The other day a mid-tier PUA named Johnny Berba committed suicide. He is not the first PUA to do so, and he will not be the last. Furthermore, even among PUAs who have not killed themselves, you are going to find quite a few genuinely troubled characters. On top, there is the issue that the PUA lifestyle itself is not in the least sustainable, and at some point reality will come crushing down. So, let’s have a look at what is going on here!

I do not want to spend too much time on Johnny Berba himself. Yet, he exemplifies the problems behind the PUA lifestyle quite well: he was in his late 30s, if I am not mistaken. In addition, he had financial problems and apparently some mental health issues. Regarding the mental health issues, we can muse about whether they were cause or consequence of his PUA lifestyle, but it should be quite obvious that these people are not the most well-adjusted bunch. Note that I am talking about guys who build their entire identity around being a PUA, not guys who bang the occasional slut.

The biggest problem with the PUA lifestyle, even for guys who are successful with women, is that there is a very obvious end in sight. If you have aged well, you will still be able to get women when you are in your mid- to late 30s or even 40s. However, your behavior is not socially accepted and women are acutely aware of this. To them, it is obvious that you should have achieved something in your life at that point, and telling others that you teach guys how to get laid or that your identity is based around how many chicks you have banged is downright bizarre. I am quite certain that people like Johnny Berba had very few friends in life. Normal people cannot relate to them at all.

In contrast, if you are in high school or college, you can just go with the flow and party, and have sex with random chicks as much as you want or are able to. Even then, picking up chicks is not your main activity as you still pursue other goals. Other people cut such guys a lot of slack even if they are likely to never amount to much in life. At least they can enjoy their youth and party. Yet, there is no such easy excuse to be had once your youth is gone and you are clinging on to a lifestyle all your peers have left behind. Of course, his is the positive case. Most PUA types, however, seem to have not gotten laid much when they were young and focus on scamming inexperienced men out of their money.

Speaking of money, the PUA industry obviously declined tremendously since its heyday about two decades ago. Since then, the pie has only ever gotten smaller. The people attracted to working as PUAs did not leave solid, established careers. Instead, these were guys who were floundering. Amusingly, there was the marketing claim by RSD that PUA coaching had to be so expensive because their coaches were so highly skilled that they could easily make high six-figures elsewhere. In all seriousness, no surgeon, high-ranking lawyer, or investment banker left his career to teach a bunch of dorks how to hit on drunk sluts.

The PUA industry was built on lies upon lies. The people involved in it, and a lot of its customers did not always realize it, but at some point reality inevitably had to rear its ugly head. Too many guys spent $5k on a weekend bootcamp, realizing that they are not doing any better with women, so the well ran dry. The best “routine” cannot fix height, looks, and a lack of money. The same realization leads to PUAs getting depressed because they also have to admit to themselves sooner or later that they are not competitive on the dating market and never were. I wonder what a “highly skilled PUA” thinks if he sees a good-looking guy with a woman of a caliber he could only bang in his dreams.

Eventually the disparity between the public image such PUAs built up and the experiences they have day in and day out will be too much to bear. They want to portray that they are successful in life, have money, and get laid. Yet, in reality they have zero social status, the money is not good, and they do not nearly get laid as much as they would like, or claim. In his last days, Johnny Berba was so desperate that he begged for money online. Clearly, he did not just suddenly got broke but was instead barely hanging on for a long time, probably for years. Meanwhile, he witnessed regular guys getting ahead of him, one after the other. On that note, many PUAs have the tendency of mocking regular guys. RSD spoke of “chodes”, for instance. Yet, anybody who just honed a skill and built a career ended up in a much better position in life than any of the RSD dating coaches.

Plastering your face all over the Internet has certain negative consequences, both socially and professionally. Arguably, there is no way out for these guys. They have at least a five-year gap in their CV, if not more, which leads to their CV getting binned immediately. On top, they have few marketable skills. Well, it is pretty clear that there is not much money in the PUA industry, so if these guys had marketable skills, why did they not leave yet? In fact, some PUAs did have marketable skills and they left the PUA industry behind. Mark Manson, for instance, used his ethnic connections and landed a publishing deal, which set him up for remarkable success. Chris from GoodLookingLoser moved into selling kratom full-time. BradP closed down his “pickup mansion” in Los Angeles and made big money with rehab centers, until he got busted by the feds for his illegal machinations. Once a scammer, always a scammer, it seems. In contrast, only those people who have few to no alternatives have doubled down on their PUA career. Of course, I explicitly exclude people who run a side hustle as this is an entirely different category. The full-timers, however, have their back against the wall, and the walls are closing in. With each passing day, their cognitive dissonance gets bigger. At some point, they may snap and kill themselves.