Canadian clinical psychologist Jordan Peterson quit Twitter on Monday after receiving vitriolic backlash to his opinion that a plus-size Sports Illustrated swimsuit model is ''not beautiful.''
Known for railing against ''wokeness,'' Peterson, 59, posted an image of the magazine's 36-year-old cover model, Yumi Nu, writing, ''Sorry. Not beautiful.''
''And no amount of authoritarian tolerance is going to change that,'' the bestselling author added.
Almost immediately, Peterson's post was met with a firestorm of criticism from other platform users, many of whom picked apart his own appearance.
''My man, you have all the sex appeal of week-old bacon grease, you might want to sit this one out,'' one user clapped back at Peterson.
Another wrote: ''My guy you look like a child's skeleton covered in mayonnaise with dryer lint on the top. You're in no position to be assessing anybody's beauty you rickety junkie.''
Others used the psychologist's own words, copying and reposting them with a picture of him.
In a follow-up tweet, Peterson wrote, ''It's a conscious progressive attempt to manipulate and retool the notion of beauty, reliant on the idiot philosophy that such preferences are learned and properly changed by those who know better.''
As the hits kept coming, the professor emeritus fired back, tweeting: ''Rage away, panderers. And tell me you believe that such images are not conscious and cynical manipulation by the oh-so virtuous politically correct.''
Finally, Peterson announced he was ''departing'' Twitter, saying: ''The endless flood of vicious insult is really not something that can be experienced anywhere else.''
''I like to follow the people I know but I think the incentive structure of the platform makes it intrinsically and dangerously insane,'' he continued.
Peterson's staff has been instructed to change his password, ''to keep me from temptation,'' Peterson wrote.
''If I have something to say I'll write an article or make a video,'' he said. ''If the issue is not important enough to justify that then perhaps it would be best to just let it go.''
As of Tuesday afternoon, a pinned tweet at the top of Peterson's feed read: ''And I plan to write an article on the technical reasons that Twitter is maddening us all very soon. Bye for now.''
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