this post was submitted on 17 Feb 2026
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People who recommend negging are evil.
People who recommend looksmaxxing are quite morally questionable because they're trying to turn dating into a socially darwinistic battle royale, which i guess is in response to the proliferation of dating apps, which they perceive as a socially darwinistic battle royale, in roughly their own words. They also outright lie - no, not everyone likes hunter eyes or sunken cheekbones, tallness, even skinniness, or bulky muscles. This feels like a war against human diversity. And in many cases they pretend these looksmaxxed features just naturally appear when you lead the perfect masculine routine of icebaths, red meat meals and frequent workouts. Which is a lie. (I think stuff like this is why there are articles saying 'exercise culture is fascist')
But back to negging: not only is this encouraged by a plurality of random young people online, but it's weirdly also pushed hard by hollywood & american television - anyone else noticed that?
And negging is ALSO endorsed by, that's right, none other than Jeffrey Epstein. He had a bunch pf emails going "wow, dude, your negging advice totally works! She wants me more than ever!" So yes, it's safe to say it's actually evil. Part and parcel of training people to objectify their partners (so is looksmaxxing, because to objectify yourself usually causes you to objectify your partner)
Rant over.
I see people read "negging" on a spectrum from "playfully tease someone you're interested in" to "ruthlessly abuse someone you consider your inferior". And one of those is a lot more evil than the other.
Cause he read it in the same book that everyone else did.
I swear, the actual original material - the biography of a guy who goes out and lives with a bunch of California douchebags, learns how to navigate the nightclub scene, and comes out of it thinking much less of the community than when he went in - is one of the most damning indictments of the PUA community you'll find.
But because people can't seem to get past the third chapter... It's like hearing someone say Hunter S. Thompson loved the Hell's Angels.
What the hell is negging?
The ACTUAL meaning of negging is not 'teasing,' but:
In this sense it can be seen as a toxic extension to the "playing hard to get" concept.
It was pushed by american media and by pickup artists/ later by manosphere influencers
"You have really pretty eyes for someone with hair like that"
"Wow, your workout routine seems really intense for something who looks like they barely eat"
"I love your makeup! I bet it took you hours to cover what's underneath"
Basically, negging is using backhanded compliments to make someone feel good while also trying to tear them down. You say something nice that makes them feel good, but then say something that makes them feel self-conscious about something else. Very effective narcissistic tactic if used properly which is why the manosphere promotes it. If someone with limited self confidence is met with negging, sometimes they tend to lean into the compliment and use that as a drip of self confidence that they may not get and lean into the person saying it, regardless of the negative addition to it.
Saying shitty things to people to make them feel bad about themselves so they will lower their standards enough to fuck you. The kind of thing only an incel could come up with.
Not quite. Negging requires you to say something nice while saying something mean. Negging isn't just "You're too ugly to fuck". It's balancing compliments with negative connotations to build and break down someone at the same time.
Yeah It's shit like "I love your dress, it hides your belly so well"
Probably plays a part of it, but the main reason why is because fascism has always been obsessed with aesthetics, individualism, and the concept of übermenschen. Much of our modern health & wellness industry is focused more on aesthetics than actual health outcomes. A lot of it can be traced directly back to the eugenics movement in the 1920s.
Shit, probably the best dating perspective on this greentext community in a long time.
A LOT of guys here would pretty much say "Yea, it's bad, but that's just how human brains work, we are wired a certain way, heard mentality, blah blah blah." and that shit does not sound right. Glad you are combating that
Also yea, fuck negging
What I never get about this is...does not your very existence refute this argument? If you're a 20-something male and convinced that your genetics just doom you forever to celibacy...how exactly do you explain your own existence? Unless you are the result of a rape, you, by definition, have the genes necessary to attract a partner. After all, everyone in your family line prior to you managed to do it. If your genes were so incredibly bad that literally no one would want you as a partner, then your parents would have never gotten together, and you wouldn't exist.
No one springs forth fully formed from the brow of Zeus. The very existence of an incel disproves incel theology.
Yep that's a good point and basically should be the 'white pill' to cure inceldom. I imagine people believe dating has crashed in contemporary times, departing from the established conventions and regressing to a tech-fueled version of the primative default humans worked with prior to civilisation beginning.
As such, they chalk their recent-most ancestors' genetic success down to people 'playing by the rules' of dating, but that everything prior to that is down to this animalistic default mode they support.
That doesn't necessarily hold up though. A ceasar salad is delicious. So is pistachio ice creme. The result of mixing the two however....
Sure, but the features incels obsess over are almost always features their own father possesses.
I remember being about 6 years old and having the thought that I wished my dad had chosen a partner with less stubby toes. It probably took another decade and a half before it hit me how fucked up that was.
I don’t even know why I thought having unstubby toes would make a difference to anything. To make it more ridiculous, I have a birthmark on one foot that used to make me so self conscious that I kept my feet hidden from everyone until college. Who did I think was going to see my feet and reject me?
An incel could make the point that the internet changes the calculus, or that "ugly" people can be born to "beautiful" parents, or any other number of counterpoints.
You can't use logic and reason to argue someone out of a conclusion they have arrived at for emotional reasons. Lots of men and boys have been socialized in a really bad way, which makes them unappealing partners. Realizing, accepting, and working to change that, is extremely hard. Instead, with "bad" genetics, then the failures aren't actually your fault, and you don't need to change.
I'm Asexual, dude
Yes! A lot of american humor is based on tearing someone down. I cringe thinking back into my childhood when I participated in this type of behavior but thankfully i've stopped a long time ago. Still saddens me that a lot o people just don't mature out of it and keep behaving like this.
Also fuck negging and all the garbage that comes out of the manosphere. Bunch of insecure man babies