History's most renowned ladies' man, Giacomo Casanova, appreciated and harnessed the power of flattery. When seducing a beautiful woman, Casanova complimented her on her intelligence. When seducing an intelligent woman, he emphasized her beauty. His reasons are obvious: beautiful women are told they're beautiful, intelligent women are told they're intelligent. The key, Casanova understood, was to offer a unique compliment, emphasizing something other than the obvious, making the woman feel special.
Casanova employed another tactic, hinging on the [female condition eternally preoccupied] with love and looks. After inviting a woman to dinner, he surrounded his apartment with mirrors, functioning as portraits by which she could both admire herself and watch Casanova admiring her during the meal. Vain? Yes. Effective? Absolutely.
Despite two centuries having passed since the famous womanizer's death, women's natural preoccupation with love and beauty hasn't dramatically changed. 'Romance' is the best-selling fiction genre, amassing $1.4 billion per year, and the cosmetic, beauty supply, and perfume store industry includes about 13,000 stores with a combined annual revenue of around $10 billion. Sure, there are men who love everything from Jane Austen to Twilight to blemish-reducing foundation, but it's hardly presumptuous to classify both romance novels and makeup as predominantly "feminine."
While women have remained invested in conventionally feminine interests, the so-called "tactics" of seduction have experienced a dramatic, unfortunate shift away from pleasantries and compliments.
A recent phenomenon, "negging," has grown increasingly common in both young men's behavior and today's vernacular, managing to infiltrate the upper echelons of mainstream media. Negging, as defined by the oh-so-legitimate Urban Dictionary, is "a way to pick up girls" by tapping into female insecurities, employing subtle insults to debase a woman's confidence, making her more vulnerable to a man's advances. According to Neil Strauss, best-selling author of The Game, negging is the number-one most effective pick-up tactic.
To flirt is to neg. Young women almost expect to be insulted by a prospective suitor and respond accordingly, feigning frustration and then peacocking around for the rest of a night in an attempt to win his attention.
The growing popularity of this transparent mind-gaming is often blamed on men. After all, it is men who are employing this tactic on us "poor and defenseless" women.
Au contraire. The unfortunate truth is that negging is popular because it works. It works as well today for bands of young men as outrageous flattery did for Casanova. However, contrary to popular opinion, the roots of negging are not imbedded in the sociopathic egos of young men, but rather, in the origins of the second-wave feminist movement.
A famous feminist gibe of the 1970s was, "A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle," promoting women's radical independence and complete disregard for men.
Negging is, first and foremost, a testament to a prevalent hostility between the sexes -- a hostility introduced by the feminist man-bashers of the 1960s and 70s and despised by young women today.
Craving the same attentiveness and compliments showered upon Casanova's paramours, modern women are utterly disenchanted by today's dating game, lamenting The End of Men and accepting self-deprecating, "flirtatious" banter as the norm.
It is a vicious cycle: women bash men, men insult women, women bash men. Rinse, repeat. One can't help but wonder... Could even Casanova survive in today's dating game?
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It seems ( at least on the surface ) that it is the age old conflict of control and whom will have the upper hand. Feign disinterest while keeping one eye open for the reaction.
For so many , ( the young primarily ) have grown up with only a one dimension aspect to the dating game. Doubly so for the hyper quick environment of constant input.
What I mean by that , is that text , whether via social media , email or phone does not allow the nuance of body language , facial expression or flutter of eye that can say infinitely more than just 140 characters.
Old school requires more effort and for you to actually show up , but imho gives you a much greater ''leg up'' on the competition out there,
Good luck, the worst that can happen is you get stood up , but at the very least you get some fresh air , exercise and proper perspective .
But these behaviors don't come from nowhere, they come from observing what works and what doesn't. For instance, I was once sending e-mails to someone I met on a dating website, whose profile I liked even if it lacked photos. After a few mails, she sent her photos to me, I thought she looked rather nice and said so. Right after that, she put her photos on her profile and completely stopped writing me, without warning, though she was still active on the website (last active date). I sent one or two mails to try to get it started again, but she never answered, so I stopped trying (I'm no stalker).
It's hard not to conclude that she decided, after my compliments, that if she wasn't as bad-looking as she thought, then she could do better than me. Ouch. I'm not going to lie, it hurt.
So I understand the reasoning: if you compliment a woman, you might convince her that she's "above" you and that she doesn't have to settle for one such as you. If you "neg" her and play on her vulnerabilities and self confidence, you instead incite her to believe you're the best she can hope for, and so increase your chances.
I'm a romantic and I hate this transactional model of dating... but it does seem to work and that annoys me most of all.
Second, telling a beautiful woman she is smart when she's not, or a smart woman that she is beautiful when she's not, doesn't work, and it IS what everyone tries to do. It doesn't work. Casanova said he used techniques, but in reality he was merely good looking, and would say "you wanna?" and THAT'S what worked.
Funny, though, how some people have taken Neil Strauss' book - which was a personal insight into the "secret society of pick-up artists" - and interepreted it as a "how-to" manual, totally missing the book's point that the tactics only work on the insecure and never lead to anything lasting.
thats why the full name is: "The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pick-up Artists"
In fact, he claims he felt dirty
A quote from the book: "The sell is that, with the special techniques they learn from Mystery and other gurus, the ubergeeky can often give a convincing simulation of being a regular human being, even if, like one sarger in this book, they are in fact near-sociopaths".
I'd recommend it to anyone, Male or Female, just not Teen boys.
women like bad boys and hate nice guys. men replicate what works.
in the past....marriage minded men didnt have to wait too long. now they are gonna turn to game after getting shitted on by women for being nice.
all women need to do is be a functional adult that isnt evil. its like finding a unicorn. but men keep looking.
Isn't it a little over-simplistic to classify all guys as either nice or bad? Isn't there something in between "she won't marry me" and "getting shat on"?
That last bit is just rambling.
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If you ever wondered why so many women are sometime acting "odd", just buy a few women magazines.