The masculinity based online blog “Return of Kings” blasts that it is a blog for the promotion of masculinity. Read: for implementing the patriarchy. The bloggers once announced in an interview that “feminists are the foot-soldiers” for their website, allowing for writing that is atrocious, and borderline abusive in language to receive more reads than half the bloggers’ responses to them.
We get angry, and rightly so, the way these men speak is meant to demean and belittle women and anyone who promotes equality for the sexes. From the few shares from that website I’ve perused, I’ve noticed they seem to be taking clear advantage of the hate reading aspect that I sometimes find myself doing.
I didn’t hyperlink their website because they don’t need more hits, and they are not the only ones. Men’s rights groups often post similar offensive blogs in order to attack women and harm the feminist movement, and we help them. This has been driving me crazy recently as many of my Facebook friends will post links to these offensive articles just to alert the world that these individuals are scum, and yet again, more people read them- just what they wanted.
Small blogs aren’t the only offenders. Buzz feed, Jezebel, and other news websites are highly trafficked by individuals itching to hate read and slam the article with comments while they laugh. A recent New York Times blogger asked other authors “Do we really need negative book reviews?” Wouldn’t ignoring them get them off the shelves faster? The writer herself used to write those negative reviews, she found it fun. It was her version of hate reading, and the fun bashing afterwards can make many feel better. We start thinking that pointing out the flaws of the piece makes everyone see the bad in the piece. However, this “bad” is ignored when the article is shared and people choose to glaze over these heartfelt and very valid angry sentiments to simply click on the hyperlink and make sure that disagreeable blog gets more hits, and thus, more fame. And this should be applied to bad blogs as well. To some, being infamous still has the word famous in it, so I really believe we need to rethink our tactics. How can we get blogs like “Total Frat Move” and “Return Kings” out of our mind, and into the blogosphere’s deadly abyss of being forgotten. Is anyone willing to actually stop hate reading, or is this guilty pleasure too much to give up?
There are a few ways to go about stopping the hate reading cycle.
- Ignore the posts. We don’t need to look at them to know they will probably suck.
- Inform the person sharing them that we need to stop giving the sick bastards attention.
- Report the blogs and articles to the website it was shared on. They are discriminatory and need to be removed.
- Use a website called Do Not Link to avoid linking a hate read to their website.
- Stop hate reading. Take the pledge.
What do you all think? Do you think ignoring the websites will work? What else do you think will help? Comment and let me know!
ShoutOut! James Madison University 
I really appreciate this post, but I don’t know what to think about the situation. A lot of me agrees with exactly what you’re saying, but another side of me feels like I need to read this blog just to understand what they are saying in general. I would love to talk to you more about this because I am seriously interested and want to know more of your thoughts on that matter.
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