There's an ancient European fable about not being able to slay a dragon until it could be named. It's a metaphor for needing to have language to describe a problem before you can effectively deal with it. A perfect example is "simp". As far as I'm aware, before the popularization of that term there was no way to chastise men to stop giving money to e-thots. It is a lot easier to tell people to stop simping than to stop donating their money. Another example is "shit testing". Before I had that word, I just assumed women were being bitchy but until I understood the concept of shit testing, it was a bigger problem in my life.
Anyway, I don't want this to be a MGTOW post. The concept of "red pill and blue pill" and "waking up from the matrix" are EXTREMELY useful when talking about the establishment. Sure, there have always been metaphors that people used, even in the bible, but as far as I know, there has never been something so digestible by the mainstream. These days the redpill is such a ubiquitous concept even people who never heard of the matrix understand the concept.
I don't have any proof this is why the most successful pair of brother filmmakers of all time cut off their dicks, and started making garbage shows that don't have a message, other than that it's pretty strange to do that to begin with. My theory is they were deliberately brainwashed at fancy Hollywood parties to start taking hormone replacement therapy, because the establishment wanted to punish & prevent them from (maybe even accidentally) waking so many people up
Don't think that because the innovative cinematography was original to the Wachowskis, that the idea behind the story wasn't unoriginal to them.
Hell, the "matrix" idea is just lifted from Plato's allegory of the cave: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/hide-and-seek/201906/platos-allegory-the-cave
Look there are a lot of ideas out there that get recycled. True Blood, that TV show based on the book series was lifted almost completely from a role playing setting called the "World of Darkness" by White Wolf. The author used to actually work for White Wolf. Likewise, the whole Underworld series was lifted as well, all they did was say "lycan" instead of werewolf. The studios won in court only because White Wolf was broke at the time.
I definitely didn't say the memes dispensed in The Matrix were new. I just think they made the redpill easily digestible and even pleasurable for so many people so fast, and that was their "infraction"
Fair enough.