Stephen McDermott

IN ONLINE CULTURE, red-pilling is a term used about someone who believes they’ve uncovered hidden truths about how the world really works.

It is popular among conspiracy theorists (who believe politics and power are shaped by hidden systems and suppressed truths) and among proponents of the manosphere (who argue that society is inherently biased against men).

The concept comes from the film The Matrix, where the protagonist Neo is offered a red pill that allows him to see “how deep the rabbit hole goes”; taking it reveals that humans live inside a vast computer simulation, and allows Neo to escape into the real world.

What I saw on social media this week was the disturbing reversal of that premise.

Rather than escaping the simulation, I saw how embracing the simulated world of social media has seemingly pushed one user of the platform X so far down an online rabbit hole that real-world interactions are being shaped by it.

Her name is Chloe Power, who currently posts under the handle @Emp4thchan – though she has had multiple other accounts on X that have been suspended.

Content relating to Power first appeared on my timeline in fragments; it started with a narrative about her that was shared by one account, then others sharing clips of her behaviour.

I saw posts by a woman of colour claiming she had been racially abused in a clothes shop in the capital by a woman who turned out to be Power.

Other accounts quickly re-shared footage Power had posted, in which she can repeatedly be heard calling the woman the n-word and telling her “this is not your country, go back to Africa”.

Asked by The Journal, a Garda spokesperson said officers in Store Street Garda Station were investigating an incident of alleged assault and harassment, though they said no arrests have been made.

Even for someone used to seeing this kind of content on X, the incident stood out because of how unashamedly racist it was.

Power has since deleted the videos from her account on X, where she had shared them with her 42,000 followers with captions that said “Africans do not have the high enough IQ to assimilate into our culture”.

Other deleted videos (since re-shared by others) include footage of Power harassing a Muslim mother and children, and unwitting Asian immigrants at a bus stop in Ringsend.

A glance through her feed quickly reveals that posting edgelord-type content for prurient attention appears to be her entire modus operandi.

She has described herself as “anorexic Hitler” and shared images of herself performing Nazi salutes and in blackface; she posts humorously about rape; and so on.

Last month, the Irish Mail on Sunday reported how Power has filmed herself spitting on foreign nationals and racially abusing people on the streets of Dublin.

The purpose of all of this, of course, is monetisation.

Her feed also includes links to an account on premium content creation platform LoyalFans – an alternative to the platform OnlyFans, where she was once active but claims she is now banned – and Throne, where ‘creators’ can create wishlists of expensive products that fans can buy for them.

It’s a playbook largely similar to that used by the biggest influencers in the manosphere – the loose network of online male communities built around promoting traditional male values, anti-feminism and misogyny.

Like those influencers, she is blunt about her desire to make money by going to extreme lengths online, and her offensive style is steeped in irony and performative nihilism about the world outside social media.

It’s no coincidence that she has interacted with some of the manosphere’s biggest influencers: in December, she appeared on the Fresh and Fit podcast by Myron Gaines and has also posed with Sneako in an image she shared to her own Instagram account.

Both men prominently featured in Louis Theroux’s recent documentary about the manosphere.

But Power’s status as a woman in this online world is also notable.

Ireland does not currently have any prominent influencers within the manosphere, so it’s a possible symptom of how that space is evolving that she is cutting through.

She not only appeals to men within this world by creating content with a sexual edge, but has also carved out a niche by subverting the expectations of women through imitating the worst behaviour of male manosphere influencers.

In that sense, she has a unique platform among white, male fans who hold ridiculous grievances against liberal society and political correctness.

And Power’s provocative, divisive content is a style of posting that a cohort of users on X actively seeks out.

All she has to do is keep producing transgressive content to capture attention, gain followers and, by extension, generate income.

Even when her accounts are suspended, she pops up again under a different name and is allowed to continue because social media companies like X can’t keep her off their platforms.

If the conditions that amplify her behaviour persist, there is little incentive for it to stop.

We’ve seen this before, notably in the case of the Burke family, two members of whom were arrested at Castlerea Prison this week for contempt of court.

Most people wouldn’t want this aspect of their lives shared online for all to see, but a family member was happy to share footage of Ammi and Martina Burke’s arrest to social media, knowing it would lead to supportive calls from the likes of Conor McGregor, Tommy Robinson and Elon Musk.

As with Power, the Burkes know that a little notoriety goes a long way in advancing one’s profile or cause, like the persistent false narrative that their imprisonment is to do with the family’s opposition to transgender people.

The religious Burkes would no doubt disapprove of Power’s behaviour and their content is wildly different, but even as a contrast they are prime examples of the power of unconventional real-world behaviour on social media.

Ultimately, social media platforms reward this kind of inverted reality that pulls the outside world into the online sphere – no matter what the consequences are for everyone else caught up in the process.

Update: This piece was updated on 13 April to include a statement from Gardaí that they were investigating an alleged incident of assault and harassment in Dublin on 30 March; the previous version of this piece said that no response was received by the time of publication.