Oh Return of Kings, that little internet compendium of fetid little trolls who sit in a troll-pile, rubbing bits of fossilized troll-poop together while gleefully squalling about how much they hate ugly chicks. Return of Kings is a disgusting, misogynistic website, a non-stop stream of vitriolic, horrifying garbage. And their links get passed around constantly.
For those of you who haven’t had the misfortune of coming across this abysmal website, ReturnOfKings.com bills itself as “a blog for heterosexual, masculine men” and laments that “yesterday’s masculinity is today’s misogyny.” Return of Kings wants to be a safe space for “a small but vocal collection of men in America today who believe men should be masculine and women should be feminine.” As such: “Women and homosexuals are prohibited from commenting here. They will be immediately banned.” Its publisher is the foul Roosh V, pick-up artist and psychopathic misogynist. Here are some highlights from the site’s Community Beliefs:
Women are sluts if they sleep around, but men are not. This fact is due to the biological differences between men and women.
A woman’s value is mainly determined by her fertility and beauty. A
man’s value is mainly determined by his resources, intellect, and
character.
Elimination of traditional gender roles and the promotion of unlimited
mating choice in women unleashes their promiscuity and other negative
behaviors that block family formation.
As one would expect, we receive tips about Return of Kings posts pretty much constantly. Some sample subject lines from the past week: “I have found the worst thing and y’all need to write about it,” “someone PLEASE lay the smack down on this guy!,” and, succinctly, “AAAAAAAHHHH!!!!” I couldn’t log onto Facebook last week without seeing several of the site’s articles, followed by a sea of furious comments. Our urge has always been to overlook these pathetic imbeciles. Firstly because we do not stand for appropriating a Lord of the Rings title to name your sad hateful weblog, and secondly because this little shit-smear deserves neither the time, the energy nor the web traffic. If a feminist writer’s (very appropriate, completely understandable) rage directs 10,000+ people to a particularly noxious Return of Kings post, that will make the troll king’s day. The Return of Kings collective will get attention, they’ll feed upon your outrage like a bunch of dementors with chin strap beards, and then they will absorb none of your well-reasoned arguments and dismiss you as probably disgusting and lonely and redolent of menses and cat pee. And then they will call you an ugly cunt.
According to Quantcast, ReturnOfKings.com got an average of 35,000 daily unique pageviews for most of the month of November. (Jezebel, to compare, gets an average of about 500,000 uniques per day). Interestingly, on the 20th, Return of Kings’ traffic jumped to 500,000. This meteoric rise took place over the course of three days. And that clearly has everything to do with the viral outrage to one of its truly, truly horrific pieces, which was titled “5 Reasons To Date a Girl With an Eating Disorder.”
It seems to me that there’s no point in reading a post from these guys. You can ascertain exactly what its contents will be from the title: some variation of “fat chicks suck,” “feminists are gross lesbians (we hate lesbians too unless they’re porn lesbians),” “rape isn’t even real, guys” and, “I have difficulty maintaining a basic grasp of the conventions of grammar.” Why bother getting riled up over some infantile Neanderthal who will probably never abandon his revolting worldview? And why — via Facebook link, via email, via blog post, whatever — direct other people to it? Why share the hate? Why contribute to increasing their web traffic fourteen-fold?
I know that there’s something deeply cathartic in hate-reading. I also know that it’s therapeutic to articulate your blind rage. And now, so we don’t have to give the trolls the attention they so desperately need by getting seriously worked up over their garbage, I will do a round-up of the worst recent Return of Kings articles — first I will read and summarize each; then, for your hate-reading pleasure, I will select the Most Horrific Quote; and, finally, I will write a three-sentence dismissal. Then we can all move on. Three sentences is generous. It’s more than any ReturnOfKings writer deserves. But let’s get to it anyway.
5 Reasons To Date A Girl With An Eating Disorder
Summary: You should date a girl with a “mild-to-moderate” eating disorder because she will be thin, she will likely be wealthy (no poor people have eating disorders!!), she will lack self-confidence and thus be easy to boss around, and, being “crazy,” she will be good in bed.
Most Horrific Quote:
You-go-girlist “confidence” — grounded in little more than years of being told she’s a unique and special snowflake for no other reason than she was born female — renders a woman into an insufferable turd who thinks the world revolves around her.
An eating disorder often translates into the direct opposite: a girl who’s modest, fragile, and vulnerable. Instead of having to constantly wrestle with a difficult and obnoxious girl, you’ll be dealing with a tastefully insecure girl, who’s eager to please, and wants nothing more than your approval.
Three-Sentence Response: Eating disorders are complex, dangerous and devastating conditions that affect people of all genders, races, ages and body types, and there’s nothing “tastefully insecure” about having one. Eating disorders are debilitating: they have the highest mortality rate of any mental illness, those who suffer from them tend to completely withdraw socially — and, as Rita Arens points out at BlogHer, anorexia kills your sex drive (sorry to upend your “daddy issues —> crazy in bed” logic, bro). Having an eating disorder causes one to develop a harmful attitude toward her body is a way that could never, ever be encapsulated in the feeble adjective “insecure.”
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
