article.

  Counter-arguments to this include that conservatives do have more sex, even though even many conservatives are gender progressive nowadays. Japan is also one of the least religious countries and has a peculiar history regarding their sexual modesty. Historically, there have also been more incels due to harsher ecologies, so Medieval Europe and 19th century U.S. may not be a good comparison.

• Furthering the welfare state rather reducing it: Some blackpillers hold that poverty is a better solution to inceldom than mass abundance. To the contrary, child-rearing could instead be more subsidized to reduce female selection based on income. Blackpillers respond that women would then turn to looks and status. State welfare advocates also tend to promote broad societal egalitarianism (Jante Law, e.g.), a sort of status leveller that is rumored to reduce intrasexual competition. However, they do not usually put forth a plan on how to reduce sexual dimorphism in the face of globalization. And in 2019 they tend to favor open-borders and liberal internet policy, which can increase sexual dimorphism in the dating sphere.
• Cult & unhealthy pessimism: Blackpill-spaces are criticised as cultish, quasi-religious and for encouraging unhealthy, pessimistic behaviors among members of the spaces, sometimes inciting violence.
• Bluepill: The bluepill is pretty much the complete opposite of the blackpill. Bluepillers tend to deny even biology determinism and propose self-help, personality-altering, individualism, neoliberalism, and other self-actualization type philosophies. They also promote an overall positivity as a solution to inceldom.
• Danger of a stricter culture: A general danger of returning to stricter enforcement of norms and hierarchies is that those in power will abuse it. For example, the notion of chivalry (man proves himself to and protects the woman), nationalism, obedience can quickly result in exploitation of low-status males and provoke wars between nations, or also possibly authoritarian outrages such as mass killings. It is a balancing act between maintaining order on the one hand and preventing highly coordinated conflict on the other.
• Nurture vs nature: In particular socialist, social constructionist, bluepilled and purplepilled spaces criticize that the blackpill relies too heavily on biological essentialism, i.e. sees human nature as more inflexible than it is.
• Too much focus on fast life history women: As little as 7% of women have used the most popular dating app, Tinder, in 2020. Also data on sexual activity in the U.S. suggests that only a small minority of women is currently engaging in a promiscuous lifestyle. These are presumably particular women with a genetic disposition for a fast life history, i.e. they are promiscuous and do not invest much in the offspring (i.e. NAWALT). Only 33% of users who have dated through Tinder got a committed relationship out of it, the rest went for one-night stands or causal sexual relationships, suggesting the majority of Tinder users are indeed fast-life strategists, with such women being possibly more superficial in their choices based on looks only. Women who truly enjoy rape are presumably also only a minority of fast-life strategists among women as the Jolly Heretic noted.
• Sex is not distributed 80/20: As noted in the hypergamy article, in the U.S., sex is not as unequally distributed as 80/20, but only around 60/20, meaning 20% of men have 60% of the sex, and this is similar for women and men. As the demography article shows, sex has declined for both sexes and there is no evidence for a large rise in sexual inequality favoring few Chads, but some evidence for a small increase of inequality, varying between countries, e.g. in Finland, sexual inequality appears to have risen more strongly. Since Finland is a very progressive country, it might serve as a model of progressive subpopulations in other countries.
• Women are not more lookist than men: As explained in the Scientific Blackpill, in dating apps, men and women aim up in looks to roughly the same degree. In some studies, men are even more choosy about looks than women.
• Muscle theory: Building muscle likely actually works as a dating strategy, both to become more physically attractive to women, and for intimidating other men to win out in intrasexual competition. See also the body attractiveness article. Building muscle and free mate choice, however might not come very naturally to slow-life strategists who are might be more adapted for arranged marriage, and the ability to gain muscle mass is also partly genetically predetermined.
• Female sexuality more flexible than assumed: Most blackpillers and redpillers, especially those focusing on female mate choice, regard female sexual desire is very inflexible, however there is substantial evidence that female sexuality is actually more malleable by culture than men's (see Roy Baumeister's research).

Meme gallery

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