What Is Negging?

I have to confess that I’d never heard of the term “negging” until I watched what has become one of my favourite movies, Kingsman: The Secret Service. (The sequel is even better.)

But that’s not surprising, because I was 56 and married when I first saw this movie, and therefore not in the dating game.

(Truth be told, I have never dated in the traditional sense of the word – my first wife and I were introduced by our parents, although it definitely wasn’t an arranged marriage, and I met my second wife online via a business site. That means I have never actively gone out looking for a girlfriend or wife – or even a one-night stand.)

However, according to Wikipedia, negging is “short for negative feedback and is an act of emotional manipulation whereby a person makes a deliberate backhanded compliment or otherwise flirtatious remark to another person to undermine their confidence and increase their need of the manipulator’s approval.“

Perhaps not surprisingly, this strategy arose out of the so-called pick-up artist (PUA) community around the time of the millennium.

As an older male, who has never played the dating game, as I mentioned above, the whole pick-up thing reeks of insincerity and an unhealthy attitude to women, but maybe that’s just my age and situation talking.

I do get that meeting somebody can be difficult, and you need something to make you stand out from the crowd, and if your only goal is a one-night stand, then maybe these canned pick-up lines will do the trick.

But as a way to find your life partner, it doesn’t seem to me as a very worthwhile strategy – and maybe that’s not what it was intended for, of course.

Anyway, let’s look at negging from two different perspectives – male and female – and show some examples so you can see how it works.

How Males Neg

The goal, from the man’s perspective, is to find a girl who is supermodel-hot and who is full of themselves (e.g. they have what’s known as a “resting bitch face”) – and then take them down a notch using one or more backhanded compliments.

And it’s used especially in nightclub-type situations where the goal is a hook-up, as I believe they call it.

The aim is to indicate to the woman that he is not intimidated by her beauty or looks – because, according to many people, men are often fazed by women who are exceptionally beautiful (or intelligent).

Now, I’ve seen it said that if you use this technique on girls who do not meet the above two criteria, that you’ll “come across as a dick”. (It’s my suspicion that many PUAs come over as dicks, regardless of their technique, but that’s only my opinion.)

The strategy men use when negging in these situations is to avoid the lines that these women hear day in and day out, which might include:

• “Are you a model?“
• “You’re really beautiful!“

They may or may not be sincere and well-intentioned, but the women hear these comments so often that they will usually brush them off without a second thought.

Negging, however, almost acts like a pattern interrupt, forcing them off-guard for a second.

Example of these introductory negging comments include:

• “I love your top – did it shrink when you washed it?“
• “You look gorgeous, but if you lost some weight, you’d look even better.“

Some men like to point out that negging is not bullying, because you’re not trying to put her down – you’re simply giving a compliment with conditions.

But it’s still manipulative, and as such, I find it distasteful at best.

In fact, seeing some men try to defend this technique is both sad and funny, to me.

Negging From A Female Perspective

Women, in many cases, perceive negging in a very different way to how the men who use this strategy see it, which should not come as any great surprise.

Of course, some of this may be because when done “correctly” (whatever that means), it’s meant to be a subtle psychological technique that is “neither a compliment nor an insult, a neg holds two purposes: to momentarily lower a woman’s self-esteem and to suggest an intriguing disinterest.” (This is according to the person credited with the invention of negging, Erik von Markovik.)

But men being men, how many of them are experts on subtlety?

So, women see negging attempts as:

• Back-handed compliments, where men will say something nice, immediately followed by something less positive. For example, “You’re really good-looking for an Indian girl.“
• Comparisons to others who are “better” than you. For example, “Your sister’s hair looks great – maybe you should try that style.“
• Insults, which are often disguised as constructive criticism or questions. For example, “That dress looks great on you, but I don’t think yellow is your colour.“
• One-upmanship, where they downplay your achievements or situation. For example, “Your dancing looked great, but let me tell you about when I won a dance championship.“

And if a woman calls the man out on what he just said, they will usually get a response like “I was only kidding” or “Lighten up“.

The man may even try to turn the table by making it seem like he is the victim and/or accuse the woman of being a bitch or skank (if, or more likely, when, he gets rejected).

Here’s The Thing

Even in a nightclub situation, there are a few unwritten rules that you need to bear in mind:

1. Nobody is obligated to engage in conversation or spend time with anybody if they don’t want to.
2. If somebody says “no”, then that should be respected.
3. Not everybody goes to a nightclub because they are looking to be picked up – some simply want a night out with their friends.

However, negging doesn’t always happen in a nightclub – it can happen anywhere, even in committed relationships at home.

One problem is, there is a fine line between joking around and insulting the other person.

It’s long been my view that if you cannot laugh at yourself, you have no business laughing at others.

But when making fun of others, even if the intention is not to harm or manipulate them, it’s easy to take it too far or say the wrong thing.

I made this mistake early on in my first marriage, where an innocent comment was misinterpreted – and it took a good while for her to get over that, because giving me the benefit of the doubt wasn’t her forte.

Conclusion

In case you hadn’t noticed, negging is not a strategy I find palatable – and too many women see it as insulting and misogynistic.

It’s possible, of course, that they are experiencing techniques that are improperly carried out, but even when done as originally intended, it seems like a strange way to try to open a conversation.

I’m all for joking around a bit once you’ve got to know the other person better, but trying to use what you see as humour when you don’t know them at all is fraught with danger.

There is, apparently, a sub-group on Reddit called TheRedPill, but if you try to visit that page, you get a warning that the community “is dedicated to shocking or highly offensive content” and a request to confirm that you want to enter.

I decided not to enter, not because I’m easily offended but because I couldn’t be bothered. I’d already seen a couple of comments posted by men that were shared elsewhere, and I find it sad that some men (probably a tiny minority in the grand scheme of things) still treat women the way they do.

As an aside, what I find interesting is how few books there are on Amazon when you search for the word negging. This could, of course, mean any one of several things, but it’s rare to find a topic that is relatively popular in the search engines that does not have a ton of books written about it.

Maybe it’s because, as I’ve said, many women find it distasteful, and perhaps the majority of men see it for what it is too.

Either way, I wrote this article so that people, especially women, can recognize negging when they come across it, and deal with appropriately (e.g. walk away, or respond in kind – if a simple “No thanks” doesn’t work).

And lastly, the very fact that some men are intent on dating (or hooking up with) only super-beautiful women says, to me, that they are shallow. It comes over as being all about the conquest and the ego and the status symbol, with little regard, if any, for the woman.

Give me a beautiful mind and soul over a beautiful body any day – but before you can reach that point, you need to understand what’s truly important to you in life.

Additional Resources

These are suggestions for those who wish to delve deeper into any of the above:

1. Kingsman: The Secret Service
2. Kingsman: The Golden Circle