red-pilled

What does red-pilled mean?

Red-pilled is a slang term meaning “having taken the red pill,” with red pill referring to something that causes someone to recognize a reality previously concealed from them. It is widely used as a disparagement of people associated with far-right or reactionary ideologies.

Also red pilled, redpilled.

Examples of red-pilled

I am not / don’t consider myself “progressive” but I sure as hell ain’t a MAGA red pilled incel who is angry at the world
—@kaponofor3.bsky.social‬, Bluesky, 20 Nov. 2024

“I haven’t been boosted or anything, but the moment where I really started to get redpilled on the whole vax thing was, the sickest that I’ve been in the last 15 years, by far, was when I took the vaccine,” said Vance, describing how his thinking on the vaccines have changed.
—Henry J. Gomez, quoting JD Vance, NBC News, 31 Oct. 2024

It is hard to appreciate just how thoroughly one of the world’s richest men has been red-pilled until you actually follow along with his media diet.
—Tim Murphy, Mother Jones, 3 May 2024

Black gay liberal turned ‘red-pilled’ conservative speaks out against woke ideologies
—Fox News Digital (headline), Fox News, 20 Jun. 2024

I'm what many on the left would now call a red-pilled right-wing conspiracy theorist (i.e. I don't mindlessly accept everything the mainstream media preaches about Covid and find myself increasingly disenchanted with the Dem party)...
—Pemulis_DMZ (user), The Free Press (comment), 17 May 2022

To be red-pilled can now mean being broadly skeptical of experts, to be distrustful of the mainstream press or to see hypocrisy in social liberalism.
—Nellie Bowles, New York Times, 19 May 2020

Where does red-pilled come from?

Red-pilled is based on the Internet slang red pill, or something that causes someone to be made aware of a purported deeper truth or to recognize the ‘real’ facts of a situation. Red pill came from a scene in the 1999 film _The Matrix _where the main character is given the choice between taking a (literal) blue pill that would return him to a state of ignorance and a red pill that would show him the truth that humans are enslaved in a simulated reality.

The concept—and term—spread as a metaphor for supposed political and social enlightenment in the 2010s within online communities associated with conspiracy theories and extremist ideologies (including racism, homophobia, and misogyny). The counterpart, blue pill, also became popular at this time; it refers to unquestioning acceptance of progressive thoughts and values. By the 2020s critics of right-leaning individuals and groups began co-opting red-pilled as a form of sarcastic derision, meant to call out their truths as delusional and bigoted.

Now, permit us to get a little ‘grammar-pilled.’ The noun red pill was made into a verb, “to make or be made aware of truth,” taking the past tense and past participle forms of red-pilled. From red-pilled (and parallel developments yielding blue-pilled) came the suffix -pilled, which is usually humorously attached to stems characterizing a sudden fixation or indoctrination. For instance: “After deleting social media from my phone, I got book-pilled and can’t stop reading.”

How is red-pilled used?

As a modifier, red-pilled is widely used to denigrate someone or something seen as conspiratorially or conservatively extreme, especially in aggressive opposition to social liberalism. It frequently appears in the construction to get or become red-pilled, which refers to the process in which an ‘unenlightened’ individual comes into their newfound understanding, typically through forms of ideological or political exposure and persuasion.

While the use is less common since being appropriated by, especially, left-wing critics, red-pilled is still sometimes used in its original, unironic sense of “having seen the truth,” typically involving a significant turnabout in one’s political or social stances.