Blue pills. Red pills. Black pills.

All part of the manosphere glossary.

A Matrix lexis, sprung from the movie, where Keanu Reeves’ Neo character is offered a choice: Blue for blissful ignorance, red for knowledge and dark truths.

Extrapolated to the fecund and fevered online universe of incels — involuntary celibates — blue pill means a person not yet woke to the “fact” that society discriminates against loser males and red pill means a person who’s grasped that outcast males, cucks, will never find sexual favour with women, the mocking Stacys who flock to their Chads.

Black pills: Bite the bitterness. It’s biological determinism. Born that way, die that way, and no amount of gym sweat, “bonesmashing” (surgery) or roidcel therapy (performance-enhancing drugs) will change your destiny.

That’s a thumbnail distillation of the crazy theories that fester in crevice platforms — messaging boards primarily — on the web. Echo chambers where incels seethe and stew in their misogyny, fomenting hatred, mostly under cover of anonymity, praising martyrs of the nihilist movement — including the suicidal and the homicidal.

Alek Minassian has already been transformed into a martyr, regardless of what happens in court when the 25-year-old comes to trial in February, charged with 10 counts of first-degree murder and 16 counts of attempted murder — the casualty roll from the van attack along north Yonge Street on April 23, 2018. There’s no question Minassian was the man at the wheel of that rented vehicle, who steered onto the sidewalk, taking out bodies, women and men but mostly women. The general assumption is that his lawyers will mount a case for “not criminally responsible.” That he was mentally ill and did not fully understand the nature or wrongness of his actions.

Which is certainly not how Minassian presents himself in the lengthy videotaped interview conducted late that night by Det. Rob Thomas of the Toronto Police Sex Crimes unit.

That Minassian is calm and collected and matter-of-fact about what he did, how he planned for it, how he scheduled the carnage for just after completion of his exams at Seneca at York. It was a Monday; final grades for his bachelor of software development program were to be posted the following Saturday.

All the while he was plotting logistics — 80 per cent of his time spent thinking about it, envisioning it — Minassian had been exam-cramming too, going about his usual routine. “Because I still have to ah worry about my school work.” The specific date chosen because “I felt it would be more symbolic if I had ah completed my ah exams.”

With the detective, however, Minassian did try to explain the arcane foundations of blue, red, black pilling, how it devolved from The Matrix.

“You can either take the red pill or you can take the blue pill. And some of the — some alt-right members even consider them to be supposed to be ah black pill which … in essence means they are MGTOW, “Men Going Their Own Way.”

The canon of drivel on 4Chan, to which he was referring, and where he posted anonymously. Although he was all over the platform map. R9K — “We call ourselves space robots there” — and POL and Subreddits such as ForeverAlone.

A river of vomit, it was, is, for incognito misogyny and nihilism, moaning about a prevailing economy of “unequal sexual distribution.” A hotbed for the dejected and alienated who believe that woman are purposely denying them the chance to find love and sex and romance; all these poor, pitiful, self-pitying sad sacks, an army of unappreciated “gentlemen.” Hiding behind their computer screens. Threatening malice, fantasizing about an incel rebellion, a beta male — the un-Alphas — revolution.

Where Alek met Elliot, if Minassian is to be believed. Elliot Rodger, incel founding father and hero, who, before he went on a killing rampage in Isla Vista, Calif., in 2014, posted: “I will slaughter every single, spoiled, stuck-up blonde slut.”

Minassian says he’d communicated with Rodger for months that year, on Reddit and 4Chan, and for the last time three days before Rodger launched his massacre (finishing off with Rodger, 22, shooting himself in the head).

“He told me that ah he has to go … he’s on a very important mission … and he might not make it back alive. I kind of had an idea in my head of what he was ah planning but I didn’t want to ah think it was true at the time so I said — so I replied and said ah I wish you ah good luck with that.”

Confirmed to Minassian on the news, later. “I felt kind of ah proud of him for ah his acts of bravery.”

Rodger killed six people. Minassian surpassed him. There are those who’d bend the knee to Minassian.

Minassian acknowledges to the detective that he became radicalized around that time. Quietly. Shared his percolating intentions with no one, allegedly. And, as several acquaintances have told reporters in the past 18 months, Minassian had never exhibited a shred of violent behaviour. Strange, yes — he often meowed like a cat and ceaselessly wrung his hands, perhaps manifestations of his diagnosed Asperger’s syndrome, a subject — mental health and his status as a “special needs” student in high school — that Minassian refused to discuss with the detective, wouldn’t even confirm those details.

So, humming and meowing along, until he got down and dirty with the planning, just a month before Minassian got the keys to that rental van and pointed it down Yonge.

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The night before, he’d allegedly posted on Facebook: “Private (Recruit) Minassian Infantry 00010, wishing to speak to Sgt 4chan please…The Incel Rebellion has already begun! We will overthrow all the Chads and Staceys! All hail the Supreme Gentleman Elliot Rodger!’’

To the detective, in the interview: “I was thinking that I would inspire ah future masses to ah join me in my uprising as well.”

All those involuntary celibates. “Involuntary celibacy means this wasn’t your choice who … have been thrown into true force loneliness and you’re unable to lose your virginity.”

As he had not shed his.

But the most chilling thing of all is that the carnage on Yonge could have been so much worse.

Not because someone threw a drink at the van’s windshield, impeding the driver’s vision and forcing him to halt the attack sooner than intended. But because, instead of a van, that might have been an assault rifle mowing down innocents, a la U.S. mass murders.

He’d been fascinated with weapons, keen to handle them for real, not just on the violent video games he played for some five hours a day.

Had enlisted in the Canadian forces, aiming for the infantry.

“I was interested in ah learning how to ah use ah weapons — specifically ah large guns. Such as assault rifles.”

The kind a person can hold in his hands, Minassian adds.

He only lasted 16 days into a 13-week basic training course before being asked to leave, because of an unspecified “condition,” according to a statement last year from the Department of National Defence.

“Unfortunately, I never made it far enough in my basic training to ah use guns …”

Thank God. Thank God. Thank God.