Redpill

The Redpill is a rejection of and opposition to the "bluepill" (however this is defined). This term derives from the movie The Matrix, where "taking the red pill" means accepting harsh reality. The rejection of the redpill in favor of the bluepill meant a deliberate denial of that harsh reality. Someone who hold a certain amount of blackpill beliefs is called a redpiller.

This metaphor has since been extended from that colloquial sense of rejecting mainstream falsehoods to denoting a certain ideological framework (in the eyes of certain redpillers who claim to be more objective, a "praxeology," or overarching theory of human behavior) that is applied to fields as diverse as dating and politics, and the suffix -pill itself has essentially become a meme, spawning a whole class of internet jargon.

In the narrower ideological sense, the redpill has been adopted by such diverse subsets of the manosphere as PUAs, MGTOWS, MRAs to some self-identified incels. In these circles, the "redpill" is typically defined as recognizing that most males are seen as disposable, modern society is inherently gynocentric, that women are hypergamous maters who are also generally highly deceptive towards men (particularly as it comes to what male traits they are innately attracted to) and the endorsement of masculinism. However, there is no clear and unified definition of the concept.

In terms of dating, the redpill generally emphasizes self-improvement, confidence, and high levels of mating effort as the keys to being sexually successful. They also commonly portray the contemporary mating market as essentially a zero-sum game for men and therefore often advise that men adopt highly egoistic, and in the extremes psychopathic levels of selfishness as a method of improving one's dating/general life success. They typically justify this by saying that modern society essentially incentivizes free rider behavior. Accepting this and adjusting one's behavior and values accordingly are often depicted as a key component of "taking the redpill."

Out of the redpill was developed another pill, known as the blackpill. In reference to dating, the blackpill is the redpill that emphasizes things presumed to be out of one's control. As such, it is generally much more fatalistic than the redpill. The blackpill also typically emphasizes male looks as a strong determinate of their dating success compared to the redpill. However, as physical attractiveness is improvable for most men to some extent, the distinction between these pills often boils down to what traits are emphasized as attractive to women and their degree of importance. Most redpillers, under the influence of pick-up artists, place more importance on "game" (in this sense, sexually seductive or dominant behavior, however this is defined) more than looks or even money or (objective) status. A fourth "pill," the "purplepill," is seen as a more middle-of-the-road pill that acknowledges some "red pill truths" while denying other core aspects of the redpill.

As (at least in liberal democratic Western countries) masculinist views have a not insubstantial overlap with right-wing politics, the redpill, in the broader sense, is also commonly used to refer to the endorsement or adoption of certain right-wing political views. A particularly striking example of the general overlap between the redpill segment of the manosphere and the right-wing would be that the first major self-identified redpill dating community was started by a congressman that represented the American Republican Party (r/theredpill).

Common beliefs

• The general attitude that a man's dating success is substantially within his personal ability to alter significantly (internal locus of control), though this varies somewhat. Many redpillers assert there is "no hope for "omegas" (men stated to be at the bottom of, or rejected from, the hierarchy). Thus, these redpillers essentially state that 'game' and self-improvement only work for men that already have a certain degree of sexual success. Others claim these men can only attain sexual success if they substantially alter their mentality, which includes shifting their locus of control internally. The emphasis on individual solutions to dating has led to a strong focus on various sorts of self-improvement (bodybuilding, acquiring wealth, learning new skills) in the "redpillosphere".
• That society views the majority of men as disposable, often stated to be due to evolutionary reasons as women's reproduction is limited and as such more valued than men's. They claim that this apparent natural human disposition to view men mostly in terms of their economic utility is further heightened by feminism, which is generally portrayed as a veiled ploy by women to gain further power over men beyond what their inherent reproductive resources already grant them. Redpillers typically claim that this tendency towards viewing men as essentially value producing units is particularly strong among women.
• That behaving in a seductive, dominant, or outright obnoxious manner is highly attractive to women. Redpillers claim such behavior is often more of a determinate of whether women would have sex with a man than other aspects of men's mate value, such as physical attractiveness, social status, or wealth. A common focus is on behavioral masculinity and confidence in general as the key to seducing women.
• Men typically arrange themselves into strict dominance hierarchies where some men are "alpha" and others are "beta". Some have elaborated more on this concept, but the general idea is that the men at the top of the hierarchies get most of the sexual spoils. Other redpillers (not many) have criticized this concept and claim that losers (stoners, deadbeats, welfare claimants) that are nonetheless highly sexually attractive to women debunk this concept (as it applies to sexual success), implying women are mainly attracted to irresponsible and immoral men or good looking men.
• Women are hypergamous, that is, women always desire to "date up." Redpillers have extended the term hypergamy to mean that women are generally hard to keep satisfied in long-term relationships (especially in the absence of external social controls) due to their fickle nature, as they supposedly are always looking out for what they view as a "better man". Thus, they claim women have a strong tendency to "monkey-branch" when their current relationships go south. They do this by attaching themselves to a man they already had lined up as a potential replacement for their current long-term partner.
• The 80/20 rule. Redpillers often claim that literally 20% of men get 80% of the sex or that men's sexual success otherwise follows a rough Pareto distribution where a small number of men get a disproportionate amount of sex from women. This unequal distribution of sexual success among men is said to be directly linked to, and a result of, female-driven hypergamy.
• The belief that women instinctively sort men into two broad categories, "alpha" (men they are attracted to) and "beta" (men they only view as providers). One of the stated objectives of practicing "game" is to behave in ways that will shift women's perceptions of you from being a potential provider to a source of sexual fulfillment (if one's main goal is obtaining casual sex). This is often linked with the largely debunked dual mating strategy idea from evolutionary psychology that women are evolutionarily adapted to seek out agreeable men with resources for long-term relationships and then cuckold these men with dominant, good-looking men when they are ovulating in order to receive both "good genes" from the "alpha" and provision and paternal care from the "beta".
• That "women's nature" is generally characterized by deceptiveness, shallowness, materialism, a lack of personality and unfaithfulness. Women that do not possess these traits are said to be very rare. As such, it is often stated that the phrase "AWALT" (All Women Are Like That) while not being strictly true, is nonetheless a sound heuristic to abide by when interacting with women.
• Women are generally attracted to anti-social, selfish, aggressive, and amoral men and only desire pro-social, nice, and moral men when they are settling for a "beta-provider" or when society induces them to mate with such men. The extent to which women's attraction to such men is emphasized varies throughout the manosphere's redpilled (and blackpilled) portions. Still, the consensus among redpillers is that women generally prefer assholes over nice guys. Some redpillers assert that women want a man with a balance of dominant and empathetic traits in the concept of a long-term relationship (the so-called "alpha provider").
• The belief that modern marriage is highly harmful to men owing to no-fault divorce, gynocentric courts, and the presence of strict domestic violence laws (which most argue incentivizes scorned wives to issue false cases against their husbands, though a minority appear to desire male perpetrated domestic violence to be legalized).
  This belief makes many redpillers (particularly MGTOWs, despite their ostensible anti-marriage stance, most only reject post-feminist marriage, which they dub "marriage 2.0") adopt traditionalist conservative beliefs that they believe will 'fix' marriage for men and reduce the social issues that they argue result from women's sexual freedom.
  Other redpillers are opposed to traditional conservatism because they view it as too constraining on men's freedom or because they want to be free to have as much casual sex as possible with as many women as possible (primarily certain PUAs).
  Some redpillers argue that possessing a surfeit of "game" or a high sexual market value will make women more subservient and pleasant acting in long-term relationships and less likely to divorce men.
• Men and women have different "love styles"/women cannot love in the sense men conceive of it. Redpillers often state that most women only "love" what men can provide for them (whether this is defined as wealth, sexual pleasure, stability, protection and so on) and not for what they innately are. Conversely, men are stated to have a "love style" that less objectifying, conditional and more holistic than women's. In the sense of the love styles conceived of by the ancient Greeks proponents of the redpill frequently claim that women are limited to eros, or sensual love, while men are capable of deeper and more diverse forms of love. This is generally tied up with the general theme of greater male disposability and gynocentrism. This supposed difference in love styles and societal expectations of men and women is often summed up with the phrase: "women are, men must become".
• The belief that dating is generally a zero-sum game where many men compete for the most attractive women. Thus, it is often necessary to outcompete other men in some visible way to gain sexual access to women. This dog-eat-dog view of the mating market often seems to promote behavior such as acting in an overly obnoxious way and bullying others in an attempt to appear "alpha."

See also

• Pill jargon
• Blackpill
• Bluepill
• Purplepill
• Whitepill
• r/TRP
• Rollo Tomassi
• Redpill Bible
• New Age Movement