How To Pick Up Women
Today's Salon carries an interview with "Mystery," the former professional magician who now works as a professional "pick-up artist." His theories of how you can con a chick into bed are more or less responsible for the deluge of dorky guys who now feel no compunction about coming up to you and your friends and talking about wallaby purchases and such. How does this douchebag justify "the neg," his prime seduction technique?
A "neg" is a concept. A "neg" is a statement or action one would make to briefly disqualify oneself from being considered a potential suitor. It's not an insult, I'm not putting the girl down. For instance, if I'm in a group of people and I say, perhaps to my girl of interest, "Hey, can you pass me that napkin, please? Thank you." I go to blow my nose and I look at her and I say, "What, are you gonna watch?" She'll laugh, of course, and I'll blow my nose. I'm not insulting her by doing that but I am disqualifying myself as being considered a potential suitor. Her friends know I'm not after her — I'm blowing my nose in front of her!
Then the friends are disarmed and she's gonna think to herself, "He's not after me." If she's particularly beautiful, she's gonna wonder why. The only solution to why is either that he's gay, in which case he's not threatening, or he's so accustomed to beauty that he must have beauty in his life. So he must be pretty selective and a hard-wired attraction switch gets triggered.
Writer Tracy Clark-Flory is unconvinced.
One "neg" that I've seen you do is to walk up to a woman and say, "What do you have going for you other than your looks?"
I would never just walk up to her and say that, no. But, three to five minutes in ... My job is to first disqualify myself then to get into a conversation where I can demonstrate higher value. Once you've done that, she'll start throwing subtle indicators of interest. Subtle cues like scratching the back of her hand. That area of the hand gets itchy when a girl is attracted to a man from ape days, you know — it means, "Groom me."
Or maybe "I'm itchy." It's confusing these days.
