It's the overall uselessness of life, being lied to about rules of society while brutal, cruel natural law is in effect, like people getting ahead by lying, bullying, kissing up, schmoozing, murdering, having sex with etc. and one's competence doesn't matter at all, unless it's for increase in work/punishment. It leads to nihilism, suicides and murders as "nothing really matters" and is quite common in 50+ and lower-strata society folks "that have seen it all".
From a quick research:
Blue pill - believe what society says, have okaysh life and ordinary dreams driven by collective narrative, zeitgeist, then burn to the ground later when somebody catches you off-guard and takes advantage of you
Red pill - be a selfish bastard you are supposed to be, use other blue pill people because they allow you to, argue using other people is what they truly want (mainly related to women, i.e. assuming women are attracted to emotionless men that are using them then throwing them away once no longer attractive), have a firm and rational grip with actual technical aspects of reality around you with good behavior prediction rate, often practicing stoicism/Zen Buddhism
Purple pill - mix of blue and red pill, having some societally-injected ideals while adhering to solipsistic consequentialism in using other people, but still being driven by societal rewards and the need of approval by others
Black pill - nothing matters, you or other people could be already dead, it won't change a thing, universe is random/pointless or created by an evil demiurge in order to torture conscious beings; whatever you do, whether good or evil, is pointless; people use each other all the time, given large enough reward there is no moral rule that couldn't be bent, there is no point in generosity and ideals, just in interests, and they are pointless anyway
White pill - universe was created for a reason that is good and everybody wants to get into a meaningful state/end, assuming overcoming obstacles by practicing virtues is necessary in order to reach some noble goal, likely maximizing utility/happiness of everybody, often associated with religion
Honestly, I am not sure how one could fight either of those pills as all historical civilizations had their own share of unrealistic myths and there were always groups of people seeing through their facade and taking advantage of better information, validating many of these perspectives and making them common meta-strategies of life.
This is, thankfully, not true. The truth is that you need to have some baseline level of competency to survive in corporate world. Sometimes it's quite low (for scrum masters, business analysts etc.), but still, these people know a lot more about software than say random person from the street outside the building.
The sad part is that, beyond this baseline level of competency, further competency does not help nearly as much as the being good at company politics.
HN pill - There could be an app for everything, every activity, and every device could be connected to the internet. Your life is a SaaS subscription. The least valued tech company should be worth at least $1bn.
From a quick research:
Blue pill - believe what society says, have okaysh life and ordinary dreams driven by collective narrative, zeitgeist, then burn to the ground later when somebody catches you off-guard and takes advantage of you
Red pill - be a selfish bastard you are supposed to be, use other blue pill people because they allow you to, argue using other people is what they truly want (mainly related to women, i.e. assuming women are attracted to emotionless men that are using them then throwing them away once no longer attractive), have a firm and rational grip with actual technical aspects of reality around you with good behavior prediction rate, often practicing stoicism/Zen Buddhism
Purple pill - mix of blue and red pill, having some societally-injected ideals while adhering to solipsistic consequentialism in using other people, but still being driven by societal rewards and the need of approval by others
Black pill - nothing matters, you or other people could be already dead, it won't change a thing, universe is random/pointless or created by an evil demiurge in order to torture conscious beings; whatever you do, whether good or evil, is pointless; people use each other all the time, given large enough reward there is no moral rule that couldn't be bent, there is no point in generosity and ideals, just in interests, and they are pointless anyway
White pill - universe was created for a reason that is good and everybody wants to get into a meaningful state/end, assuming overcoming obstacles by practicing virtues is necessary in order to reach some noble goal, likely maximizing utility/happiness of everybody, often associated with religion
Honestly, I am not sure how one could fight either of those pills as all historical civilizations had their own share of unrealistic myths and there were always groups of people seeing through their facade and taking advantage of better information, validating many of these perspectives and making them common meta-strategies of life.