Professional creep Julien Blanc is getting the cold shoulder for his dating seminars in Australia. His ice-out is thanks to an Internet movement to stop him from preaching his pickup artist techniques exploded after a video went viral in Japan of him assaulting women.
The video shows Blanc assaulting women in Tokyo by pulling their heads to his crotch in public spaces, aggressively grabbing store clerks while a videographer shouts “beautiful, sexy,” and giving an excerpt of his pickup lesson on being a white man in Tokyo.
Blanc says that white men can do whatever they want in Tokyo, describing his actions to the laughter of his audience.
“Just grab her… And I pull her in. And she kinda like laughs and giggles, and all you have to say to kinda like take the pressure off is just yell 'Pikachu' or 'Pokemon' or 'Tamagotchi' or something,” Blanc says in the video.
Blanc is an executive coach with Real Social Dynamics, a pickup artist bootcamp, and runs a website called Pimping My Game, where he says he’ll teach you how to “Make Girls BEG To Sleep With You After SHORT-CIRCUITING Their Emotional And Logical Mind.”
“It's Offensive, It's Inappropriate, It's Emotionally Scarring, BUT IT'S DAMN EFFECTIVE. Just kidding…,” Blanc writes.
Opponents have taken to Twitter in outrage, starting a hashtag #TakeDownJulienBlanc aimed at halting his training sessions around the world, as well as alerting authorities in Japan to his presence and sexual assault. So far they’ve had some success, canceling his events at hotels and taking down his Eventbrite listings.
@JennLi123 We will not be hosting this event at our hotel. We thank you for your passion and commitment to spreading awareness Jenn.
— HGI Austin Downtown (@HGIAustin) November 4, 2014@itsmenanice Thank you so much for bringing this to our attention. It has since been removed from our platform.
— Eventbrite Help (@eventbritehelp) November 4, 2014Earlier this year the YouTube community reacted with outrage at Sam Pepper, a YouTube prankster who assaulted unsuspecting women in the name of comedy for his channel. The genre of pickup artist videos is not too far from the social-experiment prank genre that came under fire for its practicers' tactics against unsuspecting women. While Blanc isn’t a power user in the YouTube space, some videos of his have garnered more than half a million views teaching other men his tactics. After shutting Blanc down in Australia, the #TakeDownJulianBlanc movement helmed by Twitter user JennLi123 continues to try and stop him from making a return to Japan.
This is a public call: Is there anyone who speaks Japanese who can work with us to #takedownjulienblanc in Japan?
— #TakeDownJulienBlanc (@JennLi123) November 5, 2014H/T Gawker and rocketnews24 | Screengrab via JulienFreeTour/YouTube