Pick-up artists Tim Veninga and Ali Mohammed, the latter a visiting lecturer at the RUG, are threatening to sue Sikkom editor-in-chief Willem Groeneveld if he writes about the complaints he has received regarding them.

Earlier this week, Groeneveld put out a call on Facebook after hearing that women felt mistreated by the pick-up artists. ‘Abused, even. And they had no idea they were being filmed.’

On daygameacademie.nl and versiercoach.nl, Mohammed and Veninga depict themselves as professional dating coaches. With the aid of a paid course, they teach young men how they can pick up and sleep with women, ‘how to undermine her objections, easily get dates, phone numbers, and sex’, they advertise.

Complaints

According to Groeneveld, not everyone likes the men’s pick-up tricks. On Facebook, he is calling for women to come forward with complaints. ‘I’d heard about them before, but I thought now was the time to go after them’, says Groeneveld.

The UK also received a complaint from a female RUG student who says that Mohammed harassed her in late December. He used his position as a visiting lecturer to impress her, says the student, who wished to remain anonymous. ‘I mostly just felt uncomfortable and intimidated.’

Videos

The pick-up artists approach women on the street or in the pub and secretly film the interactions. The videos are then uploaded to YouTube and used during the course that teaches men how to win over women.

‘Snagged a chick’s number on the first try’, reads one of the clients’ comments that the pick-up artists put on their website to advertise their services. ‘Gentlemen, I can proudly tell you that I nailed my first chick, hard, using daygame. A 19-year-old tight little half-blood Indo.’ And: ‘I got so much sex it’s unreal.’

Visting lecturer

One of the pick-up artists, Ali Mohammed, is a visiting lecturer at the RUG. He teaches a course called ‘How to pick up patients’ for pharmacy students. Mohammed himself graduated from the programme in 2014. That same year, he started working with Veninga.

‘What I really fucking like to do is what you see here. I was so busy studying that all I could do was daygame. Talking to chicks in the street, flirting with them – and I really mastered that shit – has given me so much knowledge that this is truly the platform to share it with people’, he says in his first video dating back to March 2014, which shows him walking past the university. In that same video he shows selfies of undressed young women who supposedly sent him pictures.

Lectures

According to instructor and pharmacist Claudia Dantuma-Wering, Mohammed has said that he has quit his work as a pick-up artist. Mohammed himself did not respond to inquiries from the UK. His videos and website are still available online.

‘I think some people said some things to him, about how it’s unbecoming of a professional person’, says Dantuma-Wering. ‘I certainly don’t support it. As far as I know, he has quit, which is what he told me.’

According to the teacher, his classes are well received. ‘It’s a different way of teaching that they might not normally use. Especially communication classes can be quite tricky, and I think it’s good if you approach that in different way. It can be useful in patient communication.’

The police has received no complaints about the pick-up artists, says student officer Edwin Valkema. ‘But if they recorded undercover videos without getting the women’s permission, that is illegal’, he says.