The Ask the Red Pill subreddit (r/AskTRP) is an odd little creature. While the main Red Pill subreddit is an arena filled to overflowing with comically swaggering self-proclaimed alpha dogs, all competing to out-alpha one another, AskTRP is an endless parade of insecurities.
Ostensibly a place where uncertain Red Pill newbies can turn for advice and worldly wisdom from experienced “alphas,” the subreddit is really an object lesson in the many ways “red pill” thinking can fuck up your life and your relationships. The questions being asked are cringeworthy; the answers only a little less so.
One hapless would-be alpha wonders what to do about his girlfriend … walking in front of him.
Still very knew to TRP. Im not exactly sure how to respond to this. If its a shit test or a symptom of failing many shit tests all together. Anyways, whenever we walk (which we do often, bring dog to park, around the hood, whatever) she tries to walk a half step in front of me.
The horror!
Last time we were walking back the 3 blocks from the market and I was in front she kept speeding up. So I would speed up, the pace got absolutely laughable. How would you deal with this, lets say walking through the park and she keeps jumping out front?
Instead of shaking this “knew” Red Piller and telling him to chill the fuck out because who fucking cares, you could just ask her to slow down a little jesus christ what the fuck is your fucking problem, the regulars offer an assortment of Red Pill clichés seemingly designed to heighten his insecurities and turn his girlfriend’s walking habits into some sort of contest.
Then you set the pace. Slow down and let her ass walk away.
To me this is a chance to play dumb games with her if that’s what she wants to do. Make stops when you want, change directions, go your own way and make her follow your lead.
When in doubt, act like a petulant teenager who’s never been in a relationship before.
Another newbie wonders what to do now that he’s no longer the buffest dude in his church group. No, really.
So long story short ive been going to church and most guys dont lift there or arent in very athletic shape, but today we got a new guy and when he went up to take the podium i felt sort of amogged (biceps wise).
AMOG= Alpha Male of the Group. The dude was out-alphaing him with his giant biceps.
Dude was in a shirt showing off his building like frame and it got to me. My pride took a hit because i could literally feel the temperature rising as the women and men stared in awe of his Sylvester stalone like stature.
I dunno, ask him out, maybe?
How do i deal with no longer being the one with the most impressive biceps? Can i supplement it with other things? For example, im 3 years older than the dude and i have good game, more knowledge about women’s nature than he does, so do you think its not the end of the world no longer being the most ‘alpha’ looking of the group?
And a would-be alpha teeters on the edge of self-awareness.
I am starting my bulk next week because i realized im not as big as i could be.
… and plunges back into insecurity.
And no, im not insecure im just curious about how to stand out as alpha amongst someone twice your size. The girls were giving me the googly eyes before and id like to keep it that way. I must stay AMOG .
Dude, get a grip on yourself.
In this case, the advice is much less cringey than the question. Sure, there’s one guy who tells him he absolutely needs to get bigger and buffer than his new rival, and another who sniffs that “‘going to church’ is kinda beta in my books,” but a few others tell him to, you know, not get so fixated on the size of another dude’s biceps, because that way endless insecurity lies.
there’s always going to be somebody bigger and better at something than you are. you should work on not letting it effect you more than you should work on getting bigger than the bigger guy or smarter than the smarter guy.
Elsewhere in the subreddit, another would-be alpha is stunned to discover that, contrary to a lot of Red Pill “teachings,” acting like a serial killer doesn’t always inspire adoration from the ladies. After snapchatting flirtatiously with a new prospect, he reports,
she tells me I scare her. I ask how do I scare her and she says she gets dark vibes from me. One of my public snapchat stories was a demonic doodle for shits, gigs, and boredom. I tell her she’s not wrong (I told her in an earlier convo that I’m an asshole) and that she gives off soft sensual vibes.
That’s a first for me to be told I’m scary. I’m not overly concerned but I was surprised that the whole dark thing took a turn that made her stop engaging with me. I thought it was like catnip.
So, so close to self-awareness.
The regulars aren’t much help. “Amused mastery,” advises one. Take her for a ride on your motorcycle, advises another. Still another suggests what he apparently thinks is “humor.”
[Agree] & [Amplify] with a sexual twist. “Yeah I get that a lot cuz I make the ladies scream” gotta be witty man especially when texting / snapping sexual stuff.
Another notes that real serial killer types don’t actually try to come across as serial killer types.
Dark triad isn’t attractive as such imo; there’s an overlap between alpha traits and dark triad traits, sure, and that is what the girls want while the rest is a turn off. Actual psychopaths wear a facade and don’t show their true colors when they want to manipulate people; there’s a reason for that.
WWTBD: What Would Ted Bundy Do?
In another thread, an aspiring alpha wonders if it might be a good idea to read something other than The Red Pill subreddit or self-help books.
So I woke up today and I work through tasks for like 4 hours, rest, go to the gym, watch a movie (going through the IMBD top 100 so I catch up with pop culture so I can entertain a conversation with a boring girl sometimes),
Wat.
then right back to cleaning room / washing clothes. I was thinking about getting a fiction book from this list:
He links to a rather unimaginative list of old-school literary classics that he found on a forum devoted to fitness.
But then I thought… “What would Red pill do in my position”. I could be meditating or continuing to read through Book of Pook or these other books but I feel like I should also be giving myself time when I don’t work. How valid is that? Lastly… fiction, or no fiction?
Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I’m not going to bother with the answers here; suffice it to say that they’re a bit less cringey than the questions.
But it’s striking how many of these would-be alphas sound like the most insecure dudes on planet earth.
I mean, sure, everyone deals with insecurity. And there are few people more insecure than those who, like a lot of these guys, are starting to date for the first time. But fucking hell, man,
The problem isn’t just that “Red Pill” wisdom is turning them into assholes. The Red Pill is quite obviously amplifying their anxieties as well. It’s hard enough to introduce yourself to someone you’re attracted to, but it’s a lot harder if you’re also obsessing about being the Alpha Male of the Group.
Seriously, guys. Chill out. Trying to banish your insecurities by becoming the buffest dude in the church group — or the smoothest Game-spitter at the club — isn’t going to work.
The Red Pill won’t get rid of your insecurities; it will only encourage you to overcompensate for them with misogynistic macho bluster. You won’t emerge from your Red Pill training a happy, secure man who’s a natural with women; you’ll end up an embittered asshole preening and posturing on The Red Pill subreddit. And that’s the BEST CASE SCENARIO.
Fuck that. Be who you are. Read whatever books you want. Stop freaking out that your girlfriend walks a couple of paces ahead of you. Banish the word “alpha” from your life. Move the fuck on.
This seems unfortunately relevant, a CollegeHumor bit ‘is this quote from The Game or a psychopath?’
A lot of this Red Pill “alpha game” stuff seems amazingly passive-aggressive. I remember one guy (featured here, I believe) whose “game” involved knocking silverware off the table in restaurants so that the waitress had to keep coming back to the table. He didn’t flirt with her or anything like that, he was just very proud to have found a loophole to force a woman to speak to him.
The whole mindset would be pitiable if it wasn’t accompanied by so much narcissism and spite.
Dude, you’re in church. Isn’t pride a sin? And coveting against the ten commandments? I’m an atheist, so what do I know. But I’m pretty sure I heard that somewhere!
Sarkeesian said “in the game of patriarchy, women are not the other team. Women are the ball.”
Never a truer word was spoken, but in this case the other implication is true: men are the other team. All of them. So much of this stuff comes from seeing every interaction as a contest in which there must be a winner, and in which one cannot sleep soundly unless one has vanquished everyone else in the world.
It’s a poisonous fucking thicket and I am very glad to have left a society which encourages it.
I had no idea that all these years my cat was running game on me. What an AMOG!
Wow, “my girlfriend walks faster than me”. So even when they manage to get in a relationship, their red pill nonsense doesn’t stop.
@WWTH:
The seven deadly sins are weirdly defined, they don’t mean what we think they mean. The sin of Pride consists of believing that one is qualitatively different from others and so can never be compared to them. In this case, by striving to compete against everyone else in his church, this dude is actually being non-proud. But not humble, because that means something else because God hates dictionaries.
(As an aside, my favourite is sloth, which is defined as “a lack of interest in spiritual development.” This means that it’s possible for me to commit sloth whilst also committing other sins like lust or avarice, which is very efficient. Sin smart!)
I… really can’t say anything that you didn’t say better in the last few paragraphs. When they think about things they get insecure, and when they get insecure they get angry. It sounds like they didn’t get the feeling of freedom that I got when I came out of the equivalent of high school and my peers were no longer concerned about whether things were gay or not.
Welp, Ive read enough WHtM to be surprisingly good at the “game or serial killer”. What does it say about me that the serial killer quotes seemed more earnest?
Brilliant.
You know, it’s always struck me as odd how these Red Pill “field reports” always fixate in such detail on the men. Women are only identified by a number (HB6.5), occasionally hair color, but then they’ll go on to describe the Chad she was with in very detailed terms (“6 foot 5, 230, totally ripped, massive biceps, untucked button-down Oxford shirt, khakis, no socks, mirror sunglasses, 3rd year med student….I could feel the tingles all around me when he walked in the room”) I don’t mean this in a “hurr hurr they’re all closet cases” way, I think it’s more indicative of just how completely uninterested in women they are. As EJ reiterated, women are just the ball. Nobody cares much what the ball looks like.
I’m sure it must be hard for women to keep up conversationally with his fascinating regime of Mechanical Turk, napping, gym, pop culture movies, and minimal house chores.
When I reread Helter Skelter after learning about the manosphere, it was scary how much Charles Manson seemed like a red piller. The sad thing is, many of them would take that as a compliment.
Okay, so being a follower is “beta,” and the goal of every RedPillian is to be “alpha.”
So they all have to follow the RedPillian herd’s advice, to avoid being “betas.”
Because logic!
The Matrix reference is especially funny because I’m convinced that film is a coded transition metaphor. Lana Wachowski, as you may know, is transgender and besides the obvious ‘rebirth as your true self’ metaphor going on Neo’s identity and embrace of it is represented by his name.
Early on in the movie we get the very on-the-nose interrogation scene where Agent Smith describes him as having two different lives with different names, Thomas A. Anderson and Neo, and the forces of authority in the movie (note how his boss is dressed identically to Smith) attempting to oppress him always refer to him by the first name. His crew meanwhile always call him Neo, the name he prefers, and when Smith and Neo finally show down in the train station Smith continues his habit of referring to Neo as ‘Mr Anderson’ (note the male prefix) until we get this exchange at the end:
Agent Smith: You hear that Mr. Anderson? That is the sound of inevitability. It is the sound of your death. Goodbye, Mr. Anderson.
Neo: My name is Neo.
And then Neo throws Smith in front of a train, symbolically destroying the authority that refuses to let him define himself.
Here’s something else that’s bothering me.
Does this man not work for a living?
@Film Runner: It’s also funny how they’ve tried to arrogate the “Red Pill” label for themselves, despite being the most massively deluded, out of touch group of stereotypical cartoon thinkers ever to huddle together beneath the dark, damp rocks of the Internet. It would take weeks to catalog all the thought errors on that sub. They’re so “unplugged” and “aware”, they have to check with an internet forum on how real-world social interactions work every time they go to a party or walk down the sidewalk with their girlfriend.
Meanwhile, all of us poor, deluded Blue Pillers are busy having happy relationships, genuine friendships, and fulfilling hobbies, jobs, and lives. I guess all of those things are just hallucinogenic drugs for the masses. True alfalfas live stoically, breathing the fresh, cold air of detached superiority…oh sorry, what was it?…”amused mastery”.
MRAs are such fake geek boys when it comes to The Matrix. =P
I have to admit my ex used to always somehow end up walking JUST in front of me whenever we walked somewhere–I found it super-annoying. He’d always apologise and walk by my side when I mentioned it, but then somehow he’d end up JUST in front of me again.
That is a really weird book list–there are three books on there that I’d never heard of; trying to decide whether I should check them out.
The saddest thing reading about these lads is, making “game” the centre of their self worth, they have taken all the joy out of their own lives.
Redpillers reading: normal people watch films they are interested in…..not on the off chance a pop culture reference will get “game”. Unless you’re a paid film critic, if you’re quest for companionship has honestly driven you to waste hours watching films you are not interested in,(and I’m not sure I completely believe that story), you are doing life wrong.
The walking thing makes me laugh because there was a time when my boyfriend seemed to be always in front of me and I felt like I was chasing to catch up, so I asked him “dude why are you always in front? Why can’t we just walk together? Why does taking a stroll have to feel like a race??!” And he was like “Oh, how funny! I always feel like I have to catch up to YOU!” And then we laughed at the weird perceptual thing that had happened and didn’t think about it again. If only talking weren’t so beta, our confused friend above could do the same.
Well, in fairness, it could be a weekend, or he could be a college student with some open days in his schedule, or on summer break.
I do find it amusing that he is watching movies he claims to have little personal interest in in order make conversation with someone he finds dull. How is doing homework for your small-talk “alpha” behavior, again?
Also nothing says “fascinating person” like having no interests or passions of your own, just those you feign in pursuit of sex.
> When in doubt, act like a petulant teenager who’s never been in a relationship before.
I think there’s a reason TRPers act like that…
He’s looking for a fiction book?
I probably never would, but reading this stuff makes me want to go on AskTRP and write some kind of parody/troll post where I whine about something like “the new guy in my OTO group has has a longer, more lustrous beard than I do, and it’s making all the Satanic chicks swoon” or “There’s a new guy hanging out at the local game store, and he’s got a better Magic deck than me; how do I get back my AMOG status?”