Musk just reanimated a dead meme. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)
Lately, Elon Musk’s erratic tweeting has been generating headlines, as the billionaire has been calling for America to return to work amidst a global pandemic (won’t somebody please think of the shareholders!) and announcing his son’s name as “X Æ A-12” via Twitter - it’s still unclear which syllable Musk and Grimes use to refer to their son.
Musk’s recent Twitter drama was especially amusing, as Musk randomly tweeted to his followers to “take the red pill,” accompanied by a rose emoji, often associated with the socialist cause.
So, why was Musk referencing The Matrix and making vague political allusions?
Well, the “Red Pill” has long been used as a metaphor for accepting harsh realities over blissful ignorance, a meme often utilized by the alt-right, who seek to market their unpleasant ideas as “the hard truth,” rather than deranged incel fantasies which paint women as biologically inferior.
There’s a spectrum of shaky beliefs associated with the Red Pill meme, and it’s impossible to know what Musk is really referring to, because he deliberately left it open to interpretation. But Ivanka Trump gave a deliriously cheerful response, gleefully acknowledging that she has swallowed whatever bizarre delusion fermenting in the brains of people who unironically use the phrase, “take the red pill.”
Hilariously, Lilly Wachowski, co-creator of The Matrix, joined the conversation to put both pill-poppers in their place, also sharing a link to Brave Space Alliance, an LGBT social service organization, and encouraged people to donate to the cause.
It’s a bizarre, bitter irony that The Matrix, the creation of two trans-women who imbued their own sense of alienation and displacement into the story, has been completely co-opted by the alt-right, who don’t even recognize the existence of transgender people.
In The Matrix, the detachment that Neo felt, his suspicion that something was ever-so-slightly off about his world, proved deeply relatable, reaching far beyond the intention of the original allegory.
Perhaps it’s not surprising that the “Red Pill” meme proved so popular in the dark corners of the internet; The Matrix highlighted the unreality of modern life, the sense of isolation that our society often induces, the nameless dread that draws so many into believing hateful narratives.
Memes tend to evolve quickly, becoming distorted far beyond their original meaning, and in a sense, it doesn’t really matter that the “Red Pill” was meant to symbolize the brutal reality of gender transition. Sadly, it means something different now.
But whatever Musk’s intentions, I think we can all agree that it is incredibly embarrassing for an adult to be tweeting about the “Red Pill” in 2020, a fact recognized by Grimes’ mother, Sandy Garossino, in a now-deleted tweet that seemed to be directly referencing Musk.
Outdated Matrix references aside, I suppose it’s somewhat comforting to know that even the rich and famous are losing their minds during quarantine; the relentless boredom is sending us all down some weird online rabbit holes.
