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The “Red Pill,” a term that comes from the 1999 film The Matrix, has become a framework for individuals to describe their awakening to some previously hidden supposed reality. The major contemporary secular male supremacist movements—PUAs, men’s rights activists, The Red Pill, and Men Going Their Own Way (MGTOW)—all use this terminology to describe their “realization” that men do not hold systemic power or privilege. Instead, they awaken to the “truth” that socially, economically, and sexually men are at the whims of women’s (and feminists’) power and desires. As in the film, to be blue-pilled is to accept the mainstream narrative and choose to live in ignorance of the truths of the world. Red Pillers see themselves as intellectually superior to “blue-pilled normies.” The Red Pill terminology grew in male supremacist forums and was adopted more broadly by far-right and white supremacist groups to describe their own versions of awakenings, conspiracist worldviews that often overlaps with male supremacist positions, such as antifeminism.¹

Beginning around 2016, misogynist incel forums began to shift from a Red Pill to an increasing “Black Pill” mentality. This belief system accepts the Red Pill view of society dominated by women but rejects individual-level attempts such as learning game to achieve a sexual relationship with women as misguided, asserting that only change at a societal level has the possibility to be effective. Black Pill adherents believe that looks are genetically determined, and that women choose sexual partners based solely on physical features (“lookism”), so whether or not a person will be an incel is predetermined.² Misogynist incels attempt to prove the truth of the Black Pill through misreadings of scientific studies, online dating datasets, and their own “experiments” to prove that women only care about a man’s physical looks. Although some incels still seek out plastic surgery, work out (“gym maxxing”), or try to otherwise improve their physical features, many believe such strategies are pointless as inceldom is a problem with society, not the individual. Blackpilled incels are aware of appearance and sociability/game strategies and reject them as solutions.

The Black Pill philosophy typically offers only two options for what to do with their new accepted reality: accept their fate as an incel or try to change society to their benefit—usually advocated as potentially achievable by means of mass violence and terror, not politics or other methods of change. “Copes” are looked down on as methods of coping with without changing the unjust system, including denying the reality of the Black Pill.

For those who choose to accept their blackpilled fate, suicide is often presented as the most inevitable solution; it is also encouraged in misogynist incel communities, as a form of sacrificial violence and/or martyrdom. Incels talk about potential self-harm, giving up hope, or suicide by using phrases such as “rope” (committing suicide by hanging oneself), “LDAR” (lay down and rot), or “suifuel” (suicide fuel). “Suifuel,” “it’s over,” “brutal,” and “it never began,” are popular responses to and tags for posts that members feel exemplify the truth of the Black Pill. Internal polls shared on incels.co have asked members when they think they will “rope.” In some cases, users explicitly state, “I have to kill myself,” or say that they will commit suicide by the time they are a certain age if they are still an incel.³ While some fellow members respond to suicidal comments with sympathy, others urge posters on with harmful comments, asking those who have expressed suicidal ideation why they are still posting and have not yet attempted suicide. When active members stop posting for an extended period of time, this frequently leads to forum speculation that they have completed suicide; however, that absence could instead represent men withdrawing the online community, and data is not currently available to ascertain what is occurring.

Regardless, there is a substantial difference between a community being vulnerable to self-harm and promoting and threatening violence against others. Members expressing suicidal ideation on misogynist incel forums are also encouraged to “go ER” or “be a hERo,” meaning to commit mass murder before committing suicide. Many misogynist incels don’t just advocate for suicide as a solution to inceldom, but also to create structural change through first committing mass violence. As with the Santa Barabara perpetrator, martyrdom is revered; the Toronto van attacker told police he had hoped to commit “suicide by cop,” a common plan for perpetrators of mass violence.⁴ For Black Pill adherents seeking to change society rather than simply accept their fate, the use of mass violence to forcibly overthrow the system and force normies to take notice is positioned as a key pathway to structural change.

There is a substantial difference between a community being vulnerable to self-harm and promoting and threatening violence against others.

A November 2014 Sluthate.com thread on “incel shooting sprees” demonstrates the roots of this thinking, arguing that such mass bloodshed is “the only way that sluts and alphas will realize and accept that there are serious consequences for allowing so many males to live their lives in misery.”⁵ This use of mass violence to create social change in favor of incels’ worldview has been referred to as the “Incel Rebellion” or “Beta Uprising.” The 2018 Toronto van attack perpetrator stated that the “Incel Rebellion has already begun” in a Facebook post just prior to his attack, and two days before he had posted on 4chan that “there would be another beta uprising.” Misogynist incels that glorify violence posit that by eliminating women and Chads they are working to “purify” society and to frighten those who have not taken the Red Pill or the Black Pill.⁶