red pill and blue pill, symbols originating from the 1999 science fiction film The Matrix. The pills represent a choice between remaining in a state of blissful ignorance (blue) or accepting a painful reality (red). Since The Matrix’s release, the red pill in particular has taken on various philosophical and social meanings, especially in alt-right circles and the so-called “manosphere” of anti-feminist online communities.
The Matrix depicts a futuristic world in which humans are kept in pods and used as batteries for a machine-ruled society. Under the influence of a reality-simulating computer system, called the Matrix, humans believe they are living their lives as usual. Computer hacker Neo (Keanu Reeves) meets the mysterious guru Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne), who presents him with the choice of the red pill or the blue pill. As Morpheus describes, “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.” Neo takes the red pill and wakes up in the real world.
The pill scene and others in The Matrix reference Lewis Carroll’s 1865 children’s book Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Neo receives a message on his computer telling him to “follow the white rabbit.” Morpheus asks Neo if he feels like Alice “tumbling down the rabbit hole.” The pills have been compared to the “Eat Me” cake and “Drink Me” potion that make Alice grow and shrink, respectively.
The red pill and blue pill are also emblematic of The Matrix’s themes of illusion versus reality and fate versus free will. Academics and film critics have noted the film’s similarities to philosophical theories such as Plato’s allegory of the cave, Zhuangzi’s butterfly dream, Robert Nozick’s experience machine, René Descartes’s “evil demon,” and the brain in a vat thought experiment. The Matrix also draws on ideas from gnosticism and Buddhism about ignorance and enlightenment.
Since the film’s release, there have been some commentators who view The Matrix as an allegory for gender transition. This perspective has developed following The Matrix writers and directors Lana and Lilly Wachowski publicly coming out as transgender. Some have noted that the 0.625 mg Premarin tablet, an estrogen pill commonly prescribed in the 1990s, is dark red in color. Lilly Wachowski has stated that her and Lana’s original intention was for the film to function as a metaphor for gender identity.
Ironically, the red pill has been seized by alt-right groups as a metaphor for freeing oneself from so-called liberal viewpoints. Curtis Yarvin, an anti-democracy blogger, was the first to popularize the term red pill in this way, during the late 2000s. Writing under the pseudonym Mencius Moldbug, Yarvin argued in 2007 that democracy is, like the Matrix, a simulation that Americans blindly believe. He gives examples of “blue pills” (what he calls the orthodox democratic narrative) and “red pills” (his radical, anti-democracy takes). Use of the term red pill continued to evolve after Donald Trump won the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Trump loyalists, QAnon conspiracy theorists, and others recast red pill as a verb. To redpill, in this parlance, is to initiate others into a shared set of beliefs that contradict the fact-based reality accepted by society at large. Thus -pilled has become a suffix denoting indoctrination.
The red pill functions similarly in the so-called “manosphere.” The manosphere generally refers to a vast network of websites and blogs frequented by online misogynist groups, including men’s rights activists (MRAs), pick-up artists (PUAs), Men Going Their Own Way (MGTOW), and incels. Many of these groups consider taking the red pill as a key tenet of their journeys and a necessary jumping-off point for these various ideologies. In the manosphere, redpilling refers to embracing the idea that men’s unhappiness and lack of sexual success is the fault of women and feminists. Men who do not accept this reality are referred to as bluepilled.
Other colors of the pills have also emerged in the manosphere. The term black pill, first popularized in the 2010s on the incel blog Omega Virgin Revolt, refers to accepting the futility of fighting against a feminist system. Blackpilled incels are encouraged to either commit suicide or “go ER”/be a “hERo,” referencing Elliot Rodger’s 2014 Isla Vista murder spree that has been called an act of misogynistic terrorism.
Anarchist podcaster and writer Michael Malice has promoted the idea of the white pill, which expresses hope for a better political future. Less common references include the pink pill, purple pill, and green pill. In recent years the idea of “-pilling” has become a more mainstream online joke and a self-deprecating, ironic way to describe becoming interested in or influenced by something.