So there’s an old school type of Pickup Artistry called Speed Seduction in which, instead of simply trying to manipulate the ladies into bed, our would-be seducers try to literally hypnotize their prey by repeating prefabricated “patterns” that supposedly work on people’s subconscious minds without them realizing it. The whole thing is based on something called Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP), which most scientists seem to think is quackery. Most of the pickup techniques inspired by NLP are beyond ridiculous.
One NLP-inspired PUA “pattern,” for example, involves using the phrase “below me” when talking to the Hot Babes. Since “below me” sounds vaguely like “blow me,” you see, the Hot Babe you’re talking to will be subconsciously primed to want to give you a blow job. And no, I’m not making this up.
The creepiest PUA “pattern” I’ve run across so far is something called the “Door Pattern,” invented by some dude named Alex Domnikov, and recently brought to my attention by Mike Booth, the guy behind the hilarious Some Grey Bloke videos on Youtube.
One PUA has described the Door Pattern as “the “bad boy” of all patterns. … evil and cruel, playing on the fears and deep insecurities of women.”
Essentially, the idea behind this little routine is to manipulate any Hot Babe you’ve somehow convinced to sleep with you into desperately worrying that you’ll abandon her. Why she would consider this a bad thing, I’m not sure, as PUAs are not known for being especially sensitive lovers. But we’ll just suspend our disbelief and continue.
[TRIGGER WARNING for emotional abuse in what follows]
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So how does this dastardly Door Pattern work? Well, after you’ve had sex with a woman, and she’s feeling all glowy, you point to the door and ask her “sweetheart, what’s that over there?”
And she’ll say, “well you know, that’s a door, silly.” And you say, “yeah, you know.. I’m a real positive person, but.. I mean, can you imagine.. I mean, you don’t know what can happen from day to day, when you think about it in your mind. I mean, what would happen if I walked out that door and the door closed and as the door closed, it slammed shut, and no matter what you did, you could not open the door and you knew that you would never be able to look into my eyes again and you’d never be able to hear my voice again and you’d never be able to feel my touch again.” Ok, right here is where she starts going, “I don’t like this door business at all.”
So you reassure her a little, and then it’s back to the “door business” again:
Have some more fun with her, bring her to another orgasm or whatever and say, “you know, a terrible thing happened the other day. My friend was hit by a truck. I mean, it was awful, by the time they got him to hospital he was dead. I can’t believe it, you know? It’s almost as if, it would be a horrible thing you know when you think about..” (point towards the door) “..that no matter even if you were to get that door opened and you were to search, that you could never find me again..” Then she starts freaking out. You calibrate more on that part of, “you will never be able to see me again, you’ll never be able to hear my voice again.”
Repeat as necessary, and pretty soon any time she starts to get uppity, all you have to do is point to a door, and – ta da! – no more “bullshit” from her!
Having anchored that sense of loss and pain to the door, you can trigger it whenever needed. Whatever negative behavior may come up that you want to stop, the first time you just get up and slam the door. Whether you walk out the door depends on the level of bullshit. On later occasions you can just indicate tbe door in some manner. The example Alex gives: If he’s talking on the phone and getting any crap from her, and he knows the relation of where the door is to her desk, he says, “sweetheart, could you please turn right and take a look at what’s over there..” and that was the end of the bullshit.”
Assuming the Hot Babe doesn’t either laugh in your face and/or throw you out the first time you pull this creepy shit with her, what we’ve got here is a template for ongoing emotional abuse.
Happily, one enterprising soul has turned the Door Pattern into an ExtraNormal video. I find that the robot voice in the video meshes well with the psychopathic creepiness of the content.
The Door Pattern is not to be confused with the Doors Pattern, in which you get drunk and babble on about Nietzsche and everyone around you tells you you’re a genius.
There’s a video for that one too:
Oh, and here’s a cat singing the theme song to Game of Thrones. For some reason this popped up on YouTube when I was looking for drunk Jim Morrison videos.
Thank goodness that there are now step-by-step instructions for emotional abuse.
I thought PUAs weren’t about repeat business, so who cares, unless you’re a complete fucking sociopath. Oh, wait…
In before Eurosabra sleazes the joint up by making excuses for this and “mild gaslighting.”
Maybe if she looks at the door enough she’ll realize she can just walk right out.
Holy Batman, this actually happened to me! Years and years ago, so this thing is apparently old. My (new and casual) lover mused at length about the meaning of doors, and what I would do if I could never open the door, and it would mean I could never see him again, look into his eyes or feel his touch again. I thought this was quite overt in its manipulativeness, so when he asked how I would feel about the door closing behind him, I replied:
“Oh well, it’s like you said: shit happens. I suppose if that happened, I would get up, make sure the door is securely locked against any intruder and go take a shower. Then I would go on with my life. Seems like the most sensible thing to do, no?”
“Hahaha. Okay, but what it if wasn’t a joke? People don’t always do sensible things. Like, if you imagined me, also going on with my life, behind that door, with some other girl…”
“I don’t think about things like that.”
“Because you are afraid of them?”
And it went on and on from there. He ended up basically making an argument to me as to why I should be scared and upset that he could disappear behind that door at any moment. And when I was unconvinced, he accused me of lying about my feelings. Then he called me shallow.
“Okay, would it make you feel better if I gave you permission to tell your friends I committed suicide on your account?” I finally asked.
At which point he got up, put his clothes on, and walked out that door. At which point I got up, made sure the door was securely locked, went to take a shower and went on with my life.
The door pattern requires you to first be successful in sexing the girl. How is this useful guys who use PUA tactics? I thought their whole thing was to “bang them” once and move on, anyway?
This pretty much sums up how PUAs feel about women enjoying sex, doesn’t it? The men have to be able (technically) to bring women to orgasm or they are not virile enough, but actually doing it is not that important. Sounds like fun to me! /sarcasm
@Amused
Ugh. That sucks. Your actual response was pretty much what I imagined mine would be like, though.
I think the only way it wouldn’t come off as overtly manipulative pretty quickly is if we were both really stoned and the “Door Pattern” was prefaced by non-creepy musings on windows and floors and walls. I think I would still catch on eventually, though.
Yeah, it really seems to underline the fact that self-identified PUAs (and wannabes) are, basically, announcing, “Hey, I can only be with women whose self-esteem is low enough that they have no standards.”
Because women exist only for sexy time and shouldn’t get in the way of Important Man Shit, and if they do, it’s perfectly justified to train them to slam themselves in their vulnerable spot, innit?
That is kind of terrifying, I would probably be manipulated by that. I can kind of see why guys do it because then you have control of your partner but I still like the idea of having some identity/power in the relationship. In my last relationship, however much I tried I couldn’t be passive enough. I am not sure how religious women manage the whole passive thing, it is so hard.
From what I understand, many of them suffer from crushing feelings of guilt because they can’t quite manage it, themselves, but fortunately they can usually manage to avoid their husbands’ and Men-o’-Gawds’ negative attention for a while.
This post really, really, really disturbed me…but then you saved the day with the Doors and cat video at the end. Thanks for that, and thanks for your good work…as saddening as it is…a lot of times I can’t bring myself to read what you find.
Yonkers, this is terrible. I think feminists should mount a public campaign to inoculate girls and young women against this kind of emotional abuse and manipulation, just like we’ve done for HPV etc.
Is it just me or does this read something like “Women don’t actually have object permanence, lets mess with that.”
I was bored and reading your twitter feed last night, David, and googled the door pattern
I am very triggered by any emotional manipulation, maybe because my mom was both manipulative and somewhat verbally abusive and so now I tend to react as if they’re one and the same. The first time someone tried this on me, I would not have reacted the way he expected me to. I probably wouldn’t have yelled at him or anything and I certainly wouldn’t have cried. I would have just turned red, gotten dressed, left, and never taken his phone calls again. Hows that for a fucking door trick?
Amused, I’m sorry that happened to you! But I’m glad it didn’t work out the way he wanted either.
Uh, wow, this actually happened to a friend of mine once. I knew the guy was really emotionally abusive, but I didnt find out about this (and the sexual abuse) until after I and her other friends helped her get out of the relationship; I would have physically harmed him had I found out about it sooner–probably with a door. (This is my first post here by the way, been lurking for a while.)
@Amused: Shitty dude, epic ending. 😀
So this has actually happened to me too. It was a casual FWB-type situation, maybe the second or third time we had sex, and it…didn’t go the way he planned.
First, I had no idea what the fuck he was pointing at when he asked me what was “over there,” because a door seemed way too obvious, and we were at my place so I had some weird things laying around in the same general area he was pointing. So I started listing other things…”Oh, you mean the photos? Well, those are of…No? Surely you don’t mean the old printer that I need to recycle?” Finally he had to be like, “No, I was just teasing babe, I meant the door…because I was just thinking about…” and launched into pretty much word-for-word what was up there. I was kind of sleepy so I mostly tuned it out. Hey, I’m a forgiving lady.
He got as far as the thing about a friend dying horribly, and I did freak out…trying to comfort him. Then I started asking when the funeral was, why he didn’t tell me sooner, when it happened, etc. and it quickly became obvious that he was lying, at which point I kicked him out because holy shit what a terrible thing to lie about. He tried to pass it off as a joke but it was obvious what he was doing, even though I wasn’t aware of this pattern BS at the time. I also made sure to tell our mutual friends about it because seriously, you try to manipulate me like that, I figure all bets are off. It got a good laugh, especially when the first time he showed up to hang out with us again, as soon as he walked up I pointed at the door of the bar and asked, “Hey, what’s that over there?” (I was lucky enough to be hanging out with a pretty progressive bunch who knew we were FWB) He quickly wound up disappearing from our social circle.
Imagine my surprise when I ran into that exact pattern online a year or two later. It just makes it even funnier.
I don’t mean to make light of emotional manipulation or the effect this particular pattern might have on anyone, just to be clear. I was in an abusive relationship where I was horribly manipulated and I understand how terrible that can be and how the scars can linger. For me, this particular attempt was really just ridiculous and funny though.
I know this is an obvious statement, but this tactic seems to try to take the natural fear of being trapped and turn it round to be about not seeing the guy again. I’m sure it can’t be a coincidence that it is about not being able to open the door and not about him walking out and you not being able to find him. The latter might be annoying but you’d get over it, but never being able to leave the room again is terrifying.
Anyone else guilty of mainly coming here for the Cats?
I should add for full disclosure that I’ve been guilty of engaging in the Doors pattern David mentioned in his post. Fortunately I outgrew it about the time I was finished with college, as it is not nearly as creepy but pretty obnoxious, especially since it can be visited on innocent people who just happen to be sitting near you at a party.
I’m always stunned to stumble onto tiny bits of actual psychology in the PUA quagmire. It’s total bullshit (“below me” also sounds a lot like “baloney”, but they don’t mention that part) but there’s JUST. ENOUGH. for this garbage to be legitimately damaging. Associating a concrete physical symbol with an emotional state is actually a great way of inducing that state, it’s just usually meant to induce, y’know, happy or calm or therapeutic feelings. Like all pickup shitlordery, it’s a mishmash of actual knowledge about the brain (saying things with a sexual second meaning does make the person you’re talking to think about sex, for example, but if they don’t like the idea of sex with you they’ll just find it distressing or upsetting instead) with a thin veneer of bullshit and misogyny plastered over the cracks.
Also, all this shitlordery was mostly hashed out on message boards in the early- to mid-nineties (I may know an embarrassingly large amount about this subculture, my ex-wife were extremely curious, and I wanted to I know what these shitheads were doing to the science I love) so I’m not surprised at all to hear that some of y’all have heard this shit verbatim in your youths.
Persuasion is actually really interesting, because we swim through a sea of it every day in the form of advertising and political propaganda. What these guys are doing is basically just spreading propaganda about themselves. If y’all are interested, two of my professors in Santa Cruz wrote an excellent book called, “The Age of Propaganda.”
I highly recommend it, you’ll never look at a political speech or Activia commercial the same way again.
@AK
If you don’t mind answering, what reactions did you get when you tried?
Some Gal, I’m sorry, I meant that as a joke about the “sitting around drunkenly talking about Nietzsche” thing in the OP…The Doors pattern, not the door pattern. I’d never do something like the door pattern to someone else.
I was never told I was a genius though, I just assumed I was. 😉