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.
See, Roosh, you should have marketed it as a work of Gor fanfiction and you would have been fine.
*shudder* Suddenly I feel so dirty. As ambivalent as I am about the role of the police these days, I really hope the local law enforcement authorities have Mr. V on some kind of watch list.
No.
Shadowplay, as Kyle Trouble is a former Return of Kings contributor, this makes complete sense that he emulates Roosh in every way, right down to relocating to Eastern Europe.
He’ll end up lamenting the fact that nobody wants to marry and procreate with him, the same way Roosh does.
Wow, it is Pancake Kyle! I wonder if he still despises watching women eat and still checks his web diagnostics in the middle of sex. (As one does.)
How can this incredible catch still be on the market? What woman doesn’t love being inspected like cattle on a first date? Who wouldn’t jump at the chance to do cooking and cleaning in exchange for a lifetime of undying contempt?
Regarding Fifty Shades, when the movie came out I remember a meme/joke that said that if Christian was poor and living in a trailer park, he would have been featured in a Criminal Minds episode had he tried to pull out the stuff he did.
Now that I think of it, to me that sounds like a subtle way of saying consent depends on money (thus women = goldiggers, as Manospherians would like you to believe). As others point out there’s a poor understanding of consent by the author, so I didn’t miss much by not bothering to read the series.
@Aleph: I saw that joke too, but I didn’t interpret it that way… I thought the idea behind the joke/meme was that readers and movie-goers who adore Christian do so because they’re dazzled by his fictional wealth and also fictional good looks, whereas if someone wrote the same book or made the same movie with a male lead who was poor and ugly and behaved the same, no one would think it romantic. Which I think is a fair point.
Jordan Peterson’s 12 Rules for Life is #65 in books at amazon.com. I’m sure Amazon will ban it when they notice!
…and now that I’ve looked at Jordan Peterson, Amazon has decided to recommend to me a shitload of Nietzsche and Jung – plus the memoirs of Carl Panzram, who was apparently a notorious serial killer and rapist. “Customers who bought this item (Panzram) also bought 12 Rules for Life, Maps of Meaning, The Bell Curve, and Hitler’s Table Talk”.
@Moggie
I originally read that as “The Bell Jar” and was very confused for a moment.
@Rabid Rabbit, if I worked for Amazon, I’d totally arrange it so that anyone who ordered The Bell Curve got The Bell Jar instead. Just to be helpful.
Being a rogue Amazon employee might be fun. Lots of scope there.
“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.’”
If Roosh had chosen to present his books as fantasies (like the 50 Shades series, which is based on Twilight) Amazon might have been more lenient; but since he’s put them forward as reminiscences based on fact, Amazon has had no choice but to assume that he means what he says and isn’t putting them on, which explains their qualms. If he’d prefaced his works with “long long ago in a galaxy far far away” or “hey kids, you know, some of what you’re going to read is make-believe” or even “hi boys and girls — it’s storytime!!, then Amazon’s response might have been more forgiving. I think Roosh would be wise to bear this in mind for next time, if there is a next time. (That’s right, the bot only wants to be helpful.)
Just saying.
Amazon has a conscience? Who knew? Perhaps they can be nudged into getting rid of all the loathsome Holocaust denial titles they recommend after I’ve been searching for Charlotte Delbo, Primo Levi, Jean Amery or Tadeusz Borowski.
Wow. So someone’s limiting a rapey dude’s ability to get rapey. And of course, he’s upset that his speech rights are violated. Never mind his income is based on writing how-to manuals for violating many other people’s rights. But like his kind, he’ll never know what irony is.
Game sold 2000 books in its first two days on Amazon because Roosh’s mom was trying to buy them all up, in some misguided attempt to protect him.
Is he still living in her basement?
First off, the part about them not including sexual violence is an obvious and blatant lie.
Second, pornography? Does… does Roosh not know how much porn Amazon sells? There are rivers of erotica running through Amazon. You can get the collected works of Chuck Tingle on Amazon. Why on earth would anyone think that “contains pornography” would be a reason for Amazon to ban something?
@Moggie,
That would be hilariously awesome.
Maybe Amazon actually has a modicum of quality control. Like, Roosh books are terrible in premise and execution and grammar and art and entertainment or education value and pretty much any criteria one could use for quality, I’m guessing. I’m sure Amazon’s bar is pretty damn low, but even then, Roosh is unable to meet it. Now there’s someone with below average height, so to speak.
I really hate these assholes because of their obsession with Ukraine and eastern Europe. I just feel glad that because they will be scammed because they don’t speak Russian ? my city is a hot spot for these American and British people who come to pick up women. women who they pick up know why these men are there, mostly, they are easy to recognise. I have one friend, he rents one apartment and regularly such men like Roosh (usually little bit older) stay there. I think they are sleazy assholes but if they want to come and spend too much money and get scammed in restraunts and shops then good. fuck them. they are not some cool guys, but losers.
@Surplus
Someone did, although Amazon doesn’t carry it. The original publishers got in quite a bit of legal trouble, and served as a precedent for limiting freedom of the press.
@Surplus
Someone actually did write such a book.
The publishers got in considerable legal trouble when someone used it, and ordered to quit publishing it.
I once saw a ROK story indicating that Kyle Trouble was staying in Finland at the time. I guess he, like Roosh, collects “field reports” from various countries and not just the kind of less wealthy countries where sex tourists go.
@Dalillama:
Meanwhile: Novelist Who Wrote About How to Murder Your Husband Charged with Murdering Her Husband.
After reading it, I can’t begin to guess whether she’d thought about killing him for a long time (and it worked its way into her novels) and finally did, or whether she’s innocent and the police just suspect her because of the novels.
@Orange Swan – Welcome if you haven’t been here before! I like the look of your blog.
Since others mentioned it, I have mixed feelings about The Bell Jar. On one hand, Sylvia Plath writes with clarity and humour about depression and the effects of sexism. There’s one scene that’s written comedically but is horrifying at the same time – Esther suffers uncontrollable bleeding after sex because her IUD was put in wrong, and the medical staff at first dismiss it as “something about periods, you’re fine” (paraphrasing). Look, she could have bled to death!
As for depression, there was another scene where the narrator says she couldn’t sleep for a month… not to give any credence to a certain J. Peterson and his apple juice. 🙂
On the other hand, Esther dismisses a fellow patient as a weirdo for being a lesbian. She also acts like a snob even though she feels insecure about fitting in with richer sorts. Now, if course the character isn’t the author, but since the novel was supposed to be autobiographical I equated the one with the other. Mind you, I was only around 18 when I read it.
To follow up Dalillama’s post Paladin Press also published a book called Assassination: Theory and Practice, credited to Richard Camellion. Given that Camellion was the real name of the ’70s and ’80s “men’s action” novel character the Death Merchant it was probably written by Death Merchant creator Joseph Rosenberger.
Paladin Press was co-founded by Robert K. Brown, who later founded Soldier of Fortune magazine.