Math is hard for at least three liberals

[_Res Ipsa]

RI - What do you think Musk meant with the immediate follow up joke of taking Dayquil and Nyquil at the same time as taking "both" pills at the same time if not a juxtaposition between red rose Twitter and red pilling? In what other interpretation are those opposites?

Unlike you, EA, I was not born with the gift of mind reading. Based on my prior knowledge about Musk, including his looney tunes statements about COVID, I would read the first as telling the left to wake up and see the truth about COVID. I would read the second as saying you can’t both see the truth about COVID and believe what the government is telling you (at least the California government). But I would not jump to the conclusion that he’s gone full-on neo-Nazi. But the problem is it’s like demanding that I make rational sense out of Trump’s Twitter spewing. There’s not enough there there for me to say with any level of confidence what the man was tweeting when he hit the post button. Or if he was actually thinking.

[_Doctor CamNC4Me]

Here’s some math for Dick Born:

https://ibb.co/YDt2tvC

- Doc

[_EAllusion]

[quote=EAllusion post_id=1224941 time=1589902012 user_id=1078]

Unlike you, EA, I was not born with the gift of mind reading. Based on my prior knowledge about Musk, including his looney tunes statements about COVID, I would read the first as telling the left to wake up and see the truth about COVID. I would read the second as saying you can’t both see the truth about COVID and believe what the government is telling you (at least the California government). But I would not jump to the conclusion that he’s gone full-on neo-Nazi. But the problem is it’s like demanding that I make rational sense out of Trump’s Twitter spewing. There’s not enough there there for me to say with any level of confidence what the man was tweeting when he hit the post button. Or if he was actually thinking.[/quote]

I don't think it's "mind-reading" to think that Musk thinks he was writing a tweet that involved a juxtaposition between opposites given that he immediately followed it up with a joke about doing seemingly contradictory things in the context of taking "both pills." I also don't think it is a stretch to think a guy who spends a fair amount of time posting online would know about popular online jargon or that he would be oblivious to hundreds of responses to him that interpret it that way. It is a stretch to think that saying "take the red pill / red rose emoji" then joking about taking both pills being like taking dayquil and nyquil isn't referring to the opposite political connotations of those things.

It's reasonable to think he's aware that red pilling involves alt-rightish conversion and red roses are the preferred symbol of Twitter socialists. Musk is also a guy who very much hangs out in circles that both are friendly to alt-rightists and Sandersistas, so he might be sincere. He's a repeat Joe Rogan guest, for goodness sake. Maybe he's trolling, maybe it's a dumb joke, maybe he thinks he's got a smart synthesis. Musk is kinda an idiot, which makes it harder to pick. My take is that this would be irresponsible even if he was just writing a bad joke.

That's not to say there's any ideological coherence to be found in any of this. I doubt there is. Even hardcore alt-right types aren't known for their ideological consistency as their moronic beliefs run them into corners. It's just that he knows what red pilling means enough to know what he's referring to when writing a tweet about it.

This doesn't mean he's gone "full on neo-Nazi" as red pilling is deliberately more vague than that. The whole idea behind red pill proselytizing is to get people into alt-rightish areas first before introducing the harder stuff. Not everyone goes from Jordan Peterson to Ajax in a day. That's why I talked about pointing in a general direction. I think he just means alt-rightish conservatism or, at the very least, is aware enough to know that's how it will be taken by his audience. And that's how it was generally taken.

[_EAllusion]

Musk also hangs out in the circles that takes techno-fascism seriously. If you squint hard enough or recently were hit in the head with a hammer, I can see how one might think that's a synthesis of alt-right and socialist ideas. But if you take that seriously, you're thinkin' already ain't so good, so that's on the table. Musk could be thinking something along those lines. Or, you know, making a stupid joke.

Having read Grimes comments on socialism, it recently occurred to me that Grimes' song "We appreciate power," which I had interpreted as silly piece about a future techno-authoritarian dystopia written by someone who thinks Roko's basilisk is deep, might be more earnest than I thought.

[_Analytics]

I think the last sentence of your penultimate paragraph describes her pretty well. When I first saw Musk's tweet, I read it as "Wake up sheeple -- the government's lying to you about COVID." I think I've seen it used with almost every fringe and contrarian group I've encountered. I include the manosphere and alt right groups, but I don't primarily associate it with those groups.

I don't buy this interpretation. First, because Musk is online-literate enough to know what online culture generally understands red-pilling (and the Twitter red rose for that matter) mean to know how people are going to take it. Two, because after he did it, he got a tsunami of alt-rightists celebrating him and a large people criticizing him on those terms and he didn't respond to that with, "No, no, what I mean is..." The best case scenario interpretation here is that he was playing with the term as a joke and not caring about how he should know people will take it. Musk has a history of coming off as a trollish idiot, so that's plausible. Or he just might mean it.

According to Wikipedia, "The red pill and blue pill is a meme representing a choice between taking either a "red pill" that reveals an unpleasant truth, or taking a "blue pill" to remain in blissful ignorance." it goes on and on about this general unpleasant truth interpretation and the Matrix. At the bottom, it lists seven "other uses," the fifth of which is a two sentence description of how it is used in the men's rights movement.

If the alt right now has an effectual trademark on the metaphor, the wikipedia entry needs an overhaul.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_pill_and_blue_pill

[_EAllusion]

Yeah, the wiki entry needs an overhaul mostly to expand that section. The wiki disambiguation currently is doing that work so that when you search for "red pill" one option is just to send you directly to their man-o-sphere page.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_pill_(disambiguation)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manosphere

(The other option is "The Red Pill" which is a movie about the MRA's)

You just picked the wrong article.

That said, while you emphasize that it's the 5th use down, it's the only one even ballpark relates to what Musk could be saying while the others refer to some obscure things. It seems like you want to emphasize its place in the list even though that's by far the most common use on the list, but why? Do you think Musk was referring to easter eggs in Mameo?

If you google taking the red pill, almost all of the hits are either 1) recent news articles explaining alt-right red pilling based on the recent Musk story or 2) a bottomless sea of references to alt-right red pilling.

Sucks if you are an ex-Mormon who wants the term, I guess, but they co-opted it to the point that that's the common parlance.

[_Doctor CamNC4Me]

Plenty of ex-Mormons still use it as an apt metaphor for unplugging our skulls from those black cable thingies.

- Doc

[_EAllusion]

[quote]Plenty of ex-Mormons still use it as an apt metaphor for unplugging our skulls from those black cable thingies.

- Doc[/quote]
I know. That's just a niche use. I wouldn't recommend any former Mormon to go onto the webz and claim they're all for shootin out them red pills, 'cause it's gonna get taken the wrong way. It's got to be put into context.

There still is niche use of the idea in all sorts of ways. It's just that the evolution of the man-o-sphere use into a general alt-right term has become dominant. The co-creator of the Matrix didn't tell Musk and Trump to go “F” themselves in ignorance of how the term has evolved.

[_Doctor CamNC4Me]

I'm a little confused about your point regarding Musk's use of the red pill and the manosphere and a socialist emoji. He's clearly not anti-woman because he keeps getting involved with them despite some pretty insane relationships and resultant settlements. He's clearly not a socialist because, well, there he is. What's he getting out of trolling Twitter with 'speaking' to the Alt-Right? How can one dovetail the government of California preventing him from opening up his factories and this tweet, is what I'm getting at. The NYT seems to be fumbling around with the whole thing, too:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/19/tech ... -pill.html

There's a paywall.

- Doc

[_Doctor CamNC4Me]

Oh. And one HAS to wonder if the CA Gov's decision to pretty much open it all up TODAY didn't have to do with some influential billionaires taking the red pill, too.

- Doc