A mother has revealed to TikTok how she got through to her son who had fallen down the 'red pill' rabbit hole on the internet.
Do you ever feel like you're in The Matrix? While we're not quite being hunted by sunglass-wearing versions of Hugo Weaving, the rate that technology is moving at has us sometimes fearing we could be trapped in a technological nightmare similar to Neo.
The Wachowskis' four-movie saga popularized the whole red pill, blue pill analogy, with one woman going viral on TikTok after claiming she managed to 'de-pill' her 'red-pilled' son. The Matrix introduced the idea of living in happy ignorance under the influence of the blue pill or learning an uncomfortable truth by taking the red pill. Netflix recently explored the 'red pill community' in the bombshell series Adolescence in which a teenage boy is arrested after committing a crime seemingly motivated by 'red pill' communities.
Although the idea of the red pill was actually introduced in 1990's Total Recall, it was The Matrix that made it famous.
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In today's context, the idea that a man has been red-pilled suggests that he has a hatred for women. Some men will vent on Reddit communities like The Red Pill, often displaying misogyny or general for the female sex.
Men's Rights Activists might claim that men get all the hard jobs, women are only after them for their money, and even that they're being 'tricked' into fatherhood.
Posting on TikTok, rchlprkr explained how she first spotted that her son was 'red-pilled'. According to her, it all started with a conversation where her son apparently said, "Well women are golddiggers anyway."
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When grilled on 'which women', he couldn't name any specific examples but said it applied to women in general.
She told him, "The only people who begrudge women who want to have money spent on them is men who don't have money but still want that woman. They want her to drop their standards for him, even though he can't provide the lifestyle she wants and expects.
"He gets mad at her for expecting money, but it's just a lifestyle choice at the end of the day."
She said that she reminded her son that he knows women aren't doing this on mass.
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Responding to her video, many were shocked at how commonplace this appears to be coming.
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One concerned person wrote: "It’s actually diabolical how the red pill mentality is so easily slipped into media targeting young boys & men."
Another added: "Nice, calling out false bias and invented scenarios is a great message. Hope your young fella has found some positive role models."
A third concluded: "I saw the very initial signs with my youngest (14) when he started referring to women as 'females'."
The OP responded to this and said that it's a term that's often used in these red pill videos.
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While we (hopefully) don't live in a computer simulation like the Matrix, it seems the sci-fi epic is only becoming more realistic by the day.