In my early 20s, I was a huge of the then Australian-based seduction coaching company The Natural Lifestyles. It seemed like a refreshing and rosier alternative to the American and English counterparts of seduction coaching that seemed bent on competitiveness, machismo and Red Pill ideology. The Julien Blanc incident of 2014 left me with a bitter and sour impression of the pickup community and I earnestly avoided the community for the next year or so. I was grateful that I didn't fall into the Red Pill cesspool because I found James Marshall a more relatable personality. Having also been a musician with an interest in cultures, religions, philosophy and travelling of-the-beaten-tracks, I was naturally inclined towards watching his YouTube videos. I considered flying over to Melbourne in the southern midsummer of 2016 for a TNL bootcamp. Having told the admin for the company's workshops that I was an undergrad in my first year at the time, I was advised by this admin that this workshop wasn't for me as the price of the workshop would be out of my price range as a student and he suggested I turn towards free resources such as videos, online courses and e-books. This I had found to be sound advice.

The "bootcamp" model or in the case of TNL, the "workshop model" is a fundamentally flawed model for teaching [hetero] men seduction, dating and relationship advice for women. For starters, it bars entire demographics of men who don't have the financial means to drop $US2,000-3,000 for a workshop. This in return results in a clientele that is largely comprised of white collar professionals, managerials and business owners who the financial means and disposable income to blow money on a seduction workshop. It has come to my personal speculation that the high pricing of these "bootcamps/workshops" has still enabled the proliferation of MGTOW, Inceldom, Red Pill and Black Pill ideology. If we as men want to take full ownership and solve the problems of sexual assault, rape culture, abusive relationships, co-dependency, loneliness, Inceldom, MGTOW and Red Pill ideology, addressing accessibility of advice and resources is key.

The other issue with these pickup "bootcamps"/"workshops" is the one-size-fits all formats. All of such are geared towards guys who are 'new' to cold approaching women in pubic and provide little in the way of options for men who are "intermediate" or men further down the track of cold approaching need constructive feedback in their ongoing journey with relationships, dating and sex advice. There is little accountability for individual learning abilities, as well as the psychological nuances of "approach anxiety" and hesitancy towards cold approach, this here I feel a therapist or psychologist would be of better assistance to addressing this issue than 'seduction coaches'. While it's great that a company such as TNL shows a great deal of sympathy for clients undertaking and learning ropes of cold approach, I think that there needs to be more holistic, localized approaches to dating, relationship and sex advice that don't involve blowing thousands of dollars of on weekend or week long workshops in major European or American cities and are carefully tailored towards individual learning abilities and personal circumstances. A guy with ADHD is going to have different issues from a guy with high functioning autism, as will a guy who is a recovering alcoholic or a man who has a fixation with prostitutes.

The innate hierarchy that is created from and entailed with price exclusionary workshops and with standardized formats is a recipe for all sorts of complex issues: manipulation, conning, coercive upselling, blackmailing, abuse, gatekeeping, concealing abuse, sexual assault, harassment, racism ablism etc. It is for this reason that I am adamant that if we want to address to toxic masculinity, misogyny, sexual assault, abuse and all that is implicated by MGTOW, the Red Pill, the Black Pill etc, we need to address the means by which dating, sex and relationship advice is delivered to men. With the abundance and proliferation of videographic and written content, it has never been easier to seek out solid advice for dating, sex and relationships. However, i believe convincing men that dropping 2-3k on a "workshop" or "bootcamp" will really augmented their chances of success with sexually relating to women is fraught with its own problems of exclusivity and hierarchy. Concealing such advice behind, or at least attempting to convince men that such advice lies behind such paywalls only perpetuates a model of gatekeepers and seekers and enables a potential culture of "masters" or "OGs" whose integrity is seldom if ever called into question. Coming from a classical music background, I have seen first hand what happens when men are pedestalized as "maestros" and "masters of their art", leading them to gatekeep the careers for young female (and at times male) musicians leading to a myriad of abuse and toxicity. A clarinetist was recently outed in my local scene for raping one of his students in the 2000s, another school music teacher was outed for raping a 16 year old student, and the former head of my music school promptly retired after word got out of his extensive string of sexual harassment and coercive relationships he had with students, dating back to his private school teaching days. Like education, law, science, engineering, fine arts and music, the seduction community is no exception to perpetuating patriarchy and toxic hierarchies where sexual abuse is enabled. It is for this reason, in addition to the reasons listed above that we should stop centring and pedestalizing 'coaches' and 'gurus' for relationship, dating and sex advice and all of this should be decentralized, common knowledge for every man (hetero, bi, gay, asexual etc), not gate kept under paywalls.

Even pickup coaches who price themselves on the lower end of the scale and have lesser clout can be questionable and dodgy. I took lessons from a pickup coach (who went by the name of Jacob Prince) back in 2016 when I was 20. While advice was solid and sound regarding getting me started with my verbal communication skills with women and fixing up my style, his instructions to take bounce women around different bars and use alcohol to create "time distortion" was rather questionable to me, thus leading to me quitting Skype coaching sessions with him. He himself was also an alcoholic, putting this on display where him and a 'wingman' of his goes on a trip to Romania, which I found to be bad optics for his coaching business.

I think Mark Manson's book Models: Learn the Attract Women with Honesty is an excellent starting point for any man venturing into the realm of dating, relationship, and sex advice. The book is reasonably priced and unless one wants to delve into the niche realms of BDSM, polyamory, swinging etc, I see no reason why anyone should blow any more money on relationship advice.