Mindset · Open Post

The Black Pill is the Original Red Pill

The original metaphor of the red and blue pill is inspired by the movie The Matrix. Neo, the protagonist, has the choice between taking the blue pill, which brings him back to a fake (but very pleasant) reality; in contrast, taking the red pill would mean that he has to continue viewing reality as it is, with all its negative aspects. As you can see from this description, the use of the blue pill metaphor alone has morphed quite a bit. Today, we use to to mock people who do not want to wake up. Blue-pilled cucks are losers who do not get anything good in return for their efforts. They allow women to take advantage of them and they believe the lies of their political leaders. In contrast, the blue pill in The Matrix would mean you could eat juicy steaks and fuck porn-star caliber women in red dresses who don’t have tattoos.

In a recent comment, Pickernanny made a reference to the black pill, in its current interpretation. He rightly points out that it is seen to express hopelessness. Here is his comment:

If you are taking the red pill right now then you believe that there is still something that can be done. It’s kind of like telling a really short and ugly dude to ‘Just lift, bro. Take a shower, bro. Get a haircut, bro.’ When in reality, the guy in this example should just make some extra disposable cash and spend it on hookers — which there should be plenty of in the future should we experience a collapse lol. 

The black pill in the political sense is used to express a sort of hopelessness to the current situation. The time for speaking up is over, and the time for hunkering down and braving the storm is beginning. It’s the realization that there is no political solution and that the only fix is going to come in the form of societal collapse and violence.  That’s just my interpretation of it. And who really knows, maybe this is just a really awkward phase and everything works out okay.

I don’t disagree with anything in this comment. However, I want to point out a few subtle nuances that arguably don’t get the attention they deserve. First, as I pointed out above, the interpretation of the blue pill has completely deviated from its original meaning. There is no general disagreement about its interpretation. If you are a blue-pilled cuck you live in some kind of make-believe world that is completely inconsistent, yet it is what you are comfortable with, so you don’t question your premises. The common theme of the blue pill in The Matrix as well as in contemporary parlance is that you live in a fake reality, yet in the movie, it’s a fantastic fake reality while in the real reality, people are unhappy because all their actions, such as being “nice” to women, do not ever lead to anything positive for them. (Article continues below.)


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The red pill, in contrast, is now interpreted in a way that is even more absurd than the strange perception of the blue pill. Instead of seeing reality for what it is, a red-piller thinks that he only needs to lift and shower, get a haircut and a new wardrobe, and bitches will beat a path to his door. Red-pill rage is the realization that the world has lied to you. Guys in this state are commonly advised to funnel their red-pill rage into crushing it at the gym. Yet, the red-pill community neglects the role of genetics. They also often refuse to acknowledge the realities of location, race, money, and many other parameters for success in life as well as success with women.

People who drop out of the red-pill community but still want to be part of an online group that obsesses about women take a different pill, the black pill. The tone in the black-pill community is often one of extreme negativity and hopelessness. This is captured in the catchy phrase, “It’s over!”. People also tell each other that it is time to “rope”, i.e. hang themselves, or to “LDAR”, i.e. “lie down and rot”. Yet, the outside observer can easily miss that the problem here is that the people unironically speaking like that may indeed have very poor genes. Nothing they can do would fix that they are 5’2″, albeit there are some “looks-maxxers” in this community who managed to improve their level of success with women after cosmetic surgery. Of course, they were in a better position and maybe only needed to get a few things fixed, similar to how some women go from being an 8 to a 9 after a nose job and some dental work.

Yet, the hopelessness is not inherent in the black pill. In my view, the black pill is the original red pill, i.e. it means that you perceive the world as it is. This can entail the realization that because you are 5’2″ you’ll likely not end up bedding supermodels. However, taking the black pill means that you only perceive a hopeless situation as hopeless. It does not mean that your disposition is generally one of hopelessness and defeatism. A good-looking guy with an impressive lay count can take the black pill and realize that he’s getting laid because he’s 6’2″ and has a great jawline. This does not mean that he thinks he needs to “rope.” Likewise, if you take the political black pill, you realize in what a shockingly bad situation the West is and that you are governed by a hostile elite. It does not mean that you would still think that the West is dying if we had better leaders and countries that were in better shape. However, without the (political) black pill you would not be able to admit to yourself how bad the current situation really is.


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12 thoughts on “The Black Pill is the Original Red Pill

  1. Now wait.
    What’s up with the hate and mockery with words like “looks-maxxing”/”gym-maxxing” thing?
    Doesn’t the regular Chad/Tyrone already go to the gym to carve his physique,improves his looks(or was he born with that genetic lottery?).
    And was born and brought up into wealth!?
    There are 20% of men banging the majority of women( the 80%) so who are they?

  2. For some reason this quote from As Good As It Gets has been in my mind lately, and something about this piece brought it to mind yet again:

    “Some of us have great stories, pretty stories that take place at lakes, with boats, and friends, and noodle salad. Just no one in this car. But, a lot of people, that’s their story; good times, noodle salad. What makes it so hard is not that you had it bad, but that you’re that pissed that so many others had it good.”

  3. Thanks for following up on my comment and adding to the discussion. I think the black pill is why boomers love Qanon so much — it’s a blue pill that gives them something to place hope in. The boomers in the U.S. never really had to stare at the consequences of their actions up until recently, and were actually convinced that they were the generation that was leading the way to true progress the likes of which the world had never witnessed before. Turns out it was just same old decadence repeating itself all over again. It’s much more likely that you have millennials and zoomers labeled as doomers, it’s as if they aren’t exactly intellectually black pilled, but their senses are telling them that something isn’t quite right.

    1. Referring to millennials and zoomers as “doomers” is gaslighting, in my opinion. They are genuinely facing dismal prospects on all fronts: work, home ownership, marriage, public safety. You have those aloof boomer commentators making fun of those people for suffering the consequences of their parents generation. It’s pure evil, in my opinion.

  4. I agree the black pill is just unbiased reality, but the naming is bad.

    Normally we associate black with bad (if you are some BLM idiot reading this: no, this is not because of black people, but because we don’t see at night, because it is dark, and darkness = blackness, so that’s why humans associate black with danger/bad), and white with good.

    For example I myself would say I’m a blackpilled genetic determist nihilistic 😉
    something like that.

    So sometimes this is actually depressing, life is meaningless, we are all going to die… you know the typical nihilistic worldview.

    But it can also be quite calming in some ways and remove a lot of pressure. A lot of normal people see life kind of like a race, in which you have to reach certain milestones.
    For me I just laugh at those people. They are trapped in the hamster wheel without even realizing it.

    And Aarons is completely correct, in the original Matrix movie, the red pill was actually the black pill.

    I think a better term is to just call yourself a rationalist. Because being rational means exactly to have an unbiased (as possible) view of reality and use the models which best explain & predict stuff.

    1. want to chime in, I think people misuse the term “rational”. Rational was supposed to originally mean someone who uses his mind to deduct how the world works. As opposed to empiricist, who puts less focus on general ideas and just observes. 100% rational male (pun not intended) will for example create an electric circuit, notice it doesn’t work how he planned it to, and will just freeze with “this is impossible!”. In the same fashion you can say communists are rational – “but the book said it should work!”.

      So yeah today we have 2 meanings of rational, one is what I described and another one is “reasonable person”

    2. Why would the rational person in this example build something instead of just deducing how it might work? Also, the correct conclusion, after building a prototype that does not work, would be that this particular prototype does not work and thus all prototypes that were built with the same theoretical considerations in mind.

    3. There are 2 kinds of rationality:

      Epistemic rationality: This is concerned with building a correct model of reality. Science basically. And of course, this depends on empiric data, and inductive/deductive reasoning.

      Instrumental rationality: This is concerned with goals. What is the best strategy to achieve a given goal (the goal is basically an input parameter to the method). Of course this depends on epistemic rationality, as a good strategy generally requires to have an accurate understanding of reality.

      So someone who ignores empiric evidence, is not rational, but an idiot.

    4. It is also important to point out, that rationality is orthogonal to ethics, it is value neutral.

      Instrumental rationality is not concerned with the content of the goal, only how to achieve it, once it was defined.

      The question “what should our goals be, given the state of the world” is the concern of ethics.

      People often use the word “irrational” for someone who is according to them, behaving in a way which they don’t like.

      So you can be a rational/irrational mass murderer, and you can be a rational/irrational philanthropist.

  5. The problem with the red pill is that it’s dominated by “coaches” that want to sell you something. If you look at all the major channels, they always want to sell you something. Blackpill channels, on the other hand, don’t sell anything but ironically some of those guys get a lot of donations (FaceandLMS bought a new pc with donations for example).

    Of course, red pill coaches don’t like the black pill, because there is nothing to sell and most of their viewers NEED to swallow the black pill.

    I personally got a minor nose job (partly for health reasons), because of FaceandLMS’ videos. I had a bigger, slightly crooked nose, now it’s smaller and fits my face better. I even got complimented on it by women already. Even my chad brother, who mocked me for my nose, wants a nose job now, too haha.

    But think about that: that’s 1500€ (normally 3000-5000€, health insurance paid half of it) gone to my ENT doctor and not in the pocket of some red pill coach dude, who would tell me to “just lift bro” and “hold the frame bro”. Sad that those guys f*cked up their lives just to make some bucks in a dying industry. They panic because those useless idiots can only talk bullshit for a living, and have no tangible skills.

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