Math is hard for at least three liberals

[_Doctor CamNC4Me]

Hrm. It looks like Musk, after a quick googlez, has claimed he’s a Moderate. But that was in 2018, and after it was claimed he was a Socialist by someone on his Twitter feed. He’s probably shifting to the right after bickering publicly with Californian Democrats with regard to this shut down. I dunno.

- Doc

[_EAllusion]

I'm not going to watch her video DT. If had a conversion to alt-right ideas, which is what red-pilling by definition is, and says she's taken the red pill, then yeah, she's alt-right. She is not a "far left feminist," then, because words have meaning. If, by "taking the red pill" she has some other equivocated meaning, then that should be addressed on its own terms and she should suck at words less. Words evolve - it seems like yesterday that "red pill" referred specifically to the man-o-sphere's fake sociology of gender relations, but "red pill" and "far left feminist" are polar opposites. I have no idea who this person is and don't care to find out at the moment, so I can't say what's going on. It just doesn't matter for what I was saying.

Musk, today, wrote "Take the red pill." If you're following the gossipy news story version of this, it's worth noting that Ivanka Trump enthusiastically supported it and Lilly Wachowski told them to both to go “F” themselves.

That's a straight-up endorsement of taking the red pill. To wit, he said "take the red pill." If he's being ironic, then there's still people who will take it seriously because of his stature. That would almost be even worse because alt-right culture is very much into trying to attract people with softer ideas before pushing towards into more taboo areas, and Musk just pushing people in that direction as a joke would be some real prick stuff. But since he's been on the COVID truther train as of late, which is adjacent to being into alt-right conspiracy mongering, he might just mean it literally.

[_Doctor CamNC4Me]

Huh. Girl Trump responded:

https://mobile.Twitter.com/lilly_wachow ... ce-1294934

Welp. There you go.

- Doc

[Guest]

.

[_DoubtingThomas]

"Getting red-pilled" means adopting alt-right beliefs. Could mean getting into white nationalism, or pseudo-scientific misogyny, or Q-anon conspiracy theories, or all of the above. That's the general direction it's pointing in.

Okay, I guess I have to do more research on that.

[_DoubtingThomas]

But Musk is clearly doing far more good than harm.

[_DoubtingThomas]

The world needs Elon Musk.

[_Res Ipsa]

Red pilling is based on The Matrix, where the protagonist learns that the world he’s been living in is an illusion. He is then given a choice between going back to the illusion by taking a blue pill or staying in the newly discovered real world. It’s used by all kinds of fringe groups, include many based on conspiracy theories. To wake up from being a sheeple, you take the red pill. I’ve heard it used quite often by former Mormons to describe waking up from their former beliefs. I’ve read or listened to Laci Green. I don’t recall anything alt-right about her.

[_EAllusion]

I don't know if you read my post upthread RI, but my first thought is that if she's an ex-Mormon, she might be referring to being "red-pilled" in the sense that the ex-Mormon community uses it. This is very much a niche use as "red pill" as common parlance has been taken over by alt-right usage. DT insisted that no, that's not what she's talking about. I didn't know who she was, so I had no idea.

DT also edited his post that changed the content of what I was responding to, but my comment was in response to material I wasn't going to spend my time on. Since has nothing to do with Musk's comment so I ignored it. Given your post, I went ahead and looked at what he linked before.

She very much is referring to "red pill" in the alt-right sense (the original, more narrow, puahate sense, really), but while she's doing this she attempts to reform the term into something like "seeing nuance" or being willing to "open up a dialogue" and works back to the generic Matrix reference. She's trying to co-opt the term back as push-back against people suggesting she's being red-pilled. The idea is in response to the question "Am I being red-pilled?" (in the man-o-sphere sense), she retorts with, sure, if by "red pill" you mean be an awesome, open-minded super-reasonable skeptic who isn't afraid of taboo topics.

She discusses hanging out with and talking with alt-right youtube personalities and finding they make some good, interesting points. She's not saying she agrees so much as she's saying those misogynists make some good points that we need to engage seriously to live the fullest intellectual life. But while that seems to be her argument, the primary example she uses of nuance is Rebecca Tuvel being the victim of a academic witchhunt. Dr. Tuvel has absolutely nothing to do with the alt-right community she is otherwise referring to, so it feels like a bait and switch. The background context seems to have been a lot of drama around the fact that she started dating a gamergater and started adopting their talking points around the time she took this defensive turn. Some follow up material I perused has her sounding more like Bari Weiss and breaths some context into the "is she being red-pilled?" chatter that forms the basis for what DT asked me to look at. DT might be invested in this drama, but I'm not as her minor celebrity didn't even enter the orbit of my awareness. Superficially, she sounds like tumblr feminist turned occasional anti-anti-feminist to me, but whatevs.

I have a little more sense sense of who she is based on this now, but I still fail to see why I should care. DT's "Well, is Laci Green alt-right?!" seems to miss the point to discuss something he wanted to discuss. It has nothing to do with whether Musk using his platform to encourage people to "take the red pill" was a bad thing or not.

[_Res Ipsa]

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.