I had read a look recently called "A Billion Wicked Thoughts" which examines pornography and women's romance novels to try to understand what men and women want. There were sections of the book that made me think, "Are the authors fans of the Red Pill sub?" but other parts of the book went against Red Pill concepts. Thought you might all find it interesting. Here's some excerpts:

From the chapter "Ladies Prefer Alphas", Billionaires and Bad Boys:

" Here are the ten most common professions of the hero, derived by psychologists Maryanne Fisher and Tami Meredith from the titles of more than 15,000 Harlequin romance novels: doctor, cowboy, boss, prince, rancher, knight, surgeon, king, bodyguard, sheriff.

Conspicuously absent from the list of romance heroes are blue-collar workers (no janitors or welders), beureaucrats (no claims adjusters or associate marketing managers), and traditionally feminine professions (no hairdressers, secretaries, or kindergarten teachers). All of the hero professions are associated with status, confidence, and competence. As Henry Kissinger famously said, "Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac". Power is a reflection of a man's rank in the dominance hierarchy, and women are attracted to the men near the top. The man at the very top is known as the alpha male.

"Alphas are natural leaders - that's pretty much the definition of the alpha - with a strong protective streak and a fierce confidence in their own abilities," writes EroRom author Angela Knight.. "They're who women reach for when the bullets start flying." Most romances introduce their hero with a very clear indication of his alpha status...

Study after study has demonstrated the erotic appeal of male dominance. Women prefer the voices of dominant men, the scent of dominant men, the movement and gait of dominant men, and the facial features of dominant men. The social organization of most primates features a very clear dominance hierarchy... it appears that almost all female brains are susceptible to dominance cues. "I met [Bill Clinton] as part of a government panel while he was president. I'm a lesbian, but the powerful attraction I felt towards him for an instant made me question whether I really was!" ...

The book talks about the "50 shades" and all the rip-offs involving billionaire alphas. In many cases, they come across as having an almost "otherworldly" level of alpha-hood.

Regarding the current fad of supernatural romance novels (which is so large it actually has it's own section in bookstores):

Consider paranormal heroes: wizards, necromancers, werewolves, and - most common of all - vampires. These supernatural males are alphas among alphas. Vampires are exceptionally strong and powerful. They're often immortal. They know how to fight and annihilate the competition. They are fully capable of protecting the ones they love from a range of mundane and otherworldly dangers.. "Edward Cullen has, for millions of passion-starved better halves worldwide, become the undead embodiment of everything the contemporary schulb seems to have shed: danger, poetry, strength, speed, eternal devotion, and an insatiable hunger for the jugular,".. Werewolves are also alphas - even when they're not... Every pack has a true designated alpha wolf. However, any werewolf has monsterous strength and ferocity and refuses to back down from a challenge.

Regarding men in prison:

What about bona fide bad boys- serial killers, violent offenders, and rapists? It turns out that killing people is an effective way to elicit the attention of many women: virtually every serial killer, including Ted Bundy, Charles Manson, and David Berkowitz, have received love letters from large numbers of female fans... Among the Yanomamo people of the Amazon, men who have killed the most other men have the most wives and the most offspring. Indeed, killers are generally regarded by the Yanomamo women as the most desirable. Men from the Ilongots of the Philippines were required to present the shrunken head of a man they had killed to a woman during courtship.

But readers of romance novels are quick to point out that they certainly don't want their heroes to be rapists or murderers. They're willing to tolerate a little misogyny and jerkdom in their heros at the beginning of a story, as long as they don't stay that way after they meet the heroine. In fact, being alpha is only help the full hero package. To truely pass the [female brain turn-on test], the hero must find his inner goo.

And some very non-Red Pill ideas:

Taming the wild coconut

In psychologist David Buss' classic cross-cultural survey of mate preferences across thirty-seven different cultures, women's number one preference in men was "kindness and understanding." If that's the case, what happened to cartoonist Robert Crumb?

...

Crumb clearly never read romances or he would have known that when it comes to women's preferences, they don't just want a nice guy - they want an alpha who learns to be nice to her. In other words, women want their romance heros to be like coconuts: hard and tough on the outside, but soft and sweet on the inside. But the hero's sweet interior can't be available to just anyone. Only the heroine gets to crack him open. The hero is granted free reign to be a badass with everyone else, as long as he's tender and attentive with the heroine... Consider this scene from The Serpent Prince:

He stumbled forward and dropped to his kneed before her. "I'm sorry," she started, and then realized she was speaking over his words. "Stay." He grasped her shoulders with both hands, squeezing as if he couldn't believe she was solid. "Stay with me. I love you. God, I love you. Lucy. I can't..." Her heart seemed to expand with his words. "I'm sorry, I..." "I can't live without you," he was saying, his lips skimming her face. "I tried. There isn't any light without you." "I won't leave again"... "I love you." "You are my salvation"

That would be considered laughably beta and weak by the Red Pill, or by most men, in fact. She basically has him wrapped around her finger.

The coconut template of romance heroes has been central to romance novels for a long time.

Though "kindness and understanding" are attractive to women by themselves, they are usually most effective at activating the [female attraction cues] when a man's sweet interior is packages together with the tough coconut shell of alpha-hood.

The book also goes into the traits of the female heroine. The most important one being that she has something special that he sees inside her. He is hooked on her. I interpreted this as an ego validation for women, as well as an indication that he would never stray because no other woman in the world is like her. The evo-psych side of my brain says that this is an indication of his undying intention to be her long-term provider, which has obvious advantages for women raising children to adulthood. So the hero is: tough and confident (which allows her to depend on him, protect her from external threats, allows her to remain confident that no matter how bad the world gets he can handle it and she doesn't ever need to worry, he also has the genetics that will be useful for her children, everyone looks up to him - i.e. preselection), he's also emotionally bound to her and only her (the ego-validation of being special, he will stick around for the long-term, provide for their children, this isn't a "short term fling" kind of thing).

All of this makes me think: the blue pill downplays the importance of being alpha, and the red pill downplays the importance and value of "emotionally vulnerable" beta qualities. It's true that women send fan letters to serial killers, but I wonder how many of them were looking for an emotionally vulnerable side to him - that he's a coconut? It also makes me a little annoyed at the roles that women want in a male (or at least the perfect, idealized male) when we have to simultaneously manage two very different types of traits.