There's an incredibly addictive loop to content that makes you mad, makes you fearful, and then soothes those two feelings. Qanon does this a lot. "Vaccines are poison! (fear), they stole the election! (anger), but [insert politician here] has a secret plan to out the cabal and bring military justice and keep us all safe and free (soothing)".

Red and [the other pill that shall not be named] content uses this same loop. Here are statistics on infidelity or paternity fraud or divorce, be mad about it - Here's a diatribe about why women won't fuck short guys, be fearful and afraid - it means you're never going to feel love. In the red pill, that soothing turn is to say, "But don't worry, you can follow our plan of self-improvement to cheat the system and get women and be happy". In [the other pill], that soothing message is more along the lines that it is totally fine to just stop trying.

The alt-right movement does this too. "The BLM movement is a symbol of your oppression! Fight it! Trans people are ruining society! Be fearful and afraid - join our brotherhood and take back what's ours!... Congrats you just became a Neo Nazi full of racism and hate.

The red pill offers proactive solutions that you can use to overcome your issues even if they are unethical considering TRP pushes the dark arts as its main method. The [other pill] soothes with the notion that you don't have to try, it's over, you can relax and just play 12 hours of league of legends in your room every day because you can't do anything about it. This bifurcates two groups of men who are coming to youtube or whatever else totally depressed, lonely, and upset about dating. Some of them want solutions and they only have one set of content. Some of them are struggling too much for solutions. Their social anxiety or their depression is too high, they are too geographically isolated, they've faced too much trauma, or for whatever other reason they want to stop. They want to be told it is okay to quit trying because they can't change the outcome.

And since loneliness is a driving force to being hooked on this content in the first place, one added bonus is that you can find a community of people who have also taken this in and who will be your friends in online spaces. That's important to the grift too, because this isn't a message you hear just once and then you just accept it and go on with your life secure in the knowledge. You have to keep listening, keep watching the videos, reading the blogs, taking in the content. That's the rage loop activated. You need to be surrounded by people who are in agreement with the content and who will rehash and support you in agreeing that this is right and true.

So people join social enclaves (discord, subreddits, whatever else) and gain a social group dedicated to this content. The tiniest bit of critical thinking and logic will break the shelf on the ideology because it was poorly crafted and, well, you know, totally bullshit to begin with. So you need to keep coming back to places where you'll find content that reinforces your negative worldview.

It's also worth mentioning that the anger-fear-soothing loop is SUPER ADDICTIVE. This is fucked up but it makes sense. It's a functional kind of emotional regulation. Think about how politics for centuries has used this method. "Look at those immigrants coming over here taking your jobs!" - meanwhile the rich get richer and we all end up divided and powerless.

When you encounter experiences that make you fearful or angry in real life, you can turn to the "friends" you have online (either parasocial youtube personalities or members of your group) to channel those uncomfortable feelings through the content and achieve a kind of peace. It becomes a huge support system in the mental health of people who are deep down the rabbit hole and one of the main challenges of leaving is learning to use new and different emotional regulation structures, which can be a steep learning curve.

There will be people like myself who will constantly challenge the views of the red pilled individuals and we will feel that by putting across what we believe are sound, logical responses, then these men will benefit and learn and move on and everything will be ok, except that's never the case due to the repetition processes of where these guys constantly congregate online. As the saying goes, you cannot reason someone out of a position that they never reasoned themselves into.

The negative emotions mimics a lot of the patterns within abusive relationships. It borrows a fair bit from BITE models of high control groups. The red pill and the man who had swallowed the pill is the abusive relationship here. Before, indoctrination would occur in the real world where a person had to attend meetings in person but with the internet age, you can do it all from your phone in your own living room which is what makes it so terribly fucking dangerous. It's absolutely devastating to the emotional landscape of an individual, and the manosphere is usually targeting people without great emotional resources in the first place, so climbing out of the hole is pretty fucking difficult. It's sad, really.

If this describes you, get help - it means you have been indoctrinated to believe something which has in turn worsened your situation. You were probably depressed to begin with, but by falling down the many dangerous rabbit holes online, things have gotten beyond awful. Please seek professional help at the earliest opportunity.

Edit: Spellings