Two Flirt Coaches Walk Into an Interview
There’s an entire corner of YouTube dedicated to men who teach other men to treat human interaction as a sequence of unlockable levels. The logic is mechanical: whoever can hold hands can escalate to a kiss, whoever can kiss can negotiate a cab ride. Desire as optimization. Romance as a conversion funnel. These men wear blazers that don’t quite fit and speak with the confidence of people who have never been told to stop.
Ronja von Rönne—German author, journalist, professional provocateur—brought two of them onto a late-night show to have a conversation. Sebastian Voppmann of Premium Life and a man named Nick from The Real Man showed up confident and left having fulfilled every cliché their critics had ever written about them. They walked into the roleplay. They didn’t notice the knife until they were already past it.
I find the takedown format almost too satisfying to be fully honest about. Of course Ronja wins. She was always going to win. The more interesting question is what she’s actually saying, and whether the ironic delivery lets her avoid committing to any of it. Her conclusion is sharp but slippery—she proves that two YouTube pickup coaches aren’t feminists. Seven minutes well spent. Whether it adds anything beyond the obvious to the conversation that was everywhere in early 2018 is a question she declines to answer directly.
Here’s where I have to admit something: I’m also superficial, regularly, without particular shame. Someone appreciates my music taste? Great. Someone loses it over my Sailor Moon collection? Honestly the highest honor. Someone just wants to tell me they find me physically attractive? That’s fine too—I’m not going to pretend otherwise. I’ve told people I was only paying attention to their body and nothing else. Meant it as a compliment. It usually landed that way. The issue was never whether physical attraction is allowed. The issue is whether the person in front of you is a human being or an obstacle course to be processed.
Sebastian and Nick seem genuinely uncertain about the difference. Ronja knows it perfectly well and uses the uncertainty against them. Watch it for the cringe alone—the cringe is educational. Just don’t mistake the satisfaction of watching them fail for anything deeper than that.