This is news to me, as I just recently learned via Anime Jam Session cohort DJ Ranma S that Mens Fitness pulled their offending NYCC/AF article…an article that I wrote a scathing rebuttal to in its wake, one of many surfboards hanging ten on a massive wave of backlash. Other websites such as Nerd Bastards.com, iFanboy.com, Total Fangirl.com, and themarysue.com expressed similar feelings of outrage, and it’s nice to know we here at AJS weren’t alone in how we felt. That article is gone now, as is the discussion about it on their Facebook page; indeed, any mention about it on their website has disappeared, as though they’re pretending the whole thing didn’t happen.

The most obvious reason for pulling the article can easily be ascertained as “too much negative press.” There could be other underlying factors leading up to this reasoning that we can only speculate on. Was there indeed a slew of subscription cancellations by very health-conscious otaku? Did they use the pictures of people in their articles without the subject’s consent? Did they just now realize that Jordan Burchette is an errant douche whose work would do more harm to the company than good? Or did it fully sink in that a bunch of pumped up, alpha male types got the rug pulled out of under them by a bunch of (gasp!) nerds and can’t live with the shame of it?

It comes as no surprise that Men’s Fitness hasn’t issued an apology for the article, and quite frankly, I doubt they will (though I have been proven wrong before). Besides, the ultimate apology, not publishing the article in the first place, can never be given to us.

Ari Rockefeller

When he is not training Pokémon and being the very best, the Master of the Written Word churns out convention, video game, anime and movie reviews like clockwork. No one is more productive and dangerous with a pen and paper (or, in this case, a keyboard).

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