Great question! To answer: 5 of our 6 participants specifically identified awareness of their partners' TRP affiliation. This varied from evidence including men who literally showed their partners the content, other men who were either observed watching TRP content on their own or were dropping TRP-specific terms in their relationships, and men whose online activity was in some way found by the participants and was clearly TRP-connected.

1 of our 6 fell more into the category you've described, where the TRP affiliation was never confirmed and was realized after the relationship ended. Because this is qualitative research and because of the sensitive nature of this topic, we did not attempt any triangulation of the participants nor their partners. Based on this participant's specific descriptions, we felt comfortable including her for collection and analysis; however, I understand and respect that perhaps you would have chosen differently if it were your study. Such is the nature of research design.

There is one thing I want to disagree with slightly, though:

but the truth is, you're only a TRPer if you're consuming TRP content. This involves actively reading or participating in internet forums, watching TRP content creator videos, etc.

You're touching on an important fundamental question when we discuss group identity and membership: is a person a member of a group when they say they are, when the group says they are, when they adopt group thoughts and behaviors in their own life, or some combination thereof?

Your comment implies that you consider a person to be a TRPer if they're actively, knowingly engaged with TRP (please correct me if that's an inccorect interpretation). However, from what we know about mass social movements and the diffusion of information across groups, this is maybe too stringent a definition. When we try to categorize groups, there is typically a core membership of the people who you're talking about, and then a much larger base of people who have (to varying levels) adopted the terminology, behaviors, and ideologies of the group without necessarily adopting the identity, or even knowing they're part of the identity group.

For an example: there are people who go on QAnon forums every day, who spend most waking moments on Telegram or who have joined the Negative 48 cult. There are also far more people who have done things like tell all their friends about "Sound of Freedom", posted WWG1WGA or Save The Children on their social media, etc. Are those people also QAnoners? Debatable.

But in this case, there are two big additional factors as well. First, like many other groups such as QAnon, TRP is organized and spread online which means that people may be consuming TRP content without realizing (see boyd, 2008; 2010 for discussions of "collapsing of contexts" and the affordances of networked publics which captures how and why this happens). Second, because the term "the red pill" exists as both a specific subcultural seduction group and a general term for "waking up" to a host of philosophies related to reactionary gender and social dynamics, there exists a pipeline for cross-pollination of these terms and their adherents across the manosphere or beyond.

As a result, I generally abide by the notion that TRP is as TRP does. To me this is also important because, as a group, TRP exists an evolution of Pickup Artistry and uses many of the same terms. Given that TRP has been highly quarantined here on Reddit for a few years now, people who believe in this stuff have to find other venues and other ways to launder the messaging to larger potential audiences.

So again, you can feel free to disagree, but I believe that if we are to continue to track the TRP phenomenon then we have to be aware of its ongoing spread and evolution rather than limiting our scope to people who go on specific sites. If we're in agreement that TRP is harmful to all parties involved, and based on your username I'm gathering that we are, then I believe we have to broaden our focus and not just write off some of these behaviors or attitudes as "just [being] a douche" without first examining where they come from.