When state Rep. Robert Fisher testified before the House Legislative Administration Committee last week, he admitted posting on Reddit as pk_atheist, the pseudonym used to create The Red Pill, but he denied – under oath – that he is still running the notorious forum that some have called the heart of modern misogyny.
The question was raised due to a report in The Daily Beast (that followed a similar Miscellany Blue investigation), in which reporters identified numerous items that appeared to link Fisher with the current Red Pill moderator, a Redditor using the pseudonym, redpillschool. “Fisher may still be very much an active contributor and chief moderator of The Red Pill,” The Daily Beast concluded.
Fisher explicitly denied that he is continuing to moderate the site as redpillschool. “It’s starting to look like a zany conspiracy theory by a liberal rag to me,” he complained in an email to reporters.
It is important for the House committee to determine if Fisher is the current moderator, not only because it would contradict Fisher’s sworn testimony, but also because the committee is limiting its investigation of Fisher’s activities to statements he made after he took the oath of office in January.
We compiled the most compelling clues that suggest Fisher may have simply shed one anonymous persona for another and is continuing to run the site as redpillschool:
1. Fisher and redpillschool sound strikingly similar
In March 2013, redpillschool appeared as a guest on the BBC World Service Newshour program under the alias, “Morpheus Manfred.” Here, you can compare his voice, as captured in that broadcast, with a recording of Fisher when he was interviewed on the Tom Brown Show in September 2014.
2. Fisher and redpillschool apparently share a Google Adsense account
Fisher explained the fact that his email address appeared as the DNS administrator for several websites managed by redpillschool by saying he is “a reseller for a web hosting company” and has provided free or low-cost hosting accounts for many people he has never even met.
“I am not responsible for the content on these sites, nor am I endorsing anything on them,” he wrote. “My email address was the default for DNS records when somebody didn’t provide me a different address.”
Fisher didn’t explain how the Google Adsense publisher ID linked to Puerarchy.com, one of the websites linked to his email address but managed by redpillschool, was also linked to InsideNH.com, a website authored by Fisher and Rep. Nick Zaricki (R-Goffstown) where the legislators discussed issues related to their work in the New Hampshire House. Ad revenue from Puerarchy.com was directed to the same Google account receiving ad revenue from InsideNH.com.
3. Old redpillschool messages were edited after the press contacted Fisher
As The Daily Beast reported, some comments written by redpillschool (and captured by the Archive.is project) were edited after The Daily Beast contacted Fisher with questions related to The Red Pill. “[A]rchives of redpillschool’s comments seem to suggest Fisher may have quickly moved to cover his tracks,” The Daily Beast noted.
For example, the version of a message captured on March 8, 2016 adds a sentence about living on the West Coast that was not included in the version of the message captured the day after it was posted on January 11, 2016.
Similarly, another reference to living in California appears in the version of a RedPillSchool comment captured on May 9, 2016 that did not appear in the version captured the day after it was originally posted on October 27, 2016.
4. Reddit comments by Fisher and redpillschool display significant similarities
Jason Baumgartner, a “big data aficionado” and neuro-linguistic programming analyst, has collected and archived more than three billion Reddit comments and submissions. He responded to a “How many of you think that redpillschool is Robert Fisher?” question on Reddit with an analysis of every single Reddit submission from pk_atheist and redpillschool.
“After reviewing all of the data, I am certain that pk_atheist and redpillschool are both Robert Fisher’s accounts,” he wrote in a message to Miscellany Blue. “There are too many similarities between the two accounts.” Here are a few of the similarities he discovered:
Pk_atheist and redpillschool both mentioned the OKCupid online dating site and their frustrations with it:
pk_atheist: "I actually had to quit OKCupid because it was just making me angry. 99% of the profiles that had girls I could be attracted to (i.e. not large) had this self-important BS. They have a lot of expectations.”
redpillschool: “But check out OKCupid some time, because you’ll see it’s female profiles that have the ‘Must be 6’ tall, athletic, please no losers thx’ checklist at the bottom. … 80% of women go after 20% of the guys. On OKCupid, women ranked 80% of men as ‘below average.’”
Both frequently used the word "hypergamy” and both capitalize it:
pk_atheist: “I’m going to argue that part of taking the red pill is letting go of the pipe dream that was marriage. Marriage is dead. Hypergamy reigns supreme.”
redpillschool: “I see very little conscience, self doubt or regret in the women I know. They simply blame their husbands and are eager to get out of their marriage vows at the earliest opportunity. It’s not 1955 any more, it is the decade of Open Hypergamy.”
Both mentioned the KETO diet; both suggested that it’s ok to drink diet sodas while following the diet; and both noted that they have lost 25 pounds while on the diet:
pk_atheist: “I really don’t follow paleo. I have however lost 25 lbs since July on the keto diet. I will read leangains.com, thanks for taking the time to reply with some meat! … “I’ve lost a ton of weight on keto and diet soda. Just saying.”
redpillschool: “Diet cola is fine. I do keto and drink diet sodas all the time. Lost 25 pounds. Working on my last 10.”
Both mention theoretical physicist Brian Greene and his book “The Fabric of the Cosmos:”
pk_atheist: Brian Greene argues that we only see time (and entropy) go in one direction because we’re on the upswing towards a return to high entropy.
redpillschool: That’s not really provably true, and that’s why Schrodinger’s cat is such an interesting experiment. For instance, we already know via experiment here on earth that we can have twin particles in a superposition until observed- and that’s with gravity and some very fancy science to hold the particles for a period of time. (Mostly illustrated in Brian Greene’s latest book, if you’re interested.)
Both speak about “feminism being a sexual strategy:”
pk_atheist: Interesting perspective. I have long maintained that above all else, feminism is a sexual strategy. It’s a long list of accomplishments women have been making to better poise themselves to make sexual decisions. Trying to change the social narriative to say that being a slut is ok is part of the strategy.
redpillschool: I think feminism is a sexual strategy, but not intentionally one. We believe it’s an unconscious drive for women called the feminine imperative.
Both use the term “feminine imperative:”
pk_atheist: The only game advice I condemn is one that plays strictly into the feminine imperative. “Don’t forget to be respectful, women like that.” … Good, you feel guilty about letting women benefit from men’s work. The feminine imperative has successfully entered your consciousness.
redpillschool: I think feminism is a sexual strategy, but not intentionally one. We believe it’s an unconscious drive for women called the feminine imperative.
Both reference the same three video games: Command & Conquer, Grand Theft Auto and SimCity.
Both mention Gary Taubes, the controversial journalist who has challenged scientists’ claims about diet and health.
Both use the expression “and so on and so on.”
Both use the expression “down the rabbit hole.”
The most frequently-used six word phrase related to women by both pk_atheist and redpillschool is “not all women are like that.”
5. Fisher and redpillschool both posted the same time of day, in the same subject areas and using a similar vocabulary
Baumgartner analyzed the time of day pk_atheist and redpillschool posted messages on Reddit and concluded “there is a strong correlation between the two.” He noted “pk_atheist has far less posts than redpillschool by close to an order of magnitude, but there is still enough data to draw some statistical significance.”
“What we see here is a really good indication that the two accounts are at least in the same time-zone, and that they start posting around the same time of the day (the hour of the day is in UTC time),” he wrote. “We also see that there is a slight increase in posts around the 20th UTC hour and then a great falloff after the 22nd hour onwards until the next day.”
Baumgartner took a look at each user’s top 50 subreddits for posting comments and found 23 of the 50 subreddits are the same for both pk_atheist and redpillschool. The list of shared subreddits not related to Manosphere topics includes the gaming, SimCity and startrek subreddits.
Pk_atheist and redpillschool “both share a common vocabulary of over 6,000 words,” Baumgartner noted. His study found they both use certain words with the same frequency. For example, his analysis of their use of words with ten characters or more found that all of pk_atheist’s ten most frequently used words are also used by redpillschool in nearly the same frequency.