Late last week, word spread in the pickup artist community that one of their own, British “daygame” coach Tom Torero, had taken his own life.
No details of the apparent death have been revealed publicly; so far the only media coverage, such as it is, has come from blog posts on PUA sites with names like Girls Chase and Seven Daygame. From what I can gather from the article, as well as from some of the effusive memorials for him posted around the web, Torero seems to have had several rough years, financially and otherwise, and would disappear entirely for months at a time, with no one knowing where in the world — literally, what country — Torero was even in. So what actually has happened to him this time isn’t completely or even incompletely clear.
Despite the dearth of information, the PUAs know who they blame for the apparent death: muckraking journalist Danya Hajjaji, who back in November published an extensive story on Torero and his sleazy tactics with women, many of which skirted the laws only barely.
As the article shows in some detail, based on extensive use of leaked course materials, Torero was sleazy in the way a lot of so-called PUAs are sleazy: he preached an openly manipulative approach to women that he called “stealth seduction,” he spoke proudly of “bamboozling” girls into going home with him, and boasted repeatedly about “laying” girls as young as 17 — less than half his age. (The age of consent in the UK is 16.)
But in some ways the sleaziest thing he did was to make audio recordings of his sexual activity — with women unaware he was recording them — which he then posted online to illustrate his sex-getting “teachings” and to prove that yes, he was really getting laid.
Talking to a number of legal experts on UK law, Hajjaji learned that the laws against revenge porn there don’t deal explicitly with sound recordings, just pictures and videos, so it would be unlikely that law enforcement could really do much about them. But they certainly don’t make Torero look like he was the kind and “beloved” character the memorials paint him as.
What has enraged many of Terero’s fans online the most is that Hajjaji didn’t just report on Torero’s sketchy but possibly not illegal behavior; she also contacted a number of the internet companies that enabled Torero to make a living online, from web hosts to payment processers. After hearing from Newsweek both PayPal and Mailchimp decided to cut their ties with Torero, who (conveniently for them) seemed to be breaking any number of rules in their terms of service. Amazon, with laxer rules about content, is still selling several of his books.
Torero’s fans blame Hajjaji’s article for his death, which some are calling a “murder.”
We’ll have to see how this develops.
H/T — I was made aware of this story through Tweets from TakedownMRAs.
Note: If you are feeling overwhelmed, the National (US) Suicide Lifeline can be reached 24-hours a day at 800-273-8255. Or click here to contact someone online,
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Funny how misogynists call the relentless harassment of every feminist woman online “criticism” but when someone points out actual criminal and predatory behavior, they cry cyberbullying.
Predictably there’s a lot of “17 is old enough to consent” defenses going around. I saw this little gem today in the replies to one of TakedownMRAs tweets
https://twitter.com/HighestHorseman/status/1478371666292101122?s=20
Sad story. But goodness, PUAs are out of touch. This dude did not give “dating advice.”
That Twitter link gives me a page overlaid with a giant obscuring popup inviting me to log in, and won’t scroll or function properly if I get rid of it by other means than signing up.
Journalists are allowed to and really should report on bad things people have actually done. Accountability isn’t bullying. Hajjaji’s further actions of alerting brands were also just a necessary public service. It may well have contributed to his worsening mental state and it is horrible he ended his own life but she bears no responsibility. He made those recordings.
What loads of these men don’t seem to realise that while it is legal for men to sleep with 17-year-olds (if they don’t work in particular professions like teaching) in the UK, if you don’t abide roughly by the “half your age plus 7” youngest-age dating rule it’s seen as REALLY FUCKING WEIRD to do so. Like I knew a guy who went out with a 17-year-old when he was 26 and it (rightly) cast a pallor of shame on him. Everyone talked about it, people were worried for her. Doing so when you are pushing 40 is the sort of thing that would get you excommunicated by your friends.
There is something that just feels predatory when you are in your thirties but still pursued a teenage girl, even though that is legal according to the law there. I know some sick people would be hellbent to defend this and thought its okay because the “Age of Consent”, but in reality they just don’t admit that they are being a manipulative person.
From the tweet :
Hmmm its that a threat? The op said like it was a bad thing for woman giving dating advice to men. So they tought its just better if its only man who give dating advice to other man? Its rich coming out from their kind who actually may be giving false information because of their biased and often misogynistic view. Some just claimed much bizarre thing about woman and man, and passing them as fact that only hurt them as man and us woman more because they thought they know better than anybody else.
These chumps aggressively don’t care if the women they pressure into sex feel upset or suicidal afterwards, so I have literally 0 sympathy for this douche lmao
@surplus: I’ve copied the text of the tweet below for you:
To that I say, no it doesn’t make a substantial difference, the older man is still a creep. Just because it’s legal doesn’t mean it’s right and all that.
This Zoe Quinn and Alex holowka all over again?
On a slightly different note can see talk about the way children’s media potrays this sort of behavior in a positive light? Older cartoon encourage pursuing a girl whose “playing hard to get” and as recently as Strange Magic a lead was told to love potion the girl he loves so she’ll finally return his feelings.
unfortunately the Newsweek article is click-bait news, to make money, basically lying about Tom, they exploit his mistakes, which would have directed hate towards him. The concerning point about the article is that this Journalist documents that she hunts him, writes lies about his character, kills his revenue streams in the middle of a pandemic, knows that he has problems depressions, this is psychotic behaviour. The sad result is that he took his own life, however many guys and girls are in happy relationships because of him.
So now telling the truth is murder.
Listen closely, manospherians: Never change. Never take responsibility. Never make your mother or father or teachers proud. Never make any kind of sense whatsoever. If you were to do so, I’m pretty sure you’d break the space-time continuum.
RIP Tom
So being an absolute creep and taking advantage of girls doesn’t lead to fortune and happiness? (Fry shocked face .gif)
@Surplus: You can get around Twitter’s obnoxious pop up by opening it in an incognito window.
I notice how one of the misogynists has “BLM” in his profile. Never ceases to amaze me how people can compartmentalise their commitment to equality.
Also an article about somebody’s actual behaviour is not “bullying”.
If they think his tactics are fine then why be mad that they’re being written about?
PSA: Avoid the Red Pill Rights blog at all costs. Two minutes of exposure to their disgusting takes on Torero’s suicide will raise your blood pressure to the point where you might be at genuine risk of stroke or cardiac arrest.
@Steph Tolhill:
Two responses to that:
1.) If I were to, say, write an accurate article about Jewish practices but still claim in the same article that they’re wicked folks deserving genocide, why would Jews be mad about that? After all, I just described them accurately. They should be happy I didn’t just make stuff up like Nazis do. (In case it’s not obvious, I wouldn’t actually do that.)
2.) Also, those tactics are supposed to be secret so they can blame women/girls for failing to protect themselves from things which they’re not allowed to know about so they can’t actually protect themselves. In reality, said tactics not nearly as secret as they’d like them to be, nor are they always as effective as they’d like even when their target is unaware, which in their minds is bad enough. But making their methods even better known and warning people about known predators further infringes on their freedom to predate, which is, like, clearly the worstest form of tyranny imaginable or something.
Surplus wrote:
Some time ago, Twitter started giving me this very clear hint that they want their readers to get an account or GTFO. What I do is I regularly clear cookies from my browser (which I should be doing anyway) and then I can scroll Twitter freely for a while until my browser accumulates enough Twitter cooties to mark me as a regular reader.
Sorry, but BS biased article and comments. That article gave one side of a story and deliberately attempted to misrepresent. Set out to ruin a man and succeeded in killed him. Nothing ‘kind’ or ‘virtuous’ about that.
As for the age shaming. Give me a break. Don’t push societal standards onto others. Consensual sex with those of legal age is what it is. The women wanted to sleep with him and he was friends with many of them afterwards. I don’t necessarily agree with the audio although identities were blurred…hardly a Harvey Weinstein or Epstein character. I’d put literally killing someone (or celebrating this death as some feminists are) at a much worse level of morality than anything Torero did. He helped a lot of people and that’s why the tributes exist. Many men met their girlfriends and wives and had families as a result of having the skills to meet a stranger in person rather than the comparatively pathetic norm of 2022 (sitting at home on tinder and swiping people like a pack of playing cards).
If women are sophisticated and intelligent creatures, who cares if these manipulative “pick-up” artists even exist, because women have agency and can say no.
However, the issue is whether what these pick-up artists teach – being an arrogant Chad – is actually attractive to women, then we may have a problem.
But since women don’t find arrogant Chads attractive, at all ever, then these pick-up artists simply won’t be successful and their industry will die.
Either way, let intelligent men and intelligent women navigate the sexual marketplace and have consensual sex with whoever they wish.
So the sex with teen girls was consensual or not? Afterwards, were they happy with their choice? This information is missing from all of these articles about Tom. It’s as if no one wants to hear from these women. Maybe we should hear what they have to say.
If you actually studied all material instead of basing your opnion on a biased framed story, this article would have been quite different.