Why Are Men’s Dating Coaches Being ‘Cancelled’?
A few weeks after becoming the latest dating coach to fall victim to ‘cancel culture’, Tom Torero decided he had nothing left to live for.
He committed suicide on 31 December 2021, just days after Newsweek published a hit piece on him.
The article’s author Danya Hajjaji not only ripped Torero to shreds, but also moved to have him banned from his website host, social media networks and payment processors — essentially erasing his only sources of income.
Now, following his death, she’s being accused of involuntary manslaughter by angry online commenters.
This isn’t the first time that men’s dating coaches have been targeted by the ‘cancel culture’ brigade. Hajjaji had successfully deplatformed Mike Ke, better known as PickUp Alpha, just months earlier. This comes after a 2019 BBC investigation resulted in dozens of other dating coaches having their YouTube channels deleted.
In this article, we’ll explore why the media is obsessed with cancelling men’s dating coaches — and how they are going about silencing them.
Are All Male Dating Coaches Toxic?
The world of pick-up artists (PUAs) rose to mainstream consciousness in 2004, following the publication of Neil Strauss’ best-seller The Game.
Strauss was a journalist shadowing a group of PUAs and documented his journey becoming a successful one himself. These guys wore wacky clothes, spoke in secret code and used canned routines to seduce women. They were mocked by most of society, and rightly so.
In the present day, few old-school PUAs remain. Most modern dating coaches recognise The Game as nothing but a fun and entertaining story. Modern coaches won’t feed you clever lines or psychological trickery any more. Instead, they mostly help men make lasting improvements to their behavior, so to appear more attractive to the opposite sex.
Most coaches sell books or online courses offering men dating tips. Some offer in-person ‘bootcamps’, during which they’ll accompany students to bars, nightclubs or daytime venues, helping them to meet women and offering feedback on their interactions.
Men who suffer from anxiety, shyness, social awkwardness or general cluelessness with women can get a lot of value out of these services. Indeed, reports suggest that men’s dating coaching is an $100m industry.
It does have some dodgy characters. What industry doesn’t?
Yet, when the men’s dating industry is covered in the media, all coaches seem to be accused of having sleazy and misogynistic intentions.
For starters, journalists still insist on calling them ‘pick-up artists’, knowing that the public associate this term with the cringeworthy self-confessed nerds from The Game.
The media will also often associate PUAs with with more extreme misogynist groups in ‘The Manosphere’, such as incels and MGTOW (Men Going Their Own Way).
Incels and MGTOW hate women. Dating coaches teach men how to improve their relationships with women. They are literally polar opposites.
Dating coaches are also accused of using coercive, deceptive or manipulative techniques to make women sleep with them. These accusations are inherently sexist, because they imply that women are stupid enough to be ‘tricked’ into sleeping with men they don’t like.
The truth is: dating coaches teach men how to approach women in a manner that makes them feel comfortable and excited to say ‘Yes’, whether that’s to swapping contact details, going on a date or accompanying a man home.
Why Are Dating Coaches Being ‘Cancelled’?
Many dating coaches sell digital courses with video or audio footage of them approaching women and going on dates. Some would upload footage like this to YouTube as well. It serves as educational content to demonstrate that their teachings are effective.
To preserve the legitimacy of the interactions, the women aren’t made aware that they’re being filmed or recorded, although their faces are blurred and all personally identifying details are muted. The laws for these type of recordings are different in various parts of the world. In many countries, provided you protect others’ privacy, it’s completely legal to do this.
However, after being pressured by the BBC as part of its 2019 pick-up artist documentary, YouTube amended its terms to not allow any footage of this nature. Shortly after the documentary aired, dozens of dating coaches had their channels terminated without warning.
Vimeo and other video hosting companies have taken similar steps in recent years. In fact, Vimeo went as far as prohibiting all content that “markets, sells, or constitutes classes or tutorials that seek to teach seduction techniques”.
Newsweek journalist Danya Hajjiji accessed Tom Torero’s digital course ‘Stealth Seduction’ and made the following comment in her hit piece.
“While the women’s names tend to be muted, footage viewed by Newsweek suggests at least one woman’s first name was not edited out.”
It was also found that ‘Stealth Seduction’ contained audio footage of Tom having sex with one of the women he met.
While that certainly presents an ethical question mark, the Newsweek article concedes this is not illegal in the UK.
The Voyeurism (Offences) Act of 2019 prohibits recording an image or operating equipment beneath an individual’s clothing for the purpose of “obtaining sexual gratification” or “humiliating, alarming or distressing” the person.
These laws do not include audio recordings, and the precision of their stipulated means presents a loophole for pick-up artists.
Unlike perpetrators of revenge porn or upskirting, for example, PUAs can state the purpose of their recordings as educational, not for sexual gratification or torment to the women involved.
Unable to press legal charges, Hajjaji instead took it upon herself to contact the likes of PayPal, Amazon, Mailchimp, YouTube and Stripe, suggesting that selling sexualised content was against their terms of service. Torero was essentially erased from the internet shortly afterwards, and found himself unable to mentally recover after this fall from grace.
It’s a common ‘cancel culture’ strategy. Find one thing your enemy did wrong and pressure all media companies to erase that person because of it.
The question is: does the punishment really fit the crime?
Why Is The Media So Keen To Erase Men’s Dating Coaches From The Internet?
It’s nothing new for the media to create fear and outrage via sensationalization. That’s what generates clicks.
A news story about how dating coaches help thousands of shy, lonely and awkward men find love wouldn’t be as popular.
But why go the extra step to cancel them forever? Why doesn’t the media want useful dating advice to be available to men?
The journalists might argue they’re trying to protect women from creepy guys. But the truth is: they’re actually doing the complete opposite.
Most men have no idea how to see a woman they don’t know, start a conversation and make her excited to connect with them.
But they still want to have sex…
So, what do they do?
Some men will try and approach, do a terrible job and make women incredibly uncomfortable. Others will do absolutely nothing, instead hoping to rely on dating apps or getting drunk in nightclubs to meet someone. And if that doesn’t work, they become frustrated, depressed and bitter at the opposite sex. This is how guys end up joining those misogynist online hate groups.
And what happens when they’re drunk at the club, by the way? Do you think these clueless guys are approaching women in a respectful way?
Or are these the guys who are:
- harassing women;
- groping them on the dancefloor;
- not taking no for answer;
- slipping pills into their drinks;
- following them home late at night;
- sending photos of their genitals;
- and whatever else?
The men who know how to connect with women aren’t the one’s sexually assaulting them.
It’s the clueless, frustrated and lonely guys doing that.
By cancelling men’s dating coaches, the media is creating more of these dangerous men.
