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Comment by biql | Hacker News Reader

Sounds like social coaching has all the attributes of an untapped business niche. The question is, if there is just a obvious pain, why there is such a shortage of solutions. I think it could be because of the stigma associated with this issue or because people affect by it lack genuine interest in solutions as people are usually happy to pay for all kinds of self-improvements.

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> Sounds like social coaching has all the attributes of an untapped business niche

The problem is that most of the potential customers are well aware that the field is full of hucksters and certifications are largely meaningless. I'm not about to pay for services I don't believe will pan out.

Doesn't scale is a huge issue. Lack of evidence that it works is another - and anything remotely evidence based is given by somebody like a psychologist and is very expensive.

Social coaching is just another venue through which scammers do their thing. Eg the Andrew Tate-esque "schools" making men even more dysfunctional in the name of teaching them to be "attractive".

It's very easy to talk about some sort of coaching for these issues, but imo it isn't really that straightforward. The people being suggested to take coaching are often very easily manipulated, and there's also the issue of everyone having a different standard for a healthy level of socialization, and everyone also loves to force their standard onto everyone. Result is that "social coaching" is going to be more like brainwashing/indoctrination in practice.

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