What “Red Pill” Men Get Wrong About Alphas and Emotion

Confession time: I'm hooked on studies. Reading scientific research is one of my favorite things. Being a science dork, I'm always reading up on new findings, and I'm just as keen to keep learning about what's happening with people, mentally and emotionally. I even host a podcast on which I chat with study authors about what their findings say and why they matter.

Several months back, Dr. Ian Zapcic published a study titled “’An Alpha Wouldn’t Spare an Emotion on a Woman’: A Directed Qualitative Analysis of Dark Triad Outcomes in Women’s Relationships with Red Pill Men.”

Given how divided things are right now, I figured it deserved a closer look, to get a sense of what's happening with men who are dating. How do they deal with rejection? Which false beliefs have caught on? How on earth did we end up here? Let me walk you through it.

What Does Red Pill Mean?

Let's start by defining a few terms. In the 1999 film the term comes from, “The Matrix,” Morpheus offers Neo a choice early on.

“Take the blue pill, and you go back to sleep and believe whatever you want, or, take the red pill and see how deep the rabbit hole goes.”  — “The Matrix”

In short, swallowing the red pill means seeing the unvarnished truth about where you stand. Once Neo takes it, he wakes up in “the real world” and discovers that the life he'd known was only an illusion.

From the study: “The Red Pill (TRP) is a men’s seduction community organized primarily online, particularly via the message board platform Reddit.  TRP is considered to be part of the ‘manosphere,’ a nebulous confederation of websites, blogs, videos, and other online-mediated spaces devoted to men’s rights, promotion of male-centric issues, and opposing feminism.”

Single men go looking for advice in male-dominated spaces and end up finding a false story fueled by outrage.

In these warped corners, men refer to “taking the red pill” as a way to signal that they've been enlightened. They've woken up to reality. It's essentially wokeism in another color: red instead of blue.

The study goes on (the emphasis is mine): “In manosphere and TRP philosophy, the reality that must be unveiled and acknowledged is that, through feminism, women have attained social power and privilege, which allows them to control access to romantic or sexual relationships.”

TRP tactics are the pickup artist's next evolutionary stage (in the 2000s, they went by PUA). Pickup artists tried to turn romance into a game and relied on tricks to land women. Unlike Red Pill men, though, they weren't openly anti-feminist.

Once more, the study spells it out: “Foundational TRP documents describe feminism not as a fight for gender equality but as a ‘sexual strategy,’ which women use to gatekeep their own bodies as well as controlling which men have access to sex more broadly.”

“TRP, therefore, exists as an antithesis to feminism, which it views as an obstacle to be overcome in order to attain adherents’ sexual goals.”

A brief tangent: as hard as it is to believe, this isn't even the worst “pill” around. The Black Pill goes further still. Its followers think everything is predetermined and nothing can change it, so you might as well break things and behave badly. Some people who instigated mass casualty events, including the Toronto van killings, came out of the Black Pill community.

Defining the Dark Triad

The dark triad refers to three personality traits that, honestly, suck. Here they are:

• psychopathy
• narcissism
• Machiavellianism 

Red Pill circles typically encourage men to use these traits to “game the system” and win by whatever means it takes. That mindset is what drives negging, ghosting, and similar toxic trends.

Again, from the study: “Individuals high in these characteristics have been observed to engage in obtaining short-term wants over prioritizing long-term goals or connections. In high-DT individuals, these short-term wants are generally acquired through aversive or unsavory means, such as coercion or dishonesty.”

And it gets worse. According to the study, aggression, self-importance, and emotional coldness are common in this manosphere, and are even encouraged.

“Indeed, high-DT individuals tend to show a callous disregard of others in pursuit of their own. Collectively, these callous manipulation behaviors have been referred to as an adaptive ‘cheater strategy,’ which allows individuals to get what they want when they want it.”

Put simply, they believe the world has swindled them out of “resources” they “deserve,” so cheating to reclaim them is fair game. Inflicting hurt actually seems to be part of it, maybe as a way to “get back” at women who've wounded them through the years. Very not good.

Why It Matters & How We Can Help

Men are in crisis at the moment. For the first time in history, they're expected to fare worse than their fathers did. Jobs for men with only a high school education are disappearing, and women have zoomed past them academically.

In 2024, we watched young men make a GLARING swing to the alt-right politically, even as young women grow more liberal.

Source: American Survey Center.

Combine that with all the mixed messages men get from the media, and the average guy may find this a confusing, frustrating moment. Because men generally aren't great at opening up to other guys about their feelings, they go online in search of the “fix” for the situation.

That's when you stumble onto Jordan Peterson and Joe Rogan, who tell you things like “It’s not your fault,” and “We know the keys!” To a lost boy, that's a cure-all for a bruised ego.

Tackle Your Own Challenges

Hit the gym, dress sharper, build your confidence. Nearly everyone can support that message. Then it begins sliding into Andrew Tate's worldview, in which you “think the women belong to the men” and you “grab ‘em by the —” well, you know how it ends.

Research (Andrighetto ’19) has also found that men who face romantic rejection begin drifting to the right politically. Put all of this together, and men can be led astray.

Men who've done the inner work have a clear sense of who they are and what they want, and it isn't to dominate or control anyone. I'm not claiming therapy is for everyone, but it has helped me, and I'd like to see more dudes give it a shot.

Every one of us can work on becoming better. Maybe landing a date was easier 30 years ago, back when a big bank account meant a personality was optional. But times change, and you have to change along with them.

Take an interest in personal growth and tackle your challenges. There's a question I put to every client, man or woman: “If your Aphrodite or Apollo walked in right now, would you be able to earn them?” Each of us has something special about us, and we should work harder to draw those qualities out and let them shine.

There's a solution to every problem, and I never want a man to feel hopeless, because there's always hope. Surround yourself with people who cheer your successes, not something like the incel community, which booted its own leader for the crime of getting laid, of all things.

My Advice to Daters: Look at It From the Other Side

Step one, for all of us together: breathe. This isn't the end of the world, and all of it can be readjusted.

American society hasn't made it a priority to steer more resources toward young men, but maybe that's about to change. I hope so.

Women have made huge strides lately, which is wonderful and worth celebrating. Yet there's now an obvious trend (one that's nobody's fault): lots of men feel ignored or unimportant. When they sense that someone else “gained” something, they assume it came at the cost of something they “lost.” And they begin resenting the people making gains.

It comes down to not adapting and not seeing what you stand to gain from an equal partner, one whose emotional needs you meet while they meet yours. Don't get sucked into the blame game.