Petitioning to end the Reign of the so-called King of Mean

Everyone has dealt with an internet troll. They enjoy relentlessly pelting the comment sections of Youtube videos and message boards with their rage-inciting statements and take great joy in the anger that gets hurled back at them. However, most of the time the comments they post can be easily ignored. Either someone else will yell at them, saying exactly what you were going to say, or their comment will be swept up in a sea of other comments, as they no more or less important by the website. What happens though, when these trolls have not one, but two websites? Roosh V is a self-proclaimed pick up artist. His original site (made to promote his books) focuses mainly on who he is and his misogynistic views. This was enough to have him put on the list of misogynist sites of the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Fast forward to a year ago, Roosh V publishes Return of Kings. The site presents itself as a website for masculine men, which it is perfectly allowed to do. If you have seen the site, it is teeming with articles about hating heavy people, hating sluts (ironic considering how many times the writers talk about bedding them), being against women’s rights, beating children, hating American women, and hating feminists. No matter how mad it makes the rest of the world, the men of Return of Kings are allowed to have these views. Free speech is one of the best things about this country. It’s what allows people like us to lash back and say something about the site as well.

"Roosh V"

Where the line of free speech gets fuzzy is when a website like this rallies together to organize something like Fat Shaming Week. If you haven’t already seen it, the community of Return of Kings spent a week in October posting derogatory Twitter updates and pictures of heavier people on their Twitter feeds and tagging it #fatshamingweek. Participants used this to separate fat people from the rest of society, and aggressively suggest that they don’t belong. This is considered an act of hate. Taking a group of humans, singling them out and using high school bullying tactics on them is not only despicable by moral standards, it also what could be the beginnings of a hate group. As you can from their site, they don’t only dislike people who stray from society’s definition of skinny. We don’t know what they could do next or to what extreme it could go.

I am petitioning to shut them down, or at the very least have them recognized by their hosting site and society as a hate group. We can’t have another incident like fat shaming week happen. Not only do our reactions only fuel the men of the site on, the psychological effects on the people targeted are damaging, especially to younger internet users with fragile self esteem. Please sign my petition here, and continue in the I Feel Delicious social media blackout of Return of Kings. The less fuel for the fire, the better. Together, we can keep moving towards social equality, and stop these guys from holding us back.