I Took The Red Pill Before It Existed

"Pills" are stupid

I now know that. By subscribing to a false dichotomy you are already falling into a trap that will limit critical thought and (more than likely) put you at a higher risk of lining the pockets of someone who wants you to believe something. But I didn't always know this. When I was 15 (11 years ago), the term "red pill" or "manosphere" did not have the stranglehold on culture and young men as it does today. In fact, it was a disparate group of internet creators that fell into a few categories.

Before we break them down, I think it is important to paint the picture of me at 15 years old and why this type of content appealed to me.

Who does Red Pill appeal to?

You may have the image of the anti-social incel who hates everything and everyone. They are violent and miserable. I didn't meet any of that critera. I was a teenager with phenomenal grades, I graduated highschool with a 95 average, 4.52 weighted GPA, I took Calculus BC as a sophomore, and got a 1550 on the SAT on my first attempt and went to a private college prepatory highschool in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

I had friends. Sure, we were (and still are) nerds, but I had my ride or dies. We would play video games almost every day together since we first met in sixth grade. I grew up in a non-broken, upper-middle class home. Both my parents were incredibly loving. I didn't have mommy or daddy issues. They instilled important character traits into me. We didn't fight more than any normal family. Both my parents worked and they loved each other. I wasn't antisocial. I would speak up during class, I was part of student body government, and I would attend school dances.

So... What Happened?

Like any teenage boy (especially in 2015), I watched a lot of Youtube. I didn't watch TV, I didn't really go to the movies. I also didn't play sports or do any extracurriculars. If I wasn't in school, eating, sleeping, or playing games with friends, I was at my computer watching YouTube. Around this time, a few things started to enter my consciousness as goals, primarily because other boys at school also started to center on these as well. They were as follows:

Girls

I had many friends, none of them were girls. I had tried to ask out a girl once before. The pressure in my chest felt unbearable when I did it, I could barely get the words out, and the reward for feeling like I was about to die? I was shot down, brutally.

Clearly, I was doing something wrong. Where did this lead me? To the tool that had previously allowed me to learn what ever I had wanted: Youtube.

I began watching creators like Charisma On Command. He would talk about what made the marvel super heroes I loved so charismatic, their posture, their delivery, etc. I would take notes.

Alpha M. He would teach me about style, how to not have bad breath. How to trim a beard (I did not have one at the time but wanted one).

Thus far, while I wasn't actually learning anything positive, I also wasn't unlearning anything, or worse, getting convinced of something actively detrimental. Algorithms do what algorithms do. It began suggesting other creators, this time those in the "PUA" or Pick Up Artist community.

This is where the slippage begins to happen. They discuss the term "cold opens" (approaching a stranger with romantic intent), frame (pseudoscience way of describing who has the upper hand in an interaction), the biological differences between men and women. They "teach" you how women work, as if they are some alien species that must be studied rather than a human being. Then they "teach" you the formulaic steps you can take to have sex with them.

Without ever talking to a girl, and from a very innocuous and actually natural and healthy desire to get a girlfriend I had gone from appreciating and respecting women (my mom is not only an incredibly parent but also an industry titan and the CEO of her own firm), to viewing woman as having one purpose, the object of my sexual and romantic desire.

Education

I went to a college prep highschool, and as I established, was pretty good at the whole school thing. My parents, especially my father, emphasized education as one of, if not the most important value in our household. Because I was excelling at a school that was filled with high achievers and parents who had similar pressures for them as mine did for me, I assumed I DESERVED to go to university wherever I wanted.

When I was 11, in sixth grade, I wrote on a piece of paper in a time capsule for my school that I wanted to study Computer Engineering at MIT. When I made it to highschool I had my 3 schools in mind: MIT, Stanford, or Caltech. Anything else would mean I am a failure. By this point this was self-imposed pressure and that of my friends, not from my parents. "How to get into MIT?" was probably the query into google I asked. My test scores were there, my GPA was there, my extra-curriculars were not. So I ran for student body governement, and got on! I joined jazz band! I joined and went to nationals in DECA, and maxed out basically every AP course I could and when I exhausted those, I took classes like Multivariable Calculus and Quantum Mechanics as self study as a junior.

I wanted to be SURE I would get in. I DESERVED it. I ended up on reddits like r/mitadmissions and r/applyingtocollege. I became aware of programs for underprivileged kids, women in STEM, etc. I saw bitter posts (unfounded) about quotas for specific races.

I began down yet another rabbit hole fueled by my arrogance that if I did not get into MIT I was wronged. I, a straight white male, was being persecuted against. And there was a ton of people who shared my opinion and validated it. Spoiler Alert: I did not get into MIT, or Stanford, or Caltech, or Berkeley, or UPenn... you get the idea.

Money

Who doesn't want a little extra money? I didn't care about clothes to impress people at school. But a better gaming GPU? Some new CS:GO skins? Sign me up. No one at school really talked about money, no one had side hustles that I was aware of. But online, on instagram, and Youtube, people my age (or more commonly just a little bit older) were RAKING IT IN. They lived in mansions in LA with their friends and played video games and had cute girls around them. Mind you, this is years before the whole "internet money" thing really took off.

But already, I was hooked. Money was a new metric to optimize, at 15 years old before I had ever held a job. In fact, this was my new definition of "success." Not becoming a professor and changing the lives of thousands of students like my father, not feeding the homeless, not risking my life for my country.

Things like copywriting, white labeled-saas, dropshipping, crypto, etc were not really a popular thing back then, but if they were, I certainly would have spent way too much time trying them.

You know how I mentioned CS:GO skins earlier? Well those were (and still are) worth real money. And, you could spend $2.50 real dollars on a key to open a virtual case which would give you a random item of varying value. In really rare cases, you could get something worth thousands of dollars.

If this sounds like gambling marketed to children, trust your judgement. I found other ways to "make money" with my skins as well by wagering them on professional matches of the game and who would win.

This scratched an itch in my brain I didn't realize was a precursor to gambling addiction until I woke up my mom crying at 1AM because my sure fire bet had lost, and what I didn't tell my mom was that I used her credit card to buy the skins I just wagered and I now owed her 80$... that I didn't have. She had no idea what I was doing and this understandably frightened her that I was not only capable of this but that I had access to it in secret.

How Did I “Escape”?

I had every possible check and balance in my life and this still happened to me, 10 years ago. I wish I could tell you the "thing" that shook me free. The conversation from my dad, or the moment I said or did something that made me learn my lesson.

Instead, I was just... lucky. I found my passion in the gym and learned consistency and hard work. I got a girlfriend my senior year who was patient and helped build my confidence. I went to Georgia Tech and joined a Fraternity with a bunch of head screwed on straight boys just a few years older than I who I looked up to. I gradually unwound in the real world all the damage that I had done to myself purely online.

What Now?

I am genuinely terrified. Everything that happened to me has become a calculated science. People who want to make you angry, or insecure, know exactly how to reach you. Let's compare what I was exposed to then to the world today Looksmaxxing is a new industry targeted towards young men to make them incredibly insecure about their bodies. They sell overpriced and dangerous solutions to teenage boys who are convinced they will never find love because of the shape of their eyes.

The material conditions for the average man has gotten a lot worse. There is a well oiled machine to convince young men that the reason for their struggles is: "the system," women, immigrants, people of different sexual orientations, religions, etc.

Money has become even more of a north star for young men then it was for me. Get rich quick schemes are not only abundant, they are sold exceptionally well. Money being the result of hard work is no longer a foundational truth in the common consciousness and because money alone is a goal, there is no need for more foundational skills that are gained during a higher education. Working a respectable 9-5 job like being a doctor, or lawyer, or engineer, once incredibly aspirational professions, feels like a "failure". We have put a casino in every kids pocket. In some cases real casinos as sports betting is now legal in most states and there is a proliferation of apps to satisfy a young man's risk appetite. Arguably worse is the casinos that mask themselves as "skills" like crypto trading or daytrading meme stocks on apps like Coinbase and Robinhood.

What To Do About It?

This is why I do what I do. If I was a 15 year old in 2026, I would 100% have fallen further than I did in 2015, and I had every system in place to keep me from doing that.

I see the ways people online talk about how to fix this issue, and it is EXACTLY, what those who are profiting off these men want you to do.

They criticize the people producing the content, and the boys consuming it, rather than seeking to understand what makes it appealing in the first place. Instead of acknowledging that boys may be hurting, they reinforce the idea that they are privileged and that they do not need help and must "figure it out themselves."

This will only push these men further into the wrong people's arms faster.

My favorite audience on my platforms is on instagram, and there is a whole host of moms of boys. There is something so pure about how much a mom cares about her kids. Moms of boys right now know something is up, and are willing to educate themselves on how to best help their sons. To those moms (and anyone who wants to help), I give you the following advice.

Validate their feelings and come from a place of wanting to understand rather than criticize. Why do they think immigrants make their life worse? Why do they want money above all else, and why do they think the best way to make it is to not go to college? Why do they think if they had blue eyes instead of brown someone would love them?

Then, reinforce core truths but through the lense they want to hear it. This isn't manipulative like the people you are trying to combat, it is leadership 101.

You make money by providing value to the most amount of people.

Women desire someone who others respect. That man is kind, and strong, and funny. Not one who has numbers in a bank account but lacks accountability and will not sacrifice his own wants and needs for those he cares for.

Most people online do not care about you, they are financially incentivized to make you believe the things they are telling you. Your parents have a direct incentive to actually care about you and improve your wellbeing.

Education in any form is an incredibly important part of being able to think for yourself, make a good living, and find a mate.

etc.

This is not a futile fight, I think we are trending in the right direction. And I think moms of boys will be the unsung heroes as we turn many broken young men into the future husbands and fathers they and we want them to be.