So after a discussion on Discord with a very tired Alcotholic, I thought I'd bring the idea here.

So it all started with a conversation about Maroon 5's new album cover with a user asking if Maroon 5 were Men Rights Activists because the album was titled Red Pill Blues. The title is meant to be a reference to the 1999 film The Matrix in which a Red Pill symbolizes the truth of reality while the Blue Pill symbolizes blissful ignorance of illusions. In recent years MRA groups have adopted the Red Pill symbology as a metaphor for the specific moment when they come to the belief that certain gender roles they are expected to conform to (e.g. marriage, monogamy) are intended to benefit women, not themselves.

The user argued that the idea of the Red Pill in its original context (the same context Maroon 5 were using it in) was ruined because MRA groups had adopted it and tainted it. My argument is that MRA groups hadn't tainted the idea, we had by associating with them and allowing them to own it.

The same thing happened with Pepe the Frog, which was a loveable meme everyone used until halfway through 2016 when it was declared an Alt-Right symbol by the media. The Alt-Right hadn't taken it from us, we gave it to them because we stopped using it. It became a hate symbol the second it was labelled as such, because then people stopped using it.

If ISIS started using Looney Tunes imagery in their propaganda would we simply give them Bugs Bunny and the rest of Looney Tunes? God, I hope not.

Society decides what the meaning behind something is, and its time we recognised that and used it to take ownership rather then leaving it for the bigots.
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