Nashville
Steve Crook squints through the sun, scanning his surroundings with precision. “I’m very picky,” he says. Bachelorettes and dog walkers and bag-juggling shoppers are identified, assessed and disregarded.
“They have to be physically attractive,” Crook says plainly. “I’m a bit of a Barbie guy, really — long legs and big boobs and slim.”
Then, she appears: a young woman, laughing with her friends on this picturesque street lined with stylish shops. The mission begins.
Crook breaks into a jog, then darts between cars to reach her. It’s mid-afternoon and the sidewalks are packed, but nothing is stopping him. “I just thought, f**k it,” he says later, giving CNN the play-by-play. “Let’s get out of the head and just do it.” So, he does it: He stops the woman, his heart racing, and tells her she’s breathtaking.
And then, disaster strikes: She starts to turn away. The conversation stumbles on for a few moments, but Crook can’t find the words. It’s awkward. It’s over in seconds.
A few paces back, Matt Artisan winces slightly. Unbeknownst to the woman, he’s been filming the entire encounter. His earphones, connected to a microphone underneath Crook’s shirt, allow him to listen, too. And as Crook returns gingerly to his coach, Artisan has feedback.
The dynamic, he says, was “not good.” “You were kind of behind them,” he tells Crook. “You’ve got to get in front of all of them.” He’s been giving Crook feedback all afternoon: on his vocal pitch, his stance, his timing. “I heard the voice go up a few times,” he adds. “We’ll work on that.”
Over the next three days, Crook will approach dozens of women. He’ll stop them in the street, yell into their ears in rowdy nightclubs, and stare into their eyes, in total silence, until he breaks down in tears. And through it all, Artisan will be watching, pushing him to do better.
If you live in a major American city, scenes like this are probably happening near you. Intensive “boot camps,” teaching men how to talk to and pick up women, are taking place across the country as people grapple to recover a lost art: face-to-face conversation.
By the end of 2026, Artisan and his competitors will run camps in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, Dallas, Miami, Las Vegas, Boston and several more North American cities. Artisan’s company, The Attractive Man, also leads boot camps in Europe, Asia and Central America.
And his offering caught the eye of Crook, a 55-year-old recent divorcee, who says he’s desperate to quash his “nice guy tendencies” and “be more alpha” when he’s talking to a woman.
“I need to be the lion,” he says, looking to Artisan for help. He’ll berate himself time after time. “I just feel like a p*ssy, basically.”
At first glance, these camps feel like remnants of an earlier generation. They’re draped in the bro-y talk of the early 2000s lad-mag era; the participants insist their space is respectful, though at times – especially when talking away from CNN’s cameras – they slip into the language of objectification. They’re seeking a largely impossible goal: to crack the code of social interaction. They want to “win” a game that only they are playing.
But pick-up culture remains a modern phenomenon, with new challenges. These men have arrived here on a wave of isolation that’s swept the country since the pandemic and afflicts boys and men of all ages. About one in six Americans say they feel lonely or isolated from those around them most or all of the time, and men are less likely than women to turn to friends, family members or mental health professionals when they do, the Pew Research Center found in 2024.
“We are suffering from an epidemic of loneliness,” says Brandon Viall, one of Artisan’s participants. “We’re connected by all these screens, but is that real connection?”
The group blames many forces for their isolation: the rise of dating apps, political polarization and a post-#MeToo climate that, in the words of one participant, “scared the s**t out of a lot of guys.” But they all agree that human connection has suffered, and they want to restore it.
For Artisan, that means business is as healthy as ever.
So when CNN arrived to observe Artisan’s Nashville camp, it was unclear what would happen. Artisan let two CNN reporters, Rob Picheta and David Culver, sit in on all three days of training, and we followed the progress of four participants as they listened to presentations and tested their skills on hired models.
We also observed as the men took to Nashville’s streets and honky-tonks, wearing Artisan’s microphones and with his camera trained on their movements.
“We want to transform them in the process,” Artisan says of his students. “We want them to become a better person – because that’s how they’re going to get better dates.”
But inside this expensive seminar, something unexpected happened. The camp began as a guide to approaching women, but it ended somewhere very different.
At the start of the camp, Artisan shares his origin story: how a shy, nerdy garage-door salesman named Matt Ardisson rebranded – online, if not legally – as a savant of romance after discovering the pick-up movement in the 2000s.
The publication of Neil Strauss’s 2005 book “The Game” catapulted the movement’s seductive tips to the mainstream; Across America, men were suddenly practicing the canned routines, scripted openings and backhanded compliments explored in the book. But Artisan saw a problem with it all: It wasn’t genuine. So he developed his own pick-up philosophy, equal parts respectful and boisterous, that he still teaches today.
It has a vocabulary. Talking to a stranger is a “cold approach”; there’s “day game” and “night game,” two very different propositions given the unpredictable nature of a nightclub. An “instant date” is often the goal, but it usually takes “practice reps.” Artisan gives his squad “missions,” like complimenting a woman, each time they go “in field,” or out into the world.
Artisan says an unintended byproduct of the #MeToo movement was that it made men more cautious, further chipping away at spontaneous conversation. Then came the Covid-19 pandemic, which robbed the world of connection and never fully gave it back. Through it all, the growth of dating apps has changed how courtship is practiced.
And now, a new surge of toxicity is infecting modern masculinity. It’s coming from the manosphere, a loosely defined online ecosystem led by influencers like Andrew Tate, who tout a return to male authority and female compliance.
Artisan says he is not a part of that world; he repeatedly stresses the importance of respect and insists his approach has shed the worst, most sexist excesses of pick-up culture, focusing on his participants’ self-worth more than scripted lines. He says he has researched Tate’s philosophies online. “There was some good stuff, and there was some disgusting stuff.”
But Artisan’s teachings sometimes veer from self-growth mantras to crude jokes and objectification. On YouTube, which has become a major driver for new participants, Artisan promises his nearly one million YouTube followers a quick romantic fix for every conceivable social situation. (“How to APPROACH a girl with her MOM … 97% of All Women Are Turned On When You Say THIS … Younger Women Are Interested in Older Men – IF YOU DO THIS.”)
There’s a disconnect between the Artisan that his subscribers see and the more nuanced teacher who appears at boot camps. And it’s a contradiction he accepts: “It’s a little bit harder to communicate deep things on social media,” he says. “Maybe that’s my fault. I need to do a better job of doing that.” But on reflection, he adds: “Maybe the algorithm wouldn’t favor it, though.”
And the audio and video recording of women is a questionable feature of every camp – even if the men here don’t see it that way. Artisan captures footage of each participant striking up conversations with women, and then plays it back for the group like a football team grinding tape.
“I don’t feel sleazy about it, because I’m not trying to be sleazy,” says Viall. “I’m not doing anything nefarious.”
Artisan rejects the idea they should tell women in advance that they’re being filmed – such knowledge would make the interactions less useful, he says. “If we were posting it online, I think that would definitely cross the line,” Artisan says; his focus is on filming his participants and assessing their body language, not on the women they’re speaking with.
Jeff Whittington stands in front of the room, flashes a boyish smile, and prepares to be lambasted.
“By this point in your life, you should know how to dress yourself,” Artisan tells the 57-year-old Mississippian, rupturing his “aw shucks” folksiness. “You’re literally pushing women away with your presentation,” Artisan says. He eyes Whittington’s baggy T-shirt and jeans, and issues an ultimatum: “No approaching (women) today until you fix your style.”
Whittington says he signed up for the weekend to shed some of his homespun modesty. “I wanna get out of the friend zone,” he says.
Artisan and his coaching partner, Ike Shehadeh, poke and prod at every part of his group’s personalities. “Most of our clients have what we call nice-guy tendencies,” Artisan says, referring to men who are trying too hard to please women and, they say, devaluing themselves in the process. “You’ve got to have a little bit of edge.”
They discuss situations in which they might approach a woman, such as waiting for her to come out of a store, or while she’s loading groceries into her car — though Artisan notes that, in the latter instance, it’s worth clarifying that “this is not a robbery.”
He also explains his so-called “A.S.S. rule:” Always Say Something. Then, it’s time to “escalate,” he explains. The man’s energy should be less friendly and more “James Bond, bada**.” He insists: “She needs to feel that tension.”
None of this is cheap. Men pay a few thousand dollars to attend the camps, plus travel and accommodation. Artisan also has “elite” members who pay an annual membership of up to $20,000 for frequent coaching. One of those elites, James Gerald, says the project has “changed my life.”
Gerald speaks in a forceful cadence, like a start-up founder reciting a LinkedIn post. “I’m a tech guy, right? So, I understand games,” he says. The Miami resident is 52 and divorced, but at times, he’s still a self-conscious high school kid with a speech impediment. He’s never tried therapy, but he insists he doesn’t need it: His elite status lets him join any of Artisan’s boot camps for free.
“I learned that I communicate better with technology than I do humans,” he says. “I’ve been fighting all my life to become more social.”
Gerald has been to so many of these boot camps that he’s lost count, and he insists each one brings him closer to what he’s really looking for: an escape from his overly critical self-doubt. “I want freedom,” he says.
He’s joined in that fight by Viall, a 47-year-old Montanan who lives with cerebral palsy and is here to “turn the disability into a superpower.” Viall has plenty of confidence, and a few prepared lines already (“Who’s the ringleader of this three-ringed circus?” he asks whenever he sees a trio of women). He’s here to add “a little bit of a sexual spice” to his game. “It’s only weird if you think it’s weird,” he says of the environment.
The superficiality of dating apps has only deepened his frustrations, and Viall wants to tilt the odds in his favor. “It’s just random dumb luck. And I’m done with random dumb luck. This is a skill,” he says. “I think (this) should be taught in schools.”
The wide-eyed Crook, who was born in Britain and moved to Florida two decades ago for a marriage that ended in 2022, is the greenest of them all. He’s tried everything since his divorce to meet women — salsa dancing, pickleball, a sailing club — but he’s always felt like the outsider in the room, the nice guy who finishes last.
On the streets of Nashville, he takes a silent vow: No more Mr. Nice Guy.
But Crook is rusty. It’s the group’s first in-field session, Artisan sets the men loose one afternoon in 12 South, a trendy Nashville shopping neighborhood. Crook peruses the crowds, picking his moments carefully.
At one point, he asks for a woman’s number, and she seems receptive – but then turns her body away. Was she reaching for her phone, or did she lose interest? Crook bails from the interaction too early to find out, but the question will torment him all weekend.
CNN interviewed several women after they were approached by members of the group, and most said they were delighted to hear about the camp.
“(Men) don’t have the confidence to talk to women,” Gwen McKay says, moments after a brief conversation with Gerald. “They’re hiding behind the screens.”
A few paces back, Shehadeh — once a workshop participant and now Artisan’s coaching partner — is watching.
He used to be these men: lost in a sea of rejection and self-doubt. Shehadeh, a son of Palestinian immigrants, learned to hustle from his hard-working but largely absent father. His first business tanked, and he spent some time homeless, too proud to accept government assistance or admit his plight to his friends. And Shehadeh, who is 5 feet 2 inches tall, cursed the world for his height, convinced it would doom him romantically.
Then he read “The Game” – and began a two-decade quest to hit on women at a staggering rate.
“My number one priority (was) getting dates,” he tells CNN. So he asked himself: “Where will the women come in?” The answer, of course, was the counter at a Victoria’s Secret in San Francisco, where he landed a job in 2005. Suddenly, women had no choice in the matter. “Eventually, they have to come talk to me, because I’m the only cashier today,” he says with the triumphant air of a child plonking a solved Rubik’s Cube on the table.
Shehadeh, who owns a successful chain of sandwich stores, now insists he has many of the things he always craved: wealth, status, and a long romantic history. He pulls out his phone and shows CNN a video in which he emerges from an expensive sports car. “If someone (thinks) ‘Oh, Ike is creepy and bald and not good looking,’” he says, and points to his phone, as if the image ends the debate. “It invalidates any person’s opinion automatically.”
Most of Shehadeh’s stories follow this formula: They have a loser – some doubter, the world, a woman who “rejected me in a very arrogant, b*tchy way” – and a winner, who invariably is Shehadeh himself.
Artisan and Shehadeh have built reputations on their abilities to approach women. But there’s a twist. As the pair steer their nervous clients towards groups of female shoppers, they’re followed by Jen Ardisson and MacKenzie Heermans: their partners.
These days, The Attractive Man is a family business. Artisan is accompanied by his wife, Jen, who has 1.2 million Instagram followers. She understands the deal: Approaching women keeps Artisan at the top of his craft, and the pair help fine-tune each other’s content game. But behind the scenes, he’s too old for nightclubs, she says with a smile.
Shehadeh, though, is less willing to give up his craft. “If your girl doesn’t think that you can get other girls, then she’s going to like you less,” he says.
“She needs to at least think that other girls want me,” he insists.
So how does all this feel for Heermans? The 27-year-old doesn’t buy her boyfriend’s theory that she’ll lose interest if he stops approaching women. “I don’t understand that,” she says dismissively. “That’s a guy thing.”
“He takes his dating very seriously,” she says. “He enjoys it.” Does she enjoy watching it? “No,” she says quickly. “I respect the teaching part. There is a little bit of a line, though.” Could he ever give it up, if the reward was a happily-ever-after life of marital bliss? “He won’t,” she says.
And how would he react if the roles were reversed, and Heermans was the one professionally hitting on guys? “I don’t think he could handle it,” she says with a laugh.
There’s chaos, and then there’s a Friday night in Nashville. The strip is a blur; partying out-of-towners bump and sway into each other, and the riffs of live bands playing “Sweet Home Alabama” and “Mr. Brightside” and “Wagon Wheel” blend together in the air like a cocktail.
The men have spent the past two hours in the safety of Artisan’s Airbnb, dutifully taking notes as he lectured them in the complexities of “night game.” But as they emerge from their Uber, the raucous insanity of America’s bachelorette party capital knocks them back.
A sidewalk corndog vendor is starting the party, rowdily waving a sausage and dancing with two dozen female revelers. It’s hard to approach women above the chants of “Get a corndog! Get a corndog!” So, the group wades deeper into the front lines, dodging bachelorettes and the occasional frat boy.
“They’re rattled,” a suited Shehadeh tells us. Artisan left his recording equipment at home; he implores the group simply to dance. “Let’s focus on having fun,” he tells them.
For Crook, that is a tall order. “I’m still in my head. I’m a little bit anxious,” he says at Jon Bon Jovi’s honky-tonk, beneath a gigantic, mocking picture of the handsome rock star. He chastises himself after attempting unsuccessfully to strike up conversation with a group of partiers.
“I’m so self-conscious. I’m just struggling tonight,” he says. “I’ve always found these environments hard.”
Artisan and Shehadeh insist on the training; they believe the nightclub is a perfect place to improve your game. And the men are willing students: “When I’m at a boot camp, I’m here to learn,” says Gerald, gesturing dismissively toward a crowd of drunken revelers. He says he doesn’t touch alcohol while practicing his night game.
But there is an air of futility to the scene, like the coaches are shepherding square pegs into round holes. The men’s styles collide clumsily with Nashville’s party people, who are at least a decade younger and many drinks deeper.
And it’s starting to get to Crook. He plasters a smile on his face for another few moments, then gratefully leaves the party when the group calls it a night. Later, Crook stays up late in his hotel room, asking Google where his “nice guy” energy comes from. The AI summary tells him it’s often learned by children who grew up in volatile environments. He thinks about his own childhood; his domineering, rugby-playing father, and all the time he spent asking himself why he’s different.
The following morning, the participants wake up with maybe the clearest heads in Nashville. They’ve logged dozens of approaches, and it’s time for something more intimate.
“Gentlemen,” Artisan booms. “Pick your model.”
At every boot camp, Artisan reaches out to local models and influencers, offering them a payment in return for a few hours of their time. The five women enter with little idea of what to expect. This is the turning point of the camp — the moment the men face their fears.
Over the next hour, the men rotate from model to model, testing cold approaches, handshakes and the art of asking questions. Artisan stages one particularly grueling exercise, instructing the men to stare into their model’s eyes in total silence for several minutes: He calls it “soul gazing.”
Crook’s lips wobble as he looks deep into Jenny Jackson’s eyes, then tears drip down his cheek.
His tears continue as the models give him feedback. He stands in front of them, butterflies beating against his insides, his fingers drumming against his thigh.
“I got to look into your eyes for those five minutes,” Jackson tells him. “It was amazing … I felt like I got a glimpse into your heart, into your soul, and it was wild.”
And then, she adds: “You’re very in touch with your emotions, which is such a good thing that most men struggle with.” And Crook stops trying to stifle the tears: the dam breaks and he is swept under a wave of gratitude. He’s waited his whole life to hear this.
Later, when he’s able to find the words, he explains what this meant to him. In his quest for alphadom, he’s suppressed his emotions. “It was like a light-bulb moment,” he says. “Suddenly it all made sense … That’s just part of my makeup. It’s not that I’m weak.”
Outside, after the charged session, the models decompress. Crook’s emotions took all of them aback; they expected to hear scripted one-liners, not to see a man collapse into tears. “This is really intense,” says Jackson, still moved by the experience. “It was unreal.”
“It hurt my heart a little bit,” says another model, Faith Gonzalez. “I wonder what his experiences in dating may have been for him to react in such a way,” she says. “You don’t just cry.”
Artisan winds the experience to a close, and looks onward: Next weekend, in Toronto, another pool of women awaits.
But first, on the final day of the camp, the men gather around a screen to watch video. Their approaches from the weekend flash in front of them, each one shakily filmed from a distance by Artisan. They cringe a little at their dialogue, but they pump each other up, too (“Hey Jeff, you look f**king great!”).
Still, as the footage rolls on, something begins to shift in the room. The boisterousness seeps away, replaced by a surprising vulnerability.
“This, for me, is therapy,” says Viall, who says he’s lacked a male role model since his brother’s death in a traffic accident in the 1990s. “I get to work on something that, as a kid in high school, I didn’t really get the chance to work on.” Tears suddenly dampen his face. “Boy, do I wish I could go back and talk to that high school kid, who was lost, and give him a hug.”
This camp, of course, isn’t therapy. But in a world that can seem cold, it gave these men a place to feel seen. For all of Artisan’s provocative online content, for all his tips and the “approaches” these men have logged, this camp was about more than getting dates.
“We are human beings,” says Crook. “We have emotions, we have thoughts, and we have sexual urges. To say otherwise is denying your own reality.” But in Nashville, he went beyond that urge. The camp, he says, “exposed my issues … my own sense of unworthiness.”
He says he noticed the same questions emerge in his head with each encounter: “Why would she want to give me her number? … Why would anyone want to be with me?” And then, little by little, he tried to fight them.
Days later, in a follow-up interview with CNN, Crook still tears up as he recaps the weekend: The nerves, the difficult conversations, the moment he fell deep into Jackson’s eyes. This was exposure therapy: Getting rejected, he learned, “wasn’t as devastating as I thought I was going to be.” He helped the other men shake off each polite dismissal, and they helped him do the same.
Crook says he left with new clarity, determined to keep throwing himself into an occasionally unforgiving dating scene.
“I strongly believe that we come in (to the world) with a life task, and this is mine,” Crook says: “Trying to get to the point where I heal those pieces within myself.”
“The world’s not gonna kind of come to my door,” he says. “It’s up to me.”