Negging and Hating at Trinity

I have never been a big fan of the term "hater." Sometimes valid criticism can be dismissed by over-confident individuals as mere haterade. Or whatever.

My friends and I, heavily influenced perhaps by PUA lingo articulated in The Game and other sources, have integrated the term "neg" into our vocabulary. Backhanded compliments ("Those shoes look comfortable") and offputting acts (offering a chick a stick of gum) allegedly keep women off-balance.

Further, we use the term "negging" for alpha-type jostling in any situation, micro or macro. The larger the group of us hanging out, the more likely someone is going to want to assert himself to establish some sort of dominance--where we eat, where we sit, when we leave, etc. I'd say it's ridiculous except that it's probably programmed into us.

It's a great reason to avoid large groups for me.

Those two elements, then, go into my understanding of our use of the term "neg." It seems like it's pretty much the same as "hate". But it's not.

On Saturday night at Trinity, I experienced one of each. See if you can tell the difference.

The Neg

I was in the Blue Room, moving around a little bit on the dancefloor, when I started up a conversation with a woman. She had made good her escape from a guy who was following her all over the dance floor, so she and I joked about that, and then she pointed to her roommate, who was making her way over to talk to us.

"You need to know," I light-heartedly informed her, "that you might have to make fun of other people if you're going to hang out with us."

"You mean," she coldly replied, "make fun of guys who wear suits to dance clubs?"

My smile kind of froze as I digested that. Was she making fun of me? Or, rather, was she making FUN of me? Or fun of ME?

I wasn't wearing a suit, first of all. I was wearing a black jacket and a tie, sure, but black jeans.

Secondly, making fun of someone wearing a suit at a club is a bit like making fun of someone bringing a baseball glove to a baseball game--doing so is a BIT weird, but it's not that much of a much.

So I politely informed her of the makeup of my wardrobe and went back to talking to her friend.

The attempted neg failed. I did not rise to the bait, and she wandered back to the other part of the dancefloor.

The Hate

Later that night, I was in the main room. F-Bomb and TM2000 had gone home, but I wanted to squeeze all I could out of the night, and staying until closing results in many interesting sights to behold.

This night was no exception.

It was about 2:15, and the crowd had thinned considerably (oddly enough, it had become largely white, while earlier in the night it was about 60% Asian...). I was dancing along the South wall, by myself, when I saw a woman, also dancing alone.

I was drawn to notice her, initially, because she was an attractive woman. Very fit and optimized. ("Optimized" is a term we use for when a woman is all dressed up; if she looks great optimized, she might not look so great when not dolled up, but a woman who's not optimizing and looks great is a definite good thing.) More interesting, though? She was dancing with PURPOSE.

Her purpose? The bounder standing along the wall about 10 feet from me.

She was making eye contact with him. She was bending over in his general direction. She was locked in on him, and he was enjoying it with his eyes.

It didn't make too bad of viewing for me, either, but after a few minutes it was enough, and I started watching other things going on.

It was at that point that I heard, from behind me, "... cellulite ..." in an unhappy voice.

I turned around and saw a pair of women staring at the purposeful dancer. They, too, were optimized. But they didn't look as good, and it was killing at least one of them.

"Can you even believe her," she asked me as I turned to her.

"That's quite an outfit she has on," I commented noncommittally. "Showing quite a bit of skin."

"Yes," the Hater went on, huffily. "And can you believe it, given she's got cellulite?"

"Uh... what?"

"I mean... look at her!"

"I am. I have been. Yeah I just don't see it."

And I didn't. I looked for it at this point... trust me. Heh.

I then looked at Hater's friend, trying to judge whether she was Hater2 or ... something else. Fortunately for all that is good in this world, the friend sort of crinkled her brow, acknowledging that her friend was, indeed, a hater.

I might not be a big fan of the term "Hater". But it has its place in the world.

Because haters be hatin'.