By David Futrelle
Some good news to start off your week with: Amazon has removed nine of PUA skuzzbucket Roosh Valizadeh’s books from its website. And Roosh, whose latest literary masterpiece dropped on Friday, isn’t happy.
In a post on his blog, he declares that
Amazon has gone on a rampage and banned the paperback and Kindle editions of nine of my books, including my new release Game. The sales pages now give you an error message. Despite repeatedly trying to get answers from Amazon via phone and email, they will not tell me why the books have been removed.
Roosh has somehow convinced himself that Amazon is retaliating against him for … selling too many books on Amazon, a COMPLETELY REASONABLE THEORY that MAKES PERFECT SENSE because obviously Amazon hates making money.
I believe the bannings began because the launch of Game was extremely successful. I sold 2,000 books in the first two days and hit the top 700 on Amazon paperback on the first day. Even before Friday’s launch, Game was already in Amazon’s top 10,000. As far as I know, Amazon didn’t receive a single complaint about the content, but they removed it anyway.
Roosh complains that Amazon sells books that he thinks are far more offensive than the books of his that it has banned — including 50 Shades of Grey, which, Roosh reports with horror, contains a scene “where the sexy male character bludgeons a female.”
Apparently Roosh doesn’t understand why some people might be less offended by a fictional account of a (mostly?) consensual BDSM relationship than by a series of sex guides that often seem like date rape how-tos. But then again Roosh seems fairly baffled by the notion of consent generally.
Roosh is still working out the details of his conspiracy theory.
None of my books contain child rape scenes, physical abuse, pornography, or sexual violence, and yet they were banned.
Well, I suppose that’s if you don’t count his account of a sexual encounter he says he had with an extremely drunk Icelandic woman — which, he wrote, “would have been rape [in the US], since she couldn’t legally give her consent.”
Oh, and there was the woman he says he “I had to use some muscle [on] to prevent her from escaping” after she changed her mind during sex.
And there are plenty more examples like these.
But, hey, in Roosh’s mind none of this counts as sexual violence so never mind.
Were they banned because they were effective at helping men? Was it because executives at Amazon disagree with my political opinions? Was it an action from a rogue employee? They won’t tell me. Whatever the case, someone in the company clicked the delete button and I’m supposed to accept it, but it’s hard to do that when your livelihood depends on the basic assumption of fair business practices.
I might just bust out crying.
The HuffPost, meanwhile, has a few details on Roosh’s banning that haven’t quite made it into his conspiracy theories just yet, noting that Amazon had removed the nine books “after HuffPost reached out to ask whether Valizadeh’s content was in violation of the company’s hate speech policy.”
The theory that Amazon hates bad publicity makes a bit more sense than Roosh’s theory that the company just plain hates making too much money.
Up to a point, anyway. As the HuffPost points out, Amazon continues to sell most of Roosh’s titles. Meanwhile, other tech companies like Twitter and YouTube continue to provide a platform for Roosh, directly and indirectly helping him to make money off his nox..ious sex guides and other hateful content. Though, the HuffPost notes,
After HuffPost reached out to YouTube, the company deleted one video from Valizadeh’s channel for violating its hate speech policy and banned him from livestreaming for three months. Valizadeh now has one “strike” against his account. If a user receives three strikes within a three-month period, YouTube will terminate their channel.
Huh. That last bit is sort of … interesting.
Let’s just see how this story develops.
How can this person even exist? Who the hell is a rape legalization advocate?
I really hope this causes him to go off the rails and get himself perma-banned on social media.
Roosh V is still…alive? I had the most wonderful dream where his dick fell off and he died.
I really don’t care, do u?
He deserves no money, that gender cop, homophobe, transphobe and mental illness denier!
Womp womp.
Shhhhh, don’t anyone tell him about J.K. Rowling. They might ban HER, too!
Maybe that’s just their “deer in the headlights” behavior: upon sensing the presence of a dangerous predator, freeze and be very watchful until he leaves. Did Roosh ever think of that explanation?
I wouldn’t be shocked to learn that “Fifty Shades of Gray” is a better read than anything Roosh has ever shat out.
I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess that the answer is “rapists”. Rapists and wannabe rapists are the ones who want rape to be legal.
How was that? Do I win?
It should be noted, though, that Fifty Shades does portray Christian as pushing Ana when she hesitates, not taking ”no” for an answer, and at one point straight-up raping her even though she objects (and it’s NOT an instance of agreed-upon pretence). So it’s not really a portrayal of a consensual BDSM relationship.
Obvs this is no defence of Roosh in any way, just wanted to put matters straight.
What Dvärghundspossen said. The author apparently thinks it’s a consensual relationship, but the author clearly doesn’t understand that she basically wrote a textbook abusive relationship. Christian is a creepy, abusive stalker who constantly ignore Ana’s boundaries.
Hey, that sounds a bit like Roosh, actually.
Dvärghundspossen, point taken.
It remains the case that Fifty Shades is fiction (and lots of fiction contains rapes), whereas Roosh was basically selling rape manuals. I imagine Amazon might similarly treat a mystery novel differently from a “how to commit a murder and cover your tracks” manual, were anyone to try to publish such a thing.
Even in Amazon’s vast catalogue, 700th from the top in paperbacks is not extreme success.
I’m sort of curious why Roosh thinks that
would be at all relevant for Amazon banning his books. I’ve read a great number of books that contain some or all of the above, some of which are considered ‘classics’ and ‘part of a well-rounded education’. Most if not all of them are available on Amazon. Of course those books are generally well written, and not how-to manuals.
In case there’s someone who hasn’t seen it, I strongly recommend Jenny Trout’s reread of 50 shades. It’s amazing.
It’s not that 50 shades doesn’t likely violate Amazon’s guidelines – but I can’t imagine the amount of public pressure it’d take for Amazon to enforce its own guidelines on such a massive cash cow as 50 Shades. It’d be like Twitter banning Donald Trump.
Funny you should mention that …
https://www.siliconrepublic.com/companies/twitter-trump-deactivated
There’s a new Roosh in town, BTW. He’s been getting slapped down pretty thoroughly.
https://twitter.com/KyleTrouble/status/1038398550311350273
@ Shadowplay, although I haven’t heard of the charming Mr. Trouble I decided to check him out. My reaction was basically that he was Roosh lite(headed). What is this cooking obsession with the MRA crowd? Apparently this is a mass indictment of the 21st Century American
female – SHE CAN’T COOK! I guess we should all have it carved on our tombstones!
Pretty sure the MRweenies are obsessed with “she can’t cook” (and also “she can’t clean”) because they want a Mommy to pick up after them and feed them on demand.
You know, the deference due to their possession of a dick.
I can cook and have a very good relationship with my father, but I’m still not going out with no arsehole PUA.
That Kyle Trouble guy might be the subject of the pancake misandry post from a few years ago. The guy who cane here and pretended to be having sex while trolling us. Needless to say, he was mercilessly mocked
https://www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/2016/01/11/beware-the-pancake-eating-girlfriends-of-doom-red-pill-dude-warns/
Good lord. It is the same guy!
His blog (Moocow linked it, bottom pf page 3 of the comments) advertises the book I’m seeing attached to the twitter account at the moment.