The Brief: To be "pilled" means to be indoctrinated or to gain a new perspective. This term is a reference to the red pill/blue pill scene from The Matrix.
DEEP DIVE
In reference to political awakenings, the suffix “pilled” refers to someone who changes their worldview after learning new information. Though not exclusively associated with these movements, redpilled and other variations have been used widely by the Alt-Right and by men’s rights activists.
The term originated as an allusion to the 1999 film The Matrix. In it, the character Neo is presented with two pills by the character Morpheus who tells him “This is your last chance. After this, there is no turning back. 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.”
To be “redpilled” or X-pilled means to have an eye-opening experience that drastically changes someone’s perspective. “Blackpill” is a popular variation for a pessimistic, doomer outlook on the world. People can attach “pilled” to almost any word to suggest that they’ve been indoctrinated or convinced of a certain way of thinking.
Like others, I've recently become KN95-pilled. But anyone else find that the straps on theirs break pretty frequently?
— Joe Weisenthal (@TheStalwart) February 3, 2021
— Matthew Zeitlin (@MattZeitlin) February 5, 2021
The thing that sucks about being orange pilled is that I find it increasingly difficult to be curious about non-Bitcoin stuff.
— Dim Zayan (@cryptgm) February 10, 2021