On Sunday afternoon, just days after the birth of his seventh child, the billionaire technology entrepreneur Elon Musk tweeted to his audience of 34 million followers: “Take the red pill.” The term is popular in internet communities such as the alt-right and the manosphere, and refers to the scene in the film The Matrix in which the protagonist, Neo, is offered the choice between a blue pill that will allow him to remain safely deluded, or a red pill, which will allow him to discover the underlying truth about reality. The phrase has come to mean rejecting widely accepted truths — particularly those that relate to equality between races, genders and social groups — and choosing an alternative narrative about society. Such narratives lean, in many cases, towards racism, misogyny and other highly controversial beliefs. While this is not true of every single person who would consider themselves “redpilled”, the members of pretty much every alt-right group you might have heard of – incels, neo-Nazis, eco-fascists – will often consider themselves to have awakened in this way to their fringe theories and socially unacceptable beliefs.
For Musk’s followers, or indeed anyone aware of him, this tweet would have been little more than regular programming from an eccentric billionaire for whom unpredictability is an inextricable part of a valuable personal brand. Musk often tweets memes to garner a reaction online, although whether he does so ironically is not clear.
Content from our partners
