Roosh V

Who he is

Daryush Valizadeh — who wrote for more than a decade as "Roosh V" — is the pickup-artist-turned-blogger who built one of the pre-Tate manosphere's most notorious platforms and then, in 2019, publicly renounced almost all of it. Born in Washington, D.C. in 1979 to an Iranian father and an Armenian mother, he trained as a microbiologist before turning his dating exploits into a career: a 2007 how-to book called Bang, a shelf of country-by-country seduction guides, the group blog Return of Kings, and the long-running Roosh V Forum. ^[1] He coined the term "neomasculinity" for the worldview he sold, and he became, in the BBC's description, a man who "openly and unashamedly courts outrage". ^[3]

That outrage peaked in February 2016, when petitions, media coverage and government condemnation swept across Australia, the UK, the US and Canada in response to a planned series of international meet-ups. ^{[3] [4]} Three years later, Valizadeh announced that he had converted to Orthodox Christianity, condemned the casual sex his entire brand had been built on as sinful, took several of his books out of print, and eventually shut down both Return of Kings and his forum. ^{[2] [1]} He is a living person, and this profile treats both halves of that arc — the empire and the repudiation — from the public record.

Rise

Valizadeh began the 2000s as a working microbiologist and an anonymous blogger cataloguing his attempts to pick up women; when his identity was exposed he turned to writing full time. ^[1] His first book, Bang, appeared in 2007 — billed, in his own words, as "a tightly written, no-bullshit textbook on getting laid" — and was followed by a series of city- and country-specific guides with titles such as Bang Ukraine and Bang Poland, premised on teaching readers how to "bang" abroad. ^[2] He founded the group blog Return of Kings and the Roosh V Forum, which he said he had created in 2008 to help men fornicate. ^{[5] [1]}

Over time he rebranded the pickup material as a broader ideology he called "neomasculinity", a self-described mix of biology and traditional masculinity set against what he termed "Western degeneracy" — a repackaging of the red-pill worldview under a new name. ^[1] The business model, as the BBC observed at the height of his fame, ran on provocation: Return of Kings' anti-feminist positions were extreme enough that some commentators dismissed the whole operation as a "troll" group existing mainly to upset people, and the site's leaders did not deny that they set out to provoke. ^[3] The strategy paid off in traffic — during the 2016 controversy the Return of Kings website doubled its usual visitors to 82,000 unique users in a single day. ^[3]

In early 2016 Valizadeh announced "tribal meetings" for heterosexual men in dozens of cities, part of a plan to hold gatherings in 43 countries. ^[7] The reaction was immediate and international. An Australian student's petition drew thousands of signatures; a UK petition to ban the events reached almost 81,000; MPs called for him to be barred from Britain, and Australia's immigration minister Peter Dutton said "people who advocate violence against women are not welcome in Australia". ^{[4] [7]} Valizadeh cancelled the public meet-ups, writing that he could no longer guarantee the safety of those who had planned to attend. ^[4]

I can no longer guarantee the safety or privacy of the men who want to attend on February 6

Reporters covering the collapse noted the paradox at its centre. As Vice put it, by announcing and then cancelling the meet-ups Valizadeh had turned himself from a fixture of an obscure online subculture into a worldwide news item; whatever happened to the gatherings, he and his ideas had gone global. ^[6]

What he taught

For most of his public career, Valizadeh's product was instruction in how to have sex with as many women as possible, wrapped in an increasingly ideological account of the sexes. The early books were tactical — travel to particular countries, follow particular scripts. ^[2] The later "neomasculinity" framed that project as a philosophy: feminism had corrupted the West, men were under siege, and a real man reclaimed traditional authority over women. ^{[1] [3]} The content that carried this message was, by the account of outlets that reviewed it, openly contemptuous of women; even after his conversion, articles remained on his site with titles such as "Women Must Have Their Behavior And Decisions Controlled By Men" and "Do Not Have Sex With Feminists". ^[5]

The critique

Controversies

The 2015 rape essay

The single most-cited item against Valizadeh is a February 2015 blog post. As the BBC reported, he "wrote a widely criticised article ... calling for the legalisation of rape on private property as a way to 'defeat rape culture'", and "has since said the post was satirical". ^[4] The essay is not reproduced here; what matters for the record is that it existed, that it drew international condemnation, and that its author's own account of it is that it was satire — a defence critics have never accepted, given the rest of his output. ^{[4] [3]}

The global meet-ups and the state response

The 2016 meet-up plan produced something unusual: coordinated condemnation by national governments. Australia's immigration minister declared that "people who advocate violence against women are not welcome", noting that the country had already refused visas to the pickup artist Julien Blanc and the rapper Tyler, the Creator over their statements about women. ^[7] In Britain, a Home Office minister said the government "condemns in the strongest terms anyone who condones rape and sexual violence or suggests that responsibility for stopping these crimes rests with the victims", and welcomed the cancellation. ^[4] The episode made Valizadeh, briefly, one of the most-condemned men on the internet — and, as reporters noted, one of the best-known. ^[6]

The renunciation

In May 2019, Valizadeh published a post titled "The God pill" announcing that he had found religion and could no longer defend the life he had spent a decade selling. ^[2] He reframed his entire prior worldview as a series of way-stations to faith. ^[2]

The blue, red, and black pills were transitory stages I had to experience in order to take the final 'pill': God.

Calling it "the hardest thing I've ever had to write in my life", he condemned casual and extramarital sex as sinful and rebuilt his forum's rules around the change: topics such as "how to bang" were banned, while discussion of dating and sex within marriage was allowed. ^{[2] [5]} His flagship book, Bang, went out of print and off his website, and he unpublished several other titles he said would lead men into sin. ^{[2] [1]} The awkwardness of the turn was not lost on him. ^[5]

I created this forum in 2008 to help men fornicate, so I don't know if it's possible to 'retrofit' it for another purpose, but it's worth a try.

Observers were divided on what to make of it. Coverage stressed that the conversion was real in its effects but incomplete in its accounting: much of the misogynistic writing stayed online, and outlets such as Relevant declined even to link to his site because of it. ^[5] He went on to shut Return of Kings in December 2022 and to close the Roosh V Forum in 2023, saying he wanted to live an ordinary religious life. ^[1]

For a reader here because someone they know is following a figure like this, the useful question is less whether Valizadeh's conversion was sincere than what his arc shows: that people do leave, that the exit is rarely clean, and that the pull of these communities is answered less by argument than by building a different life. This site's exit roadmap is written around exactly that, and Valizadeh's renunciation is included as one documented example of a very public departure — the account of an algorithm-era exit is another.