# White Knight

"White Knight" is an internet pejorative aimed at men who publicly defend women they barely know, with the implied motive that the defender wants a romantic payoff. The label grew out of a 2004 Urban Dictionary entry and sharpened through a 2007 Something Awful essay, becoming one of the longest-running insults in online gender discourse.

## Origin
The label pulls from the knight-errant of medieval romance literature, a stock character first recorded in the 14th-century poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and developed through the late 12th century[3]. User Jake posted the first Urban Dictionary entry for "white knight" on November 3rd, 2004, framing it as a man who leaps to the defense of a woman in distress[2].

The internet-specific sense took shape on January 17th, 2007, when Something Awful ran a post titled "A Few Words on the Internet White Knight," which argued these men defended any woman online with no regard for whether the defense actually made sense[4]. On January 6th, 2009, Urban Dictionary user abstractsplash added a dedicated "Internet White Knight" entry, defining it as "someone who stands up for girls on the Internet they barely know"[6].

- **Platform:** Urban Dictionary (coinage) / Something Awful (viral spread)
- **Creator:** Unknown
- **Date:** 2004

## Overview
The joke behind the White Knight label targets a specific flavor of online behavior: a man jumping into a thread, comment section, or forum to defend a woman from criticism, usually a woman he does not know personally[1]. The reward he supposedly wants is attention, gratitude, or sex, which almost never arrives, and the archetype is often described as flipping to insult the moment his rescue goes unacknowledged[1].

Common markers include unsolicited praise like "you're beautiful, don't listen to them," scolding other commenters for being mean, and framing a stranger's defense as moral duty[2]. Urban Dictionary entries extended the figure to men who claim to support gender equality but step in to shield women from any task or criticism they find uncomfortable, with examples ranging from lifting heavy objects to replying on social media[2]. The term is used across forums, comment sections, Reddit, and Twitter, and tends to travel with the related phrase "white knighting" as a verb[5].

## Frequently Asked Questions
### What is White Knight?
White Knight is an internet pejorative for a man who defends a woman online, usually a stranger, with the implied hope of a romantic or sexual reward[1].

### Where did White Knight come from?
The internet usage grew out of a November 2004 Urban Dictionary entry[2] and a January 17th, 2007 Something Awful post titled "A Few Words on the Internet White Knight"[4].

### What does White Knight mean?
It mocks men who perform chivalry online as a dating strategy, with the assumption that the defender resents the woman the moment his rescue goes unthanked[1].

### How do you use White Knight?
It is typically used as a noun or verb ("stop white knighting her") in forum, comment, and Twitter arguments to accuse a man of defending a woman for self-serving reasons[6].

### Is White Knight still popular?
The term is still a standard insult in online gender debates and has been documented across forums, 4chan, and TV Tropes since the early 2010s[5].

## References
1. [https://web.archive.org/web/20100505012923/http://www.urlesque.com/2010/04/30/five-most-annoying-kinds-of-internet-scolds/](<https://web.archive.org/web/20100505012923/http://www.urlesque.com/2010/04/30/five-most-annoying-kinds-of-internet-scolds/>)
2. [https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=White%20Knight](<https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=White%20Knight>)
3. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knight_(stock_character)](<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knight_(stock_character)>)
4. [https://www.somethingawful.com/news/few-words-on-2/](<https://www.somethingawful.com/news/few-words-on-2/>)
5. [https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/white-knight](<https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/white-knight>)
6. [https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Internet%20White%20Knight&defid=3603680](<https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Internet%20White%20Knight&defid=3603680>)
7. [https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WhiteKnighting](<https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WhiteKnighting>)
8. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUzdelBHU6M](<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUzdelBHU6M>)
9. [https://forum.bodybuilding.com/showthread.php?t=117205971&highlight=white+knight](<https://forum.bodybuilding.com/showthread.php?t=117205971&highlight=white+knight>)
10. [https://www.ignboards.com/threads/so-wait-someone-explain-what-an-internet-white-knight-is-to-me.184597286/](<https://www.ignboards.com/threads/so-wait-someone-explain-what-an-internet-white-knight-is-to-me.184597286/>)

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Source: https://meme.com/memes/white-knight
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