red pill
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Forms: form: red pills
form: redpill
Etymology: From a scene in the film The Matrix (1999), where the main character, who lives in a virtual world known as the Matrix, is given a choice between a red pill that will allow him to learn the truth about the Matrix and a blue pill that will return him to his simulated life.
Senses: examples: text: To take the red pill is to choose to take responsibility for our lives, both on the personal and larger social levels.
ref: 2003, Glenn Yeffeth, Taking the Red Pill, page 148:
text: Do you want to continue to live in the false world of dieting, where emotional pain is numbed, health risks are ignored, and false promises are made? Or do you want to take the red pill, as it were, and see the reality of a world in which food and eating don't dominate or take over your life?
ref: 2011, Stephen Arterburn, Linda Mintle, Lose It for Life: The Total Solution, →ISBN, page 49:
text: We can offer ourselves the option of taking the red pill and, when the circumstances are right, we shall not be able to resist the lure of the naked truth; however hard it may be to stare it in the face.
ref: 2012, Yanis Varoufakis, Joseph Halevi, Nicholas Theocarakis, Modern Political Economics: Making Sense of the Post-2008 World, →ISBN:
text: Until the media and economy are democratically structured and regulated, the best people can do is take the red pill -- that is, utilize the alternative media for information and thereby purge their neurological systems of large misleading segments of their past education and the mainstream popular media.
ref: 2013, John C Alessio, Social Problems and Inequality, →ISBN:
text: As you choke down the red pill, we will begin to expound on that eternally important question that few people have bothered to ask, save once, likely around the tender age of four [...] the eternally important question, "What is money?"
ref: 2013, David Mint, What is Money? A Quest to Answer the Question of the Ages:
glosses: Something that enables or compels a person to overcome illusion and perceive harsher reality.
examples: text: One of the unfortunate outcomes of a red pill awakening (i.e. to learn the true nature of men, women, our culture's abject gynocentrism) is red pill rage: anger at the raw deal dealt to men by unconstrained gynocentrism and a sexual market place that is far too risky for an awakened man to tolerate.
ref: 2019, 8. 8 Finger, Roger L'Estrange, Seneca, On Anger: Wisdom for Men: An Antidote for Red Pill Rage:
text: The foundational tenet of taking the red pill is at the root of almost all the major manosphere groups we will look at in this book, including pickup artists, so-called Men's Rights Activists, and Men Going Their Own Way.
ref: 2020, Laura Bates, Men Who Hate Women: From Incels to Pickup Artists, the Truth about Extreme Misogyny and how it Affects Us All:
text: Reading this book and taking the red pill will give you the red pill mindframe and liberate you from simping and you'll receive wisdom in dealing with women and avoiding manipulation.
ref: 2021, DMPaul Smith, Taking The Red Pill - The Bitter Truth: The Red Pill Mindframe And Alpha Male Strategies to Avoid Female Manipulation And Deception In Relationship And Dating:
glosses: Something that causes someone to believe in gynocentrism in modern society.
examples: text: Most red pill thinkers will have already debunked this one and replaced it with a better story.
ref: 2017, Peter Wright, Red Pill Psychology: Psychology for men in a gynocentric world:
text: With the growth of 'the red pill' and similar such groups among men there is a growing realisation that life is very different in dating for 'alpha males' compared to everyone else.
ref: 2017, Player Mastermind, Gold Diggers and Sugar Daddies: The Red Pill Guide to Hypergamy:
text: The problems faced by men in America—the problems the Red Pill community points to as proof that we live in a gynocentric society—have deep historical roots; however, the Red Pill represents a new, dangerous phase of American masculinity in the internet age.
ref: 2018, Donna Zuckerberg, Not All Dead White Men: Classics and Misogyny in the Digital Age:
text: Indeed, this is the surprising core of the whole Red Pill theory of seduction: never stop begging for it.
ref: 2019, Andrea Long Chu, Females:
text: If you are attracted to the truths presented in Red Pill culture, but are put off by any morality or atheism present, this book is for you.
ref: 2019, James a Deprisco, The Catholic Red Pill: A Guide for Men:
glosses: The subculture of men who share a belief in the gynocentrism of modern society; manosphere.
glosses: Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see red, pill.
Derived terms: red pilled
red piller
take the red pill