“You take the blue pill – the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill – you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.” Most have heard this famous line asked to Keanu Reeves’s character in the film ‘The Matrix’, where taking the blue pills represents staying in the simulation and the blissful ignorance that goes along with it. Taking the red pill means accepting the truth and harsh realities of the simulation being fake and going to the world beyond it. Well nowadays, taking the red pill means something a bit different. In short, it refers to a belief system that views society as dominated by feminism and biased against men, and “taking the red pill” means that you are waking up to this reality. 

Gaining traction in the early 2000s, what started as online forums for men to air out their grievances about women turned into groups of misogynistic, threatening incels. They view women and “sexually active men” as the worst part of society. At times this behavior can even lead to crime, similar to that in the new Netflix show Adolescence, where a 13 year old boy kills his female classmate under the guise of the red pill ideologies. Despite whatever reason that the red pill culture/ideologies were created and popularized, their ideologies are misogynistic, which not only pose a threat to the young women, but also the young men who choose to take the red pill.

Some might say, “It’s just an online forum”, and it could’ve started that way. But, online forums have turned into hundreds of videos, spewing information about becoming ‘alpha males’ and dominating others by any means necessary. This has led young men to worship influencers like Andrew Tate, who is currently facing rape and human trafficking charges. It’s very easy to fall into that rabbit hole, and once you do it’s hard to get out. In a study done by Matteo Botto & Lucas Gottzén, analyzing the stories of former red pill young men, many shared that their red pill stories never even started with choosing to go to these forums and other pages. One individual stated, “I don’t know when or why my recommended feed started getting filled with StephisCold and MJGetRight videos.” In many cases, their reasons for staying were attributed to their vulnerabilities at the time and therefore they were easily manipulated. So one goes from looking at a few videos on YouTube to believing a woman’s consent does not matter in any aspect of life. There are many cases of people sharing fantasies of committing sexual violence and other criminal acts on red pill forums. Whether or not the men on these forums would act on these desires does not make the potential threat any less serious. 

Still, despite all of the internet backlash to red pill culture, some don’t see the issue with it and view it not as a threat but simply as a tool to help men with today’s dating culture. In an interview done with The Guardian reporter Stephen Marche, an anonymous red pill head moderator claims that these forums are simply a place for men to vent their frustrations with the dating scene and get advice from fellow men. In the interview, he states, “The endgame of our advice isn’t to hate women. It’s to understand them so you can stop being so darn frustrated by them.” These mentalities are shared by many who are on the surface level of red pill ideologies, but even they cannot and should not ignore the fact that these forums and red pill ideologies have gone too far. If men need a space to talk about their issues with dating culture they need better options than anonymous and misinformed hateful message boards. 

As these red pill forums become increasingly more extreme, there has to be more of a push to stop young men from taking the red pill. If young men are not fed these extreme ideologies of masculinity and the “wrongdoings” of women, there’s a chance for these ideals to die out. But to do so, families must pay attention to signs that their sons are starting to fall into the red pill trap and give them a space to express themselves in a non-harmful way. And for those who have already joined the red pill community, think to yourself, are you taking the red pill or is it just the blue pill in disguise?