The Charlatan
WIKIPEDIA’s definition of a charlatan is :
“A charlatan (also called swindler or mountebank) is a person practicing quackery or some similar confidence trick in order to obtain money, fame or other advantages via some form of pretenceor deception.”
There’s a type of acting coach that has recently arrived on British shores from the US, you’ll know him if you’re American, but you may be unaware of him if you’re a Brit who is an aspiring actor. I get a lot of messages about this type of coach and so I’m foregoing the blog I was writing to speak about this.
He’s had some METHOD training in the US, and he wants to share his success with you. He’s got all the right answers, and he knows how to tell you what you want to hear. But most of all, he’s going to charge you ££££££££££ to learn his mystic craft.
He’s part therapist, part playground bully, part failed actor.
He’s omni-present on the Internet and appears to be the second-coming of the Messiah, but really he’s bluster and bullshit and treats his students like the cash-machines he knows they are to him.
What he teaches doesn’t work, but it won’t stop him from bullying and abusing his students for NOT GETTING IT, just as he didn’t get it and was BULLIED into self-delusion. Now, like the abused, he becomes the abuser.
When you don’t learn anything from him, he simply berates you for not ‘being open’, not ‘breaking the dam’, not ‘pushing through’, and several other meaningless phrases of bullshit and deception. It’s not your fault you didn’t learn anything useful from this man, he didn’t have anything useful to teach you.
As Kenny Young and the Eggplants once said, he “promises whole potatoes but delivers only fries” and frankly, he makes me feel sick.
He talks a good game, his Internet videos *sound* convincing, until you realise that they’re 50% sales speak 50% bullshit.
But he’s good at selling it, he’s a slick salesman, selling dreams of the big time in exchange for your hard-earned CASH.
He’s also very good at co-opting celebrities for endorsements. They don’t know any different, and they swallow his shit HOOK, LINE AND SINKER.
Never mind that it makes them look like they’ve booked themselves at a CULT Summer Camp.
Why am I saying all this? Am I JEALOUS of this kind of guy (or girl)’s success? Certainly not. Because success in the form of CONNING people out of money, isn’t success it’s FRAUD.
What they teach is FRAUDULENT. What they sell is HOPE. What they deliver is NOTHING but fear and abuse. They HUMILIATE and BULLY their students in the name of ‘emotional’ availability.
Listen up you frauds, we know who you are, we read your ads, we get your emails and mop up the damage that you cause to your students, who scrimped and saved and worked their tails off to be your student. A coach has a huge moral and ethical responsibility to their students, and you shit all over your responsibility. Actually, since I’m not holding back, you make me SICK.
People are willing to pay you to abuse them because they WANT their DREAMS to be REALISED. Not because you know anything worth teaching.
So, I say to all of your actors, acting students, wannabe actors, presenters, sports people, whoever you are, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably it is. Avoid these people like the plague. They are swindlers, grifters, peddlers of snake oil.
Don’t get caught buying their shit, cause they sure as hell won’t give you a refund.