Pilled

In the 1999 film The Matrix protagonist is offered a choice: “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”.

The varieties of online “pills” have boomed in 11 years, far more than what are listed below, but describing someone as “pilled” online usually indicates thorough indoctrination to a prescribed ideology. For example, you might describe a Q Anon follower as having been “Q pilled”.

Beliefs associated with the blue pill are that patriarchy dominates Western culture and that women, queer people, and BIPOC are oppressed as a result.

The blue pill is also often associated with normies, “mainstream” people who assimilate into society and are generally offline, or SJW snowflakes. Normies and blue pilled folks are typically believed to be sheep, and unable to think for themselves.

The red pill was initially backlash against second wave feminism. Thinkers like Rollo Tomassi used evolutionary psychology and critiques of feminism to draw the following conclusions that created the spine of the men’s rights movement:

1. Feminism dominates Western culture (gynocentrism)
2. Men are oppressed as a result
3. Dating is a sexual marketplace
4. Women are naturally hypergamous

These are accepted assumptions among most “red pilled” communities, though organizing principles of the red pill in the last decade have grown to include things like traditional conservative values, white supremacy, gun rights and mistrust in mainstream media.

The "black pill" generally refers to a set of commonly-held beliefs in incel communities, which include biological determinism, fatalism, and defeatism.

An incel who has "taken the black pill" has adopted the belief that their sexual market value is genetically fixed. As a result their lack of success romantically and sexually is permanent regardless of any changes they might try to make to their physical appearance, personality, or social status. The only thing one can do after taking the blackpill is cope (by trolling or attempting to ascend) or rope (commit suicide).

The word incel is short for involuntary celibates, and it was coined by a queer woman in the 90s. Since then, the word has been co-opted by an online subculture whose members define themselves by their inability to attract romantic or sexual partners. Incels who devote lots of time to online incel spaces are often blackpilled and hopeless. This, paired with misogyny, self-pity and entitlement has produced several mass murderers from the incel community, which is why they are so often reviled. Still, there are incels who genuinely don’t know where else to go to share experiences around male loneliness or insecurity. These non-violent incels feel even more alienated from society because of their community's bad reputation.

MGTOW, Men Go Their Own Way, is a community of men organized around freeing themselves from women all together and instead focused on creating their own masculine identities through self-improvement. Many MGTOW men are ex-simps or ex-husbands, having elevated women on the pussy pedestal for a portion of their lives. After negative experiences with dating, betrayal, financial extortion or anything that could build resentment, the MGTOW decide that women are an unnecessary distraction and financial drain, so they find other pursuits. While some of them might engage in meaningless sex with women they generally advise against it.

In 2017, someone known as “Q” posted on 4chan claiming to be a government official with a Q-level clearance. They claimed to be privy to classified documents within the Trump administration, and a community was built around deciphering Q’s posts in real time.

Like all of these communities, the Q-pilled are not monolithic. QAnon has a uniquely varied membership ranging from the tea party boomers, millennial moms, ex-Bernie Bros, to new age crystal healers. QAnon has moved outside the realm of posts and now many members are currently occupying government positions at state and federal levels.

SJWs, social justice warriors, are individuals who promote socially progressive or libral views with a caricatured frenzy. The term reached its peak usage around 2016, but often college snowflakes, BLM protesters, trans activists, and feminist gamers are all considered to be SJWs. They are considered by outsiders to be obsessed with personal identity, victimhood, political correctness, and they are man-hating regardless of gender, and intolerant of alternative beliefs by default. They are often accused of virtue signaling and enacting mob justice through cancel culture.

Anons are anonymous internet posters. Unlike many virtue signaling libs who post on twitter with their real name attached, most incels, MGTOWs, and imageboard posters decide to go anonymous. Anons generally have a culture of shitposting, trolling, and doxxing. Anons on imageboards have a history of claiming to be in high ranking government positions who will claim to have access to private information. “CIAAnon” and “FBIAnon” posters were active in the years before QAnon, but they were largely considered to be LARPers.

Popularized by the Japanese site 2chan, 4chan, 8chan, and 8kun are all variations of imageboards. These boards hosted conversation on a wide variety of topics from anime, politics, video games, porn, and all posting was done anonymously. 4chan, the first English imageboard to gain popularity, has a huge influence on the internet culture—Rickrolling, lolcats, and hacker collective Anonymous all originated from the imageboard. 8chan was an organizing hub for abusers during Gamergate after 4chan banned the topic, and ground zero for QAnon.

To borrow from incels.wiki, “Femoid or foid (short for female humanoid) refers to sneaky herd animals who have either bullied or ignored you your entire life. That is unless they were somehow making money off you as a teacher or counselor or hairdresser or wife. Popular femoid hobbies include twerking, fakeup as well as feminism, the process by which women seize the means of reproduction to liberate themselves from ugly beta providers. Another popular femoid hobby is encouraging vicious male competition and toxic masculinity through their mere sexual desires."

Like many things in these communities, this definition is half shitpost for the onlookers and half genuine. There are many ways in which red pilled folks refer to women, but this is one example of the type of dehumanization encoded in the insular language.

LARPing is short for "Live Action Role Playing". Traditionally, a LARP is a role playing game like Dungeons & Dragons that is played physically in space where players act out their character's actions and fight with props. Online the word can be used figuratively or derogatorily to suggest someone who is merely pretending or lying about their own experience. Cynically virtue signaling on Twitter could be considered a type of LARPing.