And now, from the "You're Only Proving Their Point" files...
Remember "Curvy Wife Guy"? The gent who rhapsodized on his wife's totally normal body as if he was doing some disfigured "'chubby' or even 'fat'" gorgon a favor?
Well he's back and better than ever! Self-proclaimed "author, public speaker, entrepreneur, and influencer" Robbie Tripp has used his internet notoriety to launch his new book called Creative Rebellion, which he describes as "a creative bible for the disruptive soul."
If that phrase made you furrow your brow and say, "What?" like it did me, here's how he explains it on his website: "an avant-garde stream of consciousness that seeks to inspire creative minds to listen to their inner desires to create, to be disruptive with their creations, and to disregard those who don't see the beauty of their inspired vision."
Oh.
Anyway, you could say the folks over at Babe.net didn't care for the book. In his review, writer Harry Shukman wrote that it "reads like the Unabomber Manifesto," and presents quotes from Creative Rebellion alongside the ramblings of a madman, in this case terrorist Ted Kaczynski, and asks them to decipher who wrote what.
Shukman writes of the book, "Disturbingly, a lot of Creative Rebellion reads like this — an angry, right-click-synonym-heavy screed against Curvy Wife Guy's haters," and says Tripp "sees himself as a Christ-tier genius whose veins are pumping with pure creativity, everyone else is a disease-ridden leper reeking of 'complacency and whoredom' (sounds pretty metal, tbh)."
And in keeping with that description, Tripp immediately sicced his lawyers on Babe, sending a letter threatening legal action for what he calls "targeted harassment." The letter also states, "The overall tone and intent of the aforementioned articles serve no purpose other than to effectively defame me to the public at large."
Babe.net, of course, had no intention of taking this sitting down, and immediately fired back with a post in which Shukman states, "readers of babe dot net deserve to know that in our opinion, the Curvy Wife Guy's book sucks an entire ass" BECAUSE WE HAVE A FREE PRESS HERE IN AMERICA MR. TRIPP.
For his part, Tripp contacted Buzzfeed News to say that he felt that Babe's "obsession" with him has become "deplorable" and that the site was infringing on his copyright, which is not how copyrights work at all, but fine.
Of course, on social media, response to the story was swift and intense––and decidedly not on Team Tripp:
And, of course, it wouldn't be Twitter without jokes!
Speaking to Buzzfeed, Babe summed it up thusly: "Congress shall make no law preventing the trashing of a dumb book, or prohibiting the free shading thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of babe dot net to peaceably critique 'abstract manifestos for disruptive creativity' written by an Insta-famous weirdo obsessed with talking about his wife's thiiiiccness."
These burns are hot and this case is closed!
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