The Art of the Neg

For what I think is the very first time in history, the New York Times posted a video of two Asian Americans on their main wedding page. You can see the video here, and you can see the accompanying story here.

It’s a really sweet story.  What I thought was especially cute was the fact that because they’re both architects, they seem to notice a lot about structure and design.  You can hear it in their words.  For example, she talks about how he leads her into a chapel, and then she talks about the dome and structure.  It’s cute when people have such passion in what they do that it carries into everything they do and observe.  Great story, and props to the NY Times.

After all the talk of PUA on the 44s, I decided a couple weeks ago to find out what it was really about, so I read the Game by Neil Strauss.  I hope to talk more about the book in a future blog post, but one technique that Style, aka Strauss, addresses is the “neg,” which is like a negative backhanded compliment.  It’s kind of like a tease: “Wow, your teeth are cute, kind of like Bugs Bunny.”  It’s designed to show a girl that you’re interested but not too interested.  I personally wouldn’t feel comfortable using such a technique, but it demonstrates a bit of human psychology when it comes to how people interact.

Anyway, Ping, the guy in the video, uses a perfect neg, maybe unintentionally:

The couple’s first interaction, at Columbia in the fall of 2004, was not promising.

“She was wearing this really loud coat, with five different colors, and I went up to her and I said ‘Aimee, I love your coat. It’s like an ugly old couch,’ ” he said.

Mr. Kwan said he meant it as a compliment; he liked the colors and the mottled texture. Judging by the shocked look in her eyes, he quickly realized that she did not take it that way.

“He didn’t make a great first impression,” Ms. Chang said. “It was just so bizarre and we had barely talked before that.”

Does this mean PUA techniques work?

In any case, I’m glad things worked out for them.  Nice story, great coverage, and it would be awesome to see more of this kind of thing.  Haha…without the PUA, of course.

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