r/TRP
r/TheRedPill, or 'The Redpill,' or 'TRP' (not to be confused with the generic lowercase term 'redpill'), is one the largest pick up artist communities on the internet. It was placed under quarantine by the admins of Reddit, and currently remains under quarantine. It was founded on October 25th 2012 by a New Hampshire, USA, House of Representatives Republican named Robert Fischer. /r/TRP more or less advocates that the way to get girlfriends (including model girlfriends) is by building self-confidence and self-worth (mental 'frame') by yourself. TRP says that the way women choose men is by unconsciously submitting men to confidence tests called shit tests. When a man passes a woman's shit tests, and 'holds a higher frame' than her, TRP says he will 'get' her or have a good chance. /r/TRP stresses that men not only have to have good confidence and self worth, but higher confidence and self worth than the woman he is pursuing.
According to the website subredditstats.com, TRP reached over 290,000 subscribers in September 2018.
On September 30th 2019 Reddit admins announced that the subreddit was going to be deleted. r/Braincels was just deleted on the same day, without any warning from the Reddit admins. TRP, however, was not deleted, and still exists in quarantine as of December 2021, albeit with reduced inflow of new readers. TRP moderators have also created a separate website under their own control, as a safeguard against eventual deletion.
Bad Boy Theory[edit | edit source]
Incels don't argue with TRP and PUA so much that being a bad boy helps 'get' women. But incels argue that having the permission to act like an asshole around women requires that the person already have enough looks, money, and status, with looks being the most important and interrelated factor. The amount of looks you have is inherited and influences your status from the preschool on, and later the amount of money that you earn. The amount of money one needs to correct inherited looks is prohibitive for most incels, and statusmaxxing is extremely prohibitive without good looks. If one acts like a bad boy around women while ugly or low status, that person will often not have a good time... It is for this reason a lot of incels grow up with overly 'sweet' or 'nice' personalities, so that they don't get negative attention from women (and also so they don't get bullied by other men).
The TRP counterargument to this is that every person who exists, or existed, axiomatically had two parents who were able to successfully mate, so, while unfortunate combinations of genes do exist, they are far rarer than the observed number of incels. In addition, if inceldom was based on looks alone, then the amount of incels as a percentage of the population could be expected to remain constant (as a fraction of the total male population) over time. Since this is clearly not the case, the implied conclusion is that male attractiveness has a significant behavioral component, and social changes, leading to behavior changes, are behind the massive increase in inceldom in recent decades. Thus many if not most incels can become more attractive by learning what behaviors are attractive, and behaving differently.
While a high percentage of low-time TRP readers claim to have formerly been incels, is it unclear what percentage of incels who tried TRP methods actually ended up being sexually successful. It is possible that most simply gave up and went back to being incels, leaving only those for whom the techniques worked (selection bias).
Incel Forum attitudes toward confidence 'training'[edit | edit source]
Incels and MGTOWs argue that large amounts of confidence can't be built from trying to simply change your mentality or the way you approach women (unless you are a complete autist). But instead incels argue that confidence is born from being picked by women. And that if one is ugly or low in actual LMS (looks, money, and/or status), one will rarely receive the positive female attention necessary to be confident in onesself. Incels argue everyone is confident, there is no such thing as a 'lack of confidence'. Incels are confident for example. They are confident that they will fail based on previous patterns. They believe telling people to hack how their body naturally evaluates patterns is poor advice with a low success rate.
Does 'Game' Work?[edit | edit source]
Many people scammed by pick up artist sites like TRP learn that taking TRP advice and approaching women with a good 'mental-frame' while ugly and/or low status can get one filed with harassment claims etc. People that were successful with PUA sites like TRP most likely already had the looks, money and/or status necessary to be successful, and the pick up artist community just got the person to approach more women than before, increasing the amount of dates that person was able to go on. Learning 'game' probably increased the amount of positive attention that person received, but also negative attention, and that person only focused on the positive attention arriving at the conclusion that his success rate went up an enormous amount.
TRP's counterargument to this idea is that only positive attention matters for sexual success, and negative attention can thus be disregarded... sexual success is achieved by being attractive enough to a few women, not by being generally approved of by all of them. A man is hated by 99 percent of women and adored by 1 percent is a man who can find a new sexual partner by talking to one hundred women (on average).
Many, but not all incels also believe that TRP and the PUA community can overhype the benefits of gymcelling for men with a small or short stature/physical-frame. It is typically unclear in advance what the potential benefit of exercise are to any given man, both in muscularity and "face gains" included by fat loss.