August 23, 2023

I'd thought nobody was talking about "negging" anymore?

But here's "In Defense of Negging" by Magdalene J. Taylor — a new article in New York Magazine.
But perhaps what negging really has going for it is that it’s inescapably personal.... You can message a dozen women the same compliment on Hinge, but honing in on some little detail of a person’s profile you can lightly joke about takes a bit more time and energy. You can’t perform a roast without knowing your subject. To be negged, in other words, is to be seen.... 

22 comments:

n.n said...

Neg is short for negro. It is a diversitist, threatening term indicating an intent to cancel, negate, abort a person of black. Taylor needs to read outside the popular conventions of the urban dictionary.

Tom C said...

I think people should be talking about using "honing" in place of "homing".

Lexington Green said...

Negging will always be a thing because it works.

wild chicken said...

Gotta admit it worked on me one memorable time. But he followed up the negative comment with an invite to go to breakfast (it was closing time).

I honestly could not hack this online dating thing.

RideSpaceMountain said...

A well-placed 'neg' is how I met my wife. It's more than just "being seen", it also shows you can be playful with something potentially uncomfortable, and that is very important.

Narr said...

"I hear you got married. Is she a nagger?"

Naw, she's white as you are.

Mr Wibble said...

To be negged, in other words, is to be seen....

The point of negging is to break through the natural defense mechanisms women build up. Women hear plenty of compliments- to the point that they basically ignore them. The guy who treats her like a buddy's bratty kid sister gets a second look because he stands out as different.

madAsHell said...

Taylor needs to read outside the popular conventions of the urban dictionary.

Wow!! I'm impressed!! I can't determine where the parody stops, and irony starts.

tommyesq said...

So "negging" is okay, but not "niggardly?" Hard to keep up.

rehajm said...

…of all the words were cancelling for sounding like bad words negging gets a pass?

Static Ping said...

You need to make your target think you are worth the target's time. Amusing them or taking them down a peg are both effective. In an online environment with multiple targets, you only need to be effective with one of them. So, yeah, it works. Things that work tend to not go away.

It is probably less effective than it once was as the targets are getting wise to it, but, again, it does not need to work on all of them, just one of them. Not everyone is a super observant pickup artist enemy.

Freeman Hunt said...

The piece conflates banter with negging. Negging isn't banter. Negging is specifically an attempt to activate the other person's insecurity to make them seek your approval. It only works on certain people. Other people react internally with, "What a weirdo," don't care about the initiator's approval, and are disinclined to continue any conversation.

Anything negative within banter is clearly sarcastic and not meant in earnest. It is not meant to undermine the other person's self-confidence and is not negging.

Michelle Dulak Thomson said...

Tom C beat me to it. "Honing in" ought not to have gotten past New York's proofreader.

Freeman Hunt said...

"She says he ascertained that she had been hurt by her father, "

A hypothesis: Negging is most likely to work on women who have been hurt by their fathers and least likely to work on women who haven't.

Jamie said...

Other people react internally with, "What a weirdo,"

... or perhaps, "What a jerk."

When I was 22 I was not wise to this game thing. I have made certain that my daughter is. Luckily she's also her father's daughter and this sort of strategy was going to have to do some very heavy lifting to affect her.

MadisonMan said...

Neg is short for negro
Only for people looking to be outraged.

tim in vermont said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Narr said...

Negger, of course. Can't see so well.

n.n said...

Only for people looking to be outraged

Also profit and leverage.

That said, this semantic tale shall not be lost to a back... black hole... whore h/t NAACP

Marcus Bressler said...

How many Friend-Zoned guys does it take to replace a light bulb? None. No matter how nice and complimentary they are to the bulb, it just won't screw. They'll bitch about it, but try, try again.
Negging takes care of that.
Woman posts new FB profile photo.
Men rush to beat the chick's GFs to rave about how beautiful and sexy she is.
Me: That's some filter you found there. I hardly recognized you.
It gets a DM every time.

MarcusB. THEOLDMAN

Eva Marie said...

The question was asked: “I’d thought no one was talking about ‘negging’ anymore?”
I just found the Google books Ngram viewer: When you put in a word in the search box, it shows you a graph of the frequency of usage over time (in books). And apparently, according to the graph, everyone is writing (if not talking) about “negging”
If you look at the advanced uses of the Ngram viewer it’s kind of cool.

Brian McKim and/or Traci Skene said...

Can we talk about "honing" vs. "homing?"

She probably thinks it's "carrots AND sticks."

Yeesh.