Snorting the Blue Pill and Red Pill

About

Snorting the Blue Pill and Red Pill, also known as Taking the Purple Pill, refers to an exploitable image macro series depicting Morpheus from The Matrix offering two different choices in the form of a red pill and blue pill followed by an image of someone crushing both and snorting the “purple pill.” The format is typically used by assigning various object labels to each pill, followed by a reaction of someone deciding to combine them and take both. The bottom frame used in this meme comes from the “Matrix Revisited” xkcd webcomic.

Origin

The top frame most commonly used in the format refers to the iconic scene from The Matrix where Morpheus asks Neo to choose between the red pill and blue pill, but the original artist of the illustration is unknown (seen below, left). The image of a stick figure taking both pills, crushing them and snorting the mixture in the bottom frame was originally part of the “Matrix Revisited” xkcd^[1] comic (seen below, right).

The earliest known example of these two images being used as a meme format comes from a post by Redditor Baka_Tsundere_, who shared a meme to the /r/yurimemes^[2] subreddit on January 13th, 2020, receiving over 1,600 upvotes and 24 comments in six months (shown below).

Spread

The format continued to spread in 2020 to other sites and platforms in the following months. On September 24th, 2020, Redditor apeiteados1024 posted another example to the /r/PrequelMemes^[3] sub with a different image of Morpheus in the top frame, receiving over 6,300 upvotes and 102 comments in 28 days (seen below, left). On September 27th, the Facebook^[4] page Revolutionary Memes Extreme posted a variant photoshopping goggles onto the stick figure, receiving 875 likes, 107 shares and 42 comments in 31 days (seen below, right).

On September 28th, the meme spread to Instagram^[5] and was posted by tbs_tulane, accumulating 893 likes in 32 days (shown below, left). On October 15th, Redditor mcflymikes posted another example to the /r/HistoryMemes^[6] sub with a Roman helmet added to the stick figure, accumulating over 45,800 upvotes, 140 comments and several Reddit awards in one week (shown below, right).

Various Examples

Template

Search Interest

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External References