Let me define negging for you in case you don’t know what it is.
A guy approaches a girl who is obviously out of his league and makes an attempt to lower her sense of self-worth by making a few low-key, subtle insults that aren’t mean enough to stop her from speaking to him, but have an impact on her just enough that she actually wants to continue the conversation in order to prove herself worthy.
(I’m aware, right? What will these creative minds conjure up next?
Negging is a real thing now, usually done by douchey males, so it must have been some man who said that his friend’s roommate’s elder brother’s cousin tried this strategy and it worked like a charm (of course).
But the most important query is: Does it work?
I persuaded my buddy Andrea—okay, she volunteered—to go on a pub crawl with me where we chose the best-looking, cockiest males we could find and gently insulted them to see how they would react in order to test if negging works when gender roles are reversed. Here’s what happened:
Negging Experiment #1: The Dodgeball Team
Andrea had already identified our first three victims when I arrived late to meet her at the first pub. She texted me, “This one man is really cocky,” so as soon as I walked in, I immediately set my sights on him.
We exchanged names, and as I shook hands with the far overconfident Steve*, I made eye contact, grinned like a young kitten, and exclaimed, “Awww, you remind me of my little brother!” Andrea confirmed what I said. When I asked him how old he was, he recoiled a little in his chair and added three years to his age, which his friends called him out on.
Age was referred to as “just a number, baby” at this point, and despite the fact that it was obvious from Steve’s body language (and the lying about his age) that the neg had slightly diminished his earlier too confident demeanor, he persisted. He actually stepped up his game.
We both tried to come up with additional negs to utilize, so Andrea and I headed to the bar to have drinks and meet again. I took off since the three males were all dressed in what seemed to be workout clothes.
“So … Have you guys played dodgeball recently or something? I prompted them.
That one truly made them all laugh, and they went on to say that they are coworkers and college coaches.
I explained to Steve, “Oh, so these folks have to hang around with you.
Then, Steve said, “You only need a few wonderful friends in your life, and I have three of them.”
I don’t know if males ever get to the point where they simply feel like too much of a jerk to keep on berating women, but at this point I didn’t want to call Steve out on the fact that he only had three pals.
So we bid each other farewell. Neither of our phone numbers were requested by Steve. And neither did his friends.
