12 min read
This article is more than 3 years old
The murky world of pickup artists and how they navigate consent
It may sound like a 2000s throwback, but a small catalogue of pickup artists are still teaching men how to ‘seduce women’. The Feed investigates how these ‘dating coaches’ approach the issue of consent.
Published 31 May 2021 12:19am
Updated 31 May 2021 11:01am
By Eden Gillespie
CONTENT WARNING: Content may be distressing to some readers
Sitting inside a parked car, pickup artist Frank Haro asks a woman walking by if she’d like to go for a drive down Sunset Strip.
A hidden camera broadcasts the interaction live on YouTube. It doesn’t capture the woman’s face - at first - but records her response as she tells him: “I’m scared.”
Frank assures the woman that he’s sober, she can take a photo of his ID and that he's from the “military”. “I’m persistent but I’m not thirsty,” he says.
Before the woman enters the car, Frank drives down the road and does an audio check for his listeners. Later he asks her, “What’s your pain tolerance?”, adding, “Don’t shake on me now. Don’t be nervous.”
SBS Spanish: 
Pickup artist Frank Haro. Source: YouTube
Shaky camera footage captures their walk to her hotel room. Frank covertly places the camera down and the woman is shown in full view as he massages her shoulders.
A stream of comments flow in live on YouTube, shaming the woman about her weight and overall appearance.
“Am I daddy or a master?” Frank asks, before telling the woman to touch his crotch through his pants.
The video is essentially free advertising for a pickup artist: ‘evidence’ of their successful so-called “game”. That’s until the woman turns, spots the camera and asks, “Is that recording, is it?”
Screenshot of a YouTube video that shows Frank Haro before he attempts to approach women Source: YouTube
The interaction is one of several “in-field” videos posted on a YouTube channel under Frank’s name that has over 15,000 subscribers. Frank did not respond to several requests by The Feed for comment nor confirm whether the account is operated by him directly.
One blurry video on the channel shows an unidentifiable man attempting to touch a woman’s vagina while inside a nightclub.
The Feed is unable to confirm whether Frank is the man in the video but the caption of the video reads, “In todays video i'll show you how quickly you can sexualise immediately once engaging conversation using non-verbals. This is a must watch video.”
Frank did not respond to several requests by The Feed for an interview. Source: YouTube
Before touching the woman, the man in the video wiggles two fingers at what appears to be the person filming.
When the woman - whose face is censored - appears to pull away, the man kisses her and pulls her closer. He tells her to “shut the fuck up” before she screams and he forcibly kisses her again.
“[In-field] videos send myriad harmful messages about consent, not least by suggesting that it's acceptable for men to record women without their knowledge or consent [but to also] share these videos with other men, often for commercial gain,” said Dr Rachel O’Neill, an expert on gender and culture.
“Clear parallels can be found here to other forms of image-based harassment and abuse, such as 'upskirting' and 'revenge porn',” she told The Feed.
Pickup artists: Where did they come from?
As the importance of consent and respectful relationships dominates Australian headlines, the pickup artist industry, while small and ruptured, drudges on.
According to Dr O’Neill’s book, ‘’, the industry dates back to the 1900s but was seared into the public consciousness in the early 2000s, with the publication of Neil Strauss’ best-seller ‘The Game’.
Strauss discusses techniques the seduction industry uses to manipulate and coerce women such as ‘the Neg’, which involves discreetly undermining a woman's self-esteem by paying her a backhanded compliment.
The Neg and other concepts like ‘last minute resistance’ are still referenced by a small catalogue of pickup artists.
Last minute resistance refers to the idea that some women resist sex because they are driven by the fear of slut-shaming, according to Dr O’Neill. Pickup artists position themselves as being able to overcome this using a series of techniques, she said.
Neil Strauss speaks onstage during the 2020 iHeartRadio Podcast Awards at iHeartRadio Theater, January 2020. Source: Getty
Dr O’Neill’s book paints a picture of pickup artists and their clients as ordinary men who have bought into a culture that believes women can be gamed, persuaded, or —at its worst— coerced into sex.
She believes the seduction industry presents a “grossly simplistic view of ‘female psychology’.”
“The seduction industry traffics in the idea that it has deciphered 'what women want', and that its adherents can instruct men in how to 'give' this to women,” Dr O’Neill said.
“In reality, of course, there is no single answer to the question of 'what women want'; indeed, what any of us want in terms of sex and intimacy is often opaque, even to ourselves.”
Former pickup artist Julien Blanc. Source: Instagram
As the seduction industry exploded, companies like Real Social Dynamics profited from its growth but were also successful in triggering international outrage.
In 2014, Swiss-born RSD coach Julien Blanc was after protests against his advocacy for the use of physical force to “pick up” women.
Julien choking women, grabbing their heads and pushing them toward his groin and advising his followers on how to destroy a woman's "b**ch shield".
Then-immigration minister Scott Morrison said of Julien, “This guy wasn't pushing forward political ideas, he was putting a view that was derogatory to women and that's just something that our values abhor in this country.”
Julien later apologised “to anyone I’ve offended in any way.”
“This was never my intention and I just want to put it out there,” he told CNN’s Chris Cuomo.
Julien now describes himself as a "self help coach". Source: Instagram
Pickup artists today
John Mulvehill (aka John Anthony Lifestyle), a former dating coach assistant for the company Real Social Dynamics, markets himself as having slept with over 1,000 women.
The 37-year-old told The Feed he throws his ‘lay count’ number around “just to show that I have a lot of experience and a lot of success in terms of getting the result, which is, you know, getting with a new attractive woman.”
In his YouTube videos, John often describes women in terms of their perceived attractiveness, rating them as “10s” or “5s” - a 10 being the most attractive and a five being mildly attractive.
Advertising material on John's website. Source: John Mulvehill's site
John told The Feed he detests RSD and claims ”they used to encourage literally walking up to girls and calling them a wh**e or a dog as an opener.”
“That's the kind of stuff that got them banned from entire continents. And that kind of behaviour was getting guys slapped and punched.”
John claims he’s now living in Brazil with his girlfriend and that he’s been coaching men for over a decade.
He said he’s “helped countless guys just gain confidence and get better skills, deal and navigate social situations.” Although he admits, his own sisters aren’t fans of his profession.
“I have two sisters and they like, hate this because they think like, ‘oh you're just trying to like, manipulate people’,” he said.
“But really, like every guy has a strategy, most people's strategies are just very bad.”
John often shares so-called "receipts" of his 'game' on YouTube. Source: YouTube
John said he tells his clients to “not be overly pushy and just enjoy the time with the girl and let things unfold naturally.”
“If a woman says I don't want to continue, then you should stop immediately,” he told The Feed.
While researching this article, The Feed came across several articles that included serious allegations about John’s past.
An article by The Daily Beast alleges that according to an arrest report, while John was working as an assistant for RSD instructors in 2013, he walked a woman to his car.
According to the arrest report, John pulled the woman into his car, locked the doors so she couldn’t escape and tossed away her phone so she couldn’t text her friends.
“She kept telling him she wanted to leave,” The Daily Beast quoted the arrest report as reading.
John uses graphs that he claims show the amount of women he's slept with over time. Source: YouTube
The woman claimed John pulled down his pants and told her to watch as he masturbated while trying to grope her breasts and kiss her. She also alleged when her friends found her, they banged on the car window and she got out.
According to court documents, John was charged with disorderly conduct, coercion and two counts of open or gross lewdness.
John was never convicted. Instead, he made a “no contest” plea for disorderly conduct (a misdemeanour) on the condition that he pay all fines, fees and costs, undergo impulse control counselling and “stay out of the [Vegas] Strip corridor” for a year.
A “no contest plea” means you accept punishment for the crimes you have been charged with, but you do not admit guilt.
John photographed with several different women. Source: YouTube
When asked about the allegations, John sent The Feed a pre-recorded two-hour PowerPoint presentation in which he attempted to debunk the woman’s claims.
In the video, John compared his situation to “what they tried to do to Mike Tyson” and said, "feminist assholes are gunning us down as men".
John is not the only former RSD employee that continues to work in the dating field.
Alex, who also was previously employed by RSD, does not describe himself as a 'pickup artist'. Source: Instagram
Queenslander, Alex, was studying psychology at university when he claims he was recruited to be a coach at RSD in 2007. He said he quit the company in 2012 because he didn’t like the direction it was going in.
“It was kind of a pyramid scheme, to be honest,” Alex told The Feed.
“We could work with three guys at a time on a weekend in Sydney. RSD would charge each of those guys $3000 each,” he said.
“I was getting about 22 per cent net earnings. That was the model.”
Alex now runs a four-week program that he claims teaches men how to “overcome helplessness, hopelessness and disorientation in the social and dating game.”
“The advice I give guys is that if you realise you’re equal to so many other guys and you’re able to overcome issues about having an ego or being socially afraid...people will reciprocate your social contribution,” he told The Feed.
In a video posted on Alex’s YouTube channel, he claims “your theatricism and manipulation can trigger consent.”
When asked about this quote Alex told The Feed, “manipulation is not necessarily a bad thing. Parents manipulate their children into believing Santa Claus is real to create a more exciting situation for the children.”
Alex was at university when he claims he was recruited to be a coach at RSD in 2007. Source: YouTube
In another video, Alex discusses how to “balance out” the use of ‘negs’ (negative expressions) to seduce women.
“Turning your back to her, shushing her, these are negative things - it’s so beautiful when you do these physicality negs,” Alex said.
In the video, Alex also claims negative expressions can be over-the-top and theatrical like telling a woman: “you’re a trophy wife bitch”.
“I’ll also use the phrase ‘you never told me to stop’,” he said in the video.
Australian 'dating coach' Alex has run workshops for men in several different countries. Source: Instagram
When The Feed asked Alex for clarification on this comment, he said he was referring to a woman he was dating at the time.
“In this relationship, I’d playfully call her the trophy wife which is a really positive over-the-top expression and then would be like ‘oh, now you’re being a bitch’ and she would say the same to me,” he said.
“The point that I was making is that if you’re very generous with your positive statements, then you can playfully use negative expressions.”
Alex said with his clients, the question of consent doesn’t come up often, adding, “if there is a doubt in terms of consent, there is no doubt.”
Moving away from the pickup industry
Damien Diecke runs the School of Attraction in Sydney. As a dating coach, he said he applies his background in men’s work to relationships rather than a pickup artist philosophy to attract women.
Damien told The Feed he believes manipulative strategies endorsed by some pickup artists target women with the lowest self-esteem.
“These mentalities upset me the most because it hurts everyone. It puts women on edge, it makes women not trust men, and it hurts the men themselves as well,” he said.
Damien believes there is a growing undercurrent of angry men who are resentful towards women.
Damien Diecke is the founder of School Of Attraction. Source: Instagram
He said these men need attention because they are forming their own groups online and adopting unhealthy philosophies about women.
“What most women and society in general sees are overly aggressive, assertive men out there who are making women feel unsafe. And that's a problem, and that needs to be dealt with,” Damien said.
“But what society doesn't realise is that there's an equally larger volume of men who are feeling very underrepresented and very unsupported,” he said.
As for John, he believes some men “take it too far”.
“A small subset of guys take this stuff to a perverted sense where they're calling girls dogs or whor** or… in some cases, guys were posting like sex acts [online],” John said.
“I agree that the public image at the very least, it looks just very, very strange. And that really bothers me because I have a real system that helps guys...”
The Feed contacted Frank Haro several times for comment but did not get a response.
If you or someone you know is impacted by sexual assault, you can call 1800RESPECT on 1800 737 732 or visit .
Share
