Ruben Sim

Quite possibly the only image of Ruben Sim we have.

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“”Some Roblox employees say they respect Simon’s efforts; others write him off as a “drama channel” — a bad-faith actor who cares more about clicks than kids.

—Bloomberg Businessweek

“”I unironically hate furries. they're disgusting porn addicts, they're annoying and they groom children. if i were president i'd establish FEMA camps to have them all rounded up and ground up into dog food and they'd probably like it.

—Simon being his normal self on Twitter

Benjamin Robert "Ben" Simon (May 12, 1997–), better known by his online alias Ruben Sim, is a former Roblox Forum troll and YouTuber. Simon holds something of an everlasting grudge against Roblox ever since they banned his account in 2014. He was sued by the company in 2021 and ultimately ordered by a court not to visit the website or go near Roblox's offices (though he seems to have continued making videos about them). Simon was perhaps best known for exposing predators on the Roblox platform, though he's since faced criticism for conflating being a member of certain communities (most notably furries) with predatory behavior. By his own retelling in a 2023 Kiwi Farms post, these comments against furries and LGBT people have been part of an effort to purge his fanbase of anyone he perceives as "sexual degenerates and hyper-sensitive social justice warriors" since about 2020–2021.

Roblox lawsuit

On 23 November 2021, Roblox filed a $1.65 million lawsuit against Simon for "posting false and misleading terrorist threats", breach of user contract, and "cyber-bullying and harassing Roblox employees and executives". In the lawsuit, Roblox claimed they had banned his account for allegedly: "engaging in sexual conversation with users, discussing sex acts, engaging in sexual harassment, singling out users and groups for ridicule or abuse, attempting to upload a nude image of himself with only a lampshade covering his genitals, using racial and homophobic slurs, creating and using inappropriate accounts with sexual names, attempting to upload a sex game, attempting to upload images of Adolf Hitler, ... using prolific profanity; and cyber-bullying and harassing Roblox employees and executives, including through libelous personal accusations." They alleged that he repeatedly evaded bans by creating new accounts.

The lawsuit concluded on 16 January 2022; Simon was court-ordered to pay $150,000 in damages and stay away from Roblox's website and real-life offices. Simon created a GoFundMe to cover his legal costs which raised a total of $7,981.

Moderation For Dummies

The bizarre troublemaking is kind of a shame, because he does get it right sometimes and all the controversy might have a "poisoning the well" effect on that, if anything. Simon has pushed for Roblox to better moderate their platform (which they manage through a combination of AI and human moderation), often himself bringing attention to genuinely inappropriate content and behavior for them to respond to. For this he actually appeared in a Bloomberg Businessweek feature titled "Roblox's Pedophile Problem". Per that article:

In interviews with more than 20 current and former employees—including moderators, engineers and safety managers, all of whom requested anonymity because of confidentiality agreements or fear of retribution from the company—Businessweek repeatedly heard that while child safety might be the company's watchword, policing the platform and its 13 million games is a Sisyphean task. One moderator says her team receives hundreds of escalated reports involving child safety every day, far too many for her team to clear. Eight current and former trust and safety workers say user growth at Roblox takes priority over child safety. They describe calls for more resources going unanswered, resulting in a backlog of incident reports and the departure of one manager who left after promises for extra staff went unfulfilled. Others say that features they recommended to better protect kids, such as pop-up safety notices, were rejected[.] … A Roblox spokesperson disputes the claims about resources and backlogs. … Most of the safety workers interviewed by Businessweek say it's harder to pursue pedophiles at Roblox than at other online platforms, because every user is an anonymous collection of pixels. That's the thing about catering to children: You can't ask for real names, email addresses or phone numbers at sign-up. This protects the privacy of children—but also of predators.

For some reason Businessweek decided to let us know Simon's gaming room smelled like marijuana. (Wall Street prefers cocaine.)

Personal beliefs

LGBT community

Simon has liked tweets from the all-around bigot Matt Walsh on the subject of transphobia, and also follows several notable anti-LGBT personalities, including the alt-right comic artist Hans Kristian Graebener (a.k.a. StoneToss),^{[citation needed]} former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, and anti-trans activist Katie Herzog. There was some ambiguity since he simultaneously followed pro-trans and anti-trans accounts.

Furry fandom

Simon venomously hates the furry fandom, so much so that they are virtually all he ever talks about. In December 2022, he changed his Twitter bio to include the line "f*rries/coomers blocked on sight".

During that time, Simon posted a bunch of anti-furry tweets, including one stating that if he were president, he would establish FEMA camps to round up furries and have them "ground up into dog food". He also created a poll receiving a majority of support from his fanbase where he asked if hospitals should deny furries access to medical care, with the implication that anyone disagreeing must support zoophiles. In another poll, he asked whether his followers would rather be sued for $1.6 million or be a furry, in reference to his 2021 Roblox lawsuit.

Even with the predictable backlash from the furry fandom, it got to the point that even some of his own fans would criticize Simon for his actions as he had created a hoax that he had successfully petitioned the Arizonan legislature to make it illegal to be a furry.

In multiple cases, Simon directly linked to tweets made by people he didn't like (often those who are openly supportive of furries), knowing full-well that his personal army fans would go over to their profile and harass them, oftentimes to such an extent that anyone affected leaves the site entirely. He also allegedly doxxed people in the fandom^{[citation needed]} and sent an abusive email attaching an animal abuse video in response to someone writing a complaint to him via email about his actions towards the developer of Roblox game Thunder Scientific Corporation. Simon later publicly posted animal abuse videos on his Twitter profile that matched his critics' furry avatars.

Simon also showed support for an Oklahoma bill proposed by Justin Humphrey which aims to ban furries from attending public schools, urging his followers in Oklahoma to back the bill as it would "protect the children", despite students being specifically named and targeted by the bill under proposal.

Simon later published a video on his YouTube channel where he ranked his most and least favored Roblox communities, which received significant criticism from the community because of his assertion that 95% of furries had zoophilic tendencies and also due to the negative association drawn from his inclusion of furries that were not confirmed zoophiles as background imagery during that segment - the most notable of those being:

• Bluefolf, a transgender furry who criticized Simon for his refusal to deal with (or even halfheartedly disapprove of) the extensive online harassment she received from his fanbase (including death threats and illegitimate DMCA takedowns against her Twitter profile) following the inclusion of her likeness alongside the claim that 95% of furries were zoophiles and her subsequent posts about the situation.
• Lemonade Coyote, a furry EMT who had died from injuries following a collision with a black Honda on February 16, 2013, was displayed in the original upload of the video. Simon later re-uploaded the video with Lemonade Coyote's photo blurred out after the backlash. However, all other images of furries that have not been confirmed to be zoophiles still remain unblurred.

Following the hack of the Fur Affinity domain and its associated Twitter account on August 2024, Simon defended the attacker, accusing the site of facilitating child sexual exploitation.

After rumors started to spread that he was allegedly involved in the attack, Simon followed that the sudden influx of furries making negative statements about him were confirmation that his prior accusations directed towards the community were correct.

Kiwi Farms

In December 2023, he announced that he had joined Kiwi Farms, seemingly to share his efforts to improve the Roblox moderation system. However, he also threw in an ask-me-anything, which led to a couple sort-of political asides. In one, he stated: "Kiwifarms has been an invaluable resource in uncovering and combating child molestation, grooming, animal abuse, sex pests, domestic violence, parental neglect, and political hysteria." Left out of his post was any direct description of the site's facilitation of doxing and harassment, a characterization which Sim appears to dismiss as merely "a disinfo campaign". Later in the same post, he said: "I've spent the last 2-3 years culling my fanbase of sexual degenerates and hyper-sensitive social justice warriors. All of the anti-furry posting I've been doing is designed to keep these types of people from working their way into my support base."

Artificial intelligence

Simon is a strong supporter of the use of artificial intelligence to generate images, considering it to be just another art form. He has criticized artists for taking a stance against AI image generators, viewing such stances as backwards and "a great way to be left behind" in "a highly competitive industry".

Other attention grabs

Fake car crash

“”Imagine being so desperate for clout that you fake a car crash by taking some random pic on rrddit[sic]

—@ImagesHumanity on Twitter

In March 2023, Simon posted an image of a wrecked car on his Twitter account, claiming he had lost traction and slid into a curb. The image was actually from a 2 year old Reddit post and was lifted with no alterations.

BDSM porn

Simon, when he was 16, created and published BDSM porn of an (at the time) 13-year-old's nude Roblox avatar, then repeatedly advertised it on the official Roblox Forum. He repeatedly sent mentions to her in the replies to the porn post for up to 2–3 years afterward. In 2014, he uploaded a now-unavailable video to "expose" her "trying to create a following and deceiving people". At the time, he compared the situation to Gamergate (which doesn't at all help his case); he stated: "If you let these kinds of people slip by then everyone will think they can do it. Same reason why Zoe Quinn is getting all the attention from the chans." This particular "dispute" started because she wouldn't draw his Roblox avatar for free.

And then he wondered why Roblox would rather kick him out than continue being associated with this kind of shit.

Fanbase

The most diehard elements of Ruben Sim's fanbase functions as a glorified hate mob, as they are known to attack nearly anyone who disagrees with their glorious leader, going as far as to dox sending spam phone calls and gore to targets.

Damian Haglund

Damian Haglund was a 14-year-old obsessed with the Columbine school massacre. Haglund attempted a school shooting on Mount Horeb Middle School on May 1st, 2024 and died in his attempt. On his Twitter account, he retweeted and liked posts by Ruben Sim, and replied to a couple of his tweets as well.

See also

• List of internet kooks
• Furry fandom