Over on Buzzzfeed, a couple of interesting pieces on the fine art of online pickup artistry.
Kelly Bourdet looks at some of the online PUA gurus and their teachings, noting that
Online pick-up artistry has taken the original aims of IRL pick-up — to develop general tactics and techniques for attracting and bedding women— one step further. One dehumanizing step further. Now, instead of “peacocking” (wearing gaudy outfits to demonstrate Alpha status) in bars and using tired negs, we have them deconstructing every aspect of online persona and communication to create sleek, marketing packages of human beings to sell to one another.
In an even more entertaining companion piece, Ouiser Boudreaux (AKA the Annals of Online Dating gal) reports on some of the actual terrible things these online PUAs write to women in an attempt to “neg” them into their IRL beds. Like “nice headband, bitch,” or “Lol, you look like a space commando.” Or this little passive-aggressive masterpiece:
You nearly have a perfect lack of grace. What happens when you realize only the also ran hotties slum it in brooklyn? Somebody who says they’re not good at being surface and rattles off a list of authors read mostly in high school english classes is nothing but surface. Your profile is among the most trite and cliche i’ve come across. which is a compliment of sorts, though keep in mind, you’re not in kansas anymore. You know who else won’t deal with a narcissist? just look in the mirror to find the answer: another narcissist.
None of these worked, in case you’re wondering.
Terrence is hilarious. Can we keep him?
I miss Terrence already. I’ve been very good, and think I can be trusted to take care of a pet troll. I would walk him every day, and change the water in his bowl, and feed him with tasty comments. David, pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeease?
Aw, man, I was hoping that Terrence would explain why his IP address pointed to the side of a mountain in Switzerland.
I’ll let Terrence’s comments through so long as he’s entertaining.
There seems to be a phenomenon where men on dating sites just randomly cruise around insulting women who they deem insufficiently fuckable/compliant/whatever.
There was a Pandagon thread where people were saying that Craigslist personals were the worst, and specifically that the W4M section was nothing but the occasional genuine ad surrounded by spam for porn and escort services. Then several women said that they had posted Craigslist personals ads and had the experience of having their ads ‘reported’ and removed.
Craigslist’s own policy seemed to be to remove all ads at the slightest complaint, and there’s no appeals process and no one has to investigate so the women never really got a good explanation for why their ads were deemed inappropriate (although I’m not sure they were exactly fighting tooth and nail for the privilege of advertising on Craigslist). They all put two and two together and the working theory was that women looked at ads, didn’t like them, and clicked ‘next.’ Men looked at ads, didn’t like them, and clicked ‘report.’ It’s obviously not all men doing this, but it’s enough to clear the pages of any ads that aren’t claiming to be 18 and telling you their measurements.
David, I’m pretty sure Terrence is a Bernese Mountain Dog. My friend has one and he talks just the same.
Grammar is BETA, losers! Ah, Terrence, you’re so cute. No wait, I mean YOUR so cute. [scratches him under the chin and pulls out a piece of string to play with]
Terrence is blowing off talking language.
Basic grammar is a shit test! This puts grade school into a whole new light…Mrs Sunderland was teaching us girls how to shit tests guys 10 years down the road in some crappy bar. I shoulda known!
PUA’s in a nutshell: “Lady, you SUCK!”
“Why are you running awaaayyy…”
How is saying nasty things and wearing stupid clothes supposed to get a woman into bed, unless the woman in question has a fetish for clumsy insults and/or giant fluffy hats? The ways of men never cease to baffle me….
What I don’t get is how a community probably a lot further to the nerdy end of things didn’t come up with “beta test” instead of “shit test”. Is “shit test” an early thing, and the pseudoscientific alpha/beta thing only added to the PUA canon later? Or vice versa? I’m not sure I’m game enough to wade through early-years nonsense to find out.
@Rutee
Google “lowquacks” in quotes, ignore the ManBoobz hits, and you’ll see why I’m annoyed with you right now.
🙂
*not sure I’m Game enough, maybe?
Manjaw, it is a predatory social tactic that actually is effective. (Gavin de Becker talks about it in The Gift of Fear.) You make a statement that’s a very slight insult in order to get the other person to try and disprove the insult – the real-life example he gave was of a middle-aged guy trying to pick up a teenage girl. He offered her his drink with the statement that she probably wasn’t mature enough to handle alcohol, thus challenging her to take a sip to prove him wrong.
PUAs read this wrong as “insult her, that gets her hot”. It’s lot more limited than that; just asking a woman how expensive her boobs were isn’t the same.
Based on the example it sounds like it’s “effective” for reasons unrelated to the target’s sexual willingness and I suspect, with a shiver of disgust, that that is the point.
I can confirm from experience that the “I bet you’re not mature enough to handle booze/sucking my cock” is in fact a tactic that creepy older men use on teenage girls. Didn’t work on me, because I was a snotty, arrogant little brat, but no amount of disdain ever stopped men from trying.
Wit and poetry display wit and poetry,
whereas confusing its and it’s just displays
excessive focus on tits.
As if OKC wasn’t bad enough already. I have a profile I don’t use, I just signed up for the quizzes like five years ago. I find that site to be depressing. There are just no men who are my type on there. Either that or I read their questions which reveal some homophobia/racism/sexism, and I just cannot.
But I do get a kick out of the god awful messages I get. I scare off most of the PUAs with a disclaimer about not having patience for any types of isms and my mention of the fact that I hate fedoras. But I have gotten some pretty special, neg-ish messages like this one.
Thank you? Like dude, no. I know I’m not a super model, but you don’t have to mention it!
and then just for lols I have to mention
I replied with
I might be part of the reason men become MRAs, lol.
Oh my! I have an OKCupid profile (which is NOT for dating, but try to tell them that), and I occasionally get these sorts of “negging” messages. Here’s my favorite (and yes, it was written all in capital letters):
“YOU ARE PRETENTIOUS, EGOCENTRIC AND HAVE A REALLY NICE PIC. SO I THOUGHT WHY NOT MESAGE HER AND SEE IF I CAN PROD HER WITH A STICK IN THE EYE ? YOU SEEM SO INVOLVED IN YOURSELF I DO NOT SEE WHERE YOU WOULD HAVE ANY TIME FOR ANYONE ELSE, BUT THEN PERHAPS YOU BEING ON THIS SITE IS SOME PSYCHOLGOICAL CALL FOR HELP. ANYWAY, HAVE A MERRY NEW YEAR, FELIZ ANO NUEVO, FREULICHE NEW JAHR, ETC, ETC.”
His profile discussed his Mensa level IQ, his vastly interesting spread of pastimes, and of course, the fact that he likes sex a lot and is very good at it, ladies.
The only thing this contact inspired in me was a desire to make him my Asshole of the Day by mocking him on my journal, with commentary. At least he can provide entertainment for the rest of us.
terrence said:
“Its not being incoherent, it is having a more scholarly tone. I am sorry you’re too BETA to comprehend. It’s how I write because it sounds more educated.”
No terrence, it just makes you look like a pretentious git.
@Jessay
Aww…the little mediocrity tried to use use the compliment wrapped in an insult neg.
What a turd.
I was on OKC for awhile, and surprisingly had a good run on there. Didn’t run into many creeps and met some cool guys. I’ve considered going back but this doesn’t exactly make me very enthusiastic.
Yeahh, I met two men off OKC. The first was cool for about a month until he slowly started displaying the fact that he was a raging alcoholic and threw a box of macaroni at me for bringing over a box of the kind I liked because I kept opening his cupboard to see a kind I didn’t like. When he saw the box I brought he opened his cupboard and was like, “But I HAVE macaroni,” and so I jokingly replied, “But your macaroni sucks.” He proceeded to grab it from the cupboard and whip it at me. Umm, yeah, that relationship was over.
The second time I went out with a guy from there we had been joking around all night, pretty offensive jokes, but all in good fun. He propositioned me at the end of the night and I said, no, it being the first date and me not being comfortable enough with him yet. He then told me he could just rape me, supposedly joking, but no, that is not ok. I make horrible jokes myself but there is just way too much truth in that for it to be something I can laugh at. So yeah, I told him I would kick the shit out of him if he tried and that was the end of that.
So umm, me and okc are not friends.
(First time poster, VERY long time reader here — hello!)
I just wanted to add, re the whole negging thing: in my first year at Uni, I got some weird backhanded compliments like these when I was picking up guys on nights out, but the reason I still took them home was because I was after a one night stand and they were up for it, and I knew I wasn’t going to contact them again.
So I suspect it’s not so much that negging “works”, but that the women don’t give a shit if they just want a quickie.
You know, it occurs to me that my brother and I used to play this game when we were younger. He would try to come up with opening lines, and I would come up with zingers to shoot them down. I don’t know how it started, but it was something where, for example, every now and then he would come up to me out of the blue and say something like, “You look like you could use a drink.” And then I would say something like, “Yes, please. A big glass of hemlock would be perfect right now.”
As the game went on and my brother got more desperate to find lines that couldn’t be shot down immediately and with ease, the lines got more neg-like. But then, we were in high school, and it was more a game of wits between us.
I don’t know what my point is.