there is a real lack of proof that anyone is paying tens of thousands of dollars for these camps. I'm almost certain these are being offered for free or drastically reduced prices for the influencer's friends and closest followers to farm clips, which go viral because of the absurdity and eye catching price tag. This publicity will funnel new customers towards them who will then see their $400 remote class on how to be alpha, and think it's a great deal. By laughing at these clips and not pointing out how the class is staged for engagement bait, you're helping these people profit.
I will take this all back if any participant in this boot camp can prove they paid $18,000 to the instructors. If you look at the website for this group, the Modern Day Knights Project, you will see
- the project is no longer active
- All of the classes are "sold out" to give an illusion of artificial scarcity. in addition, the FAQ says "If the class I want to attend is sold out. Is there any way that I can get in? No. Once a class is full, it's sold out and we will not accept extras, no matter how much more you offer to pay." because I'm sure there were so many desperate millionares begging to give them money.
- The page repeatedly disclaims the project is only for "entrepreneurs, Executives & Leaders", and before anyone could register for the class, they had to submit an application, and await a phone interview to decide if they would be accepted into the class, which I suspect did not happen.
- as I said, the purpose was viral fame, which could be redirected to cheaper programs that would look like bargains. The Modern Day Knights Project does exactly this, and redirects to two different 1-day bootcamp experiences which cost $900-1500 per person, and are scheduled to take place drastically less frequently than MDK, which claimed to have sold out classes taking place every week.
when i was a younger and more impressionable guy, i ended up seeing this kinda off-beat flick called Roger Dodger. it's a talking dramedy about this unhappy, but extremely clever advertising guy with a reputation, among his estranged family, for being a ladies man. his nebbish, high school nephew comes to visit him unannounced--ostensibly to visit schools in the city (nyc)--but really to get guidance on talking to women. the movie is more or less what follows as the Roger character's life spirals out from his own unhappiness as he confronts himself. he strives to always be honest with his nephew about himself, so he can't hide.
this is all well before Mad Men (Don Draper is a similar character, though i think Mad Men is more cynical and one dimensional), and it's a movie, so the story is accelerated. and it doesn't end with the broken jerk being rich and successful by hiding himself. instead, we watch this cynical, but witty man has turned his emotional intelligence into manipulating people (personally and professionally), but steadily comes to examine his empty life and heuristic as he is confronted with the innocent, good-natured nephew and begins to reconcile his unexplored traumas that drove him to this path.
it's an ultimately uplifting story with resolution, and it is pretty funny along the way if you can overlook the text of a jilted "ladies man" to see the subtext of a lost soul realizing he's mostly been fooling himself.
anyway, i bring it up, because the themes have a ton of overlap here. but, specifically, one of the earliest scenes in the movie is when his nephew surprises him at work, and his nephew asks him what his job (in advertising) is like and he just lays it out so cleanly and honestly. and luckily, the scene i am thinking of has been uploaded to youtube lmao. Starting with, "I sit here and think of ways to make people feel bad."
The meat of which is as follows:
i was in my very early 20s when i heard that and it has stuck with me now for what is most of my life. that, ultimately, every advertisement message is doing this. we can recognize the overt ones (like these bozo boot camps) or the ones that aren't targeting our weaknesses more easily.
if we operate from the notion that all advertising is doing this to us it invites us to consider what weakness or insecurity or perceived shortcoming is explicit or implicit in the pitch. and maybe gives us a lens or tool we can share to help those less certain of themselves. like a little thought experiment for when we see an ad and it resonates with us to the point that it doesn't feel like an insult anymore, consider what it is telling us about how we see ourselves.
with this tool we can see the body image issues capital formations have been offloading on to men and boys have been present for a very long time. what changes is the tactics of making us feel bad, because the methods have to change as we become desensitized to them as we age and they have to target the younger demographics that might have a few extra dollars in their pocket once they become an "adult".
and that's not even getting into the implication that what we should be doing when an insecurity is uncovered, is considering all the solutions that may come from mental/emotional growth.
:zizek-theory: Slavoj Zizek (channeling Lacan) talks extensively about the manufacturing of Lack, and how Desire is this Lack made manifest. That way when you get the thing you Desire it fills that Lack, and thus you no longer have Desire for that thing. Advertising is the deliberate manufacture of shallow desire/lack that can be easily created (and easily filled by shallow Commodities) and, critically, not so strong of a desire/lack that couldn't easily be destroyed so Capital can create the desire/lack for another commodity. Body Image is a powerful lever in generating a perceived lack. It's why attractive women feature so much in male-targeted advertising: Buy my product and you can have women like this in your life. Worse, my favorite advertising campaign, Old Spice, seemingly speaks to a woman to compare her 'man' to the one on the screen^[Quote: Look at your man, now back to me, now back at your man, now back to me! Sadly, he isn't me.] but in reality is stoking the insecurity of men by making them feel judged by 'women'^[I'm putting 'women' in quotes because it's purely internalized judgement from the Big Other taking the facade of 'women']. They deliberately tells their target to buy its product and, I quote, "Anything is possible when your man smells like an Old Spice man^[I deliberately don't complete the full line because it's sexist.]" and "Swan dive into the best night of your life! So ladies, should your man smell like an Old Spice man? You tell me." It doesn't get any more blatant.
EDIT: hit the post button too quickly :zizek-fuck:
Zizek's proposed method to escape is to recognize Capitalism is manufacturing "shallow" commodities, but that we actually need to fill a much deeper Lack that is impossible for Capital to fulfill^[It's complicated because commodities are too shallow, they need to be easily broken so another commodity can take its place and that shallowness cannot fulfill the deeper Lack.]. In this way Desire exists outside of the 'body' and the hole it leaves is the Lack. Lacan and Zizek recognize that this Desire/Lack is constantly regenerating. Lacan famously points to Love as giving your Desire to another to constantly fulfill their Lack and vice versa. From Lacan: Man's desire is the desire of the Other^[oh boy, Other is doing double-duty here; there's little-o 'other' that represents an actual person, and the big-O 'Other' that represents a fundamental unknowability of the other person's Desire that we paper over with Fetish. It's complicated.].
If this sounds complicated, welcome to Psychoanalysis. I'm still grappling with the source material.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy: