The online world is fraught with self-proclaimed gurus or self-help experts who promise individuals ways to improve their lives - for a fee of course.
Modern Day Knight Project (MDK) is one such endeavour where men pay around R322,866 for an extreme boot camp experience that lasts just over three days.
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The project claims to help men “flip the switch” and become more well adapted to life and be successful in businesses. It promises to be a safe space for men to open up about mental health and get assistance.
However, this has not been the observation of netizens who say the price is too steep and the training amounts to torture.
“Most men are secretly fighting a battle within and living a life of quiet desperation. I know this first-hand, because I was once fighting that inner battle too.
Suffering in silence, white-knuckling through life, and pretending that I had it all under control when I really did not. But it does not have to be that way,” wrote its creator Bedros Keuilian.
Keuilian is an Armenian-born American entrepreneur, investor, coach and fitness expert.
MDK says on its website that this programme is one of the toughest physical and mental experiences on the planet.
During the course of this training, participants take part in extreme military-style exercises while being mocked and with expletives screamed into their faces.
Additionally, on its website MDK emphasises that sleep will be kept to a minimum.
As a result, this boot camp began to be associated with toxic masculinity (the belief that certain people's definition of “manliness” encourages control, homophobia, and hostility) online.
Commentary Youtuber “Chad Chad” shared videos of men in the project being allegedly verbally abused by instructors, having chairs thrown in seemingly fits of rage by the same instructors and enduring grilling challenges.
“Are your eyes crossed? What the f*** is the matter with you? Are you looking at me? ... Don’t look at me with your thousand yard stare, it ain’t gonna work. This is why motherf*****s like you get divorced and your wives leave you. You must be the dumbest motherf*****s I have ever seen,” Keuilian says in one of the clips.
“Sometimes its hard to tell whether it is a challenge or an instructor going on a power trip. They shout no matter where they are. I think it’s the only way they communicate ... They watch these guys in pain or when they are exhausted and then they stand off on the side and smoke a cigar,” comments Chad Chad.
However, MDK’s website boats testimonies from wives who say their husbands came back changed men and had more strength of character.
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