Well, I have to give the terrible, terrible fellows at PUAhate credit for one thing: it was thanks to a post there that I ran across the videos of the exceedingly creepy pickup “artist” and minor Youtube celebrity that I’d like to bring to your attention today.
Meet George Godley, possibly the world’s worst pickup artist. Actually, I’m being a bit generous in my description here, because there is no artistry at all to what he does, just a gimmick: he carries a small video camera with him as he wanders the streets of London, apparently thinking that this gives him an excuse to waylay every attractive young woman who’s unfortunate enough to wander into his field of vision.
Godley apparently wants us to believe he’s “flirting” with the women he so awkwardly approaches, but flirting, like the Tango, takes two, and all but a few of the women in his videos make it abundantly clear from the get-go that they want nothing to do with him. This doesn’t seem to faze him much, and he plunges ahead, trying his best to keep up with them as they endeavor to escape his presence as quickly as possible.
Take the unfortunate woman who catches his eye at the start of this video, and who finally manages to make her escape a little short of the one-minute mark.
In this next video – skip ahead to about 50 seconds in to avoid some rather pointless wandering about — we see two failed “flirts.” His first attempt, if we can call it that, consists of nothing more than him standing in the vicinity of an attractive woman while surreptitiously filming her. After giving up on her without saying a word he runs smack into the “beauty” of the video’s title, and pesters her for about a minute until she manages to get away.
After a brief and awkward attempt at conversation punctuated by her nervous laughter, Godley gamely tries to convince “Beauty” that he’s “doing a movie for the festivals.” When she asks which festivals he’s talking about he unconvincingly stammers something about “Cannes, Sund – the usual circuit.” Even though she clearly wants to put as much distance between herself and him as she possibly can, he tries to force his card on her and plaintively asks “do you want to meet again?” The answer, a nervous “no.”
This next encounter – in which our hero barges into a restaurant to pester a woman who apparently looked briefly in his direction as he walked by outside — even Godley recognizes is a flat-out failure.
Godley has posted literally hundreds, maybe even thousands, of these “flirt” videos. None of the ones I’ve seen have gone well. Once in a while an exceptionally tolerant woman will chat with him briefly without actively trying to flee; that seems to be about as good as it gets. The rest document what is essentially serial street harassment, with Godley approaching woman after woman, none of whom give him any indication that they want to talk to him, and “flirting” with them until they can get away from him. It’s the same story, again and again and again.
Why does he do this, making video after video of these so-called “flirtations” and posting them on Youtube? Is he simply a masochist, approaching women he surely knows have no interest in talking to him, much less “flirting,” and posting evidence of his humiliating failures to Youtube for all the world to see?
Perhaps. But even more disturbing than the masochism is Godley’s obvious sadism. Despite his social awkwardness, it’s clear from the videos that Godley knows full well that the overwhelming majority of the women he “flirts” with just want to be left alone; it’s clear from their body language before he approaches them, and from everything they say and do after he starts talking to them. If a woman literally flees from you, that generally means she’s not into your shit.
But Godley doesn’t really need to be reminded of this. He’s well aware that he makes women uncomfortable — in this video he asks a woman if she’s really talking on her phone or just trying to get rid of him. But that doesn’t stop him.
He’s not missing the social cues; he’s deliberately ignoring the clear “noes” these women either tell him outright or telegraph with their facial expressions and body language as clearly as if they were shouting “no” to his face. Were he to approach random men on the street in a similar way, he would almost certainly get himself punched on a regular basis.
Luckily for him, he’s approaching women, and they’re much smaller than he is. It’s telling that he almost always approaches individual women, not the “sets” of two or more favored by most pickup artists, and that he seems to prefer approaching the supposedly more pliable Eastern European women also favored by so many manosphere assholes and creepy pickup artists.
Godley’s not-so-well-hidden hostility towards the women he approaches comes to the surface at the end of this video, in which he attempts to “flirt” with a woman photographing a tree and then then asks for her phone number as she tries to get away, an all-too-common ending to his videos. SPOILER ALERT: She doesn’t give it to him. SPOILER ALERT NUMBER TWO: He pretends he didn’t really want it anyway.
Even if Godley has managed to collect a few genuine phone numbers or email addresses along the way – and I’ve seen nothing to indicate that this is a regular or even an irregular occurrence – his alleged “success” in this endeavor comes at a steep cost. Not just to his pride – I don’t actually give a shit about that – but to the hundreds if not thousands of women he’s harassed along the way.
George Godley, a terrible pickup artist and an even worse human being.
Blargh what happened to timetravellingfool?
I’ve always wondered why mental illness or neuroatypicality of some kind is always trotted out as an excuse or an explanation for harassment of women as to my knowledge I’ve never been harassed by anyone who was neuroatypical.
And no guy I know who is neuroatypical as ever (as far as I know) behaved like this and i don’t think that they would.
In fact they are often more aware of their behaviour, for example my friend who has depression and quite severe social anxiety freely admits that he can fall prey to “nice guy” tendencies and that he needs to watch himself for them.
Argenti Aetheri if you’re still somewhere on the thread, would you mind if I asked you about genderless pronouns?
A friend of mine (biologically male) has recently come out as genderqueer. He’s still using male pronouns and I don’t know if he plans to change this but I’d like to be prepared just in case.
So what I would like to ask is how do you pronounce zie and zir? I could have a guess but I’m not sure and I wouldn’t like to get it wrong.
Y’know I’d never thought about the pronunciation there … and now I have a feeling if I said the words they’d sound like I was doing a bad Cornish accent!
In my head I pronounce them as “ZEE” and “ZURR” but I don’t know if that’s correct.
Zir might pronounced “ZEER” but I’ve never hard them spoken out loud so I haven’t a clue…
I don’t know how to explain properly why saying “they might have mental illness” is hurtful and ableist.
I don’t find that expression personally quite as hurtful as they might have illness X, where X is my diagnosis.
Saying they might have illness X, and that’s why they are acting that way, my reaction is that the person speaking thinks that I behave that way because I have illness X, despite never having behaved that particular way, and putting a lot of effort (sometimes failing) to not behave in inappropriate ways. It’s also usually followed up by, now that you know they have illness X, you can avoid them because people with illness X are dangerous and evil and not to be trusted.
The general expression that people who are mean and inconsiderate, or otherwise act inappropriately have mental illness and therefore we can’t discuss the harms they are doing tends to imply that there are people, and there are the mentally ill. Harms are only done by mentally ill. Its only a short step from there to that mentally ill humans are not people.
I tend to conflate the outcome of “they might have illness X” (which is pretty consistent on the internet) and “they might be mentally ill” to where the second statement ends up implying that all mentally ill people are bad, no matter how hard they may try to be otherwise.
When I try to say ze or zie etc. out loud, it comes out very close to “she”. The initial phoneme is just a different kind of sibilant fricative (zee instead of shee) and I’m not sure I could make the distinction clear in any sort of difficult environment.
Plus, if I pulled that out around here, folks would likely assume I had mispronounced “she.”
Plus too, I haven’t used them long enough to wear the awkwardness off of them, but that’s my problem.
By “around here” I mean Tennessee.
Arrrgh! That was me. Well Ok not literally me – I don’t recall ever meeting George. But good grief, yes, strange men following you around happens a *lot* in London. They’d start with I just want to talk and I don’t want to bother you, but they’re literally following you home or to your workplace and they seriously creep you out because they won’t leave you alone. I once angrily swore at one (I’d just a massive row with a friend) instead of being my usual polite self. That stopped him in his tracks.
@CassandraSays: “It would be awesome if everyone could always give the person doing the harassing a piece of their mind, but it’s often not clear if it’s safe to do so, and not everyone is going to be composed enough to do that anyway.”
I am one of those lucky/naturally rude/New Yorky enough to kneejerk into an angry rage monster immediately when approached or touched or cat called on the street. For those of you who can’t, don’t want to, and/or aren’t in a safe space to do so, please be aware that at least SOME of these assholes are getting a portion of what’s coming to them (aka a healthy dose of public shaming in a loud screaming voice, complete with handgestures and profanity.) 🙂 I hope this makes some people feel better if only in a small way!
If this thread needs a pick-me-up, this Korra cosplayer legit made me smile just now.
I need to finish Korra….
Oh, you have a sad and your irony meter is busted. I feel for you, I really do. So sorry the level of convo is not what you’d like to be.
Second verse, same as the first; well, in that case maybe you should read more and talk less.
You’re not a troll, but you are fucking tedious.
I highly recommend 11/22/63.
It’s not horror, but it can be horrifying.
If we’re talking about why ableism is “hurtful” and not just “ignorant”, it’s because you’re explaining away something bad an individual is doing by arbitrarily sticking them in a not-bad group. You are saying this badness is a symptom of belonging to this not-bad group. If you’re still having trouble figuring out why that’s not okay, think about if we replaced “neuroatypical people” with, say, “women”. “She’s not a bigot because of culture, she’s a bigot because she’s a woman! You can’t judge non-women based on her actions!” Or how about religion? “Bob’s being an asshole? Just ignore him, he’s Asatru, that’s just how he is.” It’s only difficult to see the implications if you start from the idea that mental illness is bad, and sufferers of it are bad, therefore it’s perfectly reasonable to blame seemingly neurotypical strangers’ actions on mental illness. After all, those people are bad, and we neurotypical people aren’t bad, are we?
It’s ignorant because it’s a pretty blatant attempt at distancing oneself from people who do and think things we’d rather not be associated with, so we throw them in with a marginalized group instead.
Was going to post a thing about racism, but the more I read the less I feel it’s welcome.
Pentapus and Nerdipants:
From my point of view (I suffer from a mental illness) there are several problems involved in making the supposition, without the necessary training, that a particular person has a mental illness.
1.Mental illnesses are very complex to diagnose and the same illness can manifest quite differently in different people, so it takes a person with many years of training and experience to be able to recognize and treat them. Internet diagnoses are not a good idea because most of the people doing them have no training and have never even spoken to the person concerned. for example, the man in the above videos could have a mental illness (there’s always that possibility) or he could just be a misogynistic arsehole. Since I’m not a psychiatrist I’d probably take the second option. Lots of people enjoy playing armchair psychiatrist, but their opinions don’t mean much.
2. It implies that people with a mental illness are generally dangerous, which for the most part is completely untrue. This leaves a very bad taste in the mouths of those of us who suffer from them while trying to be self-sufficient and live as normal a life as possible, and those of us who love and support them. It forces us into a cognitive box rather than seeing us as the individual people that we are.
3. It’s a particularly insidious way of getting People Behaving Badly off the hook and attempts to make people calling them out for such behaviour as callous. A frequent example is when someone behaves offensively and someone else pipes up with something like “Oh, that person probably has Asburger’s Syndrome and you’re being really mean and nasty calling them out on it because they can’t help it.” There’s really no way of knowing that from a video of the person or a weird story on someone’s blog but they not only treat it as a fact but judge other people for being unsympathetic.
4. It’s a way of dismissing something that the “mentally ill” person is saying as in “Don’t pay any attention to him/her, he/she is just off with the pixies.” Of course, if the person objects to that characterization it’s just seen as proof of their instability.
5. A person’s mental health is really not a matter for public speculation. It’s a matter for the person, their psychiatrist, their friends and family and possibly their employer if special accomodation needs to be made for them.
Time Traveling Fool:
Are you OK? Some of those posts don’t sound at all like you (I don’t post much but I’m always lurking).
Well, I can’t speak for anyone else Sid, but if you want to post something on racism I’d be interested in reading it.
And thanks to everyone hear for posting on ableism, because I think you’ve clarified a few points for me.
Really? These women are far too polite. I would have threatened to sue for using my image and made a grab for his camera. Creep with a camera. Great. Just what a girl needs.
Something funny in flirt like i really need your ass #10,956 in my face DSC_4639 720p.mov at 1:57 “I have thousands of numbers, like I really need yours?”
I was thinking: “So, you too have a copy of the phone book????!!!!”
Pentapus1024-
I’m not really going to talk about the ableism thing, because I think other people have covered it better than I can. But I think you’re pretty wrong about this community. We all say something dumb or fucked-up sometimes. And I think in any kind of feminist sphere, that’s probably even more true because we’re often interacting with people outside of our own frame of reference. And that means that you have to be open to criticism on your views.
So, yeah, TTF got smacked around a little. Zie is an adult and a regular poster here. TTF can handle it. There were also people who were concerned because this was not normal behavior for this poster. Last night’s postings were not anyone quashing dissent, as you oh-so-kindly implied. That’s surprise, disagreement and concern.
I have a question:
Who was the other one? (I know about the mass exodus)
But yeah, I’m tired and can’t remember who the other person going off on an out of character bent was.
Falconer, I always thought the Zie and Zir pronouns were picked up from the german language, which has neutral pronouns that don’t imply being an object, the way english does. So I’ve used the german pronunciation.
Catching up here (fuck how does anyone deal with seroquel at anti-psychotic doses when a 50mg sleeping pill dose knocks me out like that?!)
historophilia — yeah, I say ze/zir with z’s like in zebra, so ZEE ZURR = yes. That and why I dropped the i too, because it just seems extraneous…too much Latin, too keen an interest in how language evolves, though quite less knowledge than the language creators on the thread (damn guys!)
thenatfantastic — hellkell and Some Gal had a bit of a spat a bit ago, but came back with clearer heads in the morning, which I’m hoping will happen here.
As for ableism, reading the other comments, and having slept, I remembered I scanned a chunk of Emilie Autumn’s book specifically because of this, so here you go — http://oi50.tinypic.com/148r5y.jpg
@Argenti Ohhh that. I thought I’d missed something, didn’t register because they made up.
One thing that’s important to consider about mental illnesses is that, for the most part, the line between HAS A MENTAL ILLNESS and DOES NOT HAVE A MENTAL ILLNESS is much thinner than most people think. The medical model of psychiatry is just that, a model: This “disease” thing is a metaphor, and any given trait or behavior that’ll show up in a clinical setting is something that will probably show up in “the healthy population,” just to a different degree or in a different context.
Unfortunate part is, this medical model was spread in part to reduce bias and fear against the mentally ill, but plenty of research has found it does the exact opposite.
Long story short, people should refrain from talking about a person’s behavior arising from mental illness unless they’re consciously putting it in the context of being aware this is just a set of arbitrary schemata designed to aid treatment, not capital F Facts. Unfortunately, this disqualifies most psychiatrists, much less lay-people.
@Buntzums – that’s nice for you, but you’re implying all of those women and anyone reading the thread who didn’t do that are at fault for not behaving like you, which is shitty. Knock it off.
Late to the party again, sorry if these have been covered, but:
@Freemage
Piñata? You smack it around a bit until it explodes, then you enjoy the candy and go on with your night. Too violent?
@Cassandra (or whoever wanted a big dog) are you in the US? You might look into Big Fluffy Dog Rescue