
I was never a *member* of those communities, but I would sometimes visit their forums (more depressed, less 'red-pilled' ones) to wallow when I was sad and lonely. Its like listening to a sad song but you also get the connection to real people. I stopped pretty quickly once I was in a relationship because I stopped needing an outlet for those emotions
I’ve never been a ‘member’ in those communities but I’ve known a lot of people who have, and it has a lot in common with other branches of extremism, in that the people who get targeted were generally weird people even before they joined, they were misfits and social outcasts, and that drove them there because the ‘tolerant loving good’ society treated them like shit, and the ‘evil hateful bigots’ accepted them and told them their loneliness was valid.
It would not happen on porpuse tho, no one would choose to be hateful and closed minded there are things that led them to this point. This is the only way they know how to act now. They could choose to take action to separate themselves from it or change their mindset but they were led there by something or someone else
As for 'red-pilled' stuff, I did follow a Manosphere YouTuber focused on fashion and fitness. He was less misogynistic than most of his peers, but the latent stuff was enough to help push me away as I saw it creep into some videos. I stopped watching when I realized even if he wasn't as bad as the Andrew Tates of the world, he still kept expousing ugly ideas sometimes. He had some good stuff, but that little bit was too obnoxious to sit through