Why do guys neg?

[caligirl03]

For reference, negging is when a guy "playfully" cuts a girl down to try to make her insecure. An example would be a guy saying, "You would be so hot if you lost like 10 lbs."

[0112358]

Three possible reasons:

1) original meaning. When hitting on hot women who get hit on all the time and are tired of it, it allows the guy to actively approach her while pretending not to be blown away by her looks. Women who are used to being sucked up to often react to this by trying to demonstrate value. This makes her more interested. Better yet the guy can "be won over by" her other qualities. So a woman who is tired of guys who just see her as a pretty face can find this guy who isn't so impressed but is then captivated by her humour, intelligence, fun personality etc which she wants more validation on. This is probably a pretty smart way to approach women who get hit on a lot.

2) some guys are probably using it on women trying to control them via manipulation by harming their self esteem. Not sure how well this works on its own.

3) some guys have no clue what they're doing and are just copying what successful guys who are chasing super popular girls behave.

"Negging" which is sort of an active disinterest is in many ways the male version of "playing hard to get" and in exactly the same way is probably a good tactic when going after people who are very confident and used to getting their way and a lousy strategy on most normal people.

[caligirl03]

Thank you for this thorough explanation! I feel like if done wrong, it almost borders on emotional abuse...

[0112358]

In the second case it is emotional abuse. However... I think that's not really what it means to people who actually use the term to describe their OWN actions. Rather some people label emotionally abusive people as "negging". I don't think the term makes sense for a couple it's really meant to describe an approach technique. And it's NOT effective on low self esteem women in that context - I'm pretty sure they respond better to a more love-bombing type approach initially.

[Anonymous]

because some skinny little insecure dipshit named erik invented that nonsense. but the thing about that skinny little shit erik is he goes online and crying and whining how the mother of his kid (who might be kezia i'm not entirely sure on that) won't let him see his kid. that's how that whole bullshit negging crap started. and he had the help of some other muscle bound insecure douchejerkoff bags who also thought it would be a "great idea" to "neg" women to cut their egos down. basically a bunch of insecure boys trying to get with women instead of grown ass men trying to form healthy relationships with women

[Anonymous]

It’s a supposedly effective technique of self-styled “pickup artists”.

I’m skeptical of it, mostly because the women who would draw my interest would probably pour a drink out on the head of a guy who was foolish enough to try it. (OK, maybe not literally, but they would certainly tell him off.)

[caligirl03]

Haha exactly! Seems like a "move" that could seriously backfire.

[InfobotLives]

It's a control mechanism. The aim is to keep her confidence slightly low, to make her grateful for any attention that she might receive. You become the prize and she is the grateful recipient. It's bullshit mindgames for guys with small wieners.

[caligirl03]

Treat them mean, keep them keen, huh? I agree, that's some totally small d energy!

[YanTeng]

I've always thought it was something they made up to be used in films hahaha, I've never heard or heard of anyone doing it in reality

[MannMitAntworten]

Never heard of such an activity outside of a couple fighting with one another.

[Jersey2]

It’s used by Pick Up Artists. You can google it.

[Askadami]

I d k neg