In Mala Fide

I was going to write a lighter post for this Friday, but this post by Conor Friedersdorf (hat tip: Traveller) attacking the neg sent me over the edge:

The community of men who study picking up women — let’s call them “players” — are unified by a belief that dating is a “game,” and that utility should guide one’s approach to it.

I’m only one sentence into this disaster and I’m already pissed off. To begin with, Friedersdorf’s italicization of the word “study” shows that he is shocked, appalled, offended at the concept that men would DARE to analyze the process of courtship. I personally don’t understand why the study of seduction is so unsettling to some people. We human beings apply our smarts to everything and anything possible, which is how our modern, technologically advanced society came into existence. Why is the diversion of some of that brainpower to better accomplishing one of the prime goals of any living organism – procreating – so wrong? It’s not even like the seduction community is unprecedented – women analyze relationships with their friends all the time, and they buy books and magazines dedicated to helping them snare a high-quality man. Yet, a few men doing the exact same thing is too much for moral orels like Conor to handle.

Secondly, Friedersdorf shows one of the symptoms of Uninformed Idiot Blogger syndrome – an overuse of scare quotes. His implication here is that only heartless “players” would be so callous as to use “game.” This is false; game is for all men, not just pick-up artists and cads. Game itself is merely a tool, with its application decided by each individual man. Some men use it to lay as many women as they can, some use it to lose their virginity, some use it to win girlfriends, and some men, such as Keoni Galt/Dave from Hawaii, use it to maintain their marriages. Think of game as being like a butcher knife, which can be used to carve up meat or carve people up into meat. Does the fact that some sick individuals do the latter mean that butcher knives can only be used for that purpose?

An item I once saw in a men’s magazine advised that a good first date might involve walking across a suspension bridge, or standing atop the observation deck of a tall building, because what women feel when they experience vertigo mimics the butterflies that accompanies proximity to a man to whom they’re genuinely attracted. I imagined some poor guy bringing his date on a long hike to the bridge over the river only to discover that she isn’t confused nearly as easily as he was led to believe.

If you’re getting relationship advice from lad mags, you’re a fool. That said, the tip here to take women on inventive dates is a good one, not for any bogus hypnotic qualities, but because the uniqueness of the date will stick out in her mind and keep her from writing you off as another lazy beta.

Of course, the belief that one acts amorally by manipulating women quickly leads to abhorrent behavior. The rogue who is zealous for sexual conquest at least understands that he acts badly if he uses deception to get sex. The cerebral “player,” exemplified by the author of the blog Elysium Revisited, doesn’t grasp that anything is the matter with his behavior.

The reason “player[s]” don’t realize that anything is wrong with their behavior is because there ISN’T anything wrong with their behavior. A sick world calls for sick strategies, dude. Get on board or perish.

As a result, he is quite unabashed as he describes a male behavior that I’ve observed on many occasions, and that I abhor more than any other mainstream pickup technique. Though I’d never heard it referred to as such, Sebastian Flyte dubs it “the Neg,” and calls it “the Swiss army knife of pickup.”

The amount of hate squares like Friedersdorf have for a particular pickup technique is directly correlated with the usefulness of that technique. The neg is an invaluable tool for men in the modern mating market, and I can’t imagine a world without it. At least part of the animus directed at the neg is due to its name, a legacy of the seduction community being founded by a bunch of socially retarded nerds. “Negging” is simply a geek-speak term for what is more commonly known as teasing. When a man negs a woman he has just met, he is displaying that he is unafraid to bust on people, including her, which sets him apart from the long lines of nice guys who slavishly kiss her ass. If you look at lovers and married couples, you’ll note that they tease each other all the time. There’s even a scientific basis for negging women. The message is clear, guys: neg early and neg often.

I’ve never seen anyone do this to a woman who hasn’t seemed to me a complete asshole even beforehand — and I’ve been dismayed at the frequency with which it works. Oh, Sebastian Flyte overestimates its utility. But it does work sometimes. Wait, let’s try that sentence again. It works sometimes! And I must admit that the author does a pretty solid job describing when it works: “Be wary though, it must never rampage out from bitter fields – it must always be quick, indifferent, and stealthy, like a dark assassin or pot of poisoned pears. It reaches just out over the abyss without falling in…”

So it comes out. The Con-man is forced to admit that the tactics he hates work. Pardon my Greek, Mr. Friedersdorf, but you are a beta. Conor’s cry is the eternal cry of the nice guy, the self-emasculated, spineless, sniveling piece of snot who never, ever gets any action. The asexual dork who wouldn’t know what to do with a woman if she jumped his bones in a dark alley. The two-legged tampon who serves as emotional support for every chick who gets her orifices ravaged by tat-sporting bad boys and suave alpha males who only stop banging her long enough to pull out and blast their sticky baby batter all over her face. I understand your pain, Conor – and I loathe it.

I used to have sympathy for nice guys, having been one myself. Not anymore. If you’re a nice guy wondering why the lady friends you fantasize of pantsing are LJBFing you in favor of assholes, there’s a wealth of online information to get you on the right track. If you’re unwilling to recognize that you have a problem and take steps to fix it, you have only yourself to blame when you and your penis end up alone. Bitching and moaning about how jerks are getting all the tail isn’t going to change anything. No, Conor, guys who neg women aren’t assholes. YOU are the asshole.

Fascinating, isn’t it? The author perceives a world wherein women unjustly pass over beta males in favor of alpha males. He justifies the insults in the same way that MIA justifies Third World robbery and murder: as a tool that is the only choice of the dispossessed to achieve equality.

Newsflash, bitchboy; women ARE passing over betas for alpha males. Game is necessary to level the playing field. That, and many women have no problems lying to and deceiving men in the sexual marketplace – why shouldn’t we guys do the same?

What that passage actually does is demonstrate precisely why — beyond its immorality — the neg is a terrible approach: “It changes you.” Without a technique “that changes you,” the author argues, “pickup is nothing. It doesn’t work.”

Imagine that. The notion that the pickup approach to dating is irrevocably flawed.

The neg is “terrible” because “it changes you?” That’s one of the side benefits of game – it makes you a better human being. This masturbatory worship of “being yourself” is one of the most sickening aspects of modern American society. You expect someone else to love you just because you are who you are? Screw you. Chances are, if you’re not a worthless sack of shit, you’re pretty close to being one. Most humans in their natural state are wretched beings, and it takes considerable work and effort to make ourselves into decent people. The increasing coarseness and stupidity of Americans is partly due to the fact that we’re expected to accept others as they are, “warts and all.” No. If you want anybody worth their skin to like you or love you, you get the warts removed or you cover them up.

And if you think that “the pickup approach to dating is irrevocably flawed,” Mr. Friedersdorf, what alternative do you propose? Oh wait, you don’t have one? Then kindly shut up.

Conor Friedersdorf, fuck you. Fuck you for being a moron who writes on topics you have no comprehension of. Fuck you for being an traitor who actively works against the interests of your fellow men. And while I’m at it, fuck your father for not giving you any proper instruction on how to handle women.

The one gold nugget in this puddle of brain vomit is that Friedersdorf’s readers are smarter than he is:

C-dog: I’m lost. Why is it immoral to call out a girl who’s adopting a bitchy stance towards you? Why is it wrong to break down the self-importance adopted by women in bars? Why is it bad to change the way that women perceive you?

I really don’t think the neg is sleazy at all. I think an easier layman’s term for the “neg” would be “tease.” The idea is you pick out something little and tease them about it. At least that’s how I’ve always seen it done. It can be funny and lighthearted but still break down some of the barriers good looking women put up while they are out at bars.

The whole PUA community is just trying to provide a science and method to things lots of guys do naturally. Guys who are “assholes” do better with women because they generally act more confident than the poor guy who never gets any women.

Conor, I think you’re looking at a neg through the eyes of what the community would call an AFC (average frustrated chump). BTW, as an ex-member of the community the guys don’t like to be called players (for good reasons). A player hides the fact that he dates different women at the same time. A PUA does not. And Phil is correct. A neg is more of a tease and there’s a science to it.

Detractors of game and the immoral attitudes they claim it fosters fail to consider that men wouldn’t use game if it didn’t work. The reason men buy seduction manuals and blow hundreds of dollars on Love Systems bootcamps is because women not only love men who use game tactics, they can’t get enough of them. If the fair ladies of this great country would stop rewarding PUAs, players, and cads with their open arms and open legs, the seduction community would vanish yesterday. But that would require these oh-so-moral conservatives to acknowledge that it is women’s fault, and solely their fault, that the player culture continues to survive and thrive.

In an exchange with Posec on my Dreher post, I left this comment:

“Contrariwise, you are correct at pointing out how conservative reticence is conducive towards liberalism and that it would behoove them to ‘work to repair the rotting, corrupt institution of marriage’ and ‘propose economic solutions that would allow men to get married and raise families at a younger age.’ Yet that is hard to do without a countervailing force in society based on religion or high culture, for which more suitable exponents need to be found.”

The failure of Rod Dreher and other conservative intellectuals to help create that countervailing force is the reason why I and others advocate game as a means to cultural change. Hermes, a traditionalist conservative blogger who writes at Wise Man’s Heart (see my blogroll) left this comment at Novaseeker’s blog on female hypergamy among the women in his church:

http://novaseeker.blogspot.com/2009/07/what-do-young-men-want.html?showComment=1247534276758#c4429295116122309191

Christianity is supposed to be a bulwark against the hedonism and decadence of modern society, yet according to Hermes, the supposed Christian “good girls” are behaving exactly like their secular sisters. Aside from pseudonymous bloggers like Roissy and Whiskey, the only conservative I’ve found who will confront the issue of women’s sexual nature is F. Roger Devlin. Unless Dreher and other right-wing writers drop their chivalrous fantasies and tackle this topic, any attempts they make at building a countervailing force to combat liberalism are doomed to failure.

I stand by those words. In the absence of any alternatives, I’m going to keep using game on women as a means to sate my lusts, and I suggest any single man reading this to do the same.

On a lighter note, one of Conor’s female commenters provides a real boner (the other kind):

Women are onto “the neg.” It may be time for the PUA community to innovate.

Men are onto female beauty. It may be time for women to innovate.

UPDATE: The follow-up post to this one was based on erroneous information and has been deleted. Thanks to the anonymous commenter who set me straight. That said, Conor Friedersdorf is still a treacherous fool who doesn’t get it.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 24th, 2009 at 5:00 am and is filed under Game, Sex and Politics, Sexuality. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.