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]
.
.
.
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.
This is the second time in my life now where I’ve heard something and went:
“This is a thing?”
“It’s enough of a thing to have a name?”
“Someone here has actually experienced this?!”
“More than one person here has experienced it?!?!”
For the record, the first time was discovering the word “Voraraphile”.
Well, at least the door pattern is in good company.
@AK
Oh. Sorry I misunderstood. (Not like I don’t enjoy Doors pattern talk if the mood is right. 🙂 ) I know we have some former-PUAs and MRAs here and I just thought that you might be one if them.
The idea of pulling this one someone before sleeping with them seemed like something PUAs might pull and I thought the reactions would be interesting.
@leftwingfox: Did someone pull this on you? I’m sorry, that’s terrible.
Blaaaargh. Binjab, now I am going to start working “below me” into conversations in the hope that women will be subconsciously compelled to offer me deli meats. Perhaps there’s a whole PUA niche market there; maybe just call it “Running Fish and Game.”
LOL. I can see that resulting in the following conversation:
Friend: “So, tell me about that guy you took home from the bar last night. What was up with that?”
Woman: “Eh, not bad. We had fun. But I won’t be calling him again.”
Friend: “Why not?”
Woman: “He had this completely bizarre fixation with doors. Apparently they remind him of death or abandonment or something. He wouldn’t stop talking about how sad it was when people walked out the door and then got hit by a truck and you never saw them again.”
Friend: “Seriously? Like, right after sex he’s talking about this? How fucking weird.”
Woman: “I know, right?!?”
I believe it used to be called, “The Stick Pattern.” The stick would be sitting next to the door and the husband would point to it and say, “What’s that over there?” And she would say, “It’s the stick.” And he would say, “And that’s what I get to beat you with. And there’s nothing you can do about it.”
http://www.historyofwomen.org/wifebeating.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marital_rape
@Binjabreel: My thoughts exactly. This little script is almost classical conditioning, but the author must have been drunk the day they discussed Pavlov if this is what he got out of it. It’s not quite science, is what I’m saying, but it sure sounds science-y.
A superior adaptation of the true story of the Titanic.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1869152/
Falconer: Oh no. I was clueless that this was even a tactic, I was referring to hearing Amused and AK’s stories here.
I’m not exactly the most social person in the world, and would much rather be in no relationship than a bad relationship. I’m the sort of person who _will_ walk out that door, but it would never occur to me to actually cultivate that as a threat.
Some Gal, no worries, I’ve been lurking here for a long time but just started posting so it’s easy for me to forget y’all don’t know me and some things that to me are obviously jokes are less so when they come from a random internet poster with no background. 😉
I’d actually be interested to hear legitimate stories of reactions to it, too…having experienced it and even giving him the benefit of the doubt found it so absurd, I really have trouble imagining how it actually works. It is so scripted and the reactions for the “HB” are unusual, to say the least. Yet it is apparently quite persistent (I’ve had two 2+ year relationships since I was with the guy who pulled it on me) so surely they can’t all be striking out with it? Or maybe they are and they’re all just lying about it, I guess. Actually, that’s probably it.
Patterns of abuse in the family of origin often create a mental state that recognizes abuse as the norm. Jerks who despise women seek out those who are vulnerable. NLP–basically, you can use similar tactics to the abuser to free yourself from the abuse. One needs to develop the courage to leave, and a social network that helps you to recognize that you are in fact being abused. For many women, economic vulnerability plays a big role in keeping them in an abusing relationship.
My reaction is what you’d expect from hearing that somebody is trying to learn to use the Force to Jedi Mind Trick girls into sleeping with him. Equal parts bemusement at the ridiculousness of the plan and repulsion at the complete moral bankruptcy of the person being ridiculous.
Or it might make them subconsciously want to watch Celebrity Jeopardy.
I’ve been in the PUA community for almost 7 years as a coach and I have to admit that when I first arrived there was a lot of buzz about NLP and certain patterns that men were using on women.
This never felt right to me. It’s outright manipulation in a not good way, not sure if manipulation is ever good but that’s for a different discussion.
Nowadays in the world of modern pick-up NLP is basically outlawed. Mention it once as something that you use and you might as well be a leper! Most men want to better themselves on their own so they can be more naturally attractive to women and not rely on creepy NLP patterns of heavy routines!
Either way… The Door is interesting to read about. I had never heard about it and I hope by posting this Pattern up on a blog it doesn’t come back to life.
GlennP
Glennpua.com
They really don’t think of woman as human beings, do they? I mean, I kind of know that on an intellectual level, but this shit just kind of slams that point home.
@Cloudiah: yeah, seriously.
This kinda reminds me of the guy who proposed to his girlfriend by faking a horrifying car crash right in front of her because he wanted her to realise how much it would hurt if she lost him.
Y’know, because that’s not manipulative at all, and it’s not like people in a secure, happy relationship don’t know it’s gonna hurt when your loved ones die.
The level of gullibility in PUA is mind boggling. OK, I am 60ish so I have the benefit of experience, but this shit is so obviously a group of nonsense pop-psychology ideas that originated to sell books to the insecure. None of these ideas have any basis in reality and the only time they might even appear to work is if a woman chose to go out with the PUA despite the PUAing, not because of it.
Also, too, leftwingfox…evil child. (; You had to pique my curiousity, I looked up “Voraraphile”. Ick
Also, too, too, I probably shouldn’t be surprised. There are also “things with names” about self inflicted damage for people that cannot fathom that inflamation and scar tissue are not the same as an increase in erectile tissue. Some of my fellow penis owners can be a sad lot…
So wait, reading the comments here from people who have said this has happened to them, I’m wondering: Has this ever actually worked? Sometimes, I think that PUA tactics just come from hunches. If you read PUA forums, it becomes pretty obvious that they’re not as successful with women as they claim to be. I seriously wonder if they just come up with these ideas as hunches.
What.
I’d assume you use it on someone who already has some attachment to you. Possibly someone who is already having mixed feelings about the relationship, and where the relationship is already abusive. If a stranger used it I’d probably be glad to be rid of them but when you already like the person my mind might change.
When I was a teenager, I did childcare for a neighbor’s kid, who was about 4. Sweet kid. Anyway, one day I was playing with him and I had this “brilliant” idea to pretend that he had suddenly become invisible. I thought it would be fun for him, like a superpower. Instead, he did that thing little kids do where their faces just kind of crumple up and they start crying — because to him it was like saying he had gone away forever, and his mother and father wouldn’t be able to see him and no one could play with him.
Because I am a halfway decent person I immediately hugged him and told him he wasn’t invisible and I was very stupid to suggest that and I apologize and here let’s play something else to erase that terrible (if momentary) trauma. And I told his parents when they got home in case the trauma did linger. (It didn’t.) And then I filed that away as really not a very good idea since I never ever wanted to scare a child that way again ever. Ever.
I guess if I were the kind of person who would become a PUA, I would instead have filed that away as “Useful technique for undermining a child’s sense of self and making them feel terrible so that I can manipulate them.”
Cthulhu’s Intern, I doubt it has by itself. I imagine that some people who have used it have either “lucked” (I feel icky writing that, obviously I mean it from the PUA’s POV, not the other party) into finding a woman who has been abused in the past in such a way that a threat of abandonment like that triggers her, or they’ve abused the victim that way themselves and created a sense of dependency before they attempt it. Either way, the results aren’t about the pattern itself (which is patently ridiculous as described), but the way that their…girlfriend (I normally would write “partner,” but that doesn’t seem appropriate here) has been conditioned to respond to the threat. I imagine that accounts for most or all of the true “success” stories (again, I feel icky writing that). I don’t think that really counts, though, as any discussion that triggered her could work, NLP or no.
When I read about it initially a few years back, multiple men were talking about using successfully it with multiple sex partners, who were often portrayed as confident women who were reduced to helpless damsels by this pattern. Those are the guys I’m certain are lying. I’m not a gambling woman, but I’d bet money on that.
“I’m gonna run away and never come back and then you’ll be sorry!”
“Right. In the meantime, finish your peas.”
Tip to any guy who thinks the PUA has a good idea with this plot- sounding like a cranky five year old isn’t all that enticing. The suggestion to act out physically by slamming doors is bullshit. Tantrums are childish and/or threatening,
If someone lies and threatens to get women to sleep with him- well, ‘artist’ isn’t the first word that springs to mind.