Fyodor had lost absolutely all interest in REJOIN. The overwhelming majority of his time he was spending in the US, making appearances on television, giving speeches and attending academic conferences. His numerous appearances on Chris Dixon's show had brought him to the attention of American conservatives, who liked what he had to say about the radical left's extreme political correctness agenda which they were using to silence any people that had ideas that were different than theirs. The public events that he took part in revealed to Fyodor that he was connecting with an audience composed almost entirely of young white men. Fyodor took time to speak with some of them at his events and what he discovered was that they all felt disaffected because in their minds the relentless political correctness that Fyodor was always talking about had caused them to become vilified by society. Having learned this about them, Fyodor started spending increasing amounts of time talking about the issues that were causing these young white men to feel so out of place in society. In his speeches he railed against affirmative action as a disastrous attempt at enforcing racial equality that had only been successful in widening racial divisions. On gender, Fyodor talked about how the single most destructive phenomenon in the West was the breakup of the nuclear family for which women who had entered the workplace were singly responsible. He also talked about immigration and how it was undermining national identity which was a particular point of pride for men. But it was his statements about how women were the problem that his supporters really enjoyed hearing, so Fyodor started finding more ways to hold women responsible for society's ills. He warned about the decreasing percentage of whites as a portion of western populations and blamed lower birth rates on the education of women, he also claimed that there would not be as many women in the workplace as there were if western governments had not enacted laws seeking to enforce equality of outcome. Because of all of these statements that he was making about women, Fyodor was labeled a sexist, in addition to being labeled a racist for his comments about affirmative action and other comments that he'd made about crime, poverty, eugenics and The Bell Curve. Fyodor was embroiled in controversy like he'd never been before, which made his fans love him even more and made his second book, 10 more steps up the mountain: Purpose beyond Prosperity, a bigger bestseller than his first. Fyodor was riding high, higher than he thought possible when he first got involved with REJOIN, but the fame that he had achieved as a result of the controversy that he had courted had put a target on his back, a target that everybody that interviewed or debated him was aiming for. In the past it had been enough for Fyodor to respond with a no-nonsense pithy rejoinder or with an overly long rejoinder comprised of many big words that to the untrained mind sounded like something really smart and profound. He couldn't get away with this anymore, his tricks had become well known and those that came up against him were prepared. The other problem that Fyodor had was that with the snake being awakened he wasn't enjoying the benefits of its power as much as he used to. This all added up to an increasing number of embarrassing moments for Fyodor. He still had his fans who posted clips of him SLAYING or DESTORYING on YouTube, but an almost equal number of videos were appearing online with labels like 'Fyodor Milichenko FACEPLANTS when talking about race' or 'Fyodor Milichenko HUMILIATES himself by making MORONIC comparison between feminism and communism'. And in addition to this, the truth about how Fyodor had blown his family's fortune also came out, making him an object of even greater ridicule. Citing health issues, Fyodor cleared his schedule of all upcoming events for the foreseeable future. He made sporadic appearances on Chris Dixon's show, which continued to be a safe space for him, but aside from that Fyodor wasn't to be seen anywhere, leading to various conspiracy theories about what his health issues were. One video that went viral featured somebody at an amusement park wearing one of Fyodor's trademark sharp suits and a Fyodor mask and riding one rollercoaster after another until they threw up and collapsed on the floor. The video was titled 'BEEF-BRAINED Fyodor Milichenko develops health issues from performing IDIOTIC proof of concept test' and racked up 15 million views in two weeks. The near constant derision that he was being subjected to online was becoming more than Fyodor could bear. He also felt bad for his fans, who were doing what they could to defend him but were outnumbered by the people online who thought he was a moron. One of his fans, in an effort to defend him, posted a link to a study done by an engineer that showed that rollercoaster tracks could be deployed in an urban environment much more efficiently than train or streetcar tracks. The study, it turned out, was a fake study that a critic of Fyodor's had posted online in the hope that one of his idiot fans would think it was real and hold it up as proof of Fyodor's genius. The fan was attacked mercilessly for being so stupid as to believe in Fyodor's beef-brained rollercoaster idea and ended up posting a video in which he was deeply distraught, pleading for Fyodor Milichenko to return to public life and show all of these people what idiots they were for thinking that they could call Fyodor Milichenko an idiot and get away with it. Fyodor was touched by the boy's faith in him and decided that he couldn't keep hiding forever, he owed it to his fans to get back out there and show them that he was still the same Fyodor Milichenko who they had put their faith in as the man who would deliver them from the tyranny of the political correctness totalitarians. He got himself warmed up for his return to public life by appearing on Chris Dixon's show every night for a week, addressing the issue of his rollercoaster investment during one of the interviews by dismissing it as fake news conjured up by his opponents in a desperate and dishonest attempt to take him down.