Russell Brand has spoken out against self-proclaimed “pick-up artist” Julien Blanc after the actor/comedian posed for a photo with him.
Blanc posted a photo of himself with Brand on Instagram, accompanied by the caption “Pimp It?” Blanc runs the website PimpingMyGame.com, telling readers that his advice can “make girls beg to sleep with you” by “short-circuiting their emotional and logical mind into a million reasons why they should”. He also orchestrated the hashtag “#ChokingGirlsAroundTheWorld” in which he was posted photos on Twitter of him, you guessed it, choking girls around the world.
The sexual harassment that Blanc promoted led Brand’s followers on social media to question why he had opted to have a photo taken with him, though Brand has stated that he didn’t know who Blanc was when he was asked to pose with him.
Speaking in his YouTube webseries ‘The Trews’, Brand said: “I never knew who that was. People come up to me all the time and say ‘can I have a photo please’, so I just go ‘yeah'”.
He continued: “I’ve read that he’s been treating women in a derogatory, derisory and sort of not loving way, and I’m against that… that whole pick-up thing seemed appealing to me as a kid… but any system for chatting up women is in itself questionable, but any that is based on objectifying or undermining I would never, never, never, never, never endorse.”
A Change.org campaign was set up to petition against the US “pick-up artist” from being granted a UK visa, which has now nearly attracted 160,000 supporters. Another petition to take down Blanc’s web seminars and content has garnered 150,000 signatures.
A video recording of one of Blanc’s seminars, titled “Russell Brand’s Secret to Having a Magnetic Personality: Get Flashed While Behaving Like a Rockstar”, was recently obtained by the Daily Mail. In the seminar, Blanc says: “If you take, like, any celebrity, like fucking, Russell Brand, for example, what does he do?
“He does the shit that most people wouldn’t do. He pushes it a little bit further – that’s it – and he gets away with it.”
“You do that, you stand out.”
