The shit blog of Paul Chris Jones

Benny Lewis is an Irishman famous online for learning languages. He can speak at least ten languages, including Spanish, French, German, Italian, and Portuguese. He has a website, www.fluentin3months.com, where he sells courses that help idiots like you and me learn languages too.

As you might have guessed from the title of the blog post, I do not like Benny Lewis.

Because Benny Lewis can speak at least ten languages, here are ten things I hate about Benny Lewis.

His face annoys me

Benny Lewis has a face I want to punch. I don't know why. There's just something about his face I don't like. There must be something in his genes that sets off a predator instinct in me, an instinct to beat him to death with a club and then kick his corpse down a mountainside. Maybe this way, it will prevent him from breeding with my children so that his genes don't end up in my grandchildren.

He does stupid poses

You can't google "Benny Lewis" without coming across photos of him doing cheesy "wahey" poses that are supposed to convey how much fun he's having around the world, and how much fun you too could be having if you just bought his Easy Languages Bundle ($283.14) or his Courage to Speak course (for the low low price of $177.87) from his website.

He has a fake smile

Even though Benny smiles in every photo, it's a terrifying fake smile. You can tell by the lack of creasing around his eyes. When people really smile, their eyes crease up at the edges.

Benny's eyes don't crease up which means he's pretending to smile, like a psychopath.

Okay, I don't really think Benny is a psychopath. However, I am disturbed by his smiles. His eyes seem to be mocking me as if he can actually see me through the screen and he's laughing at me personally. Everyone else sees Benny as a fun-loving Irish guy, but I see him for who he truly is: a demon.

Okay, so demon might be a bit far too. Let's just say I think he needs to work on his smile, okay?

He has an attractive girlfriend

Despite looking like a pig that has somehow learned to walk, Benny has an attractive girlfriend. Fuck you Benny you bastard.

I mean, come on. The guy looks like the Fat Controller from Thomas the Tank Engine. At best, he looks like a really shit James McAvoy, if James McAvoy got pudgy and started losing his hair.

My only guess is that he pestered this girl so much that she gave in and became his girlfriend just to make him stop annoying her.

His girlfriend is American

And his girlfriend is not just attractive but American too. They got married in 2017 which gives Benny instant American citizenship. INSTANT AMERICAN CITIZENSHIP. America is only, like, the GREATEST NATION ON EARTH.

Becoming an American is my dream! That's always been my dream. Fuck you Benny for stealing my dream.

He's lucky

Benny seems to swan around life as good things happen to him, while the rest of us have to struggle around, picking up beans out of the dirt just to stay alive.

For example, he once went to Barcelona to live there for a bit. The thing about Barcelona is that the rent prices are notoriously high and it's ridiculously hard for any normal person to find an apartment. But Benny finds a cheap, beautiful house right away because he's like Jesus and John Lennon rolled into one, spreading peace and making friends wherever he goes, man. But don't let me tell the story. Here it is in Benny's own words:

“So, how long have you been speaking Catalan?”

“Actually, this is my first ever conversation in the language…”

It was Susanna, a potential landlady, who had asked me the question. Since the initial Hola, com estàs? the conversation had continued, albeit slowly, just in Catalan. She didn’t realize until this last question that it really was the first time I had ever used the language.

She had already shown me around the beautiful two-bedroom house near downtown Barcelona, but we stopped here in the garden.

“Què?? Parles molt bé el catalá!”

“…Merci!”

“You know what? I was going to rent out the rooms separately, but I like the idea of an Irish guy learning Catalan so much that you can have the entire house for the same price as a single room!”

Now I was the one with a surprised expression on my face. An entire house to myself, 15 minutes away from the Ramblas, for most of the summer, for just a couple of hundred Euro?? I was off to an excellent start in Barcelona!

An entire house near to the Ramblas for a couple of hundred Euro? This means either a) Benny is a liar or b) Benny is a jammy bastard who has lucky things happen to him for no reason.

I assume Benny is an honest man, and this makes me hate him even more because it means lucky things do happen to him, and it means I'm grinding my teeth down to stubs from jealousy.

He's a smug prick

As if being lucky and finding a house just for himself wasn't enough, he then goes on to boast about all the free stuff he gets and all the friends he has:

I got invited to VIP events, received discounts on pretty much everything, was invited to family dinners immediately after meeting people, got more free offers for tours of the city than I could accept, and had a social circle that seemed to be spanning hundreds. All this despite not knowing a single person in Barcelona when I arrived.

The first time I went to Barcelona, none of this happened. I just walked around, took some photos and then went home, like a normal person. Not like mega-celebrity Benny-fucking-Lewis here who apparently makes hundreds of friends wherever he goes.

What's more, he's a self-glorifying twat. At the bottom of every one of his vain posts, he describes himself as a:

fun-loving Irish guy, full-time globe trotter and international bestselling author.

'Globe trotter' isn't a job, you prick. You can't be a full-time globe trotter. Not unless you mean the Harlem Globetrotters. But somehow I don't think the Harlem Globetrotters would accept someone as short and fat as Benny on their team. Maybe as a fat funny mascot, but not as a player. Well, okay, they might let Benny on just for a moment, making him think he's going to be a real Harlem Globetrotter, but then they'd reveal it was all a prank, making Benny cry.

He claims to have a language hacking method

Benny claims to have an unconventional “language hacking” method that lets him learn any language in less than 3 months.

Well, here's his method: you have to talk with native speakers of the language, straight away, every day for three months.

Speak with native speakers as much as you can. Even when you’re a complete beginner.

There are a few problems with this method.

First of all, you need people to practise with. If you're not a "full-time globetrotter" like Benny Lewis, then this is going to be a bit difficult. Okay, so you can use iTalki. But not everyone has money to pay for hours of iTalki sessions every week.

Secondly, Benny's tells you to bully people into providing language tutoring for free. His method is to basically go up to people and start talking to them in their language. That's not a method. That's called being an annoying creep.

Also, his method isn't "unconventional" and it isn't "language hacking". What he's saying is this: to learn to speak a language, you need to practice speaking it. Well, that's not "language hacking"; it's just practice. It's something people have been doing for centuries.

By the way, Benny says the best way to learn a language is by speaking, not with books or courses. Yet he has his own books and courses that he tries to make language learners buy! (Like "Conversation Countdown", seven video lessons for just $117.37.) Fuck you, you hypocritical twat. I'm on to you, Benny.

I almost broke up with my girlfriend because of Benny Lewis

I wanted to break up with my girlfriend because of Benny Lewis. It's true. Not because I wanted to run off with and marry Benny or anything like that. No, it's because, on his blog, he recommends avoiding speaking English as much as possible. Only speak in the language you want to learn.

And I took this advice seriously. Since my girlfriend was Spanish, I tried to speak only in Spanish with her.

Unfortunately this didn't quite work because:

1. I couldn't even speak Spanish well enough for a basic conversation
2. my shitty Spanish annoyed my girlfriend

But I carried on. I persevered. In true Benny style, I did not give in.

Unfortunately, my girlfriend is not a patient person. She did not like helping me to learn Spanish. Sometimes we'd have big arguments about me wanting to practise Spanish with her and her saying she didn't have the energy.

Benny Lewis's blog didn't have any guidance for this scenario.

It was partly because of Benny Lewis that I decided to break up with my girlfriend. At the time I was still a fan of Benny's and I wanted to follow his advice and learn new languages. And I knew I couldn't learn from my girlfriend because she didn't have the patience. So I told her I was splitting up with her.

She cried for hours that night. Hours, Benny! Can you imagine the tears? Can you hear the sobbing? Can you, Benny?

Thankfully I came to my senses and my girlfriend and I stayed together. And we've been together for ten years and counting now. But it's no thanks to you, Benny.

So fuck you, Benny Lewis. You almost destroyed a relationship. I hope you're happy you Irish bastard creep.

I don't hate him

The thing is, I've realised that Benny and I have a lot in common. We're about the same age. We're both a little bit socially awkward. We're from similar countries. We both like to learn languages. In fact, we have so much in common that if we met, I genuinely believe we would be friends.

And his advice does make sense: if you want to learn to speak a language, then you have to practise speaking it. It may seem like obvious advice, but before I read Benny's blog, I was oblivious to it. I thought that learning languages involved dull classroom lessons and expensive Duolingo courses. Benny showed me another way. A better way.

So, to be honest, I don't hate Benny Lewis. I'm jealous of him, that's for sure. I admire his bravery at being able to start conversations with strangers in foreign languages while only knowing a handful of words. I admire his mega-successful blog, bestseller books and his job as a full-time globetrotter (though it's still not a real job, Benny).

So Benny, the thing I hate most about you is the way I don't hate you. Not even close, not even a little bit. Not even at all.

Well, okay, maybe a little bit.

Update: Benny Lewis got divorced and depressed

After I wrote this post, I watched a YouTube video where Benny explains how his life has gone down the shitter. He became burned-out, broke and depressed, and then how his American girlfriend divorced him and he became more depressed. And fat.

Annoyingly, his problems and suffering now make me look like a bit of a bastard for making fun of him.

Also, going through so many hardships seems to have humbled him, and he now seems like more a human being instead of the egomaniacal annoying prick he once was. This means I can't hate him even more.

So I can't win. He's trumped me again, the bastard, by getting divorced and depressed. God damn you, Benny Lewis. God damn you.

Oh, and now my blog post is factually wrong because he's no longer with his girlfriend. I can't be bothered to fix that though, to be honest.