STOP THE PRESSES!
Everyone’s favorite pickup artist guru Roosh Valizadeh has announced that he is cancelling all of the 165 meetups in 43 countries he had planned for this coming Saturday.
I can no longer guarantee the safety or privacy of the men who want to attend on February 6, especially since most of the meetups can not be made private in time. While I can’t stop men who want to continue meeting in private groups, there will be no official Return Of Kings meetups. The listing page has been scrubbed of all locations. I apologize to all the supporters who are let down by my decision.
Huh. Should we take him at his word on this? Roosh, in addition to being a terrible person, is also a bit of a troll. It wouldn’t exactly shock me if Roosh’s alleged cancellation turned out to be nothing more than a ruse, that the meetups are still on, and that he’s simply moved the planning for his meetups out of the public eye.
[EDITED TO ADD: It looks like this is indeed what he’s doing, organizing them secretly on the Roosh V forum, now closed to outsiders, at least according to sources with accounts on the forum.][EDITED AGAIN: Here are some screenshots (not mine) of his forums showing some of the places where they’re still trying to organize meetups.]
[EDITED AGAIN 2: REDDIT BOOGALOO There’s a stickied post in the Red Pill subreddit inviting all properly credentialed red pill alpha dogs to come to these super secret alternate meetups.]
If he really has cancelled them, the question becomes: did he do it because he was genuinely afraid for the safety of himself and his fanboys? Or did he take a look at all the protests being scheduled and realize he would look foolish if, in location after location around the globe, tiny groups of Roosh fanboys faced off against big crowds of mocking feminists? Hell, maybe he realized that in a lot of the locations he announced he was going to have trouble getting even one person to show up.
Will we ever learn where the pet shop is?
What? He won’t be able to sponge off his parents forever?
I hope the meetings are still on, at least around here. In my neck of the woods, the meet-up place is on government property. I’d like to see law enforcement pay a group of men loitering in the parking lot of a prime location for a terrorist attack some special attention.
@Bryce
It’s the perfect plan! Ruin any chance you’ve got for employment so that Mommy and Daddy are forced to support you forever!
@ kat
I wonder what his family actually do think about him. I mean, can you imagine the conversations with their friends?
“How’s the kids?”
“Oh great. Janice has got that promotion she was after. Bob’s thinking about taking some time out to go travelling”
“And Roosh?”
“Oh yeah, he’s still doing the rape encouragement thing”
Is the talk of him sponging off his parents just us taking the piss, or is that actually how the man lives?
@EJ
I’m not aware of any proof of exactly how much money he makes from the “rape encouragement” gig (as Alan puts it).
But I’m assuming that it can’t be enough to finance, for example, his world tour last summer.
It was reported in the newspapers that his two talks in Canada attracted only about 35 men each. And it’s very hard to make a living from books, particularly self-published books.
So I have my opinion but no proof.
I’d have to say it’s more or less the assumption given he doesn’t work a standard job with regular hours (AFAI/WK), he can’t possibly be getting a sufficient number of new persons buying his pathetic e-books and who would buy them over and over *if* they bothered to buy them at all, and the speaking events/tv appearances haven’t been numerous or likely to provide him with ongoing and/or significant payments. So where else could the money be coming from? He’d make sure everyone heard about it if there were a ‘sugar mama’ (or sugar daddy) supporting him – but seeing as he doesn’t have an interest in raping older (over 25 years of age) women and wouldn’t get involved in a relationship with one (like they’d opt for him anyway) who else is there to fund his lifestyle but his family?
Of course all of the above are based on what information about Roosh is available online mixed with a bit of general info regarding the average amount someone typically will net from things like tv appearances and such thrown in…..But yeah, where else would the money be coming from.
Gotta keep Roosh the Douche on the run. It’s such a handy thing for him to have picked a name that rhymes with Douche… only thing better would be if he’d chosen the name “Buckhead”.
I think there’s a 50/50 chance there. On one hand, he might think he’d look so cool to his followers for duping an 18-year-old “rich bitch” out of money. On the other, he might think that he’d look weak depending on his sugar momma to keep him afloat financially since men are supposed to be the wage earners and he’s put forth the facade that his books, speaking engagements, etc. have made him rich. Plus there’s the danger of her dumping his sorry a** if he brags about it all over the internet and she realizes he’s just using her.
Not that he’s ever going to land a rich young woman, so the point’s probably moot. Sometimes I wonder if a lot of his conquests are just puffery.
That reasoning makes sense. Thanks.
(It’s also possible that he’s got some other independent source of income; I know some people who have enough cash in a trust fund to enable them to live at a student level for their entire adult life, and then go on to do exactly that. However, that still means that he’s not actually working for a living.)
Copy of a comment from another page re cancellation of event. “Incorrect information i’m afraid. They have made the locations on their official page private to their little intranet & are still going ahead with all of the meetings. Overnight Roosh informed everyone on his website to delete all of their comments in public view on their site & to also delete emails with things the members have bought, linking them to the site. As of 3am (Aus time) this morning the site confirmed that more events had been added & all info was to be set to private, so their meetings can’t be shut down. His little ‘cancellation’ was a stunt, & the media lapped it up.”
I suspect some of meetups weren’t going to happen anyway because of insufficient interest, while others will go ahead as planned so they can later claim a great victory.
Either way I don’t think Roosh gives a crap about the safety of his fans.
He’s not in the Get Rich Quick business, he’s in the Get Laid business.
He made $60,000 a year in 2007 as a corporate scientist. It took him about 4 years to make more than that. So he now makes more than $60,000 a year.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQTPDrNUHjI
And I have a bridge to sell.
Both Roosh and Vox Day increasingly remind me of a cat who heads into the kitchen at top speed, hits the linoleum, goes ass-over-teakettle, caroms off the cabinet and precipitates an avalanche of Tupperware onto his head, who then sits up and washes his hinder parts in an attempt to imply intentionality.
@ ledasmom
Cats do have a very impressive “I meant to do that” ability.
@Alan
If the main reason for not paying attention to Roosh is that this is what he wants, I have to disagree.
I don’t care about what Roosh wants. If this causes people to be more aware of people like him, and maybe even discuss misogyny and rape culture when they weren’t interested in it before, that’s a win for me.
But I do think people shouldn’t be visiting his site to avoid money flowing in his direction.
@ rosa
It is a dilemma. I can completely see your point that there’s a danger that ignoring becomes brushing a real issue under the carpet.
Sites like this are great because they put the misogyny crowd on display in all their ghastly detail. A problem with the regular news though is that it doesn’t go into detail and there’s that ‘must be impartial’ thing, so you get a brief bit about Roosh’s thing, someone points put he’s a rape advocate but he says ‘it’s just satire’ and they leave it there. There’s no follow up. The problem with that is, what impression does that leave on the regular reader or viewer?
I think the best thing, perhaps ironically, is to give vile people more time to express their views. Then they condemn themselves from their own mouths. That Reggie Yates programme was a good example.
It is important that people are made to realise the full extent of misogyny in society (although won’t women be aware of that anyway, they experience it on a daily basis?). So it’s perhaps men who need to know. There is a tendency to brush stuff off as unimportant (“Oh it’s just a wolf whistle” etc) so, as you say, it’s vital that people (and I think that’s mainly men) need to know what’s really going on.
It’s just how to do that without:
(A) giving vile people a platform to advertise their wares and recruit
(B) allowing them an in adequately challenged opportunity to pretend they’re not a problem
I can’t pretend to know the answers.
Regarding the whole “giving Roosh attention” thing, didn’t he appear on a daytime talk show a while back (Dr. Oz?) and the experience drove him to manly tears?
I’m all for him getting more attention like that. Sunlight can be a great disinfectant.
I, for one, am glad these meetups are cancelled. Now we just have to get rid of the local AVFM chapter. It’s such an embarrassment to the city; it’s already bad enough that my province is known as “the Texas of Canada”.
Apologies if this has already been mentioned/linked before – I haven’t read through the comments yet – but a group of Toronto boxers have decided to take things into their own hands:
http://m.huffpost.com/ca/entry/9153904
Didn’t Roosh admit to living off his sister? Vox Day lives off of family money too. Then there’s Paul Elam sponging off his girlfriend.
All these misogynistic douchebags who go on about how women are useless bitches who do nothing to contribute to society while men hunted the mammoth and did all the things, they tend to live off others and do nothing to contribute to society themselves. Unless you count making the internet a worse place a contribution.
These meetings aren’t cancelled, he just reorganized them – see for yourself: http://www.donotlink.com/i4cm
I thought it was Elam who lived off his sister? I must be getting them mixed up in my head.
It’s gratifying to know that if and when the mammoths become a problem, they’ve got it sorted. Until then I assume they’re resting, training and watching out for mammoth encroachment.
@LanMAM
Hm, the donotlink seems not to load at my end of the ‘net. Does it have a history of not playing well with Safari?
@ johanna
Safari user here; same thing.
He is like the child desperate for attention, so even bad attention will do.
He is on Yahoo news (again) – the comments about him are overwhelmingly negative, and upvoted. Unfortunately some of them do dwell on his ethnicity, but on the whole people are just repulsed by the rape promotion.
It’s not loading for me as well. I’m using Firefox