Richard Kingsmill Is Being Royally Roasted After ‘Accidentally’ Pissing Off Ruel’s Fans
If you come for the King, you better not miss -- and they did not.
Ruel’s fan base are passionate and ready to take down any boomer who talks shit about the pop wunderkind — even if that boomer is Richard Kingsmill, triple j’s group music director.
Things started innocently enough: yesterday, triple j tweeted out they’d be broadcasting a Live At The Wireless recorded at Ruel’s recent headline show at Sydney’s Hordern Pavilion.
Kingsmill had to butt in to refute their claim it was the loudest crowd ever with a (very tongue-in-cheek) tweet that the ABC Fact Check department has confirmed Billie Eilish’s crowds were “one decibel higher”.
The fans did not like this, and soon Kingsmill was inundated with 100s of messages telling him to shut up and go and pack his kids’ lunches. They also argued that Eilish’s crowd was louder because it was filled with “locals”, as opposed to Ruel’s fans, who are not basic.
Look. I ran it past the ABC Fact Check department. They agree that Billie Eilish’s crowd was one decibel louder.
— Richard Kingsmill (@triplejtheking) November 4, 2019
“Okay Richard” became a thing too, mixing the “ok boomer” meme with the fact that a 55-year-old man is the music director of Australia’s national youth broadcaster. Given Ruel’s first song ‘Don’t Tell Me’ was about how adults tried to shrug off his romances as dumb adolescent pangs, it feels apt.
ok richard go back to packing ur kids lunch
— abigail 9 (@hesitatecal) November 4, 2019
be careful there richard. ruel and his army of highly trained karate masters might come and have to put you in your place pic.twitter.com/lQtXcCfnPJ
— niamh? (@NiamhFord2) November 4, 2019
okay Richard
— mar (@ruelsprada) November 4, 2019
While stan pile upons are normally pretty toxic, this landed pretty lightly on the timeline. The stakes were low, for starters, and Ruel seemed to get in on it too, tweeting that the King’s comments “cut deep”. Eventually, he asked his fans to lay off, writing “please stop attacking @triplejtheking i really like being played on @triplej”.
please stop attacking @triplejtheking i really like being played on @triplej
— RUEL (@oneruel) November 4, 2019
Ruel was already on edge; co-currently, he was tweeting about how a fan had stolen his Acne studios sweater at a gig that day. “I just know that cheeky piece of shit is just laughing looking at these posts,” he wrote of the thief, “gettin finger grease from god knows what all over my poor sweet sweater.”
The King has not responded as of yet. Assumedly he is busy making lunches, or trying to rectify things by finding Ruel’s sweater. Follow along here.