Ideagasms Melt-Down: Stephane’s Lies Revealed

So if you’re a follower of the blog, you’ll know that I’ve been critical of Stephane over at Ideagasms since, oh, it began.  I’ve just had ay too many people I like and trust tell me about how the guy lied and screwed them over to actually believe Stephane is in this business to actually help other people as opposed to creating a cult for himself.

In one of my early podcasts, you can see where I expose most of his lies during an interview with Barry Kirkey.  (Its not one of my better podcasts, but whatever.  The point is to get the truth out there.)

Anyway, today I get an email from a reader named Lor who informs me of some major drama going on over at Ideagasms.  It seems more and more of the cult has stopped drinking the kool-aid, and Stephane is banning them to keep them from speaking out against his teachings.

But these “Ex-IGs” aren’t staying quiet.  In fact, they’ve created their own forum and Facebook Group to expose the truth about Stephane, and boy, is it not pretty!

Check out what David B., the creator of the Facebook Group, has to say about his experiences with Stephane…

David B. writes:
Ideagasms Exposed!
An Insider’s Story of the Journey Through Stephane Land

This is an honest account of my experience with the organization known as Ideagasms, and its leader, Stephane Hemon. This could be classified as an “expose” of sorts, since it contains a lot of information that’s less than flattering. However, my intention is not to harm or demean anyone, but simply to speak about something that needs to be spoken of. People have a right to be informed.

This post is also for Ideagasms members who have been wondering where the “ex-IG” forum is since they’ve heard rumors about it, but have been unable to find it because of Stephane’s prohibition of our links.

To the moderators here: I completely understand and respect the goals of this forum (success with women), as well as your right to moderate it how you wish in order to facilitate those goals. Please understand that part of success is about avoiding pitfalls, and I’m posting this to inform people about one of those. Please let this message stay up. By allowing it to reach people, you may be helping to steer them away from a very dark, lonely, and frustrating road.

Ok, so here’s my story.

When I first discovered Ideagasms, it was in its infancy. Steph was just an average dude with some modest insight into the pickup world, trying to make a living out of it. His ideas concerning spiritual topics and how they relate to pickup intrigued me, so I read all his newsletters, and signed up on his forum as soon as he started it. I soon became the most prolific poster, earning a wide degree of admiration from the other members through my lengthy and entertaining field reports. Within just a couple months, Steph made me the admin of the forum.

I felt that he was honest in the beginning, and genuinely trying to help people. He didn’t make himself out to be anything special, beyond a regular guy with some skills to teach. But as with so many things, what starts out as a good intention can quickly become obscured when power is involved.

After a few months, he started to change the structure of his posts and newsletters, taking out what genuine insight he had, and replacing it with boasts about his accomplishments. He started talking more and more about how good his game is, and started using labels such as “best PUA in the world” to describe himself. Perhaps it was due to our youthful naivete, or our eagerness to believe someone had finally found all the answers; but for whatever the reason, I and many others bought into it, and heaped praise on him. Thus began a cycle of him boasting outlandish (and as we would later find out, extremely exaggerated) claims about his skills, and forum members blindly worshipping him for it – a pattern that would only intensify as time went on.

At this time (around the beginning of 2006), he began to delve headfirst into some really freaky “New Age” stuff that would make even a messianic cult leader blush. Now I happen to enjoy a lot of new agey concepts, I’m no atheist – but he took it to such an extreme that I’m almost surprised to still be alive. He claimed he was going to achieve something called “Ascension” – a state in which a person evolves to the point that they have no more issues in life, no more karma, and their soul walks out of their body and gains the ability to manifest any physical object they desire (e.g. gold, food, women, a new body), fly to other galaxies and back, and live the rest of their life in a constant state of orgasm. He claimed he was going to do it by the end of 2008, and that if we followed him, we would be able to do so as well. Most of us would go in 2012, but a special few of his closest, most devoted students, might be able to make it by his side in 2008. To grant credibility to these claims, he cited the guidance of a reclusive, enigmatic “aunt”, who was supposedly one of the top 10 or 20 spiritual people in the whole world. She never communicated to anyone except through him, yet that didn’t stop her from giving us remote “past life readings” for $30 a pop – readings which were rife with duplications, historical inaccuracies, and contradictions. In the spring of that year, he stopped talking about her, and largely quieted down on the Ascension talk too- and it wasn’t until I asked him on the phone, “whatever happened to that aunt of yours?”, that he brushed it off by saying she went insane and disappeared. And that was the end of that.

Before I go on, I want to explain one of Stephane’s core psychological tactics that he uses for making people follow him. It’s called “cognitive dissonance.”. Basically, how it works, is he will come out with a new concept – something ridiculous, like tricking a guy into swallowing your cum is a compassionate thing to do (see his “Dragonbutter” story) – and he’ll suffix it with a seemingly innocuous, yet very potent sentence right afterwards:

“Many people won’t be ready to handle this truth.”
“You will only agree with this if your heart is open.”
“Only those with high self-esteem will understand what I mean.”

This flies right under the radar, and gets you to think of yourself as “un-evolved” (read: “not as cool”) compared to your peers, who all supposedly have high enough vibrations to agree with him – unless you can manage to somehow buy into his story as well. So with the self-image under threat, the mind will do whatever it needs to in order to protect itself, including altering its belief systems (i.e. Dragonbutter is not cruel, it’s lovely!) to conform with the group, and earn the label “open-hearted” or whatever other label is in question. In this fashion, entire belief systems can be surreptitiously torn down, piece by piece, and replaced with new belief systems, without the believer even realizing what’s happened. If you’re not aware of how this works, it’s only a matter of time before you become ensnared in it – and once in it, it just keeps gathering momentum, because more and more of your self-image is staked on your position in the group. I fell for this big time.

Anyway, back to the story. In June 2006, I visited Montreal, in order to meet the man himself. I ended up staying there the whole summer, in order to learn from him (and besides, Montreal is an awesome city), and it was during this time that I first started to notice that not all was well in Steph-land.

I went out with him 3 or 4 times a week, and began to notice some “inconsistencies” in his claims, to put it mildly. We would be out at a bar, and Ghita would befriend a couple of girls and bring them to our table, introducing them to Steph. Then they would continue to talk to Ghita, while Steph sipped his beer and chatted with the guys. They might have given him an occasional sidelong glance or nod of acknowledgment, but overall they paid little attention to him, or any of us. But then in the field report the next day, it would be quite different, with Steph claiming “all 4 girls were hardcore into me, shaking and quivering from my presence, dripping wet from the sound of my voice, my game is #1 in the world, im the best PUA in the world, no one else has my skills, no one can do what I do, I’m the best, I’m the greatest, blah blah blah.”

There were times when he’d play pool at the bar. Occasionally he’d make a difficult shot, and a few people standing nearby would clap. But in the field report, it became something like “half the BAR was cheering me on.” These types of exaggerations were not isolated instances – they were patterns, and they still are, as he continues them to this day.

And the most telling evidence of all, is the fact that I’ve never seen him approach a girl – ever. I asked him so many times to demonstrate his skills, just once, and he outright refused, claiming that he “paid his dues” by training Ghita to pick up for him, and therefore doesn’t have to do it himself anymore. I have never seen him interact with a girl for more than 30 seconds, other than Ghita, despite hanging out with him for hundreds of hours in a city filled to the brim with beautiful women.

Here’s a funny story. After a while, my requests must have gotten annoying to him, so he grudgingly agreed to demonstrate an approach. So he bade me to follow him through the bar until he found a chick to talk to. I stuck by him for about 20 minutes, until finally the normal course of events got us seperated. Then about a half an hour later, I heard a voice behind me – it was Steph. “Did you see? Did you see???? Whaaat? You weren’t looking??? I did an approach!! Fuck, you didn’t see?”

This happened more than once. Eventually I gave in to the reality that I would never see Stephane Hemon talk to a girl. Only a few people I know of have seen him interact with girls at all, (nevermind approach, just interact), and not surprisingly, they report that he comes off creepy – alienating them within minutes, if not seconds. He himself admits this to a degree, rationalizing it as the fault of the girls, saying they just couldn’t handle his high amount of “Light.”

At the same time, in my own life, his methods were causing my already shaky success with women to plummet into depths I never imagined possible. I don’t want to go into just how bad it was, but it was somewhere around “absolute zero”. And Steph helped me rationalize it by saying things like “don’t worry man, these girls are just afraid of your Light. They can’t handle you, and that’s why they’re running away – they’re afraid. Just keep doing what you’re doing, and eventually you’ll find a girl whose heart is open enough to appreciate you.” So I kept going.

I wrote numerous field reports detailing my adventures in Montreal, praising Steph’s methods. From my reports, it would have seemed that I was doing really well, and success was juuuuuuuust around the corner. But inside, my doubts were growing. I didn’t want to keep doing stuff that wasn’t working, but at the same time I didn’t want to risk rejection from the group if I challenged the leader or his doctrines. Ideagasms had become cultified, with some people getting banned for being overly vocal in their disagreements, or having too much praise for a rival teacher or method. As the admin of the forum, it was too much to risk, especially since I was the one doing the bannings. 

So that fall I went back to college for my last semester. During this time, I stopped praising Steph and started posting about my own theories and discoveries. I also started dropping hints about my dissatisfaction with the leader and his teachings, saying as much as I could without directly challenging him. Steph grew more distant, and more reluctant to talk to me. In December I went right back up to Montreal, planning to live there permanently due to the merits of the city itself, more so than it’s status as the capital of Ideagasms. I had pretty much dropped out of the cult in all but name, and the desire began growing to speak out openly.

After a few nights out with the “gang” (Steph and his band of male groupies who follow him around, supplicating to him and giving him rockstar social proof that he uses to gain what little attention he can from girls), and seeing him do some really nasty things (such as sticking around a group of hapless Christian girls from Alabama for a whole night, ostracizing them for their beliefs and encouraging me and the gang to join him when they wanted nothing to do with any of us, as well as him laughing at homeless people, throwing a beer bottle down to try to shatter it on the bar floor, getting his Ascension-bound spiritual ass shitfaced six nights in a row, and other stuff I won’t get into), I had had enough.

Finally, I publicly questioned him on his forum. I asked him how he can keep telling me to use the same methods, if they obviously aren’t working. And he banned me just for that.

I didn’t know what to do, so I apologized, and he let me back on the forum. My drive towards honesty once again getting the better of me, I then wrote a post about how people are hero-worshipping him, and urging them to stop doing it. I was banned again, and he pretty much hasn’t talked to me since.

After that happened, a friend let me read the forum through his account, and I watched it degenerate further and further. He began cracking down more than ever on dissenters and those who started waking up. Whenever someone would poke their head above the clouds and ask him a serious question, or point out flaws in his doctrine in any way, he banned them immediately. Dozens of people were banned in a period of just a few months. Then came one night, which we’re calling “the midnight massacre”, where he banned 12 people all at once, under the pretense of “raising the energy vibration of the forum.” So that’s when we decided that this guy has to be exposed. And we started our own forum.

Sadly, most of the people there are not going anywhere, and there is no way for them to realize it because the chorus of conformity is so loud and so insulated that there’s no way for any contrary idea to come in and interrupt it. As soon as someone realizes his methods don’t work, he bans them before they get a chance to tell others their thoughts. He has a team of 5 or 6 followers who scan the forum all day long, deleting and banning anything that resembles criticism in the slightest degree. People believe his claims of superpowers and of being “the most successful human being on the planet” (real quote), not because he’s particularly persuasive about it, but rather because he censors any voice that doesn’t agree with it.

In the last six months, he has been delving into the writings of an obscure, kooky “scientist” named David Hawkins, whose primary claim to fame is that he has discovered a bullet-proof system for determining “absolute truth”, which basically involves assigning a number (1 to 1000) to a particular person, thought, or idea, with 1 being the darkest, most untrue, and 1000 being absolute light and truth. It’s no surprise that he calibrates himself and Ghita in the 600’s and 700’s, his followers mostly in the 400’s and 500’s, non-followers in the 200’s and 300’s, and critics (such as us) in the 100’s. With this system, he categorically justifies anything he wants to.

Most of his posts now are simply about “reaching a higher numerical level”, and his forum has turned into a spiritual penis-size contest of aspiring calibraters, trying to claim the highest numerical value for themselves that they can get away with and have others believe. To call it a keyboard jockey’s paradise would be an understatement. Relationships and sexuality are rarely discussed anymore, except for the purpose of justifying a higher calibration. Most field reports read like missionary diaries, detailing how the gospel was brought to the heathens. One structure that seems to be quite popular, is as follows (paraphrasing, of course):

“Hey guys! I went out in a state of 500, pitied all the low-vibing girls who were stuck in the 300’s, tried to help them ‘raise up their level’ but my help was denied, and so, despite having a girl who was ‘totally into me’, I had to do the ‘integrous’ thing, and ‘disqualify’ her.”

Needless to say, it doesn’t work in actually improving their ability to relate to people, or women. On the contrary, they’re being taught to back themselves into corners, to burn bridges, and to reject more and more of the world, under the pretense that it’s all beneath them. It’s really just a defense mechanism to justify loneliness, to make it seem noble and desirable since they’re at a loss to overcome it – but no one is allowed to suggest this. In fact, one of Steph’s closest confidantes, his chief “Calibrater”, got banned just a few days ago for making this very observation.

I don’t doubt that most of them are very frustrated on the inside. I know what it’s like to be in pain, while wearing a mask on the outside that says things are wonderful and Ascension is right around the corner. But he keeps on dangling the carrot for them, and they remain distracted.

“Hey, who cares, sex isn’t that good for you anyway, it’ll detract from your spiritual ascension process. Would you rather bounce up and down on a bed and trade body juices, or raise your consciousness to *700* and beyond? I just checked my calibration of you, and you made a big jump recently. Only a few more weeks and you should be at 650! 700 isn’t far away!”

I wonder how long it can continue? I suppose each person has a limit to how much they can take, and once they pass it, they leave. But there are always more people waiting in the wings, and the cycle continues, just with new faces. We, his ex-students, want to put a stop to the cycle, but unfortunately there’s no way to reach through his tough curtain of censorship. That’s why we’re posting here – to maybe reach a few people.

The censorship itself is complete. He outright condemns the idea of free speech – openly. He says freedom of speech is just an excuse for people to say negative things and lower the vibration of the group. “Doubt”, he says, is a dark energy that reeks of ego. “Opinions” are worthless ego-creations, designed to plant “untruths” in people’s minds. When he bans people, he often reminds them that skepticism calibrates below 200, and the forum calibrates above 600, and the discrepancy means that they’re “sabotaging his mission.”

Fuckin crazy, if you ask me.

As for our forum, he bans anyone who even speaks about it. All you have to do is ask, “hey, I heard there’s an Ex-IG forum out there somewhere, does anyone have the link?”, and you’re kicked out. He even has moles on our forum, trying to discover which of the people there still have accounts on his forum, so he can ban them.

Not long after we started it, it began to gain momentum as more and more disallusioned Ideagasms members joined up, eager for a chance to discuss Stephane’s ideas without fear of censorship. Steph made a shoddy attempt to assuage his followers’ growing sense of doubt by debunking our “grievances”, skipping over most of the important ones and using red herrings and straw-man arguments to make us look bad – not to mention falling back on his “calibration system” as a last resort to prove that we were wrong and he was right. He also made up lies about me and the other founders, which we have no way of responding to on his forum.

Recently he discovered a new tactic that’s quite sneaky: banning people without actually deleting their account. Now if you cross him, he will just change your password so you can’t log in – and to other members, it will appear as if all is peachy and no one’s been kicked out. Brilliant move, if I may say so myself.

Oh, and then there are the pills.

Stephane is claiming that he has a secret batch of pills – yes, pills – sitting in his cupboard, which can cure any disease (HIV, cancer, diabetes, kidney stuff, everything), sculpt any body without effort, and yes, even enlarge your penis (you saw that coming, didn’t you?), which were provided to him secretly by an anonymous, renegade “nano-scientist.” He claims he is one of the very few people on earth with the priviledge of having access to these revolutionary new pills, and for $1,000 a month, he can hook you up with a regimen. As we speak, he is supposedly taking these pills, turning his flabby body into Arnold Schwarzenegger’s. However, there’s just one caveat – the pills won’t work if you “don’t believe in them.” If you take them with “skepticism”, don’t be surprised if they fail to transform you. His actual post can be read on the Ex-IG forum.

Only one person in the whole group had the courage to kindly request that Steph provide evidence of his claims. Steph responded by accusing him of “trying to drag everyone down”, and of spreading the dreaded vibration of “doubt”, which as we know, calibrates below 200, and he banned the guy.

Here’s an assortment of nice little quotations from Stephane:

-“Freedom of speech is of no value. If I were to allow people to post anything they wanted, this forum would turn into the next mASF with people posting darkness, misogyny, arrogant positionalities, ego ego ego.” (Feb 23, 2008)

-“Then you have the greeks and italians. I group them into one pile of euro-trash.” (Feb 24, 2008).

-“Latino chicks, from brazil, panama, whatever. Macho, annoying, stupid, shallow, tough bitches who fly off the handle and have emotional outbursts for no apparent reason.”

-“Then there’s the jews, who secretly think they are special. Yes I’m generalizing, and no I’m not anti-semitic. But the Jews are the biggest poor me victims to ever live on earth, as far as i can tell.”

-“Yes, a lot of people would like “free spech” so they could come on here and post a bunch of fear-based crap and lower the vibe of IG forums.”

-“Gay pride is nothing but arrogance, and so most of them just wind up getting AIDS.”

-“About the chakras, I know what I know… So, you not seeing the value is obviously pure ego pride, which is an energy not welcome on this forum.”

-“Just know that I’m a lot quicker than you are, and my wisdom exceeds yours significantly. At the end of our debate, I’ll need you to say, “Thanks Stephane, for helping to raise my consciousness” – AND, you’ll also have to buy the GTP.”

-“The real answer is they have student/teacher syndrome, in which jealousy and pride prevent them from doing anything other than pathetic little attempts to prove to themselves that they are more evolved than I am. It’s fallacious.”

“The more enlightened i become, the greater your chances of getting there too, just by
virtue of being in a room with me. I know the way out of hell.”

-“It’s up to you to choose to be humble about it and view me as your Teacher, with a capitol “T”. I have earned that level of respect and that title.”

-“I recently made the jump to 602, which is the first stages of true Enlightenment. I am completely un-identified from my mind and body, and could literally choose to walk out of this body and leave for good. I have no more human karma, as i have mastered the linear world of form.”

“My advice to you: SHUT THE FUCK UP.” (April 5, 2008).

* * * * *

So there you have it. That’s my story, and that’s what’s going on behind the doors of the world’s most highly evolved teacher of relationships and spirituality. You can do what you want with this information. If you still want to investigate him, (perhaps you have an overpowering sense of curiosity), go ahead, but be very careful – he is a master NLP user, extremely effective at reframing, rationalizing, and subtle manipulation. If you’re not cautious, you could be helped to several platefuls of mental programming you never signed up for.

He makes liberal use of terms like “love”, “light” and so forth, which might impress a newcomer, but just remember that words are not the same as actions. Some people can preach love and compassion all day long, while in practice suppressing that very thing.

If you’re concerned that Steph may be the only person in the world teaching a blend of pickup and spirituality, rest assured that he’s not. There are many other people on a similar path, and many of the “community” teachers are starting to incorporate more and more of it into their ideas. And ultimately, spirituality is inside you – not outside. It doesn’t come from a guru.

For more information and to discuss this topic, you can visit the Ex-Ideagasmers forum (and this isn’t an advertisement for any products, cause we’re not selling anything). Thanks for reading… and may whatever path you take lead you home.

In addition to all this, it would seem Stephane has also lost his biggest form of social proof – Ghita – very recently.  it would appear that poor girl finally smartened up and dumped his sorry ass.

Check out the email correspondence between David G. and Ghita to confirm the fallout…

Discussion between David G and Ghita:

E-mail sent on august 22nd:

“Hey Ghita, I heard the great news I imagine your having a lot of mixed emotions right now and I guess thats a natural process. Stephane was a nightmare trip that took us along for the ride, we were both YOUNG, NAIVE and UNAWARE. He was older then us and he used our good hearts against us, I cant imagine what you’ve been through up to this point. Just let me know if you want me near and ill be there stay strong Angel and dont be afraid you’ve just entered into your brighter days.

David”

———-

From Ghita Jones (Facebook) August 25 at 7:39pm:

“David,

Stephane and I are no longer together, he did hijack my facebook and my e-mails, I just now got my facebook back, as of 3 min ago.

I read your other e-mails and I don’t know what to tell you, how about..you’re right. About everything.

I’m with my mom and my brother and my cat. A lot of shit went down.

Hope you’re doing alright David.

Sincerely,
Ghita”

So it’s pretty much official – Stephane is a psycho.  Stay away, and buyer beware.