Poll of the Day > Elon Musk has become a red pill icon

(+) Yeah! (+)

emagdnE posted...

Really guys? The Wachowski Brothers are now the Wachowski Sisters and you find it hard to believe that they inserted their own feelings of identity disillusionment into their story?

Come on.

Turns out he was Obadiah Stane all along. Oopsies~.

Best description of Musk, ever.


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emagdnE posted...

Really guys? The Wachowski Brothers are now the Wachowski Sisters and you find it hard to believe that they inserted their own feelings of identity disillusionment into their story?

Come on.

To be fair, Rev has a tendency to very narrowly interpret things then argue vociferously against any other interpretations, regardless of how much more substantiated and credible those other interpretations are. This is absolutely par for the course for him.

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But I'm pretty sure the Matrix was the bible story...

Are they saying Jesus was trans(cendental)?

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The irony of someone making a movie with a direct metaphor about accepting reality to later chop their penis off and take hormones because they can't accept their biological sex, to then get mad about people who use that metaphor, ok?

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I respect the career he is involved in, but he is hard to like as a person.

adjl posted...

To be fair, Rev has a tendency to very narrowly interpret things then argue vociferously against any other interpretations, regardless of how much more substantiated and credible those other interpretations are. This is absolutely par for the course for him.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/3-poll-of-the-day/78697426/939314552

ChimeraBlue posted...

I respect the career he is involved in, but he is hard to like as a person.

Yeah referencing a movie makes you an absolutely horrible person.
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Aculo posted...

The irony of someone making a movie with a direct metaphor about accepting reality to later chop their penis off and take hormones because they can't accept their biological sex, to then get mad about people who use that metaphor, ok?

What?? The whole point is they are accepting themselves as female transgenders. Theres nothing ironic about that. Thats the metaphor.


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Revelation34 posted...

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/3-poll-of-the-day/78697426/939314552

Yeah referencing a movie makes you an absolutely horrible person.

No, blatant bigotry is hard for decent people to tolerate.

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TheWitchMorgana posted...

i mean let's be real most of these dudes have never thought critically about any media they consume

people get upset at the idea that a work of art could have a meaning that isn't obvious because they think that anything they themselves didn't pick up on couldn't have really been there. it's very disheartening and honestly seems like it's pushing back against critical thought

saying people cant critically think about the media they consume because they didnt interpret it the exact same way you did is really silly

also I dont think anyone is upset over this lol

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I'm surprised no one has yet brought up the character of Switch, who originally was supposed to "switch" from a man in the real world to a woman in the matrix. She was an androgynous woman in the finished movie.

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ZBug_ posted...

No, blatant bigotry is hard for decent people to tolerate.

LMAO.
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Revelation34 posted...

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/3-poll-of-the-day/78697426/939314552

Yeah referencing a movie makes you an absolutely horrible person.

Maybe not, but publicly accusing a rescue cave worker of being a pedophile on twitter does.

ChimeraBlue posted...

Maybe not, but publicly accusing a rescue cave worker of being a pedophile on twitter does.

I can't believe I forget about that...

Revelation34 posted...

It's a retcon.

Bingo. And this wouldn't be the first, or even biggest example of retcon attempts, or creator's buying into their own cleverness or mythos that others have forced on them.

For the record, Lana said at the 2016 GLADD awards that she didn't mind that people were now looking at their prior works through a trans lens because "art isn't static." Which is fine and all, but themes and motifs you put into a film ARE static, regardless of if someone interprets it a different way down the line, or sees something that seems to align with some view or belief.

Hell, I read "scholarly" papers in college that suggested Dopey of the Seven Dwarves represented a penis/male sexuality, because he's the only bald one and likes Snow White's kisses a lot. While this is far more out there than suggesting The Matrix is a trans love letter,t he point is it's practically a sub-category of film study in terms of trying to retroactively apply deeper or hidden meanings to films.

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imagine calling yourself a film expert but not knowing what a retcon is lol

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TheWitchMorgana posted...

imagine calling yourself a film expert but not knowing what a retcon is lol

I was piggybacking off of how Rev used it, which gets the point across, but obviously not being quite what a retcon is.

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Total Recall did it first.
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I was joking when I used the word retcon. Post #15 covers what it actually is.
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Revelation34 posted...

LMAO.

Im just saying. When the creator comes out and basically says The blue pill was symbolic for accepting transgenders
and someone else goes Well in that case Ill take the red pill!.
You cant be surprised that people would be mad at the guy.

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I thought we were just talking about this:

"The red pill andblue pill is a meme representing a choice between taking either a "red pill" that reveals an unpleasant truth, or taking a "blue pill" to remain in blissful ignorance. The terms are directly derived from a scene in the 1999 film The Matrix."

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But it sounds more like Elon Musk wants to dive into the blue pill of fleeing to safer texas instead of handling the truth of prolonged lockdown

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ZBug_ posted...

Im just saying. When the creator comes out and basically says The blue pill was symbolic for accepting transgenders
and someone else goes Well in that case Ill take the red pill!.
You cant be surprised that people would be mad at the guy.

So the statement was that transgenders are ignorant?
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The pill fad is so dumb.

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Revelation34 posted...

So the statement was that transgenders are ignorant?

The statement was that imagination is neat and reality is hard.
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So why does the internet hate Elon Musk now? Because he said something about taking a red pill? How fucking vague is that? Did he say anything else... or?

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GameReviews posted...

So why does the internet hate Elon Musk now? Because he said something about taking a red pill? How fucking vague is that? Did he say anything else... or?

He might have called a rescue diver who was rescuing trapped children a paedo once because he was salty they did it before he did.

ChaosAzeroth posted...

He might have called a rescue diver who was rescuing trapped children a paedo once because he was salty they did it before he did.

Oh yeah that was shitty .

Not really recent

since then he has done meme review, that was kinda cool.

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deoxxys posted...

Oh yeah that was shitty .

Not really recent

since then he has done meme review, that was kinda cool.

True but people are slow to forgive people who consistently come off as egomaniacal when their ego goes that far.

I also heard that his plants are a safety nightmare. And now this.

The guy at the very least is annoying and usually comes off as if he thinks he's some divine gift to people. Guy might be smart, but I don't think he's as smart as he thinks he is in some areas at least. Didn't the guy compare himself to Iron Man ffs?

I think if anything the metaphor would be taking the red pill means transitioning, being true to yourself and living a significantly shittier life, or taking the blue pill, not transitioning and living a normal life as a lie.

And also apparently getting magic transgender hacker powers

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ChaosAzeroth posted...

Didn't the guy compare himself to Iron Man ffs?

I dunno to be honest, I dont follow him

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deoxxys posted...

I dunno to be honest, I dont follow him

I don't either but a lot of people like to talk about the crap he says, and there was a whole video on YouTube about it.

ChaosAzeroth posted...

And now this.

But he literally did nothing wrong in this case. Referencing a movie is nothing.
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Revelation34 posted...

But he literally did nothing wrong in this case. Referencing a movie is nothing.

Oh I mixed up thread somehow, my bad.

I'm very tired.

I mean the whole fascist statement and moving to Texas stuff.

lol liberals are actually selling their teslas over this, the triggering is over 9000

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Wanded posted...

lol liberals are actually selling their teslas over this, the triggering is over 9000

Source?

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Sarcasthma posted...

Source?

nytimes.com/2020/05/19/technology/elon-musk-tesla-red-pill.html

Seems more like 'get rid of Elon' then 'sell your tesla' but I skimmed it.

This is such an overreaction to such an open-ended statement.

Even if people's presumptions were correct, it says more about them if they think so terribly of someone just for having a different point of view.

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Sarcastic posted...

nytimes.com/2020/05/19/technology/elon-musk-tesla-red-pill.html

Seems more like 'get rid of Elon' then 'sell your tesla' but I skimmed it.

Could you post the story here? It won't let me read it without logging in first.

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Sarcasthma posted...

Could you post the story here? It won't let me read it without logging in first

Try affixing this to the beginning of the above link:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.

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https://www.google.com/amp/s/www./20/05/19/technology/elon-musk-tesla-red-pill.html

well that didnt work

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deoxxys posted...

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www./20/05/19/technology/elon-musk-tesla-red-pill.html

well that didnt work

Sure didn't since it's missing murmurs.com

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*nytimes.com stupid lack of editing ability

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https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2020/05/19/technology/elon-musk-tesla-red-pill.html

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deoxxys posted...

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2020/05/19/technology/elon-musk-tesla-red-pill.html

Worked for me. I am on mobile though, let's see if I can copy paste.

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Tesla Owners Try to Make Sense of Elon Musks Red Pill Moment
A liberal status symbol now has a founder who is moving to the right.

By Nellie Bowles

• May 19, 2020

Owning a Tesla, the luxurious electric car, is a major liberal status symbol. It signals nothing more than good taste the perfect balance of wealth with care for fossil fuels. But the man behind the brand is crafting a very different persona online that may now prove to be a challenge for his fans.
Elon Musk, the bombastic head of Tesla and SpaceX, exhorted his 34 million Twitter followers on Sunday to take the red pill. The comment was quickly embraced by his followers, including Ivanka Trump, President Trumps elder daughter, who announced that she had taken the pill already.
The exchange referred to a scene from The Matrix, the 1999 science fiction action film. But the meaning of red pill, and the idea of taking it, have since percolated in online forums and become a deeply political metaphor. And with Mr. Musk and Ms. Trump, the phrase is now lodged more fully into the mainstream.

So Tesla owners are having to grapple with a car that carries a few new connotations.
Honestly, Musk is becoming a liability and the Tesla board needs to seriously consider ousting him, wrote Markos Moulitsas, author of The Resistance Handbook: 45 Ways to Fight Trump. And I say that as a proud owner of a Tesla and a SpaceX fanatic who truly appreciates what hes built.

So what is the red pill?
In The Matrix, the movies hero, Neo, played by Keanu Reeves, is given the option to take a pill that lets him see the truth.
The world he thinks is real turns out to be an entertaining lie; his body is actually trapped in a farm where people are being used as human batteries. Taking the blue pill would let him return to living in the ignorant but blissful lie, while taking the red pill would launch him into an arduous journey through a brutal but fulfilling reality.
The idea of taking the red pill later grew to mean waking up to societys grand lies. It was embraced by the right, especially by members of its youngest cohort who organized and spent their time in online forums like Reddit and 4chan.

The truth to be woken up to varied, but it ended up usually being about gender. To be red-pilled meant you discovered that feminism was a scam that ruined the lives of boys and girls. In this view, for a male to refuse the red pill was to be weak.
Red Pill forums were often filled with deeply misogynistic and often racist diatribes. The more extreme elements splintered into groups like involuntary celibates (incels) or
male separatists (Men Going Their Own Way, or MGTOWs). Conferences like the 21 Convention and its sister convention, Make Women Great Again, sprang up to gather red-pilled men. Being red-pilled became a sort of umbrella term for all of it.
As these conversations seeped into the mainstream, pulled along by a host of other internet language from message boards to establishment Republican conversations on sites like Breitbart, the meaning broadened and got watered down. To be red-pilled can now mean being broadly skeptical of experts, to be distrustful of the mainstream press or to see hypocrisy in social liberalism.
Whats going on with Elon Musk?
Mr. Musk has been pretty wild online for years now, which has made him a major internet celebrity with devoted fans who call themselves Musketeers. There are fan pages like Musk Memes with nearly 100,000 followers, and a Reddit page with 200,000 members in constant, extremely active conversation.

Most recently, Mr. Musk has been a prominent skeptic online of the coronavirus, calling the response to it a panic and dumb and wrongly predicting close to zero new cases by the end of April. As of Tuesday, there were more than 90,000 deaths from the virus and more than 1.5 million cases in the United States alone.

Ivanka Trump replied to Mr. Musk that she had already taken the red pill.
The night before Teslas earnings were released last month, Mr. Musk tweeted an anti-lockdown rallying cry: FREE AMERICA NOW. He had a showdown with local lawmakers, threatening to move Tesla headquarters out of California and deciding to reopen a Tesla factory in Fremont, Calif., despite the local countys restrictions to prevent the virus from spreading. When State Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez objected on May 9 with an obscene tweet, Mr. Musk responded, Message received.

Defending his reopening of the Tesla factory, Mr. Musk wrote on Twitter that he would be on the factory floor and offered himself up to authorities. I will be on the line with everyone else, he posted on May 11. If anyone is arrested, I ask that it only be me.


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(Continued)
This month, he and his girlfriend, Claire Boucher, the musician known as Grimes, had a child and named him X A-12. And Mr. Musk announced that Tesla shares were too high and that he was selling almost all his possessions to the point of owning no house.
We have a phrase, its E.M.M. Elon Moves Markets, said Bill Selesky, an analyst at Argus Research who tracks how Mr. Musks messages impact Teslas stock price. People want to listen to him no matter what he says. He tends to be thought of as a great visionary.
Mr. Selesky said even Mr. Musks detractors parsed every tweet and utterance. Plus, if you have a Tesla, nobody can ever complain about you because youre good for society, he added.
This leads back to Mr. Musks message on Sunday, telling his followers to take the red pill.
Do The Matrix creators like this?
No. Lilly Wachowski, a Matrix co-creator, told Mr. Musk and Ms. Trump in colorful language on Twitter that they could take a hike.

Is red pill a Silicon Valley thing?
To some extent.
There has long been a strain of mens rights activism in Silicon Valley, exemplified by James Damore, a former Google engineer who was fired after writing a memo arguing that the reason there are fewer female engineers is biological differences rather than discrimination.
Mr. Damore became a folk hero for a simmering movement in the technology industry of people who thought the efforts toward 50/50 representation at tech companies were absurd. Cassie Jaye, who calls herself a former feminist, made a 2016 documentary about the Red Pill community and said it had flourished in the tech world.

But the more common phrase in Silicon Valley to signal contrarian thinking is narrative violation, which is often used to describe an event that cuts against the mainstream medias consensus on a topic. The idea is that there is a story being told about the world and how it works, but that the story is too simplistic to be entirely true and an event occasionally pops up to remind people of that.
Why does any of this matter?
Few products today are as deeply entwined with a persons brand as Tesla is with Mr. Musk, and so his comments can feel personal for Tesla drivers.

As a Tesla owner, a 47-year-old male recovering from Covid-19, and someone very concerned simultaneously about the environment, the economy, my kids and my parents future, this aint great, said Jeff Guilfoyle, a product manager at FireEye in San Diego. This disease is no joke, and the long-term health impacts are unknown for survivors.
Many have implored Mr. Musk online to stop.
Raja Sohail Abbas, the chief executive of an outpatient psychiatric clinic in Allentown, Pa., wrote: I am a Tesla owner and love the company. You have to stop being an idiot about this.
Tesla owner and Fan here, but this was a disappointing tweet despite the frustrations of and holdups, added Alex Goodchild, a D.J. in Brooklyn. Words are weapons especially when used during situations like the one were currently experiencing. You sound just like Trump in this tweet.
The debate has riven the Tesla community.
The last two months, theres been this polarization in the Elon Musk fan club, said Paula Timothy-Mellon, a technology consultant who moderates that LinkedIn-based fan club, which has 22,000 members. There are those who are believers in these California guidelines and there are those in favor of his push to re-open Tesla.

Driving a Tesla often carries great symbolism for the owner (and observers).
If you own a Tesla, you feel you are directly connected to Elon Musk and people think that Tesla owners are directly connected to the politics of the C.E.O., said Sam Kelly, a Tesla owner and investor based in Spain who posts under the name SamTalksTesla.
He added that he did not think the red pill comment meant any big new political awakening from Mr. Musk.
Asked to explain his thinking, Mr. Musk pasted an image of the Urban Dictionary definition of red pill in an email. It read:
Red pill has become a popular phrase among cyberculture and signifies a free-thinking attitude, and a waking up from a normal life of sloth and ignorance. Red pills prefer the truth, no matter how gritty and painful it may be.

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Sarcasthma posted...

Could you post the story here? It won't let me read it without logging in first.

I mean is it really that hard to believe?

OhhhJa posted...

I mean is it really that hard to believe?

The way Wanded worded it, he made it sound like it was some widespread thing.

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Anyone still think Elon is a decent person after reading all that?

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ZBug_ posted...

Anyone still think Elon is a decent person after reading all that?

I agree he's a terrible person for referencing a movie.
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