On Compliments

I was recently called on to help explain “negging“, and it reminded of the one time that I [purposely] negged a girl. I was going to share the whole story on Twitter, but stopped when I realized a crowed conversation with just 78 characters to spare per tweet wasn’t the right medium. So here we are.

Before I begin, some thoughts: “Negging”, like much of Game, requires a strong sense of social and situational awareness in order to be used effectively. It’s common for folk to read about these things, or to see them demonstrated once, and to then assume it’s this one thing, applied in exactly the same manner, by any man, in any situation, and with any woman. That’s an…autistic way of looking at it. A greater emphasis should be placed on the “artist” part of “pick up artist”. These aren’t things that can be deployed by any brute. A brush and paint does not make the artist. On with my tale…

During the Summer a couple of years back, my buddy “Duane”, which you first read about here (I know. I’m a horrible person), invited me out to the beach to “chill”. You know, just to catch up, have a few drinks, do some girl-watching? Yeah. Not so much. “Hogan’s Beach“, while on the beach, it isn’t quite the beach. It was more dance club than beach. There was a $10 cover fee to get in, we were given age-identifying wrist bands, and the dress code was…well, see the image above: Bikinis and high heels for the women, and whatever for the men. And did I mention that you couldn’t actually go for a swim? It was basically a couple of volleyball courts surrounded by a stage, several food and alcohol kiosks, and tables.

Now, Duane is someone that’s known me for the better part of a decade, and has seen and heard about several of my deeds. They way he loves putting it, is that my skill with women is like “Goku knowing that he could go Super Saiyan, but refusing to do so because it would make things too easy.” (Trust me, I try my best not to let it go to my head.) Well, on this day, he wanted a demonstration.

Fuck.

Me: Dude, I’m not really in the mood.
Duane: Bro’…there’s hot women everywhere. You HAVE to.
Me: [screaming internally]

To be honest, I’m rarely in the mood to do cold-approaches. Call it anxiety, or narcissism (I don’t believe most women are worth the effort), that’s just how it is. Anyhow, he decides that I just need to drink a little more and enjoy the (douchey, pretentious, noisy, claustrophobic) atmosphere, and that it’ll come to me eventually.

As we’re standing at a kiosk getting another pitcher, this short, mixed chick walks up between us to order and, behind her, I see Duane pointing at her and nodding his head. I shook my head back at him, so he stepped up to the plate. Duane starts talking to her, and from the start it’s all compliments. He introduces me, I show disinterest, and he carries on trying to bag the chick. As I listen in, I begin to grow irate. This chick was barely a 7, but he’s sitting there showering her with compliments, which she was smugly absorbing as though she deserved them, so I decided it was time to intervene…if only to give Duane both a lesson and the demonstration he’d been asking for.

Blabbing away about herself, she gives me an opening. She mentions that she’s half Filipino, half Trinidadian, and I make my entrance: “Wow, what a coincidence. My ex was also half Filipino and half Trinidadian. She was actually the same height as you, too…though a little thinner.”

I look away from her before it fully sinks in and take a sip of my beer, giving Duane a knowing look while he wears an “Ooooh shit!” look on his face. (This was a true test of my bearing. It took everything I had to not burst out laughing, like I am as I write this.) You could almost see her short-circuiting, “*Bzzt*. Does not compute!” But, having just spent a few minutes having her head inflated by Duane, and likely a lifetime by other men, she recovered and carried on, though now she’d begun trying to qualify herself to me. Blah blah blah, high flying career. Blah blah blah, in from out of town. Blah blah BLAH.

Now, something I do almost instinctively under stress is I relax. But I think I may have relaxed too much, ’cause as shorty was telling me all about how great her life was, the plastic cup I was holding just…slipped down and out of my grip, landing base-down on the deck, and *BBSHHHH*, causing what looked like a shotgun blast of beer to shoot out of the cup and all over the girl and myself.

Oops?

The chick stood there, jaw dropped, hands up, and then stomped off somewhere, with my buddy Duane chasing after her with some napkins. Me? I looked down at the cup, picked it up, gazed at the beer left inside, drank it, then poured myself some more, all without looking in the direction she’d gone off on. I knew I’d fucked up, but grovelling and apologizing would have gone against the lesson plan, so I didn’t. She returned…

Her: Um…dude?!
Me: Oh, hey. What’s up?
Her: You just got beer all over me.
Me: Oh…my bad. I think I was so bored that I almost fell asleep. But don’t worry, I have more beer left.

She. Was. Glowing. Like, she was trying her best not to laugh. It was great! At this time, she got a little less pompous and a little friendlier, and that’s when her orbiter, who’d left me alone up to that point, saw what was happening and decided to step it. “Yo, bro! I know every girl on this beach. Just say the word and I’ll hook you up!” Uh…what? “Nah, I’m good.” I waved him away but he persisted. At one point he literally grabbed some white girl that was walking past and introduced me to her. I just looked at her, then back at him, and without a word went back to talking with the shorty. He gave up on that, but switched it up, now trying to get shorty to leave and go elsewhere. I think she saw where things were headed (he was going to cockblock relentlessly from here on) and so tried to wrap things up, since I wasn’t. “So you’re an artist, right? How much do you charge for portraits?” This question took things away from the superficial and towards something that’s important to me, so I answered honestly…and failed. “I’d say $500, give or take.”

“Oh…really? I would have thought you’d charge a lot more than that.”

A girl that spends so much time talking about her career is just as concerned about the earnings of any prospective mate, and I should’ve known better. But the moment I knew for certain that I’d slipped up, was when she followed up by asking for my phone number.  I went through the motions and gave it to her, but I knew the score. “I’ll give you a call!”

Ha! Right…

After she left, I cut Duane’s congratulations short to clue him in on everything that had just gone down, assuring him that she would not be calling. As I’ve stated in the past, Game is often about what you don’t do, that being giving compliments, in this instance. (An instance I feel is an apt demonstration, showing that one can push close to the other end of the spectrum and still get desirable results). Even after what he’d witnessed, and my play-by-play breakdown, Duane still wasn’t getting it. “But…women like compliments!”

Sigh…

For all of you out there that aren’t  Duane, here’s the lesson, distilled: There’s a difference between things women like, and things that make women feel attracted to you. Complimenting early and often may get women to think you’re sweet, it may even get a smile, but it will not cause gina tingles. And while “negging” is not necessary, the fact that you can get results by doing the opposite of complimenting should tell you all you need to know about that.

That’s all I have. See y’all around…

– Jack The Cheap Portrait Artist