Do you have a large amount of disposable income? Have you grown weary of your typical recreational activities—flying the private jet to Bali, eating fresh sashimi off the naked torso of Miss Uruguay 2011? Did you watch The Game and think to yourself, “What a cool gift, I want that!” Well good news, wealthy weirdo: Now you can pay $950 to be professionally abducted.
Art of Escape: NYC offers participants the chance to learn basic escape skills like picking locks, opening handcuffs, wriggling free of duct tape and rope, “as well as effectively utilize social engineering and active confidence schemes” to your advantage, whatever that means.
The training closes with a “day-long abduction simulation,” in which students must employ their new skill set to break free! Or they just leave once 5 p.m. hits or they get hungry, whichever comes first. Fake abduction is the best abduction! Anyway:
They’ll have to gain the trust of their captors, break free of their restraints, escape by gaining access to restricted or unauthorized areas without detection, and much, much more. In addition to the pre-existing curriculum, the training will include specially tailored lessons and challenges that are specific to NYC. Participants should prepare for the unexpected, the unknown, and the unimaginable.
That does sound stimulating, but why does the description read like it was authored by a precocious 17-year-old nerd typing from within an over-sized trench coat? How do you “prepare for the unimaginable”? I can live with preparing for the unexpected, but the unimaginable? When asking clients to pay nearly a grand for your recreational abduction experience, can’t you at least hire someone capable of stringing together a coherent, compelling blurb that doesn’t refer to “Manhattan” as one of the most “fascinating cities in the world”?
But according to Rift Recon, which bills itself as “a premiere cyber and physical security agency,” the class is more than just a pricey gimmick. The company provides a variety of security trainings, including a physical security defensive in which employees learn to protect sensitive information from corporate espionage attacks, as well as an urban escape and evasion class, aimed at “high-risk individuals, or who may find themselves in a destabilizing urban area during a crisis,” which is a euphemism for “billionaires traveling in poor, lawless countries” and “Jason Bourne.”
