If your reading from the future and the thread is no longer stickied, search for the thread "The Guardian: Swallowing the Red Pill: a journey to the heart of modern misogyny" and read the interview in full.

From that interview; this article was written

First of all this is by no means limited to the Guardian, ALL MEDIA ARE LIKE THIS (AMALT)

Background: But in case you haven't worked out yet we are no longer in an "old" media world but a "new" media world.

In the old world News was information that you paid for. You paid a shilling or a quarter and a kid gave you a paper and you received information. That was the deal, currency for information. And you paid up front. The only way that news outlets could entice you was with headlines and pictures, but at the end of the day you could physically pick up the paper and skim it before purchasing it, so the actual content and information had to be there.

Now we are in "new" media, when the internet first took off news papers, just live everything else, just decided to put what was in print, up on a website. This turned out to be a mistake as people now had the option to buy a paper, or read the paper for free on their screens.

Surprising exactly no-one, people like free stuff.

To cater for the overnight realisation that their products were now worthless, news outlets adapted. Now they longer sold news, they became farmers. Farmers of consumers attention, and just like farmers, packaged that up and sold it. Sold in the form of ads and consumer behaviour in the form of meta data. Just like all free things, you are now the product.

A "news" site now exists purely to draw you in, and sell whatever information it can glean from you as well as selling ads. The "News" is merely the bait to draw you in, and just like bait bears no resemblance to it's original animal, the "news" they show bears no resemblance to what actually occoured. The bait merely exists to captivate your attention for as long as possible. And the best way to do this is to manipulate your emotions, mainly anger as this is the most effective emotion to trigger.

This is what clickbait is. But despite the fact that morons do it, it is actually a skill, just for shits and giggles I'm going to dissect the recent Guardian article on this place as we have an excellent perspective on it, as we have 3 sources, we have the original, unabridged (unless RPS is lying about this which is a possibility) interview, we have the final "news" piece, and we also have our own knowledge on the subject matter. Most of the time you only get the 1 source, the final "news" piece.

I'll dissect the article in the comments for space reasons, but if your young or naive, this should be eye opening to you, remember this every time you read an article.

And this is by no means an exhaustive list of everything that can be done to change what is to what they want it to be.

Original article will be quoted

and my interjections will be below.





How shitty are men really?

straight away the author is framing this piece as a discussion on all Men. The article is focusing on a small subreddit. yet straight away the article is linking it to all Men, AND just how bad they are. Notice the "thinking past the sale" tactic that was slipped in? he's not asking "are men shitty" he's implying that you already agree, he's focusing on just how shitty they are. This is the same as asking a Girl if she want's to meet for drinks on Tuesday or Thursday. It's a yes/yes proposition. Your not asking them to agree or disagree with you, your assuming they agree with you and asking by how much

The question hung in the air, invisible but omnipresent, like the smell of a garbage fire from a nearby town.

A seemingly innocuous statement, except for the fact that a question requires 2 parties, one to ask the question and one to listen. Who is asking the question here? the author is asking a question and acting like someone else asked it. They are creating a situation where you believe that people are asking just how bad men really are. Have you ever heard this question asked before this article? but now there is a vivid image and smell of it. All created by the author who wants you to read the rest of the article with this in mind.

Consider that the "point" of this article is an investigative piece on a subculture that most readers haven't heard of, and an interview.

This is a deliberate way of shaping the readers opinion before the article has even begun, instead of flat out saying "I don't like the Manosphere" which is what he really means, he's influencing you to come to that conclusion.

By 2016, a series of catchphrases had come to dominate the chaotic state of gender politics – “male privilege”, “rape culture”, “men’s rights” – but confusion reigned. And in the middle of this confusion, a group of anonymous men retreated to The Red Pill, an online community hosted on Reddit, to revel in their loathing.

This is a nothing sentence, the author is covering up their lack of background knowledge about gender politics to try and create a background. The bolded sentences are literally just made up. Who is in the middle? how does he know we revel in our loathing? This is just complete bullshit.

The name derives from a scene in the 1999 film The Matrix, in which Laurence Fishburne offers Keanu Reeves a choice: “You take the blue pill – the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill – you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.”

Nothing to say about this

The rabbit hole, in this case, is the “reality” that women run the world without taking responsibility for it, and that their male victims are not permitted to complain.

I'm not sure where he got this from, I've never heard or read anything TRP related that says that Women run the world. The not taking responsibility part is fairly accurate and the complaining part is made up as far as I can tell.

A rabbit hole is an apt analogy for this sentence though, as he links together 3 completely different statements and links them together. This makes it hard to "pick and choose" it's a method of linking something good with something bad to force you to take the bad.

If you walk into a car dealership, you'll get the car, the FREE window tinting, the FREE Alloy wheels, and the extended warranty.

No-one wants the warranty, but it's part of the FREE package so you have to accept the bad with the good. Hey Presto, now you've got the extended warranty.

This makes The Red Pill a continuous, multi-voiced, up-to-the-minute male complaint nestled at the heart of the so-called manosphere – a network of websites preoccupied with both the men’s rights movement and how to pick up women.

This is just completely retarded, The bolded section clearly shows an inference is being made, but compare the statement that the Red Pill is "a continuous, multi-voiced, up-to-the-minute male complaint nestled at the heart of the so-called manosphere" with the preceding statement of "is the “reality” that women run the world without taking responsibility for it, and that their male victims are not permitted to complain."

How does that reality lead to the Red Pill being the "continuous, multi-voiced, up-to-the-minute male complaint"

It doesn't. It's faulty logic and not even close to being explained. What it does is link the Red Pill firmly at the centre of the "Manosphere" which leads into the next sentence.

The manosphere’s most hateful opinions tend to generate the most attention

Not related to anything but Pot. Kettle. Black.

I'm looking at you Jessica Valenti.

The manosphere’s most hateful opinions tend to generate the most attention – like Roosh V’s notion that it should be legal to rape a woman on private property (a bit of hateful stupidity which he later claimed to be parody).

There is a pretty large divide between the Red Pill and Roosh. From the outside it's debatable wether or not it's fair to lump them together, identical twins look identical untill you spend time with them.

But this is a great way to link two unrelated things together. The previous sentence stated that TRP was at the centre of the Manosphere, and then this sentence assumes that the reader already knows that Roosh is also part of the Manosphere, and reminds the reader that the two exist within the same sphere. Without directly linking the two. This is handy when you want to link two things together in someone's mind without any evidence. Remember mud sticks. The Nimble navigators will recognise this from the absurd Trump/Hitler comparisons. If you compare two things together, people will remember that they were compared together, not that the comparison was bullshit.

Case in point. Think of an oil that you would use as a lubricant. Did you think of 2 lubed up sweaty Men fucking? You've seen the worlds LubeOil next to the words Gay for so long, if you didn't think of it then, you will now. You remember the comparison, not the reasoning behind it.

In February, Roosh V attempted to organise a meet-up of like-minded men on the grounds of the provincial legislature in Toronto, but he had to cancel the event when a local band of female boxers threatened to disrupt the event with violence.

Nothing to say about this, I'm actually surprised he left in the part about the female boxers threatening violence instead of the term "widespread outrage and protests"

But judging The Red Pill by the most extreme statements of its members is, if not unfair, then at least inaccurate. There is plenty of vileness, to be sure – elaborate conspiracy theories formed out of pure misogyny and outright hatred of female independence. But the bulk of the comments are much more muted and, frankly, pathetic.

This is a great example of a backhanded compliment. He's starting with the perfectly reasonable assumption that we can't judge everyone by it's extremes (which he reminds are extreme and vile) then states that the majority (which we assume is going to be the opposite of extreme, which is moderate) is in fact "pathetic"

This is a very sneaky way to call everyone A) Vile or B) pathetic while maintaining the illusion of a morally correct and well thought out judgement. It's essentially saying your Mother is of a gargantuam mass who's promiscuity exceeds known levels. Doesn't matter how I dress it up, your Mum's still a fat whore.

In the hours upon hours I spent wandering this online neighbourhood, I saw mostly feral boys wandering the digital ruins of exploded masculinity, howling their misery, concocting vast nonsense about women, and craving the tiniest crumb of self-confidence and fellow-feeling. The discussion threads are a mixed bag of rage and curiosity: screeds against feminists, advice on how to masturbate less, theories on why women fantasize about rape, descriptions of arguments with girlfriends, guides to going up to strangers on the street, and, most of all, workout schedules and diet regimes.

Again this is just even more thinly disguised insults.

I've highlighted the most dishonest part though. In the author's own words, the majority of the time he spend "wandering the neighbourhood" the majority of what he saw was workout and diet tips. This would make TRP an exercise forum by volume would it not?

Now compare the number of words he used to describe "most of what he saw" 9 words.

The remainder was 81 words to describe, a minority of the subreddit. He may as well have been describing all of Reddit as TRP "with some cat pictures making up the majority" It's actually stunning in the boldness of it because those 9 words refute the entirety of the rest of his article.

You heard it here first folks the Guardian says The Red Pill is "most of all, workout schedule and diet regimes"

Reading The Red Pill, then, offers two possible answers to the question “how shitty are men really?” The first situates The Red Pill as another toxic technoculture on a spectrum of digital misogyny: on Twitter, any woman who says anything even moderately controversial will receive torrents of direct physical threats as a matter of course. Sites such as 4chan exist mainly to post thousands of revenge porn images without consent. Gamers on Xbox Live will be sexually harassed, inevitably.

Remember the first line about creating a question and a discussion about your own question? well here's it's natural conclusion, the answer to the question he created and acted as if someone else asked.

The answer to the question of how shitty men are, from this perspective, is “really pretty shitty”.

I could write paragraphs about this tactic, but as usual the Simpsons already did it

"How shitty are Men Really?" - Mr. Snrub.

"Very Shitty" - Mr. Burns.

But an entirely different approach emerges with a slight shift in emphasis: how shitty are men really? That is, how does these men’s behaviour online translate into non-digital life ? The Red Pill poses one of the absolute conundrums of our time: are we our real selves on the internet, or are we not?

Only at the end of the article are we asked a reflective question, after the thousands of words of shaping and insults and assassination.

This reminds me of Clockwork Orange where the guy is forced to watch hours if violence and then asked "Do you like violence" It's about the most leading question you could ask someone.

Yet again the Simpsons said it best

Imagine if every school leaver was forced to watch that for 10 hours before speaking to a guidance councellor.

The head moderator of The Red Pill goes by the handle Morpheus Manfred, and when he agreed to give me an interview it was only by online chat. Anonymity is sacred; facelessness is the sacrifice it demands. He moderates the community’s 141,966 (and counting) members, and like most of them, describes himself as white, early 30s, male and conservative (he would have preferred Rand Paul to Donald Trump, but he likes Trump’s “watch-it-burn” style).

Now we get to the actual interview which is the only "meat" of the article and actual source for information.

It's a very long interview which you can read the unabridged version in the thread referenced at the very start, but out of that entire interview only a fraction was included in the main article. And the final question was this:

Me: But surely there’s a line somewhere. I mean, the real feelings being expressed here are hostility to women.

Now the interview has to end regarding TRP's hostility to Women.

This is the "only Rosie O'Donnell" moment which unfortunately can't make it through an editor.

Morpheus claims that The Red Pill helped him find a longtime girlfriend, and that The Red Pill is ultimately little more than an online version of locker-room talk.

He didn't "claim" that, he "said" that. This is a great way to insinuate someone is a liar without backing it up. This is the same as the "alleged" perpetrator.

It’s funny, because Jessica, my editor at the Guardian, had the same idea. Wasn’t The Red Pill just an updated version of locker-room talk? No, I said, it’s nothing like locker-room talk. Well, she asked, what’s locker-room talk like, then?

In the paragraph before Morpheus said something and that was "claimed"

In this paragraph we've got a 3rd party subject who's ideas are direct and unchallenged. Jessica hasn't "claimed" her ideas, she has stated them and the author has accepted them. Jessica, the 3rd party source, is being held up as a more reliable source, on the authors say so, then a direct quote by an interview subject.

And again, this is another Mr. Snrub moment, it's a sock puppet argument, you are creating a voice to ask the question you want asked. Oddly convenient that the author claimed "Jessica" said what she said. (notice I cast doubt on the authors premise with the use of the word "claimed")

Locker-room talk goes like this: you say to your friend, my God, did you see the tits on that yoga instructor, and your friend says, it hurts you, doesn’t it, and you say it does, it does, and he says you know I’ve sucked tits like that before, and you say yeah right and he says really and you say who and he says in Brazil and you say of course it would be an unverifiable claim, and he shrugs and you laugh and he laughs.

Is that how locker room talk goes? or is that as you state, an unverifiable claim from Brazil?

The quantity of locker-room talk is inversely proportional to familiarity with women.

That is a pretty specific statement that needs to be backed up or explained.

So, as you fall in love, maybe even get married, it no longer becomes feasible to talk with friends about women’s bodies in such specific detail because, say, your friend works for your wife, and you don’t want him thinking about her cleavage when she’s firing him.

Seems fine on the surface as an explanation, except when you look at the example and the word "say"

He's making a judgement based on his own experiences and morals and applying that to everyone elses locker room talk.

What is he basing that expansion from him to everyone else on?

But very quickly – mid-30s, really – a new locker-room talk emerges. The new locker-room talk goes like this: you ask your friend what summer programming do you have your daughters in, and your friend says I’m trying to find something with science in it, and you say, yeah, you gotta fight those cultural assumptions about girls and STEM, and he says totally, and you say I’m just trying to do little things like nature walks and trips to the science center, and he says we should go together some time, and you say totally. And then you’re taking your daughters to the science center and a gorgeous woman walks by, and you look at your friend, and your friend looks at you, and you don’t have to say a thing.

This sounds awfully like a personal anecdote being used to justify everyone's actions. Why would his experiences influence yours without an explanation?

I’m not saying this is the way it should be.

Except you just did. Just because you say something shouldn't happen doesn't negate the effects of you, literally, just doing that thing.

Frankly, it’s humiliating for everybody involved. But there is a truth there: if you have a working dick and a working soul, you’d better get used to living with contradictions.

This could be leading somewhere, an actual point.

It is exactly this capacity for contradiction that the boys of The Red Pill lack so utterly. Their humourlessness is impressive, given that they mostly post comments about the minutiae of sexual dynamics, which is the substance of almost all comedy.

Nope just another veiled insult.

Remember earlier in the article when he said the majority of the subreddit was about diet and workout?

But hidden in this sentence is a little gem which shines through.

But there is a truth there: if you have a working dick and a working soul, you’d better get used to living with contradictions. It is exactly this capacity for contradiction that the boys of The Red Pill lack so utterly.

Isn't it odd that lacking a capacity for contradiction is painted as a bad thing here?

The author actually acknowledges that there is a contradiction between your dick and your soul, and the best reasoning he can give as to why working through this is a bad thing is:

Their humourlessness is impressive, given that they mostly post comments about the minutiae of sexual dynamics, which is the substance of almost all comedy.

Aside from the fact that the two sentences don't appear to be related, it is one of the lamest justifications to carry on as normal as has ever been spouted.

The next few paragraphs are just filler so I'll skip them.

Definitions like these run into the dozens. Their primary purpose is clarity, obviously. More than lust or hatred, the boys of The Red Pill hunger for clarity. They desire escape from confusion. They desire a system with which to comprehend desire itself. Don’t we all?

Almost as if we have no capacity for contradiction. Which you painted as a bad thing a few paragraphs up.

The next few paragraphs ramble on about shit and situations that are unrelated. I won't go into them individually, but they all serve as reminders of people who "did things" to Woman and who "should have" been punished.

It's just mud slinging which insinuates and leads readers to the conclusion that although the courts handed down their verdicts, and although the evidence just wasn't there, there is an unwritten thread which insinuates that the story is not complete. That justice hasn't been served and that SOMETHING has to be done. The writer will never admit to anything, or directly incite something, but they'll point out that the story is not finished.

What they are doing is insinuating that SOMEONE needs to step up and finish it. It's essentially a way to incite violence without inciting it.

If I chant 1,2,3,4,5 and stop and look at you expectantly what's the next number your going to say? 6 obviously.

But you said 6, I never said 6, I never wanted you to say 6. It's a very sneaky way of leading people to the conclusion that you want them to arrive at. Supposedly of their own free will. Watch out for it.

The rest of the article loses focus and just generally spouts logical bullshit so i'll point them out one by one.

If you dig through the misogyny and the bravado, the boys of The Red Pill want The One. They are as lost in that pursuit as every generation of men has been before them.

This seems a reasonable statement, except it is just another veiled insult. The author is focusing your attention on the fact that we are searching for the one, not question the misogyny and bravado claim.

The Red Pill is hatred of women in the context of men who want nothing more than to please women, and who are living in a world with a sexual marketplace they find deeply anxiety-provoking.

This doesn't make sense. Is he saying Men hate Women in the way Servants hate their Masters?

Briffaut’s Law, another of the key concepts of The Red Pill, encapsulates male powerlessness as an eternal truth: “The female, not the male, determines all the conditions of the animal family. Where the female can derive no benefit from association with the male, no such association takes place.” But Redpillers are responding to a much more novel and contemporary reality that such biological imperatives: they are responding to women having financial and sexual power over their own lives and bodies. And they haven’t dealt with it yet. The term “manosphere” is really a misnomer. “Not-quite-a-manosphere” would be better. What the boys of The Red Pill need, in all honesty, is a massive dose of Romantic poetry. They need a dedicated course of treatment in the novels of Jane Austen and Dostoevsky, combined with significant therapy in negative capability.

Re read these sentences a few times untill they make sense.

Keep reading. Or not, they will never make sense. It is just sophistry, they are using arguments which seem reasonable at first glance but make no sense. If you can tease out a coherent point from that paragraph you are a smarter Man then I.

They need to learn that love is awful, in the both the ancient and modern senses of the world – that love is infinitely more powerful and real than any marketplace, sexual or otherwise.

The old 1 2 punch. This is a good one because it seems reasonable and vaguely intellectual. But it's actually bullshit.

Read the sentences separately;

They need to learn that love is awful, in the both the ancient and modern senses of the world

Not in doubt, that's pretty much TRP in a nutshell

that love is infinitely more powerful and real than any marketplace, sexual or otherwise.

This contradicts the statement that love is awful. Combined this means that Love is awful, but both real and powerful?

They need to read Freud, who wrote that every man wants to murder his father and sleep with his mother and that the only way to be civilized is to recognize that everyone is barbaric way down deep inside. They need to know that desire is a mess, and that everyone suffers from its mess. Instead of culture, the world offers the boys of The Red Pill contempt. Instead of education, outrage. But it’s not just the boys of The Red Pill who need to begin again to learn from the fiasco that is men and women. It’s everybody. It’s the whole world.

Pseudo bullshit. If we take the author at face value, we are to accept the contradiction of dick and soul? It's a lame and begrudging acknowledgement that once you dig down, MAYBE TRP is legit, but the solution is just to sit back and be nice and accept it. Just like that famous EMSK know post about TRP, the "solution" is just to accept the contradiction and do nothing about it, which is back to square 1, and actually a regression because you can see what is going on, and you choose to do nothing about it.

The question the author should have asked (obviously he's not going to because he likes his job) is if this inherent contradiction comes from Women, why don't Women change?

And remember the key 9 words in this article:

and, most of all, workout schedules and diet regimes.

Summary: There is a lot that goes into what you read, you could literally do this with everything you read, including my posts. It is instructive to do it for this guardian article because you have a background knowledge of what is being written about.

Most of what you read, you do not have that background knowledge, so be aware of tricks like this, once you start looking for them you will learn to recognise them.

News do not provide information any more, they take information, and modify it to suit their own ends with bait.

If you get good enough, sometimes it is possible to look at the bait, and reconstruct that information that it once was.