Talk:red pill

RFV discussion: April 2016
Definition:
 * 1) A man who has woken up to the disadvantages of traditional marriage and wage slavery and as a result has chosen to adopt a more independent lifestyle free of obligations imposed by society.

There seems to be potential for a sense having to do with a metaphorical means of dispelling an all-pervasive illusory reality, though almost (but not quite) all of the cites for that in Google books mention the Red pill and blue pill scene from The Matrix. Then there's a cyber-security sense referring to countermeasures to malware that creates a virtual machine for the normal processes to run in. There are also lots of hits referring to literal red pills and red pill-boxes. What I haven't been able to find is any use that refers to the person losing the illusions as a red pill.

Aside from attestation, the whole entry is wordy and massively POV. Chuck Entz (talk), 02:53, 16 April 2016 (UTC)
 * I think there are enough uses on UseNet of red pill, lowercase, no quotes, no italics, no explicit reference to the Matrix or its characters to constitute valid attestation. The definition would be along Chuck's line: something like "Something that enables or compels a person to overcome illusion and perceive reality". DCDuring TALK 11:28, 16 April 2016 (UTC)


 * Definitely used on the Internet in this "person" sense (also redpill) but might not meet CFI. Equinox ◑ 12:21, 16 April 2016 (UTC)


 * This has been detagged, is it a bit early for that? Renard Migrant (talk) 15:38, 16 April 2016 (UTC)
 * The tagged sense has been deleted, and the new sense just added is cited. That resolves it as far as I'm concerned. If someone wants to add back the original sense (preferably without the POV wording) and continue as an rfv-sense, that's okay, too. Chuck Entz (talk) 15:51, 16 April 2016 (UTC)

RFV discussion: August–December 2020
Rfv-sense "to take the red pill" (i.e. an intransitive use). I don't remember ever seeing this used without a direct object (sense 2, transitive, "to feed someone the red pill").

IMO, gerund uses don't count; "All this brainful red-pilling" could and should be interpreted as an occurrence of the second sense. PUC – 12:54, 15 August 2020 (UTC)
 * My vague hunch would be that this was supposed to cover use such as to get red-pilled, where there is no clear agent, e.g. He saw a clown, a goat, a cat and a spider gang up on a poor adventurer and in that moment he got red-pilled about their machinations for world domination. I'd say this is ingressive rather than passive. In any event I don't this use together with get, which is fairly productive for get and somewhat similar to a light verb, should be covered in the main space unless it is more idiomatic. ←₰-→ Lingo Bingo Dingo (talk)  13:03, 15 August 2020 (UTC)


 * I've seen this online, but it seems a lot less common that the other sense and I don't know if there are enough durable uses, nor what spelling might be most common (spaced, hyphenated or solid). Some examples from the non-durable web, showing typical constructions for this sense, though: "Kanye redpilled so hard Neo is still in the Matrix", "I would have redpilled so hard", "I'd have redpilled so quick". And one mentiony occurrence in a book:


 * 2018, Jonathan Weisman, (((Semitism))): Being Jewish in America in the Age of Trump, St. Martin's Press (ISBN 9781250169945), page 114:
 * Followers of the movement like to say they “red-pilled,” a reference to the über-hipster action flick The Matrix, which featured Keanu Reeves being offered two pills:
 * BTW, I can also find "redpilled" used in a way grammatically comparable to "based", which I expect is just the participle of one or both verb senses. - -sche (discuss) 19:33, 15 August 2020 (UTC)

I almost always find it as sense two, although on [Quora] I did find "Of lesser importance is the issue of gender relations. Even before I red pilled I used to joke, most women want two men, one to show her a good time, and another to pay the bills.". It is not durably archived, as far as I know, but it is an example of sense 1. Kiwima (talk) 02:53, 18 August 2020 (UTC)


 * Basically, it's real but it's too rare (in durable media) to meet CFI right now. - -sche (discuss) 01:09, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

RFV-failed, although, as points out, it seems to be real, just too rare. Kiwima (talk) 01:23, 5 December 2020 (UTC)

RFV discussion: December 2021–January 2022
"By extension, the harsher reality itself." So, like, "his eyes opened, he finally perceived the red pill"? Or, I guess, "he finally perceived the red pill that Foobarian society really favoured the Bazzes over the Foobs"? Not a use I'm aware of, but plausible, I suppose. Added in diff. - -sche (discuss) 10:42, 7 December 2021 (UTC)


 * I couldn't really find this exactly, but I did find something somewhat similar. There is a subgroup of men with a belief in gynocentrism that has adopted this term, as a specific case of the original sense (something that awakens them to their belief). However, the term is now used more broadly to refer to this subculture. Kiwima (talk) 22:34, 27 December 2021 (UTC)

RFV-failed Kiwima (talk) 21:59, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

It has been pointed out that there was a red colored pill in Total Recall with a similar function to that we see in the Matrix; if there were an intentional allusion by the creators of the Matrix to that scene, it might be warranted to include that information both here and on Wikipedia. Then again, this may be a case similar to hobbit and the pre-existing hobbit mention. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 20:15, 17 May 2022 (UTC)