One favorite technique in the pickup artist’s toolbox is the “neg,” a sort of playful backhanded complement that’s very near an insult; it’s intended to amuse your date but also to dig a little into her self-esteem even as she laughs it off. “Great nails — are they real?” That’s the basic idea.
The “neg” was invented by that guy in the hat up there, the OG pickup artist known as Mystery. Yes, he was a grown man when he came up with that name (and bought that hat).
But good negs are hard to come up with. And I’m not quite sure this guy posting on the AskTheRedPill subreddit has mastered this particular art.
![[deleted] 8 points 1 month ago
I just like to pay out compliments if I feel like it but yeah it can turn the girls against me.
So a little quick trick I do is say "Your eyes look really beautiful today".
As in to imply that usually I don't think much of her eyes.
It doesn't really matter if you are a high value male.
When a beta gives a woman flowers, it's because he wants sex.
When a alpha gives a woman flowers, it's because he just wants to.
If the woman knows you have options you should be fine with dishing out compliments.](https://i0.wp.com/www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/eyes.png?resize=541%2C534&ssl=1)
Well that was a little painful. And it would probably be even more painful delivered in person to an actual human female; I’m fairly certain this dude has never done that.
Dude, next time you see a Hot Babe, try this slightly improved eye neg instead: “Which one is the glass eye again?” Works ever time. I tested it out on my cats.
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I don’t have the words, since I can’t pronounce the key smash that wants to ensue.
Huh. And now I’m wondering if all the temporally-tagged comments I’ve ever gotten were meant to have this connotation or not. I’ve said things like, “you look great today!” not meaning to imply that usually the person does not look great, but usually rather that I noticed some special effort was made to take care with their appearance or something.
But I could easily see some jerks I worked with in the past having meant to convey this instead.
“Your eyes look really beautiful today”
“Thank you, I just bought a new pair”
Ugh, even the phrase “pay OUT compliments,” as if they were cash, is gross—the transactional, pseudo-economic rubric of so many of these sad, angry dudes drives me up the wall. It’s not just misogyny (although it is also very much misogyny), it’s a complete absence of basic social awareness and interpersonal skills. It seems almost inhuman.
As a father of two small sons, raising boys who are not like this into men who are not like this feels like an imperative. I’ve long suspected that just being friends with girls as a boy child might help to inoculate; a lot of my own friends as a kid were always girls, and it literally never occurred to me to regard women as somehow less human. There’s nothing special or exceptional about me, I didn’t train myself to do anything, I just always knew a lot of women.
I can’t help but assume that a lot of these people are failing not only because they have been poisoned by embracing bad ideologies, but also because they have never really been able to get to know any women. Taking advice from men who hate women isn’t going to help anyone do that.
@telebikun
I’ve often found that men who grew up with more sisters than brothers and who made friends with girls in their teens tend to be the least unthinkingly sexist. I went to an all-girls school in the 2000s, and our all-boys equivalent made for some lads with MAJOR hang ups.
They were grammar schools as well (just in case this doesn’t translate, grammar schools are streamed so the “top 25%” in “intelligence” attend them. Of course in reality these are highly questionable concepts) and it seemed to me the worst thing you can do to a certain type of teenage boy is separate him from girls and then tell him he’s very very clever. Even their teachers made fun of our girl’s school because OBVIOUSLY we weren’t as intelligent as those super-smart boys.
O/T; but may be of some interest/ use to Brit Mammotheers.
Recent Employment Tribunal case.
Confirms trans/genderfluid is a protected characteristic. So employees have to use correct pronouns, up to date name badges, allow employees to dress according to gender, use whatever lavatory etc.
Also, they have to ensure all other employees and management abide by same.
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5fc8d559d3bf7f7f5c134ad3/Ms_R_Taylor_v_Jaguar_Land_Rover_Limited_-_1304471.2018_-_Reasons.pdf
I get the feeling negging is just “shade” for creepy douchebags…
@LollyPop
seemed to me the worst thing you can do to a certain type of teenage boy is separate him from girls and then tell him he’s very very clever
No question there. A lot of manospherians seem convinced of their own intellectual superiority, and I can’t think of an example where segregation of the genders has been especially good for young men’s social development. I’ve heard that for some types of teenage girls, being away from boys can be beneficial (some women thrive/achieve more in all-woman academic environments, presumably because they’re insulated from some of the institutional sexism that pervades the academy?), but the converse definitely doesn’t seem to hold true.
@ Telebikun
We have quite a lot of single sex state schools here. In such schools girls perform better than in mixed schools; but there is no measurable difference for boys.
I went to grammar school. Not because of any academic merit; just that there was a catholic grammar so I got automatic entry. That had always been a boys’ school; but the year I went it had merged with the girls’ grammar next door. (You could actually tell which building you were in because of the smell; seriously.)
As my lower schools had been mixed though it was just what I was used to. Our gang was able to continue as a mix of boys and girls. And although there were groups in school; it wasn’t cliquey. There was a lot of overlap. So for example I like live music, so I’d meet up with the ‘rock chicks’ for gigs. (Think double denim and patchouli).
So I think that was really beneficial to us boys. Girls were just mates we shared common interests with; so we all communicated like regular humans rather than as if we were negotiating a business deal. Which seems to be the way our MR friends view every interaction.
@Telebikun : I think “some women need to be in all women environement” is sort of rubbish and hide the true reason for doing that. And in particular, reject the problem of toxicity to the poor girl/women
Like, a girl heavily bullied by boys is probably better in a all girl school, or in another school with a less toxic culture, but it’s not that she’s better working with women, it’s that theses boys should get a spankin’.
Similarly, if a mixed academic or engineering environment is toxic to some women, the problem is very probably in the men of that environment. And isolating them from women to try to make them less offensive will just make the problem fester.
Remember that there’s almost no innate difference between men or women, and men have the power to not be asshole. Let’s not accomodate their shittiness.
(of course, forcing the women to stay in the toxic environment isn’t acceptable, and indeed they should. But it should fully be framed as a failure of the men and a result of toxic masculinity, absolutely not as a need of some women)
Oh, I had no intention of implying that some women *need* to be in all-female environments, I was just thinking of anecdotes I’ve heard about some women thriving more in them.
And I certainly wasn’t intending to imply that there was some failure in the women concerned, as I was trying to make clear when I mentioned that women who preferred all-women academic environments were presumably somewhat insulated from institutional sexism.
In short, I think we are on the same page here.
Have they ever talked to an actual human at all ever? It doesn’t seem like they know anything about how real humans work.
I am shook to my very core by this revelation:
To think that an alpha could make a nice gesture, and just because!
I’m only half-joking; defining “alpha” as a man who can “afford” to do nice things without expecting anything in return sounds really alien.
@telebikun:
You can thank the slimy offspring of Maggie Thatcher and Ronald Reagan for that. The whole world seems to be steeped in “there is no such thing as society; there is only The Market” propaganda these days.
Might I add: media with female protagonists? Books, films, whatever. Especially books, though, with interior monologue and everything.
One of the most interesting experiments I came across once WRT the whole question of sex-segregated schools was one where a “mixed” school decided to divide its classes that way — so classrooms were either girls or boys, but recess and lunch and so forth were everyone together. I’ve never been able to track it down again — it was an article I read in the paper years ago, before I got interested in this sort of thing — but apparently improvements were noticed for both, and the kids mostly approved of it. The girls reported feeling a lot of relief, because the boys weren’t there acting up and distracting them, so they could actually get some work done (I seem to recall this was a middle school or junior high or something, and I think the educators’ decision was taken in part due to the whole “girls mature faster than boys in early adolescence” thing), though they admitted they laughed a lot less, and the boys reported something similar, in terms of not needing to perform to try and impress the girls, whether deliberately distracting them, feeling challenged by them, etc. But they were also able to remain friends, because they weren’t completely cut off from one another.
It seemed like an intriguing mid-point solution, though in the long run it probably didn’t do that much to help the kids realize that other genders aren’t other species. But I’d love to know how long it went on and if it continued to seem like a good idea.
Speaking of “negs”.
Over on Wonkette they’re talking about Jesse Lee Peterson’s hatred of gay pride which reminded them to talk about how he thinks women shouldn’t have orgasms because that makes them like men.
I literally cried actual tears at that it was so funny.
World’s worst? I don’t think so. This one is ripped from the pages of my life: “How’s your eczema?” I said, “Fine.”
“Your eyes look really beautiful today”
to which I might respond
”but I am Fremen every day!!”
Otherwise I got nothin’. I hate negging with a passion… if someone wants me to become extremely hostile really fast, negging is the answer.
I’m not young, but I can’t imagine what kind of hot young thing would want to get with Mystery. Well, maybe a thing would, but not a person.
@Crip Dyke: Pretty sure my grocery list is longer than sex with a manospherian/right winger would take.
@Wez: hyuu y6
I *gently* put my head on my keyboard a couple times. Probably an actual smash would have more characters, repeated.
It’s just a giant coincidence that redpillers only compliment attractive women between the ages of 16-25, and that the compliments are only ever about looks.
And that they get super angry when women are insulted by their backhanded “compliments” and reject them.
After years of hearing and reading about these jerks, I just finally made the connection: PUAs are basically trying to implement the Lifesmanship/Gamesmanship/etc of Stephen Potter without getting the central joke. Not that I think they ever actually read any of his books, but I am confident that if they did, they’d come away with the idea that they’d just found a trove of great advice, rather than realizing they were getting made fun of by a man who died decades before Mystery came up with a special name for “wearing a goofy hat”.
Tleilaxu cyber – eyes anyone? From Frank Herbert’s description, they seem to be about the only body part not sourced through Frankensteinian practices by the Bene Tleilax. If they were customised to look more attractive though…on the other hand, I don’t think I want to venture any further along this path.
Can I add a thought? I’m afraid they simply mean that he can expect something in return being already attractive and as to them women flock to men who already demonstrate they are liked (social proof) a woman sees giving flower as him, high value, choosing her and not begging for her attention.
According to this reasoning, quite contrived, a less traditionally attractive woman or simply one who thinks herself as ugly, will be even more intolerant of a less traditionally attractive man that she sees as ugly or “socially ugly” than an attractive woman because if she thinks she’s ugly she’d think of herself as second choice or spare wheel if she thinks or is convinced that guy has no other option.
To them, women are those infamous employers asking for experience and the problem of if everyone asks for experience how is one going to gain it?