White Knight

About

"White Knight" (also known as “Internet White Knight”) is a pejorative term used to describe men who defend women on the Internet with the assumption that they are looking for a romantic reward in return.

Origin

The term "white knight" is derived from the knight-errant stock character, a medieval figure in romance literature that would perform various acts to prove his chivalry. According to Wikipedia,^[1] the term "knight-errant" was first recorded in the 14th-century poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, but was developed as a romance genre character during the late 12th century. The first Urban Dictionary^[4] definition was submitted by user Jake on November 3rd, 2004, which defined the phrase as a male who attempts to aid a woman in distress.

Spread

On January 17th, 2007, the Internet humor site Something Awful^[10] published a post titled "A Few Words on the Internet White Knight," which criticized white knights for being indiscriminate in the women they choose to defend. On January 6th, 2009, Urban Dictionary^[3] member abstractsplash submitted an entry for "Internet White Knight," defining the term as "someone who stands up for girls on the Internet they barely know." On June 23rd, BodyBuilding Forums^[11] member QB_Killa submitted a thread listing several signs that someone had become a white knight. On September 1st, IGN Forums^[13] member DarkChronic submitted a thread titled "So wait, someone explain what an 'Internet white knight' is to me," to which member D.Bills embedded an image of a knight sitting at a computer with strike marks on his wall counting the number of women he had rescued online (shown below).

On April 30th, 2010, a thread was created on the /tv/ (Television and Film) board on 4chan,^[9] in which a user was referred to as a "white knight" for requesting others refrain from making fun of rape. The same day, the Internet news blog Urlesque^[12] published an article by staff writer Nick Douglas titled "The Five Most Annoying Kinds of Internet Scolds," listing "The Internet White Knight" as a manipulator that attempts to win over women by defending them online. On August 7th, a page for "White Knighting" was created on TV Tropes,^[5] which associated the meme with the "Bully Hunter,"^[6] "Knight in Shining Armor"^[7] and "Damsel in Distress"^[8] tropes. On November 19th, 2011, a Facebook^[2] page for "White Knight" was created, which received over 625 likes within one year.

Advocacy

On January 17th, 2011, YouTuber EtherealAntichrist uploaded a video titled "Enonymity [sic] and White Knighting," which argued that white knighting is a practice that should be encouraged (shown below).

Notable Examples

Search Interest

External References