Farewell to Kings

A decade of uniquely Masculine viewpoints is now gone.

Targeted Readership: Men
Theme: Consolidating Masculinity
Length: 900 words
Reading Time: 5 minutes
Image Credit: Scenes from the TV series, Penny Dreadful.

Roosh took down the Return of Kings (ROK) site on 2022/12/21, corresponding with the winter solstice. He explained the reason for his decision as follows.

“After my repentance, I did not see a problem with leaving old secular content online since it did not explicitly teach men how to sin. What’s so wrong with articles like “30 Signs That A Woman Has Been With Over 100 Men” or “16 Signs That You Are A Weak Beta Male,” for example? They couldn’t possibly hurt men, I thought, but I no longer believe that. Any piece of content that is secular, created from a godless perspective, and allows you to keep loving the things of this world will end up harming your soul by competing with the love you must have for God. It enables you to stay locked into matters and affairs that will keep you off the path of salvation. I can’t have it on my conscious that I left up an archive of thousands of articles that continued to validate for many men a secular outlook that inhibited their worship of Christ. The articles were written as if the spiritual world didn’t exist and painted the material world as the end-all-be-all of our existence, presupposing the false notion that there is no God. Therefore, I took down the entire Return Of Kings archive. It is not coming back.”

In terms of spreading the Red Pill gospel, closing ROK makes little difference now that the RP has gone mainstream. ROK has already served its purpose in that sense.

However, I have mixed feelings about Roosh’s decision to completely shut down ROK. After all, this turn of events is like a Feminist’s wet dream come true.

“No more ROK!”

“He censored HIMSELF!!!”

“The Manosphere is finally DEAD!!!”

It is true that ROK promoted many godless perspectives, as Roosh mentioned. But the thing is, it was a forum that allowed men to come together and communicate all the things they were concerned about — things that they had somehow missed in the haze of a gynocentric church and society. There were grifters and players indeed, but also honest talk about perspectives that were explicitly shunned from conversation everywhere else they turned, amid the constant rumble of lies being thrown at them everyday on MSM.

I see it as a free speech dilemma. If you allow free speech, then of course you’ll have to tolerate all the trash talk — which anymore, most of the younger crowd just can’t tolerate. But if you don’t permit free speech, then you, your children, and everyone around you will be force fed the politically correct and socially acceptable boilerplate mantras day in and day out until you’re regurgitating the same old puke. In this case, free speech forums will still exist, but they’ll go underground and fester into an echo chamber of nightmarish extremism — sorta like what we have today. In the beginning, ROK was just such a place, and it still is (or was) to some extent. But the truth eventually bled out and came to life.

Now that ROK is gone, along with much else of what was once the Manosphere, where will men get a no-holds-barred glimpse of feminine / human nature? What else is out there to help young men (and women) get a handle on that truth? What other gut-level honest assessments of reality are being offered? What other rubber-meets-the-road perspectives are being spelled out as a guide, or as an example of things to avoid? Where are the shared stories and viewpoints of men struggling to attain personal goals and make something of their lives?

The fact of the matter is that any perspective that is authentic, practical, true, and therefore meaningful, will have to touch on these inconvenient truths, the unpleasant issues, the lies, the sin, and so on, and call it out for what it is.

Thorniness is a litmus of the truthfulness that introduces the redeeming aspect of the Black Pill.

A microcosm of masculine men mansplaining “misandry”, an instructive snapshot of godlessness, and a little taste of the horrors surrounding the bitter Black Pill every now and then is a good antidote for the male propensity to coast on autopilot and pedestalize women for their beauty and p_ssy.

How can we find grace without honesty and truth, as ugly as it may be? In spite of all his sordid past, or maybe because of it, Roosh found grace. I doubt that Roosh would have ever found faith if he had always remained in the Orthodox church of his upbringing and played the role of a dutiful altar boy. He was a Prodigal son who had to travail in a world of his own desires before he was truly found.

It all brings up the question, how much knowledge, and what kind of knowledge, do men really need to know in order to know themselves, to know women, to manage their families and their women well, and to do well in life?

Does Roosh’s decision to close ROK truly benefit men? Or is it simply a knee-jerk attempt to distance his conscience from the shame of his sordid shenanigans?

The past might be instructive to younger men, lest those hard-learned lessons be forgotten.

Related

• The Red Pill Archive: Return of Kings Archive
• Σ Frame: Bards, Jesters, and Kings (2019/10/6)
• Σ Frame: An Interview with American Pilgrim author Roosh Valizadeh (2021/3/31)
• Σ Frame: Dealing with Discernment (2021/9/17)