In Defense of Negging

As a woman, I’m not supposed to like negging. Or rather, I’m not supposed to admit it. To do so would be to let the Pick-Up Artists — who coined the term, short for “negative comment” — win. As Neil Strauss, the author of pick-up bible The Game wrote for the New York Times in 2005, negging serves two purposes: “to momentarily lower a woman’s self-esteem and to suggest an intriguing disinterest.” In this context, to neg someone is to purposely take a woman down a notch, to leave her feeling worse about herself and in need of the approval you’ve seemingly refused to give her. And yet.