Relationships Talk

So-called male ‘pickup artists’ have been doing it for decades now. So, why couldn’t I?

“I went on a date with a real-life Hitch,” she shouted in my ear, splashing champagne on my dress. “I totally fell for him but then found out what he did for a job. I felt like the biggest idiot!” We were at on the dance floor and 11/10 drunk.

“Dude, you went out with a dating guru? GIVE ME HIS DEETS!” I shouted back. And she did, by way of Insta handle.

The following morning I Insta-druced myself as “Lisa’s friend who needs your dating advice.”

What for? I like to partake in dating experiments and the night Lisa spilled champagne on me, I’d decided I wanted to try Negative Dating.

What’s Negative Dating?

Negative dating, ‘negging’ or The Neg – is a form of emotional manipulation that uses backhanded compliments to put women on the back foot, make her feel unwanted thus fuelling her to seek The Neggers approval. Eg:

“You’re pretty, for an Asian.”

“You remind me of my little sister, cool.”

“Shame that dress shrunk, it’s really nice.”

It sounded mean, extremely immature, and in truth, really unattractive. So why does it work on us? According to Austrian psychiatrist Alfred Adler (friend of Freud), the main motives of human behaviour is superiority and power, partly in compensation for a feeling of inferiority. Aka we just want people believe we are great, and also tell us.

Thanks to Neil Strauss’s book The Game (when he infiltrated a group of pick-up artists and exposed their dating techniques), there was loads on the topic: how to neg a woman, what you can say, how to bring her down a notch with just a few phrases… but, I couldn’t see any by women on how to neg men. Would it work if I put my thing down, flipped it and reversed it?

Watch: Modern Dating: Translated. Post continues…

The expert’s advice

Lisa’s ex Madison had been working for four years as a consultant for Real Social Dynamics – the international ‘leaders’ in dating advice for men. Charging up to $2000 for IRL sessions, and coaching over ten thousand guys, he was technically a dating expert. But one technique he didn’t advise on was negging.

“It’s a very old and basic technique, no one really does it anymore,” he said to me over the phone. “But it’s still effective emotionally. Essentially it is playing hard to get, a seduction idea that has been around forever, preying on low self-esteem.”

I needed to know from Madison the key things men think about before they go on a date aka a weakness I could hone in on. His advice:

• Presentation – their hair, clothes, body, style aka is he attractive?
• Situation – ability to organise a cool date and afford the night out aka can he provide?
• Social hierarchy – where he ranks in his group aka men are all primates still.

His final tip: “Use the words ‘real man’. If you throw something about what a ‘real man’ would do in a situation, or that your ex was a ‘real man’, he will freak.”

So, now I knew where to aim, I was ready to neg.

Putting it into practice

To be honest I wasn’t expecting great results from The Negative Dating Experiment. Males always seem more sensitive than females, particularly when it comes to poking at their self-esteem. At best I thought I would be snubbed and ignored but YOLO and don’t hate the player hate the game, guys.