The Red Pill Movement Has Become a Grift
From time to time here at The Lyons Den, I like to write about cultural issues in addition to fitness, and today is one of those times. Over the past few years, there has been a movement that has gained a ton of popularity among men, and young boys. This movement has been termed The Red Pill Movement and it exists in what’s been termed the Manosphere.
If you have young boys in your household, chances are that you’ve heard the name “Andrew Tate”. After all the guy has over 8M followers on Twitter/X, but has been banned from Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and TikTok. If you’re wondering who this man is, he’s been dubbed the leader of the red pill movement, although he’s tried to distance himself in recent months and the real red pillers don’t see him as any kind of leader.
Today I’m going to lay out my case for why the red pill, while needed in some respects, is a giant grift and is damaging both to the adult dating scene and the minds of young high school and middle school boys. We’ll go over some of the players, and what they preach, then we’ll finish off with some better alternatives you can follow online. It is incredibly hard to find an unbiased explanation of what the red pill is, so I’m going to do my best to give you one here in this article.
What is the Red Pill Movement?
While the red pill has recently gained a lot of popularity during what is the TikTok era, it’s been around for quite some time. The red pill is said to be the answer to feminism, and a more viable option than Men Going Their Own Way (MGTOW).
The MGTOW movement started as a response to feminism, and many men who felt left behind by the system felt like they found a home within the movement. Its roots can be traced back to the early 2000s when the MGTOW Manifesto was published on a blog called “No Ma’am” in 2001. The name No Ma’am was taken from the old TV show Married With Children in which Al Bundy was a member of a men’s rights group called No Ma’am, which first aired in 1993. MGTOW is a male separatist movement in which men seek to completely separate themselves from women in culture and society. No marriage, no dating, no children. While there is a need for some changes in society when it comes to the rights of fathers (and men in general), this is a toxic answer to what has become toxic feminism.
The red pill movement has been completely mischaracterized by many in the media who refer to it as an “alt-right” political movement. At its heart, the red pill isn’t political at all but cultural, although many in the manosphere would be considered conservative. The red pill seeks to be the answer to second, third, fourth, and fifth-wave feminism giving men the tools necessary to compete in today’s “sexual/dating market”.
The message coming from the red pill was originally a blueprint for men to take their lives back. You may not believe it, but society has by and large forgotten men and left them behind. Here are some examples:
Men are incarcerated at a much higher rate than women
Sentences are much harsher for men when they are incarcerated
Men lose custody of their kids far more often than women do in divorce
Men are typically the only sex paying alimony following divorce even though women are free to work now
Women are more likely to get into college
Women in bigger cities are often paid more for the same job as their male counterparts (wild huh? The real gender pay gap is inverted)
Women today are more likely to get hired than men in many instances
Young girls are doing far better in schools than their male counterparts
Many young boys have ADHD meds forced on them to stop them from acting like young boys
There’s plenty more, but these are some of the things men want to see changed. Men are also seen as providers in the eyes of our society when in reality the doubling of the workforce following second-wave feminism ensured that would never be the norm again. Don’t get me wrong, I want women to be able to work and create whatever life they want, but women entering the workforce en mass basically doubled the labor pool overnight. This has contributed to wage suppression and it is now virtually impossible for a family to get by on one salary anymore. Only 23% of families live in a one-income household, and only 17% have the husband/dad being the sole provider for their families. The world has changed.
With the above information hopefully, you can at least understand why some men are feeling left behind. In my opinion, the “Get in the gym, go make money, stop watching porn, stop simping for women who don’t care about you, and take responsibility for your life” message is a great one, but there’s more to it than that. The red pill seems to be the answer men were yearning for.
Dating Apps Destroyed Dating and By Proxy, Men
One of the reasons the red pill has seen such growth in popularity over the past 4-5 years is due to what’s happening with dating. Dating has really changed for the worse over the last 12 years. And what happened 12 years ago? Tinder hit the app store. By the end of 2013, Tinder was seeing 4,000 swipes per second globally, which is about 350 million per day. This was the beginning of the end of hearing about your friends meeting potential partners organically, and now the vast majority of relationships start on dating apps.
In some respects this was a positive, people who were incredibly busy could now find someone to spend their lives with ease. In other ways it really destroyed dating. How?
It’s now easy to just move on to the next person and it seems like we’ve lost the ability to work on relationships and have them succeed.
People can now be engaged in many “relationships” simultaneously. This makes it incredibly hard to submerse yourself in a relationship with one person and truly get to know them.
Men don’t get swiped right on very often, and when they do they’re rarely able to strike up meaningful conversations with the women they match with (more on that later).
It’s become entirely too easy to hook up with people, as opposed to getting to know them.
It can be overwhelming to users (specifically women) who get inundated with matches and messages.
Here are some statistics on dating apps
On average 70% of dating app users are men.
Women only “swipe right” 5% of the time on average while men do so far more often.
On Tinder men and women vary significantly in their experiences. On average:
Men get a match 1 out of every 40 right swipes.
Women get a match in 1 out of every 2 right swipes.
52% of men receive less than one match per day, while 13% receive less than 1 match per week.
If you look at the dating app scene, you’ll see that it’s mostly one-sided. While there’s something to be said for the fact that there are many men on these apps merely looking for hookups and nothing long-term, if you ask men who are on these apps you’ll see that even this small percentage of women aren’t looking for anything serious either. Many dating apps have turned into marketing arms for a lot of these women’s OnlyFans pages, and their Instagram accounts, while many are just bots trying to steal your money. On top of that, there are a lot of transwomen on these apps as well. So that 30% drops pretty drastically when you include all the pertinent information.
I met the mother of my daughter on Hinge and I remember asking her if she was talking to anyone else on our first date. I just wanted to see her level of interest in me. She said no and showed me her notifications on Hinge. There were over 600 of them! They were matches she hadn’t gotten around to or messages she hadn’t answered. In my short time on the app, I had managed to strike up conversations with 3 women, one of them being her. Men and women have vastly different experiences on these apps and they can legitimately make you feel like you’re falling short as a man.
There is no "the way things are" with humans, especially with mating behavior.
— hoe_math (@ItIsHoeMath) September 14, 2024
The only consistent thing throughout history and across cultures is our drives and needs. The way thy express themselves varies widely according to the times.
What I want people to realize is that we… pic.twitter.com/cqSOCB9PKC
There was a study done back in 2019 that found that nearly 60% of straight young adult men were single, which was nearly double the amount of straight young women who said they were single. The population is roughly 50/50 as far as gender is concerned, so how does this number get so skewed? It turns out that about 70% of women are chasing the same 20% of men, and they end up in “situationships” instead of finding someone on their level who wants to be with just them.
You’ve got these dating apps beating men down, constantly making them question their worth (and a lot of times for good reason). Meanwhile, many women don’t realize that one 8/10 guy who swiped right on her and hooked up with her last year is still out of her league from a commitment standpoint. These “higher value” men will sleep with them, but won’t commit to them. This has given many women a skewed view of their “marketplace value” in the dating world. They’ve termed these women “alpha widows” because no guy is ever going to measure up to that one guy she managed to hook up with all those years ago, and they’ll forever be chasing something they cannot achieve.
Without dating apps, this wouldn’t be our reality. I believe men and women would both be significantly happier. And it’s just one of the many things that make men feel like they don’t belong. I’ll tell you that back in 2017-2019 when I was on dating apps I was never so miserable. In many ways using these apps pushed me further into depression. I’d end up with maybe one to two matches a month. My experience was the experience of the average guy, and it’s depressing.
Men Are Demonized in Modern Society/Culture
Have you ever heard the term “toxic masculinity”? I’m sure you have, and that’s because it’s a political buzzword right now. It has been ever since Hilary Clinton was running against Donald Trump. Toxic masculinity is defined as a collection of offensive, harmful beliefs, tendencies, and behaviors rooted in traditional male roles but taken to an extreme. “Mansplaining” is another term used to vilify men and for you women who don’t know what that means, it means man explaining (just a casual joke there).
Young boys are told that they’re all rapists, they’re violent, that they have inherent privilege, and that they’re just all-around awful. They’re told that the innate qualities they have, are bad and they need to change. This couldn’t be further from the truth.
Ask your average progressive politician who the greatest threat to America is right now and without a doubt, their answer will be “white men.” Hell, our president and vice president have uttered those exact words very recently.
Our culture teaches us that masculinity is “toxic” when in reality we have a shortage of masculinity. Men aren’t being allowed to be men without society looking down its collective noses at us. Imagine being a young boy growing up right now, and hearing how awful men are from every direction including from the mouth of our president. It’s disheartening and while raising our daughter presents its own challenges, I cannot imagine trying to bring young men up in today’s political climate. Hell, Brown University has a paper on their website titled Unlearning Toxic Masculinity.
Are there toxic men? Absolutely! But their toxicity isn’t inherently masculine. Toxic behavior expresses itself in all walks of life. Men, women, white, black, brown, short, tall, you name it and it can be toxic.
It’s masculine to protect those you love and those not as strong as you. It’s absolutely not masculine to harm others.
It’s masculine to put the problems of those you care about on yourself, it’s not masculine to blame the world around you.
It’s masculine to try to achieve strength both in and out of the gym, but young boys are told that Fitness is Far Right Extremism.
It’s masculine to have faith in God; it is not masculine to worship one’s self
These are all considered masculine traits:
Confidence
Dominance
Strength
Leading
Courage
Aggression
None of these things are inherently toxic, but they are masculine. In fact, many of them are lacking today in society. Some may say we have a “toxic masculinity” problem but I think the issue is that men have been feminized and are void of masculinity today. More masculinity would right the ship and pull us out of cultural decay. But men are being convinced to not act like men, and it’s to the peril of culture and men in general.
Fatherless Homes Have Destroyed Men
I’m not here to debate whose fault this is (other than the government), that’s not productive (unless we’re talking shit about the government). Women leaving their partners, men walking out on their families, it doesn’t matter because the end game is the same 99% of the time. Besides, it’s not important right now who set the house on fire, the fact of the matter is that the house is on fire and that fire needs to be extinguished. Too many young boys are not growing up with their fathers, and it is destroying their lives and the lives of those in their communities.
Here are a few stats from children who grow up in fatherless homes. Children from fatherless homes make up the following percentages:
63% of youth suicides
90% of homeless and runaways
85% of behavior disorders
80% of rapists
71% of high school dropouts
75% of youth patients in chemical abuse centers
70% of youth living in state-operated institutions
85% of youth sitting in prisons
Here are a few other statistics concerning fatherless homes
Teens without fathers at home are twice as likely to drop out of school
Girls without fathers in their homes are more than twice as likely to get pregnant before the age of 18
Teens without fathers in the home are more likely to engage in delinquent behavior
Children without fathers in the home are at a higher risk of experiencing emotional or psychological problems growing up
Teens without fathers in the home have an increased likelihood of substance abuse and addiction
Fatherless teenage boys are more susceptible to engaging in criminal activity
Girls without fathers in the home are more likely to be lured into exploitative situations outside of the family
If you want the actual data, it can be found here. I’ve just summarized much of what I found to be pertinent to the situation. If you look at the above data, when it comes to our children, you would think we could probably use a little more masculinity. Many young boys grow up without masculine role models, so they turn to celebrities/athletes as role models, and that’s a recipe for disaster when you look at our current cultural landscape.
Back to the Red Pill Movement
You’re probably thinking to yourself that this whole article has sounded fairly red-pilled and you’re not wrong. These are the facts, and as a man in American culture, I feel and see much of why the manosphere exists. Men lack purpose today. It’s too easy to check out, grab a beer or a joint, and sit in front of the TV or Monitor and cease to exist in reality. I fell victim to it prior to my recovery and permanent sobriety.
Many men have no purpose today, and it’s hurting them in ways many can’t see. They don’t want to work, they don’t have aspirations of any kind, and they’re content to sit in front of a TV drunk or high and rot away.
The Red Pill seeks to give men advice on how to be better. Or at least that’s what it used to be, and it was well-intentioned. Today, it’s really full of influencers who tell men how awful modern Western women are. And to be clear, I don’t think most of these influencers are completely wrong. It’s on full display every single day. But, and this is a big but, they’re telling men what they want to hear in an effort to attract their attention, and thus ad revenue on these platforms. They’ve found the grift that keeps on gifting.
Andrew Tate, Tristan Tate, Myron Gaines, Fresh (Walter, lol), Justin Wallen, Sneako, Zherka, Pearl Davis, and many others like them tell men exactly what they want to hear. That women are bad. That the world is against them, and it’s not their fault. For every feminist talking point about how men destroyed the world, there’s a meninist talking point counteracting that claim, blaming everything on women.
The Manosphere has even given rise to the whole Passport Bros movement, where men are completely checking out and looking to find women in other countries. They’ve completely given up on finding love here in the United States, and are off in foreign lands looking for their potential wife. Much like the Russian Mail Order Brides of the 80’s and 90’s. This can’t end well.
These red pill advocates will tell men that they need to get into the gym (good), work to perfect a craft (good), turn that craft into money (good), and then sleep with a ton of women (bad). While saying this out of one side of their mouths, they’ll say women who sleep with men before marriage can’t be marriage material out of the other side. You, as a man, need to sleep with at least 50 women prior to settling down (Myron Gaines’ advice), while your wife needs to be a virgin or at least close to one. This is where they started to lose me.
If all these men are sleeping with all of these women, who the hell are you going to marry?? There won’t be any virgins or women with low body counts left, lol. These influencers also demonize women who use abortion as a form of birth control (which I don’t disagree, these women should be shamed), all while Fresh was caught trying to coerce a stripper he hooked up with to get an abortion as seen in the reel here. I can guarantee you that this isn’t the first or only time this has happened with some of these guys.
Andrew Tate tells men to stop watching porn and simping for women because it makes them weak and effeminate. How did Tate make his fortune you might be asking? He owned a cam business where he made money from men watching porn and simping for women.
These aren’t good men, they’ve just found a way to gain popularity and use men who feel like they’ve been left behind by the system. I get it, but these influencers are just telling you what you want to hear while showing you a life to aspire to that you’ll more than likely never achieve.
Another topic of discussion is men smoking weed and drinking, and how bad it can be for your health both physical and emotional. This is good. Meanwhile, these guys are always seen with cigars and alcohol in interviews. Tristan and Andrew had a reel go viral where they had a bench-off while hungover/still drunk from the evening before. This is bad.
Another topic is marriage. They try to convince their followers that there is no value in marriage. While I can concede that marriage laws leave very little incentive for most men, this is setting fire to our already damaged culture where hooking up and never settling down or having kids is the aspiration. This is bad.
Hopefully, you can see that much of this is total and utter nonsense. These influencers speak out of both sides of their mouths and tell you what you want to hear.
What Should We Do? How Do We Fix This?
I don’t know that I have the answer to that. Our culture is beyond fucked right now. Sorry for the language but I don’t know how else to describe it. There seems to be a larger divide between men and women than ever, and our culture and politics seem to be driving that wedge deeper and deeper by the day. Many men have given up, they don’t see the value in relationships anymore and this is beyond awful for society.
If you have a son growing up in this climate allow them purpose, and give them faith. If you’re a man living within the broken system right now, understand that you’re not alone and these dorks aren’t the answer. Instead of listening to Godless heathens like Tate, Kherka, and Pearl, listen to guys like Jordan Peterson, Andrew Wilson, and other faith-based “meninists.” Even guys like Rollo Tomassi as flawed as he is, are a better fit to help you solve your problems. Find God, and find purpose. Find a wife. Be fruitful and multiply.
I started this article about a year ago, and shelved it for a bit. I didn’t really know how to finish it, and to be honest I still don’t. There is so much wrong with our culture right now and I don’t know that I’m qualified to speak on fixing it. But one thing I do know is that Red Pill grifters aren’t the way.
