Perverse ways to get a thrill
It’s no surprise that the prime minister has a fan club of ageing men with boyish crushes on her. She’s an attractive, stylish woman with a warm personality, not dolly-pretty and obvious, intelligent enough to attract the thinking man. I should say the ‘‘aspiring’’ man, since there’s ambition involved in having a crush on a woman in a top job when one’s own job is further down the status list. It’s nice when men aim high, I feel, showing they feel secure in themselves no matter how improbable their dream woman may be, as in when she lives in Auckland (you’re in Christchurch), is in a relationship, has a demanding job, and also a small child. It helps that there are many men out there who encourage others to dream.
The key is to get a total stranger’s attention, they insist, by maybe asking her for fake directions in the street, then following through with techniques honed by top exponents and paid for by the amateur. In this man-bubble of skilled seduction, bothering women with obvious flattery and dogged persistence is a worthwhile sport, and any woman will serve as a target as long as she has a pulse.
But this is mere background to the loftier case in point, the protests-too-much tactic.
Women will recognise this in the style of bricklayer Colin Wilson, of Christchurch, aged
66, founder of the turn Ardern stunt on Twitter, and marvel. It harks way back to Neil Strauss’
2005 bestseller, The Game, which sold millions of copies. Possibly Wilson was one of those buyers, then at the age of
50, and still sweetly optimistic about his chances. The book inspires imitators even now. Men pay a lot of money for expensive courses that unleash them afterward as newly forged PUAs (pick up artists), looking for love with sure-fire lines like, ‘‘Aside from being sexy, what do you do for a living?’’ How we women thrill to them.
When I say love, I mean an hour-long event at most, what with waiting for taxis and having to rearrange clothing.
Wilson’s campaign to turn around magazine and book covers featuring Ardern’s image in bookshops and newsagents’ displays has proved a clever way of attracting attention to Wilson himself, and his inarticulate but doubtless sincere passion for her. This is a level of advanced, creative work well beyond the average PUA graduate, but at 66 a man can be expected to have learned a few tricks.
It helps to call Ardern ‘‘Cindy’’, as her devotees do, a soft-sounding nickname suggesting intimacy where there is none, sounding girlish as opposed to womanish. There used to be a plastic Cindy doll, a lesser version of Barbie, so there’s an implied compliment in the comparison.
But casting such pleasantries aside, ‘‘negging’’ is a technique favoured by many, triumphantly executed in Ardern’s case by Wilson and his crew. It involves insulting a woman right off to undermine her confidence. Any schoolgirl recognises the tactic, a variation on bullying. With any luck it leads, later, to a swift seduction and a woman’s deep regret, but regrets don’t matter when there’s a scorecard to fill in.
The reverse psychology of pretending to hate the adored one’s face gives the game away, in Wilson’s case, but means Ardern will likely notice her chief fan-man’s foray, her curiosity piqued, and spend maybe seconds thinking about him. That’s got to be as good as a pick-up, though if she caught a flight to Christchurch and knocked on Wilson’s door wearing a Mother Christmas hat, and little else, that would naturally be his preference.