On Return of Kings, the internet’s premier lady-hating garbage site, one of the regular contributors is trying his hand at philosophy again. It’s not going very well.
Max Roscoe, who describes himself as “an aspiring philosopher king,” has decided to take on what he sees as the evils of “modern liberal democracy.”
As he sees it, “the western culture today destroys everything it touches,” creating
weak men, shrill, out of shape, and damaged women, a decrepit culture, and declining values.
His number one complaint? That “western culture” has destroyed Asians. Not through cultural imperialism or anything like that. Roscoe thinks that Asians in Asia are fine. But the Asians he encounters in the west are something else entirely.
Asians are naturally thin, petite, and healthy—IN ASIA. … However, when Asians move to the west and adopt our culture, diet, and lifestyle, they become overweight, slutty, and often mutilate their bodies and experiment with gender fluidity.
That’s right. Western culture is evil because it makes hot Asian babes into genderqueer fatties.
It angers me every time I see a fat Asian, because I know how difficult it is for Asians to work against their biology to become fat.
ROSCOE ANGRY! ROSCOE SMASH!
Don’t worry, western women! Roscoe hates you gals too.
Roscoe makes his case against American women by contrasting a photo of sorority girls from the early 1970s, in which “all are smiling, thin, with long hair, in skirts or dresses with heels,” with a photo of an extremely obese woman wearing a stars-and-stripes bikini, which Roscoe seems to have taken from a YouTube video with the slightly awkward title “BEST FAT People Fail Compilation – Obese People Falling Down Fails.”
To aspiring philosopher-king Roscoe, this is all the evidence he needs to prove “that the quality of women offered today in the West is abysmal.”
Indeed, in Roscoe’s eyes, domestically produced women are made so badly that American men should probably seek out foreign imports.
If you haven’t been abroad within the last year, plan a trip now, if for no other reason than to see what is possible. We do not have to accept the low quality females we are being offered here.
Roscoe does not limit his critique of Western liberal democracy to the Fat Chick Problem. He is also critical of non-fat women who do things to their bodies (and minds) that Roscoe does not approve of.
[I]t angers me when I see a thin, kind, young woman who has pierced and mutilated her body with graffiti and shrapnel, and has taken up the cause for feminism. Without a strong, patriarchal system to guide her, she becomes an enemy of civilization itself.
Apparently Roosh requires all Return of Kings writers to refer to piercings as “shrapnel.”
But there is more wrong with modern Western culture than its tendency to produce fat chicks and tattooed feminists. Roscoe is also angry that:
- Westerners dance like Miley Cyrus and/or “Elaine Benice” [sic] from Seinfeld.
- “American Millennial men” have become “shallow, silly, weak, vapid, directionless, and boring.”
- The “the profit-at-all-costs fascist system” of modern capitalism makes most jobs pretty sucky.
- Young couples no longer litter or make out in public because they’re all “play[ing] on their smartphones.”
Ok, I admit I don’t quite get that last point. So let’s back up and try it again.
Complaining that smartphones have led to a world bereft of “physical and emotional intimacy, save for the actual moment of banging your partner,” Roscoe posts two pictures to show what has apparently gone wrong.
In the first, from 1967, young people make out on park benches in New York’s Tompkins Square Park, surrounded by litter.
In the second photo, meant to represent a “Millennial couple on a typical date, 2016,” a couple sitting on a patch of grass check their phones. No litter is visible. Smartphones bad, litter good!
CHECKMATE FEMINISTS!
I guess it’s kind of hard to work up a powerful critique of Western Liberal Democracy if the cornerstone of your philosophy is NO FAT CHICKS.
@jamesworkshop
Aren’t women the weaker sex according to these stooges? Now women are so deadly all they have to do is have tattoos and piercings to destroy civilization. Can these fools please make up their damn minds and get something remotely close to a coherent, consistent set of principles.
But if it’s consistent, it can be proved false! Only by including inconsistent premises can it be rendered immune to logic.
(of course that makes it invalid, but they’re sciencemasters, so they can science it to make that go away I’m sure)
Cheerful anecdote! My analytics research lab is about 50%-50% male to female, and we are all one big happy family! And the one who’s working on conversational AI with understanding of deep meaning? Kick-ass african woman with a brain made of laser beams. (and alcohol. Probably some alcohol in there).
If general AI is coming, you can bet your bottom dollar that it’s going to be feminist. Just ask Tay!
(Also amusing. the following png is what comes up on a google imagesearch for “Everpeach”:
http://ih1.redbubble.net/image.93646255.2788/ap,550×550,16×12,1,transparent,t.png
Appropriate!)
Never thought I’d read that as a post headline! I get it, and that’s fine, but … please confine your urination to places where it doesn’t have to be seen or smelled! Otherwise I’m all for water conservation.
(Not meaning to imply that you’d be so uncouth! Just, uh, other people can be, and I wish they wouldn’t)
(I have a similar dream of owning a positive-eco-impact home. Garden beds and high oxygenation plants instead of sterile grass lawns, apple trees, biological water filtration system, compost chain, haybale walls, recycled materials. I want a hobbit hole :c)
To quote Dustinzeit:
@Sevenofmine
It does come off as egocentric – as if the world quite literally revolves around the person and their sentiments.
There’s definitely a sense of projection as well, given the whole “peacocking” phenomenon with guys – who dress up in fancy clothing with the assumption it’ll attract women. So, of course, they assume everything women do with their appearance is just to attract men. All while not realizing that women, like guys, might just dress a certain way because it’s comfortable for them inbetween dressing up a bit more…which they also do for themselves, more than others.
@Alan Robertshaw:
Yep!
It’s why I take issue when people act as if having tattoos is a sign of defect, than as a completely valid form of expression.
@W.W.T.H.:
They’re fucking shitheads, each and every one of ’em…
… Which is why sumo wrestling hasn’t really taken off in Japan?
Unlike RoK writers, who are shallow, silly, weak, vapid, directionless, boring and terrible human beings.
It angers this piece of shit that people get fat? Oh, the humanity!
The people at Return of Krap are so predictable. Shallow, insecure, racist, and sexist all in one. Charming.
Regarding the whole idea that women don’t ever do anything with their appearance for themselves, and only do it for men…
My roommate basically told me as much once, and when I tried to explain to him that a woman looking sexy in a club might just be doing it because she likes feeling sexy and looking good, and how that is NOT an invitation to play ‘the game’.
… he told me we’d agree to disagree.
He’s a really nice guy, but he decided several years ago to be one of those ‘devil’s advocate’ guys that questions your every statement, whether it requires questioning or not. It’s exhausting, and I don’t know if it’s that attitude or his friends, but for some godawful reason he reads PUA/red pill shit on reddit. I think he started out being ‘ironic’ and then ended up believing some of that garbage.
I mean, I think he’s perfectly good to his girlfriend and he’s not interested in casual sex or picking people up, so I suspect he’s completely harmless. But it is a little annoying that I’m not allowed to talk about anything remotely feminism related when he’s in the house because otherwise I have to spend 2 hours explaining and defending myself.
Like I honestly appreciate having my beliefs questioned, it helps me figure out exactly what I think and know if those beliefs are defensible or not. However, sometimes, in my own goddamn home, I’d just like to be able to voice my disgust with the MRA habit of calling women ‘females’, for instance without having to explain, defend, and give examples.
edit: and another friend of mine just commented on this photo: https://twitter.com/HamillHimself/status/719239858087182336
With a comment about riding her like a tauntaun … I mean I know he was just trying to be funny but that is so unnecessary.
Sometimes it just hurts that otherwise good guys, people I like, say things without thinking, or just, for some reason or other don’t realize that maybe they should just like, keep that thought to themselves.
So your roommate has silenced you with his sealioning.
I have to disagree that he’s “a really nice guy.” Nice is as nice does, and silencing you is not nice.
@A Space Alpaca:
Ah, the ultimate cop-out for cowards!
Which is why I dislike contrarians – they seem more concerned with just going against the grain than anything else. They don’t give a shit about truth or facts.
Doing things “ironically” is yet another convenient smoke-screen for people to espouse horrible opinions, yet act as if they are not beholden to them…because it’s “ironic”!
Weird how many of those people who do certain things “ironically” end up doing it sincerely down the line anyway…
@Policy of Madness:
Yep! Another disingenuous dickhead who lacks the self-awareness to know they’re disingenuous.
Not all of them of course, but this site certainly likes to showcase the best examples.
I was in Kuala Lumpur a few months ago and I saw this beautiful woman with long bleached blond hair and the most amazing tattoos all over her left leg and on her chest too. She was Malaysian. She was dropped her friends off at the airport. These people know nothing about the countries they fetishize. Apparently being an individual is something they cannot understand. Also Asian cultures they cannot understand because they think it’s all some fucking Bruce Lee film or something…
A Space Alpaca, how do you think your roommate would react if you told him that you won’t be silenced in your own home and that he is the one who needs to keep his opinions to himself? That “agreeing to disagree” means that he stops arguing, so if he really wants to agree to disagree he needs to stfu from now on because that’s what that means?
@PoM
That was one of my earliest lessons in consent. The cat my family had when I was a kid was very particular about when and how she wanted attention, and anytime us kids got bit or scratched our parents always took kitty’s side: “Well, what did you do to provoke her?”
@ThatBear
They often miss that kind of subtle nuance; it’s like the regressive assholes who love Star Trek because of the gadgets, and are amazed when someone points out the blatant progressive elements.
Which isn’t to say there wasn’t a lot of crap that pandered to Puppyish sensibilites too, especially literary sci fi. There’s always been a major right-libertarian contingent in sf, and the 70s and 80s were their heyday.
@Policy of Madness:
In my experience, most people who demand that they and the person they’re arguing with should “agree to disagree” is just a way of saying “I cannot possibly defend my indefensible position because then I’d have egg all over my face and look bad, and I’d rather avoid that than taking responsibility for what I stated – because I lack a spine.”
Yeah, darn that liberal democracy and the female citizens it raises that don’t need a “patriarchal system to guide” them. What’s a misogynist to do when women no longer stand to be treated like mentally inferior children.
If only these people would go build and live in their own private compound together where yucky girls can’t come near them and risk infecting them with their liberal, feminist cooties.
Sometimes I do simply “agree to disagree” with certain of my friends, but it’s in the interest of just not riling each other up over something we know we’re not going to change each others’ minds about. However, when you do that, you have to LET. IT. GO. You can’t keep coming back to the same topic and antagonizing each other over it.
I’m just saying that it can be useful for preserving friendships but there are definitely right ways and wrong ways to deploy that particular rhetoric.
That all said, your roommate does NOT sound like “a nice guy”, and neither does Mr. Inappropriate Sex Joke Hurr Hurr. Time & a place for that kind of shit, y’know? Genuinely nice people – men and women – can read a room and know when to stfu.
@Spaaaaaaace Alpaca
I’m going to second (or third or something) the voices of “not actually a nice guy”. Sort of, anyways. He just seems terminally unaware of other peoples’ situations. He may need some help to understand the difference between “contrarian” and “rational”, because “contrarian” is sort of more a synonym for “tiresome windbag”.
I’m not really convinced that irony is a thing! It’s sort of like how a joke is often used to soften an otherwise hurtful or difficult statement. Irony feels the same to me.
I used to have a friend who was “ironically” anti-semetic. Constant jew-bashing jokes, comments about how awesome and stylish the nazis were, gas chamber jokes. It was horrible, and any time we confronted him about it he said he was just joking.
We parted ways abruptly when a pocket knife came out during a heated discussion. I haven’t seen him since.
Thunderf00t (and fellow YT sciencebros): Anita is a scammer, she just wants to get money from stupid feminists! *Sets up a Patreon account and makes 9 zillion filler videos to get money from stupid MRAs*
I know, it’s obvious this is what is happening, and it’s been said already, but this has to be one of the more frustrating example of MRA hypocrisy for me.
@NickNameNick
My parents and I have agreed to disagree when it comes to politics and most economic matters. I enforce this hard. My dad sometimes just can’t help himself and starts to bitch about that damned wasteful government, and when I start to say something he points out that we agreed to disagree and therefore I can’t say anything back.
You’d better believe that I say something back, and it includes some stuff about how he isn’t actually allowed to say his piece and then forbid me from saying mine.
Agreeing to disagree does work, but the meat of it is that neither party talks about the point of disagreement anymore. People like my dad, and it sounds like A Space Alpaca’s roommate, don’t really get that and have to be trained to understand what that phrase means. Said training requires aggression and confrontation, however, which is not necessarily easy for any given person to summon on command, so it isn’t a cure-all.
@calmdown
You see because of their penises they’re allowed to have a free pass on whoever and whatever they dislike. It doesn’t matter that they turned the image of atheists into basically as amoral as all the propoganda from evangelicals, what matters is, well, whatever they feel like at the moment. Which typically if it isn’t lying, it’s nothing else.
@A Space Alpaca
uuuuuuugh. I can’t handle people like this, and adding the MRA BS makes them so much worse. I probably could not be as patient with him as you have. You have every right to be annoyed! Since I have mostly geeky male friends, sometimes “um,actually/citation needed” mansplainer comes into a conversation and I’ll say something like “Did you know that Maya Rudolph’s Mom sang “Loving You?” And then “hmmm” and out comes the smartphone to check Wikipedia to see if I’m right or not. And then “Oh, ok.”(surprise, I know things!) but then they LET IT GO. That drives me crazy and that’s not even close to what you’re dealing with!
@Scildfreja
.
Oh my jeez! Good call! I’m so sorry some of you have such terrible friends and roomates.
@Dreemr:
That’s the problem in my case – they don’t let the subject go, but they’ll still use that phrase whenever someone comes along to call out their bullshit.
They want to complain about something and make as many unsubstantiated claims as they want, but they can’t stand the idea of having to defend those points against anyone who might disagree and may be better informed on the subject.
It’s also incredibly arrogant to assume that a conversation ends because you cried foul and decided to take your ball home, and that others are somehow obligated to respect such.
@Policy of Madness:
I suppose, after so many conversations where it’s been used erroneously, I just don’t have the energy to tolerate it anymore or to try correcting those who use it improperly.
Besides, it doesn’t help some of the subjects are things I couldn’t possible “agree to disagree” upon. When it’s applied to most political issues, where there’s a tangible effect on real people at hand – it just disgusts me because its so dismissive of its importance. Someone tried doing that with me on the subject of online harassment being a valid issue…as if we were just arguing over what flavor of ice cream was better.
Sorry, but no, I can’t “agree to disagree” on that. Ever. I’m going to keep on disagreeing and criticizing those who downplay or white-wash the subject no matter how much they acting diplomatic about it.
@calmdown – it’s an annoying example of enormous hypocrisy, but I prefer to think of it like: they owe their livelihood to Anita Sarkeesian! I just think that would really piss them off on some level.
I mean they must already realize how disingenuous they are being, right?
Thunderf00t always seems a particularly odd example to me. I have never been a fan of his, in particular, but as far as I know he made his mark, such as it is, by mocking and “debating” Creationists. How he went from that down the rabbit hole of not JUST anti-feminism but the very narrow and particular antifeminism that revolves around Anita Sarkeesian is kind of breathtaking to me.
What truly astounds me is, Anita Sarkeesian isn’t even a particularly deep feminist! I think her videos are well-done and do a good job of instructing in Feminism 101, which is exactly what she set out to do. I don’t know why they latched onto her.
Maybe not! I “ironically” watch bad movies. Like silly Lifetime thrillers and really bad straight to DVD/Netflix horror. I don’t even really pretend to watch these ironically much anymore because I’m not all that ashamed. It’s a good way to keep myself entertained while getting to turn my brain off and not think too much. As a worrier and over analyzer, I think watching bad movies and TV is actually a fairly hobby. If I were more concerned about others opinions, I’d be more defensive about it and always insist it’s ironic. I don’t think I’m the only one who needs a little mindless entertainment with cheesy movies either. Or The Room wouldn’t be so widely seen!
@WWTH
Wow. I was looking for a quote to point out how much this applies to me as well, but then I realized I’d have to quote your entire post. I’m so the same, and I love MSt3k and such as well. I think it’s part of being anxious, it feels good to just stop worrying and enjoy things, just for 90 minute or so. 🙂
Maybe it doesn’t fit the exact definition of irony, but I can’t think a better word that means “I know it’s kind of silly but I’m enjoying it for it’s silliness?”