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.
Great find there on Casey Mahoney/Brad P. There’s actually a movie called “Body Brokers” (2021) that seems to depict the business model of running rehab centers in California.
Once again, this is a great analysis. Obviously, too much of “woman” in a man’s life is a detrimental factor – no matter whether a man is just obsessing over weird lingo like all of the PUA stuff, or whether a man has an actual “rotation” of women for a prolonged span of time and makes them the very focus of his life.
It does seem that the gods punish such hubris.
Moreover men who obsess over women to an unhealthy extent develop a certain aura of “creepiness”, which is bound to eventually stain your soul, if you do not make an active effort to get rid of it and move away to actually greener pastures.
“Future” (aka Thomspon Plyler), a PUA with whom I had some kind of connection twenty years ago, after his PUA heyday performed as stand-up comedian, wrote and directed short movies, worked as a bodyweight fitness trainer in NYC and now apparently works as a web developer. A very talented and enthusiastic guy – at least he didn’t fully destroy his life with “Mystery Method” and “LoveSystems”…
You knew that Future guy in person?
He always seemed like a very naive nice guy kinda dude. Defs not a con man.
He featured heavily in an early documentary on PUA and MM when he first got into it and peacocking etc in the classic garb of the time. He tries to sneak into a big PUA conference as he was broke. Interesting watch.
He really did believe in the life changing power of PUA in that doco.
Wow. There’s goes another one.
You hit the nail on the head Sleazy with cognitive dissonance, creating an ‘alter ego’ with a new PUA name also plays into it I’m sure of that. Same same really I guess leading to the Cog Diss. The end point realisation for me was that laying XX quantity of chicks is not an achievement you can really talk about or get recognition among a peer group for. Except other loser PUAs. And the quality of those chicks will be a mixed bag. It makes a guy drop his standards just to get another notch and number to try hit XXX lays.
And in the end it’s “XX lays ..but so what?” Or friends saying “he’d fuck anything that guy .. he’s a ‘root rat’ ( Aussie slang). can’t really tell the funny or interesting lay report stories to anyone IRL y’know? Except a sex addiction therapist …or strangers on the internet . 😀
And worst of all (spoiler alert)
Laying chicks does not build this promised Self Esteem or Unbreakable Confidence. It’s kinda the opposite. It’s akin to tryna fill a bucket with a big hole at the bottom of it.
RSD Jeffy and Daxx from Love Systems actually did bits of seminars saying this exact thing.
And those talks were kept in on the products somehow among the game training stuff (why?) . I took notes and quit it after watching those twin talks as it all clicked
. The ‘Thin Veneer Of Game’ they referred to it as.
On products. Selling game. Figure that out 🤔
CJ
Well, you can actually brag about your many lays (whether you’re believed is a whole other story) and tell your lay reports to construction workers. I’ve always talked about howI’d like to write down some of the shit I hear, from the pathetic to the bizarre, but I never find the time.
Yeah I’ve done that but it’s actually kinda low value thing to do socially amount a group of dudes. Ie Brag about banging X number of chicks or whatever. Better to just pull a few hotties when out socially with them if I wanna get a ‘player’ reputation. That can be kinda useful. It’s a preselection thing with some sexy slutty ones. They know what they are getting with me.
I’ve gotten funny stories from lays to tell other chicks.. this is useful cos women can tell the stories are true .. by the way it all goes down and what the chicks did , as I tell it back etc
The main takeaway I got from PUA is understanding how women operate and what they are capable of doing . Ie what I could get away with. Plus learning ‘chick lingo’ /‘chick code’.. they have their own terminology and slang for everything men & hookups. it’s really beneficial to know this. Cos speaking like this to new chicks = he’s an insider , he gets pussy. Yknow?
Funny thing about the 5 year gap in the Cv. My friend has this issue. However, he made another version of his CV with the only change being the name to “Shaniqua Q Goldstein”.
His cover letter read :
“Dear hiring manager,
Shalom”
Apparently a 5 year gap is fine for a female black Jew. In fact, Shaniqua was “exactly what (they’re) looking for!”
Shaniqua does not even have to bother with a cover letter as she has others actively opening doors for her. If not, then HR will step in and ensure that the role gets filled with a diversity candidate. A tactic I recently learned about is HR refusing to process a job offer if fewer women than men have been interviewed. This means that it is very difficult if not impossible to make an offer to a guy as no self-respecting techie will wait around for an extra months or two in order to get the official offer letter, or eventually get turned down. While there is a pushback against wokeness in tech, there is a lot of ground that needs to be regained.
I find this both interesting and sad. We have not talked that much about the PUA industry in the last few years, but I remember it was a big topic at the beginning, on the old blog. Out of curiosity, I went back and re-read the full archive of the old blog (that brought back some memories!).
Its remarkable that your old blog is still available, a lot of the forums, blogs and videos from back then do not exist anymore, and some are not even found on the web archive.
What does the PUA/dating coach landscape look like today, compared to back then? Plenty of gurus seem to have dropped off the radar entirely.
Roosh found God and disawowed his old life.
Krauser barely posts anything, his last video uploads are years old. His buddy Tom Torero also killed himself a couple years back, after being caught up in some “metoo” controversy.
Mystery seems to be active still, apparently he is doing seminars with this Beckster fraud that some readers exposed on your old blog.
That Vince Kelvin clown is apparently still active, I found a post about him on Medium, written by a woman as recently as a few months ago, which suggests he is still doing the same silly antics: https://medium.com/@rdswesley/my-experience-with-vince-kelvin-pick-up-artist-5fdbe5262c7d
Kezia Noble is still active, apparently, to my surprise. I wonder how much makeup and filters she has to apply to still look decent.
Paul Janka is still active as a coach? His website seems to suggest so. Aaron, didnt you mention at some point you met him in real life? I seem to remember you saying he was one of the more honest guya out there.
Julien Blanc is peddling “life coaching”/self help bullshit.
Ross Jeffries and Gunwitch we talked about recently.
Any others that come to mind?
Vince Kelvin is a name I have not heard in a long time. This guy must be in his late fifties or early sixties by now. That article reads as if it was written by ChatGPT. He also has a YouTube channel. I am not putting a link in this comment as the content is really off-putting. His recent videos only have around a couple hundred views. There are a few others PUAs still around. Notable is Richard LaRuina (“Gambler”) who was one of the most prominent non-US-based PUAs who only disappeared a few short years ago. After the PUA scene had imploded, he shifted to game development and released the series Super Seducer on Steam. The first game got quite some attention online as it was so cringe-worthy. A sale is a sale, though. Eventually, this fizzled out, but he certainly tried milking the attention he got.
I did not meet Paul Janka in real life but I recall is first book being quite good, it was a PDF he had released for free and with little to no editing, if I recall correctly. For obvious reasons, he does not want to acknowledge that he benefited from his good looks, and from living in NYC.
There’s that Marnie chick (similar to Kezia) who used to be a Wing-Girl PuA. She’s still going on YT.
Others still in business (or still speaking at mens conferences etc )
Brent Smith
Zan Perrion
Love Systems
Steve Mayeda (ElTopo) ->The 21 convention
RSD tyler & Jeffy
That’s all I can think of.
I had forgotten about Zan Perrion. Supposedly, he turned 60 this year:
There’s quite a few RSD coaches who make good money, including the EX rsd coaches.
– Todd Valentine seems to be killing it and is running a serious business.
– Luke went off to work with high-status clients, both personal and company branding and seems loaded with money
– Julien, Madison, Jeffy are still launching products with RSD, and seem to be doing well
I’m also surprised on the note about “resume gaps”. That’s only relevant if you’re trying to be an employee. I have a 20 year “resume gap” seeing that I’ve never had a job in my life, just freelancing and gigs and now businesses.
The entrepeneur route is risky and hard, and you risk losing it all and ending up worse off than guys choosing the employee route for sure. But I’d rather be homeless than be an employee. Some of us are just built that way.
In my case it paid off, as I currently am at the level of a very highly paid professional, but only work 2 hours a week, and my first business is growing at 50% a year (and we’re just about to massively blow up).
Alek, the PUAs who ended up killing themselves clearly failed at being entrepreneurs and they did not manage to pivot to a different business idea either. We are not talking about hypotheticals. Sure, if you are a successful business owner, you may tell yourself that you could never be an employee and rather be homeless. Yet, reality can be pretty tough. Johnny Berba killed himself party because of money problems and it seems that he did not have any other option either.
@Alek
That’s interesting re Todd killing it.
I always found his courses to be the most complicated and head melting of all to watch. He threw lots of his own brand of paradoxical-riddle-nonsense on top of the base RSD ideas. Plus his course infield was all obviously staged.
I’m surprised he is still going and doing well tbh,
Todd has been on the scene a long time now. In Strauss book during the Project Hollywood time a guy is mentioned who was sleeping in a tent in the garden .or in a cupboard . Named ‘Xaneus’. That was Todd.
So he’s been into as long as Owen/Tyler.
He must be a ‘super master -PUA’ level these days… 😂
Jeffy did not look to be doing too well financially back at the end of RSD. He was living in a share house in San Fran. And selling his own t-shirts as a side hustle.
I am not sure that Todd is killing it. His YouTube channel has drooped a lot, with video views of over a million a few years ago to just a few thousands. He probably gets buy but I need to see more evidence before believing that he is raking it in.
Jeffy seems to be pretty washed up. He is too far gone to be able to go back to having a regular life. By now he is likely in his late 50s, so he will have to ride this wave into the grave.
@Alek
Ps – congrats on the business success . That’s the dream for me. Well done.
PPs – any jobs going? 😆 I am very adept on a computer and currently looking for a 3 day per week admin job WFH. Cheers bro! 👍
Things work differently now. You can make millions with just 10k qualified fans. It used to be the case that people used to chase quantity (millions of views), but that only works if your business model is selling views to advertisers. If youre selling high ticket items, it’s much better to niche down.
I still don’t buy it because you will not sell such high-ticket items repeatedly. His reach seems to low to call him a success. I have looked into the numbers behind some YouTubers, and based on my research I would be surprised if Todd or Jeffy make decent money. As a side hustle, this may work but the demand is no longer there. If it was, we would see many more competitors, i.e. new guys trying to break into this particular niche, just like it happened back in the days.
It’s hard for us to know if ex-RSD coach a, b, or c is doing well. AFAIK U.S. tax returns are confidential, so there’s no way of knowing how much money someone makes, unless they’re executives in a public corporation (they have to declare executive compensation in their annual reports), or hold certain public sector employee positions.
Sometimes you can tell from someone’s job (a senior associate at a major law firm will always make very good money), but with those who are self-employed it’s really hard to know.
Even if we did know that one particular RSD coach was doing very well for himself, well, we’ll always have outliers. Doesn’t say much about those people in general.
Thats where backend funnel comes into play. He has a dozen or so products and services on the backend.
In terms of views, it seems every tenth video is at like 150k views. That’s hyper successful for a very niche educational content aimed at people who are specifically looking to solve a specific pain point.
Having 15 million views from people who are just looking to kill time with entertainment is almost valueless. Having 150k from people looking to solve a specific problem that you sell products for is a gold mine. These are highly qualified leads.
If only one in a 1000 of those converts, that’s at least 300$. Some (many) people buy up the entire catalog. And a fraction become big spenders who want to buy personal coaching repeatedly. True average is maybe 1000$. That’s 150k for crafting that video.
YouTube counts as views if you watch at least 30 seconds, so views are a bit misleading. Also, I am not convinced of your back-of-the-envelope calculation. A decent “conversion rate” online is about 2%, and this is mere sign ups to a mailing list, not purchases. Now I do not want to mention a name, but there is a mid-tier guy I know who sells some products online and whose online presence looks about as busy as the guys you mention. His revenue, not profit, is a little over $100k year, and if he did not live in a low-cost country, the entire business model would not really work. But even if that guy is doing as well as you assume, it’s an outlier. Again, if PUA coaching was still a viable niche, there would be a lot more competition in it.
Another aspect is that I would not put too much faith in projections of success. Again, I do not doubt that there are people who make money online. Obviously, there are plenty. However, I am also quite familiar with entrepreneurs, sometimes guys running businesses with hundreds of people, who pretend to be someone they absolutely are not. Today, these guys drive around in a Porsche, tomorrow they are insolvent.
A guy I knew play-acted as the CEO of a supposedly successful 50-person startup for a two or three years. Then the money ran out and his company was gone. The tragic part is that if he had cut costs, he may have been able to hang on a bit longer, and perhaps even become profitable, but it was more important to him to convey an image of success than being successful. Similarly, in the area I live there are people who have nice, big houses but who are in debt up to their eyeballs. Yesterday, they were winners in life. Today, the bank is foreclosing their house. I have seen such stories too often to be too impressed by status signalling. In contrast, I know a few well-off guys, including one who is worth probably between five and ten million euros, who do not draw any attention anywhere and live pretty regular lives.
That’s why I went with 1 in 1000. The conversion rate for engaged viewers is about 1-5%, with the smaller number being for more generic self help, and more specific and niched being closer to upper range.
Let’s go with 1% of engaged. And about 10% are engaged. That’s 1 in 1000. And he’s a really good marketer.
I also looked back at older videos. The ratios are similar. Most are like 30-40k then a couple 150-200k and some at a million. They are 7 years old, so it makes sense.
Evergreen videos accrue views over time. For this kind of video that tackles searchers (people googling for a specific pain point solution), it’s a completely different model to entertainment and commentary videos where the launch time views are the bulk of lifetime views.
I appreciate GLL at least being honest and admitting that rich guys just get high end escorts.