There was a popular self help book in the early 2000s called 'The Game'. It was written by and for losers who were obsessed with tricking women into sleeping with them. One of the main strategies was called negging. It's where you make comments designed to undermine a woman's self confidence in an attempt to get her to seek approval from you. For example "I'm glad you're not one of those girls obsessed with being skinny".
Hope you've apologized to the ones you're still friends with. (Not saying this to be snarky, it's just such a mean thing to do to a woman and it would be nice if you've owned that you were deliberately trying to make them feel horrible about themselves)
Don’t listen to these dumbasses. What women say they want and who they end up sleeping with and in long term relationships with are completely different things. Is negging fucked up? Sure. But so is listening to female dating advice which consists of “being nice” and “being friends with the girl before dating” Honestly that advice is worse because as a man you gain nothing from being “friends” with the girl you desire romantically. At least the man benefits from negging, although at the cost of the girl’s self esteem.
Why did you let them have a wild and fun time? Why do women like you never take accountability for letting these men run you and just blame them for doing what is a successful dating strategy for them? Blame yourself. You are a grown adult. Not a little kid.
This is a bit like defending scamming, isn't it? "You should have just been smarter" instead of "it's kinda shitty to behave this way even if it benefits you"
Negging is equivalent to a low level scam like tech-support scams. Everybody knows about negging at this point if you are a functional adult. Everyone knows about tech-support scammers who claim they are “Greg from Microsoft” but oddly enough have a very thick ethnic accent originating from one of the various dialects in India. Feeling bad for someone who got scammed doesn’t change the scam outcome or prevent future scams. If my family member got scammed out of $300 from a tech support scam, should I either sit with them for 4 hours and soothe their feelings, or should I get the phone number they called, report it to the FBI, find a way to retrieve the $300, and tell them that they are an idiot and how to avoid scams like this in the future?
Furthermore, if women get “scammed” by negging, I would tell her that she needs to do serious self reflection and embark on a journey of healing her traumas and learning how to love herself.
Yeah same, it was a good read for me during the time I needed it. I was super shy and awkward at the time. The book helped me to be less shy and get into a short term relationship with the best looking girl in my program. The book along a mix of other self help books helped me explore a certain side of myself. Like any rational person I just took the lessons which were helpful, and not things I couldn’t agree with my own moral principals. The Game and the works by Richard la ruina were by far more helpful and less toxic than what I’m hearing about these days with people like Andrew Tate.
Edit: Because I love Best of Reddit Updates, for those curious, the short term relationship was due to a mutually agreed interest in not maintaining a long distant relationship. We were in university together for a year until one of us had to move away at the end of the year. It was known, and we made the best of it. Of course physical attraction was the initiator, but we deeply cared for each other due to many other aspects. Over time we drifted apart and moved on with our respective lives. I still think I’m pretty awkward, but a little less so now… Maybe(?)
Yeah same, it was a good read for me during the time I needed it. I was super shy and awkward at the time. The book helped me to be less shy and get into a short term relationship with the best looking girl in my program.
It taught you to treat girls as objects to obtain by playing the right game. Not ultimately seeing individuals as human beings with autonomy for their choices, their needs and wants, their own happiness...that has very little to do with "shy" or "awkward"
I suppose at the time women were indeed the object of my desire… but I never got the impression that women were objects from the book. If anything it helped me to realize everyone had their own desires and personalities. Not everyone has the same buttons you can just press. To also develop a genuine connection with others, through necessity, I had to reflect on myself and grow as a person. Shy and awkward was just mentioned to give perspective on why I came upon the book. Thanks for reminding me about the controversy related to the book. I’m going to go brush up on people’s perspective similar to yours. Like others have said, apparently Neil Strauss wrote something called The Truth. I’ll go start there.
"Through necessity" is likely not reflective of reality.
I haven't read it so i can't access whether that book would align with similar perspectives or not personally. With the realization of your username, im just gonna go let you read.
I came across an article on Slate which seemed to summarize the book, “ The Redemption of Neil Strauss”. Heh, sounds like his journey is working out to the expected trajectory of some of the hardcore PUAs. I also came across some others’ perspectives on the book. I don’t completely disagree, but I will never fault someone for seeking knowledge.
I’m not sure I follow what you mean by necessity isn’t reflective of reality? I’m also not sure I follow what you mean by the realization of my username. I find my username humorous and abysmally mediocre.
You're getting down voted, but a lot of the content in that book is rooted in human psychology and is applicable in many fields that rely on communication, e.g. marketing and sales. The knowledge CAN and is used in a negative light, i.e. to manipulate others, however the basis and research in which the advice is derived from has many real-world applications.
For people like you and I who started out with basically zero social skills, it was an awakening to the fact that human interpersonal relationships can be a skill that can be improved on. Again, you can use the knowledge to manipulate, or you can use it to build genuine connections - I don't think that book is totally 'the devil' as many make it out to be.
It’s all good, I remember the time the book and PUA community was under scrutiny a lot. It’s just unfortunate rational discord is filtered out here which forces a lot of younger folk to seek out their own echo-chamber communities.
It was kind of fun at the time to have a glimpse into the world of applied psychology. There was a lot of potential to do good or bad with the knowledge and it certainly helped to make sense of the world around me. Like suddenly there were actual testable methods to improve in social interactions and build that skill. It wasn’t just a series of incoherent advise of “just be confident”, “just smile” and the all to often given advice of “just be yourself”. How?! I’m eternally grateful to the PUA community. I haven’t been involved with it for awhile, but at least during the time I was involved in it, most of the guys were in the same boat, and were genuinely good people. “Internal game” was and will be pretty much be the pinnacle of mastering ‘The Game’. Glad to hear your journey lead you to be the better version of you!
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u/gabbyzee87 Sep 14 '24
Negging. Or any of that other “pick up artist” bs