Publisher

SparkUp

Love is a crazy road to navigate. And in an age of dating sites, ghosting and crumbing, where people are putting off getting married in favor of their careers, it becomes even more complicated to date.

Like the 2005 American romantic comedy Hitch, where a professional “date doctor” by the name Hitch coaches men in the art of wooing women, there’s also a “profesional (sic) dating coach” in Manila who calls himself Smooth. In a recent statement on his Facebook page, Smooth, who has been identified as Sein Meneses, narrated how his failed marriage, which left him “devastated and suicidal,” led him to seeking “the cure for loneliness.”

He now runs what is called PUA Academy, which stands for Pick Up Artists Academy: a school which, essentially, teaches men how to “pickup” women.

Posted on its website are his cures for loneliness: products that range from a P470-worth “Smooth Seduction” E-book to a 10-day “intensive, comfort zone breaking (sic) training” with a price tag of P48,000. The long list of topics includes techniques like the so-called LMR or “Last minute resistance,” where students are instructed to repeat sexual advances towards women who initially say no. The CEO says, “Women wants (sic) to be forced.”

The program commences with a thirty-hour “infield game.”

PUA Academy went under the spotlight after this Facebook post went viral:

Netizens, especially feminists, have taken to Facebook to express their dismay. The official Facebook page of the academy, however, which had since been filled with 1-star reviews, has already disappeared.

“Love is not a game. Characters are not characters in a game,” one user commented on a post. “There is no fucking game, if you want to be taken seriously, do not ever think that you are in a game.”

 
 




Is this company really purveying self-confidence or are they propagating machismo and misogyny?

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