This is a shower thought about how the common emotional abuse tactic called "negging" is supposed to work in more than one way. For those who haven't heard of it negging is a backhanded compliment, usually consisting of a RISE followed by a DROP. Low grade insults to knock you down a peg or two.

The RISE is supposed to get your attention and lift you up like a regular compliment does. You know, how normal and healthy people express themselves.

Examples are:
"Those new heels look great!"
"You hair is so beautiful!"
"You are really smart."

What differentiates the neg from a regular compliment is the inevitable DROP the sender has to add, which makes them appear like the passive-aggressive bitches that they are. So those compliments from a above get perverted into something like this:

"Those new heels look great! Even you can wear them."
"You hair is so beautiful! Did you wash it today?"
"You are really smart for a woman."

Getting yourself to open up with the RISE so they can get under your skin where they wound you with the DROP. The handbook provides you with examples on how to deal with negging.

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Now I want you to consider a few more things about negging:

1.) Negging is done by both genders, not only men. Men neg men too. Women neg men and also other women.

2.) Little kids tease each other like that on the playground. Pubescent teens use it to secure a place in their small social hierarchy like their clique and school-class. Toxic adults still do it to this day. Negging existed before the age of the internet. But it was the manosphere that gave it a name and weaponized it specifically against women to extract sex, money and comfort from them.

3.) Negging can be applied subconsciously and without a manipulative PUA script. Yes, it's possible that you actually negged your highschool crush while he was standing in front of you and your insecurity made you stumble impolite nonsense that made you appear rude. Maybe you negged that gorgeous girl in your class who you envied but secretly wished to be friends with. You didn't want sex but friendship, which is a form of love.

4.) Last but not least the probably most important point IMHO. Not only does negging put others down, kills your chances for intimacy, love or friendship, makes you appear insecure and like an a-hole, etc.
It also might let you live in the other ones head rent free. I'm actually convinced that negging in the original sense (without the institutionalization from misogynists) is part of a set of so called cost-inflicting mate retention strategies we naturally apply. The mantra goes as follows: "Bad advertising is better than no advertising at all. She might hate me but at least they think of me. As long as she thinks of me I'm still relevant. I therefore have a slightly higher chance to reproduce with her than I would if she didn't notice me - annoying my way into her heart (and pants)." Getting a rise out of you satisfies the LVM for exactly this reason. He can't keep up with you, so he has to bring you down to his level. Statistically he has a higher chance of fucking you when you hate him than he has when you do not care about himat all and forget him. Think of the annoying boy who pulled your hair: He probably didn't read TRP at the time. He did it instinctively because your attention felt good to him. And your indifference felt bad so he had to do something about it.

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Maybe you ask yourself how I can call annoyances like hair pulling or name calling a neg in the sense I described it above (consisting of a RISE and DROP). The thing is attention feels good because we are social creatures. So as long as he is not outright dangerous in a way that causes you to CLOSE yourself off and fight for your life his attention works as the RISE. The annoyance functions as the DROP.

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In the end negging is LV and nothing that works on a HVW with a stable self-esteem. Leveling up makes you immune to negging since you see it for what it is: A cheep tactic that only works on insecure people because secure people don't depend on the attention from toxic sources that would keep them sick and vulnerable.

Let me know what your thoughts are. And ofc I'm not defending negging at all. I'm merely trying to reverse-engineer the human psyche 🤓