Chateau Heartiste

Disqualifications — false or genuine — are a powerful pickup tool. Pulling the rug out from under a girl who autonomically believes you desire her is a lickety-split way to raise your status vis a vis her status, and thus delight her hypergamous reflex. The fact is, women are constantly in a disqualification state of mind: she glides through the masses of maledom programmed to disqualify as many suitors as possible, and to settle upon the one man who is the best of all the men she can attract with her looks and youth.

Knowing this, the appropriation by the pickup artist of the female prerogative to disqualify is a classic example of flipping the seduction script and deviously moving the woman into the chaser role, where she is more likely to perceive you as higher status and sexually desirable. Psych 101 and various books on influencing friends and clients touches upon this stuff, but of course the estimable textbooks don’t follow the logic down the crimson road of poon hunting.

There are four primary types of disqualification. Briefly, I will describe them here, before tackling the subject of this post’s title.

1. Preemptive self-disqualification

Introduced by Mystery, this is a statement you make to a girl that lets her know, in so many words, that you aren’t a serious prospect. You do this by disqualifying yourself. Examples: “I’m gay”, “I’m in a relationship”, “I’m not interested in dating at this point in my life”, “I have the AIDS”, “I poop myself during scary scenes in movies”, “I’m a male feminist”.

This type of DQ (disqualification — I don’t feel like typing the whole word out because my pinky finger isn’t working, fuck you acronym haters) is called “preemptive” because it short circuits a girl’s hypergamous instinct by robbing her of the opportunity to disqualify you first. It essentially reverses the chaser-chased dynamic, and upturns millions of years of evolutionarily molded female expectation. All of this works on the subconscious level. In the heat and fury of a real live social interaction, these game tactics fly under a girl’s conscious radar, barely perceived by anyone but her omnipresent war room hamster and the hotline the fevered critter has to the gina general at the front.

The preemptive self-DQ is intended to act as a bitch shield runaround: a girl is less likely to blow you out if you make her think you’re not available to her in the first place.

2. Target disqualification

Self-explanatory, this is a tactic whereby the man disqualifies the girl from being a serious mating prospect. Owing to the greater chance that Target DQ can be perceived by the woman as sour grapes, this is a more aggressive, and thus riskier, form of DQ, its risk weighed against a potentially more rewarding payoff. Examples: “You seem like you’d make a great friend”, “You’re not really my type”, “You’re a good girl, I’m nothing but trouble… we would never work”, “I’m glad you’re off the market” [just assume she’s off the market], “Phew, so nice to talk to a girl who isn’t trying to flirt with me”, “Since your vagina is cemented shut by a rare disease, I can talk to you like you’re one of the guys”, “You’re the first lesbian I’ve met in this town”.

The Target DQ is less about lowering a woman’s bitch shield than it is about instigating a woman to qualify herself to you. It’s a more proactive DQ compared to the PSDQ above, serving as it does as an immediate status differential cue to the woman that she has to do something to correct the imbalance to the natural order of things. This “something” usually involves convincing you, the incorrigible player, that she is hot and sexy and goodtogo. PSDQs are female disqualification — aka rejection — avoiders or neutralizers, while TDQs are meant to coax women into self-qualifying.

3. Handicap Principle self-disqualification

This is a sub-genre of vulnerability game, and promoted by Charisma Arts (A Wayne Elise aka Juggler production). Basically, you bring up some faux embarrassing thing about yourself — some minor personality flaw that you blow up into significance — and reveal it to the girl. The theory behind the Handicap Principle is that women perceive men who are comfortable “handicapping” themselves — either through bright plumage (peacocking) or through admission of beta characteristics — as alpha males, because who else but an alpha male would be strong and powerful enough to shoulder a weak beta flaw without suffering any hit to his overall status?

Be careful with the Handicap Principle. First, it’s a theory, an elegant one to be sure, but one that remains, as far as I know, largely unproven by evolutionary biologists. The degree to which HP might apply to humans is unknown. At some great enough level of flaw possession, the Handicap Principle must surely break down, and we see evidence for this in the many stories of alpha males who became beta in relationships and then lost their women’s love. Personally, I think the Handicap Principle is easily confused with the theory of sexual selection, but that is a topic for a future post.

Nonetheless, it is true that women coo for the alpha male who unloads a perfectly timed admission of (cute) self-abnegation. Examples: “Oh man, I’m so bad at figuring out if women are flirting with me or not”, “I don’t dance, I’ve got two left feet”, “Ever since an unfortunate childhood trauma, I’ve had a fear of puppies”, “Black people scare me”.

The trick is to admit your “flaws” with utmost confidence and unconcern. Don’t say them as if you’re waiting to judge her reaction. They should be spoken off-the-cuff, almost as if you’re unaware that there is a girl standing there listening to you. NEVER admit to a real beta flaw that would repulse most women; i.e. “I go limp when a woman makes more money than I do”.

4. Beta bait disqualification

Another Juggler specialty, the idea behind the BBDQ is to disqualify yourself as a sucker for women’s flirtations. This is a minor school of DQ that you probably won’t use or need very often, but when you do use it, its power is undeniable. Women will very frequently try to “tease out” beta males by complimenting men and judging them on their reactions. Does the man express a little too much appreciation for her compliment? BETA. Does he seize upon her compliment as a springboard to ask her out? BETA. Does he say “Wow, no girl has ever said something so kind to me before!”? BETA.

But if a woman compliments you, and your reaction is to ignore it, downplay it, or even disagree with her (without veering into self-deprecation territory), she will think ALPHA. Examples: “Thanks, but this actually isn’t my favorite shirt”, “You like these shoes? You’re easy to please”, “Yes, that bulge is my penis. Now you’ve made me self-conscious”.

The BBDQ is both a self-disqualification and a target disqualification. You deny the woman’s positive assessment of you, while simultaneously denying her power over your emotions. It is a very subtle art form that, when mastered, is chick crack to women’s status discernment modules. A successful BBDQ is only superficially a signal of modesty; underneath the calculated modesty is a heat-seeking missile aimed straight at a woman’s id heart that explodes in a fireball of lust for your total lack of interest in winning her approval.

***

DQs are one of the most difficult game techniques for noobs to grasp. They are tangentially related to negs, and like the neg, they are often abused and misused by beginners. Their power is also their danger; because they work so well, men new to the game have a tendency to throw them out at awkward moments, and with too much expectant fervor. They then come across as creeps and try-hards, and wind up providing fodder to bitches to later log into the social media borg to mock the hapless betas who tried to run game on them.

(Leave it to a woman to mock a man for trying. You don’t hear too many men mocking fat chicks who make a real effort to lose weight by going to the gym and eating right. But then, in some respects, men simply have more compassion and empathy than do women for the opposite sex. But I ingest.)

The keys to getting your DQ money’s worth are timing, context and delivery. Too soon –> weird. Too late –> spiteful. Too unrelated — > try-hard. Too forced –> creepy. Too self-deprecating –> beta. Too nasty –> sour grapes.

But even when you have timing, context and delivery down pat, you will sometimes get your DQ called out by a woman.

You: “I’m not looking for anyone right now.”

Girl: “Good, because neither am I.”

***

You: “You’re a good girl, I’m trouble… we would never work out.”

Girl: “Yeah, I guess I am a good girl.”

***

You: “I’ve got a weird fear of puppies. Goes back to a childhood incident.”

Girl: “That’s fucked up.”

***

You: “Thanks, but this isn’t my favorite shirt.”

Girl: “Yeah, now that I look at it closely, it’s not a very good shirt.”

Don’t worry. These kinds of reactions, as plausible as they are in writing, and as much as cunts will cackle that they will respond like this to players whenever one of them tries to hit on their skanky carcasses, are blessedly rare. Most girls will be too high on their torqued emotions to call out a player’s DQ bluff so directly. The hamster is simply not that rational; hence, why he’s called the rationalization hamster, devoted to creating rationale out of nothing at all.

But DQ bluff-calling does happen, and more often to newbs than to experienced PUAs. When a newb gets his DQ bluff called, the result can be hilarity (not to mention the newb’s demanding his money back from some overpriced pickup seminar he attended). A great illustration of a newb’s DQ bluff being called out was provided by Juggler in this post.

ASPIRING NOOB: “I could. But I’m not going to. I’m an all out there kinda guy. I’m going to this fab party later. If you’re lucky I might invite you.”

GIRL: “No thanks.”

“Aww. You’re playing hard to get. That’s so cute.”

“Whatever.”

“I hear an accent. Where are you from?”

“Nowhere.”

“Ha. Nowhere. That’s funny. Can I buy you a drink?”

“Yes. I’ll take a piña colada but don’t even think about dropping a roofie in there. I’m not going to hook up with you.”

“Whoever said anything about hooking up? You’re more of the kinda girl I see as a friend.”

“Good.”

“Good. So what’s your name?”

If a girl isn’t already invested in the conversation with you, a DQ is less likely to have the intended effect. If you walk up to a girl cold and start spouting off about how you just want to be friends with her and you aren’t available for dating, what kind of reaction do you think you’ll get? Do you imagine girls will start qualifying themselves to you on the spot? No, you have to first reel her in and dangle the promise of your interest before unloading the soul-sucking DQ.

Many PUAs, like Tyler Durden, recommend a preemptive approach to DQing; that is, you train yourself to sense when girls are about to disqualify you, and disqualify them before they get a chance. Often, this occurs during the late comfort stage of the seduction, when the girl is beginning to feel pangs of guilt about the release of her inner slut which looms on the horizon. Other PUAs, like Mystery, advocate active DQs early in the attraction phase, as a direct method for building attraction. Still others say to avoid them entirely, as the risk of delving into “sour grapism” territory is too great to assume.

I will say this about DQs:

They are supposed to sound spontaneous. The best DQs are unexpected and off-the-cuff. If it sounds like a line, it will backfire. If it sounds like you thought about it beforehand, it will backfire. Body language and facial expression are important conveyors of indifference and spontaneity.

Never DQ from a position of weakness. If you are working overtime to keep a girl’s attention, a DQ will only lower your value even more. Remember, DQs are FALSE disqualifications. When you DQ as a last resort to keep a girl around, it is no longer false; it is a real disqualification.

If a girl calls out your DQ, my best advice is to ignore it and change the subject, OR readily agree with her in return. A pinpoint DQ destroyer, while rare, is not to be trifled with. You want to avoid at all costs the impression of being flustered or annoyed or dispirited by her agreement with your DQ. Just roll with it, as if you’re glad she agreed with you, and reassess if she’s worth your continued effort to bed.

The upside to a failed DQ is that, later, if the girl is into you and starts to return your interest, you can remind her of the claim she made earlier about not wanting this to go anywhere. A pullback at a moment when the girl MOST WANTS TO PULL INTO YOU is like sticking TNT up her hamster’s anus. You are beginning down the road of building your own slave harem.

Preemptive DQs — the type of DQ that occurs before you have built adequate interest in the girl (think Mystery Method-style) — can work great IF you don’t linger on them waiting for a reaction. You drop the DQ, ignore whatever reply she gives in return, and plow. The goal is subconscious infiltration, leading to script flipping.

Mystery-style preemptive DQs work best on hot girls. Since hot girls are the most likely to assume every man wants them (justifiably), a quick correction to the contrary can temporarily scramble their status differential discernment algorithms.

Be careful about DQing 6s and 7s. You can easily blow a girl out of the water and render yourself unattainable to them.

If you’re going to agree with a girl’s DQ nuke, don’t make a production out of it. For example:

WRONG WAY TO AGREE WITH GIRL’S DQ NUKE

Girl: “Good. I just want to be friends too.”

You: “Yeah, yeah, friends. That’s what I want to.” [pained expression belies your words]

RIGHT WAY TO AGREE WITH GIRL’S DQ NUKE

Girl: “Good. I just want to be friends too.”

You: “Cool. So… you see that guy over there? I think he wants you. That’s the way to do it. Stare hard.”

In Juggler’s example above, when the NOOB says “If you’re lucky I might invite you”, he’s expecting the girl to reply something along the lines of “Wow, you must think you’re special”, a shit test to which the NOOB thinks he is well-trained to parry. But instead, she deflates him totally with the cold “No thanks”. The NOOB is now left flailing, hurling more DQs at her in hopes one will stick.

The best defense against the deflating DQ nuke is to simply avoid putting yourself in the position where such nukes are likely to happen. If you pace yourself, the likelihood of triggering a DQ nuke goes way down. Should one happen to you, one that is particularly disheartening, you may consider bailing.

You: “If you’re lucky I might invite you.”

Girl: “No thanks.”

You: “Ok. See ya.”

A good player knows when to cut his losses.

However, if you see an opening and want to continue working on her, AGREE AND REDIRECT.

You: “If you’re lucky I might invite you.”

Girl: “No thanks.”

You: “Yeah, come to think of it, it’s probably better you don’t come. My ex might start a fight with you.”

OR

You: “Well, I suppose now I can make room for my Mom to come with me.”

OR

You: [fake look of indignation] “Invite… REVOKED.”

OR

You: “Great, now who am I gonna set up my friend with?”

OR

You: “Damn, I guess I’ll have to buy my own drinks.”

This has been an introductory course in DQs and sidestepping DQ nukes. The subject material is advanced, so I encourage the commenters to flesh it out for the 1 billion readers who are hanging on your every word.

Wayne Elise, aka Juggler, is a fairly well-known and well-regarded pickup artist. He’s been in the business for a while, and his game guides, while occasionally derivative, are grounded in the basic reality of male-female psychosocial sex differences and thus useful to aspiring womanizers. He emphasizes the “warmth & connection” part of seduction, but tends to engage in a little too much PUA strawman bashing (probably in order to attract a wider audience). I, for one, am getting tired of reading “evolved” pickup artists caricature the neg with the same ignorant glee that feminists do.

Quibbles aside, he has some good insights, and this post at his blog exemplifies that. I’ll examine it here because his analogy of seduction to letting out a “rope of personal history” is very good, and a lesson that a lot of newbs would be wise to take into account.

Imagine a stranger next to you. They reach out and take the end of your rope from you. They begin reeling it into their arms. So long as you allow it, the rope passes from the floor around your feet, through your hands and collects in the arms of this other person.

This is the beginning of someone getting to know you. The details they learn about you in the first few minutes may be give-aways such as your taste in high-fidelity stereo speakers and the fact that your mouth goes crooked when you smile. But soon they could be exposed to a slice of your dead-kitten sense of humor. Then later it could be your feeling toward relationships. Eventually it could be your sexual preferences. And on and on.

Through this process of information transfer, you stop feeling like a stranger to the other person. You begin to feel like a friend or potential lover.

This is an artsy reinterpretation of the comfort stage of Mystery’s Attraction => Comfort => Seduction three-stage process. Women feel attraction for the aloof alpha, but they also feel more bonded — and hence more open to sexual surrender — to men with whom they have mutually shared personal information. The details of a life are the building blocks of a woman’s romantic imagination.

Now, of course, you can boldly lie about your details if you’d like, but unless you are a clinical sociopath you’ll find it easier to remain internally consistent and externally congruent if you don’t deviate too far from your real life history. This goes double if you plan to stick with a girl for longer than three months.

A reader may reasonably ask, “How do you reconcile women’s love for aloof alphas with their love for ‘getting to know each other’?”

The answer is in the conversational tension, as Elise says.

People won’t appreciate learning about your life-details if you just give them up. That would make you sort of a life-detail slut. […]

People appreciate hearing the amazing things you have to say more if they desire them first. Don’t push. Instead, counterintuitively, you should resist.

Returning to our metaphor. You want to keep your conversational partner in a state of wanting more – pulling on your rope, sort of speak. While, at the same time, YOU want to be in a state of resistance – keeping the length of rope between the two of you taunt. This tension gives you control over the transfer of your life-details.

What Elise is describing here are the classic pickup techniques known as “assuming the sale”, (i.e., this chick wants to know me better, so I’m gonna hold out until she’s throwing money at me to buy my product), and “pacing” (i.e., cat string theory; cats respond more enthusiastically to string that is being pulled away from them). There is a broader category heading that all of this could be put under: Overconfidence.

People may not consciously be aware of pacing but they respond to it.

Pacing that’s too fast deflates the tension out of an interaction. Imagine throwing all your rope into someone’s arms. There’s no more for them to want or seek.

But pacing that’s too slow makes people feel bored and as if the interaction isn’t going anywhere.

Knowing the balance only comes with real-world practice. Generally, the balance will be the same for most women you meet because women, like men, share generalizable psychological properties with their sex.

Elise offers an example of good conversational pacing (and also some good shit test passing):

PUA: “That was a famous tennis player,” he adds. “He – got – mad – at – people. Probably before your time. I was just trying to guess your age.”

PREY: “How old do you think?”

“I’m afraid I can’t answer that question.”

“Why can’t you answer that question?”

“Because if I do then all the tension will leave the conversation. As it stands, you want to know my guess and if I give that up I’ll lose your interest.”

“I promise you won’t lose my interest.”

“Fine. But first, let’s sit down and make ourselves a bit more comfortable, if that’s alright. Then I’ll tell you all about yourself. I’ve been told I have an intuitive nature.”

They sit down on the couch nearby.

“Where are your friends? Perhaps they should join us.”

“Don’t worry about them. I’m a big girl. I can take care of myself.”

“I bet you can. Okay, I think you’re twenty eight.”

She hits him in the shoulder.

“Okay. Twenty six?”

“You’re really bad at this.”

“I know. My credentials might have been over-stated.”

“How about you? How old are you?”

“Older than you. Let’s just put it this way. I’m your real father. I remember your mom. She was hot back in the 80′s.”

“She still’s hot.”

“I’m sure she is. People of any age can be sexy. [ed: female ego bait. the purpose of these pretty lie pebbles is to lull the woman into a state of reception to the man’s sexy taboo-breaking.] But personally I end up dating girls who are uh…”

“What?”

“Younger, mostly.”

“Why do you do that?”

“Well, there’s a long answer to that question and a short answer.”

“What’s the short answer?”

“They’re hotter.”

“Okay, what’s the long answer.”

“I can’t really tell you. I’d have to show you.”

This is a textbook exhibition of flirting aka pacing. Women love this sort of “pulling teeth” kind of conversation because it signals to their hindbrains that the man engaging in it is not seeking their approval. And a man who is not interested in a woman’s approval is regarded by her evolved alpha male-detection cortical system as a man who likely gets plenty of female attention, and thus possesses the genes that would give her potential sons with him the same advantageous mating market genes.

Elise also illustrates bad conversational pacing with this example:

GAME NOOB: “I ride a fixie. Want to see my fixie porn?”

GIRL: “I have no idea what you’re talking about. Look. I didn’t ask to know anything about you. Perhaps you can hold some thoughts back.”

“I could. But I’m not going to. I’m an all out there kinda guy. I’m going to this fab party later. If you’re lucky I might invite you.”

“No thanks.”

“Aww. You’re playing hard to get. That’s so cute.”

“Whatever.”

“I hear an accent. Where are you from?”

“Nowhere.”

“Ha. Nowhere. That’s funny. Can I buy you a drink?”

“Yes. I’ll take a piña colada but don’t even think about dropping a roofie in there. I’m not going to hook up with you.”

“Whoever said anything about hooking up? You’re more of the kinda girl I see as a friend.”

“Good.”

“Good. So what’s your name?”

Elise takes some gratuitous shots here at well-worn PUA disqualification lines (“You’re more of the kinda girl that I see as a friend”), but his overall point is that bad pacing — that is, giving away the store — can render otherwise effective PUA lines like “That’s so cute” embarrassingly try-hard and pathetically transparent.

The difference between a sour grapes disqualification and a cool-as-fuck disqualification is timing. When you’re chasing — when you’re on the losing end of a pickup attempt — your DQs will be perceived by her as spiteful sour grapes. When you’re being chased — when you have pickup hand — she will perceive your DQs as challenges and redouble her efforts to win your grudging approval.

Which, I believe, really gets at the core of why game-haters and feminists and traditionalist pedestalizers have found it easy to lampoon certain aspects of game philosophy. Yes, the neg is very easy to make fun of when you put it in the mouth of a generic, socially awkward noob, like Elise has done above, who practically assaults a woman with approval-seeking behavior and regurgitated PUA lines delivered with pressing urgency at the wrong times. But put the neg in the mouth of an accomplished seducer who understands the value of teasing women with crumbs of information, and of pulling back at just the right moments, and suddenly that same neg is explosive pussy dynamite.

All great philosophies and theories of the mind throughout history have had their old guard detractors who latched onto digestible concepts that offered possibilities of being distilled into simplistic caricatures and thus made meaningless outside of their philosophical and practical context. To this day, the neg continues to be mistakenly thought of as a brazen insult by the prestige press and their manboobed and feminist lackeys, and there seems to be no let-up to their determination to remain unschooled hicks in matters of seduction.