Why Elon Musk got red-pilled, and why you all have to calm down

Amid copious public sparring with politicians and the media over Tesla’s functionality and ventilator donations, Elon Musk seems to have come to a revelation.

A certain subset of Very Online melted down over the tweet, emphatically endorsed by first daughter Ivanka Trump in a quote tweet. For the rest of you, you’re probably wondering why everyone is so mad and what Musk actually meant. Well, here’s a bit of an explanation.

The notion of the “red pill” originated from the 1999 film The Matrix. In case you live under a rock, the basic premise of the action flick is that the protagonist, Neo, learns that he’s been living in a computer simulation and is offered two pills. The blue pill would allow him to forget this revelation and return to his normal life, but Neo chooses the red pill, which lets him learn the truth about the Matrix.

The dichotomy of the red pill was co-opted with the creation of the Reddit group r/TheRedPill in 2012. The subreddit was dedicated to teaching men “sexual strategy,” a form of relatively cynical dating strategies premised on the notion that the appeal and sexual value of individual women are overvalued and limited to the constraints of fertility, physical appearance, and relative chastity. The subreddit and the most vocal adherents of the so-called men’s rights movement are unquestionably misogynist. But as even as the men’s rights movement continued to use the “red pill” branding, the conceit became adopted by contrarians completely dissociated from men’s rights activism.

Getting “red-pilled” now means a number of realizations associated with right-of-center movements. For a relatively innocuous and high-profile example, Kanye West was described as getting red-pilled when he first entertained supporting President Trump because he was “just refusing to be enslaved by monolithic thought.” A sinister permutation of “getting red-pilled” has emerged among “race realists” who are actually just outright racist.

So, in short, getting “red-pilled” can mean a lot of things depending on the context. Knowing Musk and his recent trials with Tesla, the outrage over his tweet is more hilarious than justified.

For starters, that Musk included the red rose emoji usually used by online socialists in his red pill tweet sort of gives the troll game away. After all, the guy who publicly backed Andrew Yang in the Democratic presidential primary and is currently dating the Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders-supporting Grimes isn’t likely to embrace alt-right dogmas of racism or sexism. Furthermore, we already sort of know why Musk has new beef with the Left and thus could identify with some reactionary conservatism: the coronavirus.

At the beginning of the pandemic, Musk’s promise to send Tesla-made ventilators to various hospitals and state governments became a point of controversy, with the media charging that Musk only sent CPAP and BiPAP machines, which can help coronavirus patients but are far less useful and far more expensive. This led to a defiant Musk adopting a rather Trumpy tone toward his detractors in the media.

The evidence did seem to contradict at least partially the media claims that Musk failed to deliver ventilators, but Musk’s woes didn’t end there. As California flattened its coronavirus curve and Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom prepared to reopen the state, Musk sparred with localities that were preventing Tesla from resuming operations, culminating in his declaration that he wanted to leave the state.

Musk’s announcement sparked a firestorm on Twitter, but it was obviously a long time coming for anyone paying attention. There’s not a shred of evidence that Musk buys into the bigoted slants of “red-pilling” that revolves around race or gender, but much like West, he’s clearly had it with the homogeneity and nanny state paternalism of California culture relative to other states.

So, Musk is red-pilled, and in this case, that’s not a bad thing.