Pick-up artist Julien Blanc has visa cancelled in Australia
Last week, a campaign by newspaper columnist Jennifer Li saw American “pick-up artist” Julien Blanc have his visa cancelled during a tour-stop in Melbourne, Australia. With his videos on the Internet, the controversial dating coach promotes an aggressive style of courtship involving physical coercion of random female strangers. A blatantly misogynistic and racist video where Blanc talked about coercing Asian women into mock fellatio while yelling offensive things like “Tamagotchi” and “Pikachu!” at them would be the figurative straw that broke the camel’s back, inspiring Li’s smear campaign.
Like many dating coaches who’ve emerged in the past decade, Blanc was initially inspired by Neil Strauss’ autobiographical 2005 book The Game, which detailed the author’s transformation from nerd to Casanova through his involvement in an underground society of self-proclaimed “pick-up artists.” After re-inventing himself as a ladies’ man, Blanc became involved with the US company RSD (Real Social Dynamics), turning his penchant for hitting on women into a livelihood. Since then, he has traveled the world, hosting expensive seminars for lonely, desperate men on how to improve their dating lives.
The tactics peddled by Blanc are the most extreme example of the unrestrained male patriotism that’s unfortunately become widespread in dating coach services for men. Another UK-based pick up artist named Steve Jabba boasts on his website that he will teach men to sleep with girls within an hour of meeting them or get them to cheat on their boyfriends. In a podcast, Jabba further encourages men to hit on women in a sexually aggressive way. The rise of this community though, with seminar tickets going for as much as $3,000 per person, suggests that these services are being sought out by young men.
Of course, not all dating coaches and dating coach services are like this. Working for the London-based company Daygame, pick-up artist Yad guides men through facing their fears of approaching attractive women and becoming comfortable in unfamiliar social scenarios. Serving a similar function to something like acting lessons, sessions with a dating coach can be a profoundly positive thing – encouraging a guy to venture outside of his comfort zone and internalize the way social dynamics work through hands-on experience to increase his chance of realizing his dating goals. Nonetheless, the hyper-sexual and aggressive actions of people like Blanc represent a worrisome trend.