Summary - A brief rundown of this history of Reddit and it's reaction to us plus a prediction for the future.

Most politically incorrect movements follow a pretty similar trajectory in how the mainstream views and reacts to it. As Gandhi said "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they try to destroy you. then you win" Most movements follow a similar trajectory.

I would like to refine this into a series of stages which have shown how Reddit has treated TRP since it's creation (I only found this at around 25k subs and wasn't aware of it before then so take the early steps with a grain of salt) And since it's electoral season, as a real world equivalent, I've included/shoehorned into these steps the Politically incorrect politicians; Trump and Sanders, as they both have very similar traits and trajectories. Although Trump has advanced slightly more in the stages.


Steps:

Stage 1 // The Joke: Stage 1 of any movement is having the people that notice it laugh at it as they don't take it seriously. This is pretty natural, as your in the realms of conspiracy nuts and loonies here.

Deez Nuts is on the same level as Trump and Sanders at this stage. I remember reading posts on Reddit along the lines of "Haha have you seen the basement dwellers over there, it's scary and funny at the same time" (This is actually how I found TRP, and I'm sure that is not an uncommon story) And similarly, "OMG I can't believe Trump is running/this is going to be entertaining/must be a new season of the Apprentice" And although I didn't notice anything like this with Sanders as I wasn't aware of him untill stage 2 I'm sure people quipped about "That old Guy going up against Hillary, how funny"


Stage 2 // The Flock: Stage 2 is when you move beyond the conspiracy nuts and people realise that you might be serious and the first instance where people take you seriously as a movement, and also the last time they treat you with respect. Although they don't consider you a threat, they don't recognise the trajectory of your movement and your intent, they are merely treating you as a stray sheep and employ the "get back with the flock" defence. You might recognise some small amounts of empathy with your position along with an appeal to ignore that and come back to where you started because you are no longer marching in lockstep with the group, they will attempt to pull you back in with various shaming tactics.

This is where you would have seen these posts on Reddit "Are these people serious?/You do realise how ridiculous you guys are?/Don't you care that your offending Women?"

Meanwhile Both Trump and Sanders were being told that "Yes your points are valid and your popular but your fringe candidates who'll steal votes from Bush/Clinton. You don't want the Democrats/Republicans to win now do you?


Stage 3 // The Attack: This is the first time you are seen as a threat to the natural order and the start of the concerted effort to destroy you. I'd estimate that at around 40-50k subscribers Reddit as a whole become aware of TRP. This is when The Blue Pill subreddit swung into action and people started sharing those links of compilations of quotes showing that "TRP was a hate filled group that hated Women" (Actually a fair call as the majority of the sub would have been quite new at the time, possibly the largest percentage of people gong through the anger stage that the sub will ever have)

This is the time period where you'd frequently see these posts in threads on Reddit "TRP is leaking again/Found the Red Piller/Guy's I looked through the OP's post history and he is a frequent poster of Red Pill propaganda" This was also the highest growth of this sub as people would inevitably ask "What is the MatrixRed Pill? That EMSK post about how "the Red Pill will destroy you inside" was perhaps the single greatest advertisement for this sub ever, simply because it couldn't actually articulate any reasons why the Red Pill was bad aside from "Two wrongs don't make a right" This is in actual fact pretty clear confirmation that it works, and the only reason you shouldn't use it is because it works. It was a "Turn the other cheek" mentality That thread bridged the gap between Stage 2 and Stage 3 but I included it here because it was a primarily an attack against the Red Pill as a movement. Needless to say the people who were committed to turning the Red Pill into the Dead Pill saw that this wasn't working which leads into Stage 4.

Meanwhile in the Political Race, the Democrat and Republican establishment realise that Trump and Sanders are not going away and that they are actually both very popular and are a legitimate threat to the parties plans. I'm not counting the other sides media attacking their opposing candidate as this is essentially background noise. The first chance the establishment had to directly attack their upstart candidates was their respective 1st debates, which went about as well as you'd imagine.

On the Republican side they went about it in their own way, a direct attack and having their candidates rip into Trump in a televised ambush. This was the point in the movie where nameless henchmen ambush the action star proving once and for all "You can't stump the Trump"

Meanwhile on the Democrat side who style themselves as above that sort of petty attack politics, the attack was conducted through the media. Despite Sanders making Clinton look ridiculous and even coming to her defense, the media universally declared Clinton the Winner despite their own opinion polls showing a Sanders landslide and near 100% condemnation of that narrative on social media by people attacking Clinton.


Stage 4 // The Cold Shoulder: We are at this point with TRP right now, Reddit has realised that attacking this sub just increases it's subscribers. Now posts mentioning TRP are deleted in most subs. Some subs will actually tell you that you are not allowed to mention TRP at all. Just for shits and giggled, post in ELI5 "What is the Red Pill?" and see how long it takes to get deleted. This is the collective denial stage and will only be broken when the elephant in the room get's too big to ignore. It's hard to guess when this stage will end but I think 200k will be a milestone that people will not be able to stomach and will trigger the next stage.

Leaving Reddit for a minute let's check back in with our political race. After the first debates it became clear that both Trump and Sanders weren't going away. I'll deal with Trump first because he will simply blow through this stage. How does one ignore someone like Trump in a clickbait age? you can't. The previous stage showed that attacking Trump is suicide, he will fuck you up. And being a walking headline, he is immune to being ignored. It will take a while before people realise that he can't be ignored before moving onto the next stage. The Trump express does not stop at Stage 3 and 4.

Sanders on the other hand is a much more understated candidate, while he should have no trouble getting through this stage, he is not immune to being ignored, he is just highly resistant. Sanders power come from his grassroots attraction, If Trump blows through this stage like a fighter jet then Sanders is the freight train, chugging along with too much momentum to stop. When you can regularly draw tens of thousands more supporters then your rivals at your rallies without mainstream media support, you become the slow moving juggernaut that literally creates the headlines, rally by rally, person by person.


Stage 5 // The handwave: This is the beginning of the end of the movement. This will occour when this subreddit gets too big too ignore, this can happen organically, if TRP had 200k+ subscribers this would happen. Alternatively, outside circumstances can influence this. If there was a mainstream media special on the Red Pill focusing on this subreddit this would also bring on stage 5 regardless of subscriber numbers.

This is not acceptance however, this is merely the last roll of the dice of a movements critics and actually a lame attempt to revert back to stage 1 by bringing them back into the fold with a small admission of guilt. This is where people will try to explain WHY the Red Pill is so popular while dancing around what the Red Pill actually says. There will be some begrudging confessions that there is a legitimate reason for this sub but none of the reasons offered will be what we are saying, it will be similar to what was said in stage 2.

Look to see posts such as "Well most of them are from the Lost millenial generation so it's natural that they'll be angry at society/Two wrongs don't make a right/The advice at it's core is actually pretty good, but do you really want to manipulate women?/Obviously this movement is what happens when Women move into male fields/Something Something toxic masculinity/Their subscribers aren't actually that high, I just subscribe to downvote/read)

Something similar will happen with Trump and Sanders shortly. There will be a flurry of articles and commentary trying to explain away their respective popularity. "They're just an outsider/people are protest voting/the real voters haven't cast their ballots yet" This will continue untill Stage 6.


Stage 6 // The Endgame: This is where the status quo is either restored or overturned. For us, it will only have 1 ending, This subreddit will be quarantined/banned. I would prefer quarantined that way we can just keep on doing and hopefully the overall standard of everyone in here will rise. Banning is more likely however. By this point it will be too large to ignore, and the fact that each subscriber here posts elsewhere on Reddit will mean something has to be done. No doubt next time someone links to a relationship posts and one of you moronic cunts pm's the OP then the Admins will use that to ban the sub for whatever reason and we will simply go elsewhere.

Unfortunately for the Democrat/Republican party, they cannot simply ban Trump/Sanders. Fortunately for us 2016 will not see a Clinton V Bush election as previously planned but a Trump V Sanders election much to the delight of all involved.