SlutCon

This is a first-person account of attending SlutCon, a three-day Berkeley retreat held at Lighthaven where predominantly straight men paid $3,300-$18,000 to practice seduction with paid or volunteer “flirt girls.” The crowd skewed rationalist or rationalist-adjacent - people who use cognitive frameworks and measurement talk - and included sex workers and curious outsiders. Sessions mixed empirical-sounding panels (a “Get Sexier” talk mining looksmaxxing data, sex-doll and AI-porn trends) with interpersonal practices like “circling,” wristband-mediated approaching, and exercises to normalize rejection. The author describes the venue’s affluent, hackathon-like feel, the organizers’ instructions to be open but gentle, and unsettling moments: a lightly racialized reading of attractiveness, men who reacted aggressively to feedback, and public sex-positive programming that ranged from eye-contact drills to naked circling and rope bondage. Friends worried the event was essentially pick-up-artist training that commodified women.

The writer is ambivalent: she enjoys the directness and the clarity of intent, finds some empirical framing useful, and appreciates the maternal in-person presence of one founder, who taught practical flirting techniques. She never felt personally unsafe - security was visible and participation framed as voluntary - but worries about creating yet another institution that centers heterosexual male desire and may foster entitlement by charging men and subsidizing women. Overall the account balances appreciation for candid social training with skepticism about ethics, power dynamics, and the event’s unclear identity.