BY SPECIAL GUEST BLOGGER JONELLE PATRICK
Damn, it used to be a white guy in Tokyo could get away with anything – like playfully choking girls in public, randomly ramming their heads into his crotch while cheerfully shouting “Pikachu!” and Instagramming a domestic violence checklist labeled as advice on #HowToMakeHerStay.
“At least in Tokyo, if you’re a white male, you can do what you want,” Julien Blanc tells a seminar full of predator wannabes, while demonstrating his technique for pulling girls’ heads down toward his nasty bits. (Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0AtF2gTDZw#t=59)
But thanks to a boatload of outraged women and ex-pats* who’ve got their Twitter and know how to use it, last week, Julien Blanc – the self-styled “how to be Sex-Worthy” guru who has been running seminars to help Forever Alones “develop panty-dropping masculinity” – has recently found himself the target of a bilingual petition with 51,674 signatures and counting, aimed at banning him from reentering Japan. (*Not everyone who signed the petition would call themselves feminists, but ex-pats in general are freaked that they might be tarred with the same #foreigner brush as this douchebag.)
The #takedownjulienblanc campaign has gained so much international momentum that he’s also found himself turned away at the borders of Brazil, the UK and South Korea, while hotels across Australia and the U.S. have cancelled his seminars. (His Australian visa has now been cancelled.)
Not only that, the social media machine he’s exploited so successfully backfired when his Facebook and Instagram posts were turned against him on CNN. Blanc was cornered by Chris Cuomo into making an apology on air, but let’s see how apologetic the tweeter of “Dear girls, could you please save me the effort and roofie your own drink?” really is, shall we?
I just want to apologize to anybody I’ve offended in any way. This was never my intention, and I just want to put it out there that I’m extremely sorry for everything that happened.
A little vague on the details of just who he offended and how, don’t you think? Despite the fact that gritty specifics have been shared and hashtagged all over the blogosphere? And let’s see, that passive-voice phrase, “everything that happened.” Not “everything I said” or “everything I did.” “Everything that happened” sounds more like he merely regrets that his fifteen minutes of fame are being spent as the Most Hated Man In The World.
It wasn’t his intention to offend anyone. Really.
My intentions were never bad. I agree it was a horrible attempt at humor, and unfortunately a lot of it just got put out of context.
So…he only meant #ChokingGirlsAroundTheWorld in the nicest way?
From Julien Blanc’s #ChokingGirlsAroundTheWorld tweets demonstrating yet another of his sure-fire techniques for picking up girls. Source: Twitter/ABC
I regret it, and I’ll definitely be more careful in the future.
Careful not to promote assaulting and demeaning women, or careful not to get caught?
Of course, maybe we’re expecting too much from this guy. Any chucklehead whose website advocates the pick-up line, “Get down on your knees, call me Master, and BEG ME to kiss you” is probably not the sharpest knife in the dishwasher. Perhaps Mr. Blanc needs a little remedial lesson in why he should say sorry, before he can learn how to do it. Those hotels that booted his seminars really ought to run SorryWatch conventions instead.
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Guest Sorrywatcher Jonelle Patrick blogs at “Only In Japan,” runs “The Tokyo Guide I Wish I’d Had” and writes a mystery series set in Tokyo. She lives in Tokyo and San Francisco.
Thank you, Jonelle!
Such a horrible man, trying to make the world more horrible than it is.
I gotta say, though, we have only his word for it how well this “works” for him and his also-despicable students. Of course he says it works like magic — that’s how he gets people to sign up for his expensive seminars. Of course he flourishes testimonials — that’s what all snake oil sellers do.
Not only does he not tell us about the failures of these unromantic-to-say-the-least techniques, he doesn’t show us photos from the ER of guys who tried this and got well and truly kicked….
Oh! You must see the Hot-Blue-Flame-of-Loathing post on Jonelle’s blog, which says a little more about the horror other Americans in Japan feel about this guy making us all look bad:
http://jonellepatrick.me/2014/11/23/in-which-we-takedownjulienblanc-with-the-hot-blue-flame-of-loathing/
Here’s a taste: “…carving out a niche for yourself as a foreigner in Japan ain’t easy. Fresh off the boat, we arrive bearing homemade banana bread for all the neighbors, only to find that the neighbors are hellishly indifferent to banana bread. Or our passion for anime. Or our love of taiko drumming. Or our painful efforts to properly use the honorific form….”