[Ads-l] Negging

[Chris Waigl]

On Wed, Mar 6, 2019 at 10:31 AM Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>
wrote:

> > On Mar 6, 2019, at 1:42 PM, Dan Goncharoff <thegonch at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
> >
> > Just came across this word. Don't remember seeing it.
> >
> > Wikipedia says: Negging is an act of emotional manipulation whereby a
> > person makes a deliberate backhanded compliment or otherwise
> > flirtatious remark to another person to undermine their confidence and
> > increase their need of the manipulator's approval.[snip]
>
> And here I didn’t even know there was a “pickup artist community”.


(Lucky you.)


>   I am vaguely familiar with negging in one context or another, but I’m
> not sure where I’ve heard it.



I'm probably not the only one who think of XKCD 1027 as the canonical
illustration (even though it's from 2012, and therefore relatively late).

https://xkcd.com/1027/

On another note, it's not insignificant that the Wikipedia definition is
formulated in gender-neutral terms, which, for a word that is meant to be
misogynistic, somehow feels wrong. The definition given by one of the comic
strip characters is "you belittle chicks to undermine their self-confidence
so they'll be more vulnerable and seek your approval". It would be
interesting to look up if the Wikipedia definition is modeled on the XKCD
strip.

Chris

-- 
Chris Waigl . chris.waigl at gmail.com . chris at lascribe.net
http://eggcorns.lascribe.net . http://chryss.eu

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