“You take the red pill... you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.” — Morpheus, The Matrix (1999)
I lingered on the keyboard before clicking the hyperlink—r/TheRedPill. The column on the right side of the screen described the online community as discussing “sexual strategy in a culture increasingly lacking a positive identity for men.”
As you scroll down, you arrive at the “RULES”: “No requests for financial help”, “Follow our guidelines” and—“Do not announce that you are a woman”. Just to confirm my presence was not welcomed in the community, I clicked on the final rule, and it read: “Having a vagina does not afford your words special weight or wisdom, or give you any inside understanding of how men should deal with women.”
The rabbit hole led me to the ‘manosphere’—in a corner of Reddit, a forum-based social media platform, where men gathered not to heal, but to plot. Where heartbreak turned into strategy, and self-improvement was rebranded as domination.
As a Gen-Z woman, I’ve noticed more and more of us choosing celibacy, opting to stay single and focus inward rather than outward. It feels like the war of the sexes is back—only this time, today라이브 바카라 men are actively undoing years of feminist progress. Women and other genders are once again being treated as second-class citizens—whether it라이브 바카라 in the political realm, where presidents are rolling back gender and abortion rights, or in culture, where body positivity is out the window and ‘heroin chic’ is back in fashion.
None of this feels like a coincidence. It라이브 바카라 systemic, it라이브 바카라 deliberate—and r/TheRedPill is one of the central hubs for the promotion of traditional gender roles because some men fear they will lose their standing in a world they cannot dominate. I wanted to dive into what teenage boys like Jamie Miller (Owen Cooper) from Adolescence (2025) read that led them to commit crimes against women.
“Lost a girl at a beach party to another girl”, read the first post. The title made me empathise because rejection is not a good feeling. Women have girlfriends to fall back on who comfort them but I was never sure if men shared that kind of emotional space to have heart-to-heart conversations so maybe this was some kind of an outlet for them.
However, the post was tagged as “Field Report” and throughout it, the young man was debating if he should have been more aggressive instead of being a nice guy by taking it slow. In the comments section, the community members had assembled like a panchayat, dispensing verdicts: “You hesitate you masturbate”, and “When in doubt, always assume attraction.” The one-liners got traction but don’t think they provided the kind of emotional support our man needed—instead, they picked at the wound until it hurt more.
One post titled “Buy A High-End Clone Stainless Steel Rolex”, offered an explainer on hacking women into liking them because the second sex, according to the manosphere, is with men only for their wealth and social status. Another post, offering tips for flirting, asked men to see themselves as a wolf by greeting women with “Well, hello there, Little Red Riding Hood.” These kinds of posts had spectators thanking the author for boosting their ‘SMV’ or ‘RMV’—sexual market value or relationship market value, depending on what they were chasing.
At first glance, it resembled self-help content, until the scroll led to the other end of the spectrum—(conspiracy) theory reading. I imagined myself standing up against a wall that boldly declared “Women라이브 바카라 Self Healing Is A Myth”. The author explained how when men take a break from dating, they focus on tangible measures of self-growth such as physical fitness and climbing their career ladder. But women, he argued, throw themselves in the arms of three men named ‘Kevin’ or they are constantly travelling to ‘exotic’ destinations like Peru and Tanzania. Women라이브 바카라 methods, according to him, amount to nothing because they carry the weight of their previous relationships even as they enter a new one, trusting men less than they did before. His solution for those of us in need of healing? Stay celibate for one or two years and avoid attention from men at all costs. For a moment I was convinced—maybe I am not able to decentre myself from male validation, hence my inner turmoil. That was until I saw a user라이브 바카라 comment, which dissected the post라이브 바카라 intelligently worded idiocy: “She is like a child; very little ability to grind or self-improve.”
You want to be free and feel like Me?
A God? Unstoppable in a fair confidence that bends to virtually nothing.
You can do it.
And what less could I want than a transformation from the worst possible state to the best expressible version of ourselves?
That라이브 바카라 all I want for Me and for all of You.
And for her?
She will worship you for all your divine protection while you both thrive in near-perfection.
The above are verses from what I gathered to be a poem titled Admitting You Could Have Been An Incel Is The Best Way To Not Stay One. Incel, short for involuntarily celibate, refers to men who are unable to make physical and romantic connections despite desiring it. Miller was bullied by Katie (Emilia Holliday), his classmate, because of it. The poem sings a call to action for incels to take the red pill—work on themselves, understand that “eighty per cent of women are attracted to twenty per cent of men” and how to become ‘alphas’ (dominant, rugged, aggressive) who are in charge of their interactions with women.
Further down, the posts grew darker—“The Mistake Of Needing Permission To Approach”, which argued it is a good thing if the woman you like is not comfortable around you, and you scare them; “Womens' Resistance To Emotional Connections”, claimed that women deep down know they act “crazy” when they are in love, so they don’t like real intimacy. I put the brakes on “If She Is Taking Birth Control When You Meet Her, You May Need To Change Your Strategy”. The author claimed that when women are on birth control they are attracted to “softer, more stable traits” in men, and when they are off it they are drawn to more “traditionally masculine men”. He then supports his argument by alluding to women who divorced their husbands because they stopped feeling attracted to them after going off birth control—whatever the reason might be—before ranting about pharmaceutical companies profiting from it. After all that, he comes back to say that if divorced men are re-entering the dating pool, women may not be attracted to them because single women might be off birth control, finally asking if this knowledge will alter the ways men will view dating in the future.
This newfound knowledge of archaic gender roles transported me back to the questioning room of the youth detention facility, where the forensic psychologist, Briony Ariston (Erin Doherty), spoke to Miller. He lost his cool after Ariston informed him that she spoke to his dad and she couldn’t disclose much, but that he was sad that Jamie was there. This led to an outburst from Miller. As he loses his temper, she asks him to sit. Instead, he becomes more agitated, screaming, “You do not control what I do in my life! Get that in that fucking little head of yours!” It라이브 바카라 his voice that echoed through most of the Reddit posts. If, for a second, someone—with a fully formed brain—could be convinced that this was self-help or somehow logical, then what are impressionable young minds absorbing?
