They Did it for Science

December 11, 2011 11:42 AM

Experiment: To determine the efficacy and adaptability of pop-culture hook-up guides. Can a woman use the rules of "the game" on other women? And how will dudes respond to pick-up techniques that were designed to hustle ladies into bed? Kate Ray investigates what happens when a woman plays "the game" for Nerve, and she does it for Science (All links potentially NSFW, I mean come on its nerve, but most are either OK to OK-ish or obvious from context)

More I Did It For Science:

Boob Power: Is life easier when your cup runneth over?

Heterosexuality: Could I possibly enjoy sex with a woman?

Balloon Fetish: One night in bang, pop: infiltrating a looner party.

Topless in the Park: The law's on my side, but how will the locals react?

Bartending at a Sex Party: Would it be easier than DJing a bar mitzvah?

ManDelay: Will numbing my loins help me last all night?

Nude Housecleaning: Cleaning up by getting dirty.

Tantric Sex: HWSDI: How would Sting do it?

Groupie: Our minidress-clad scientist makes like Pamela Des Barres and tries to pick up a rock star.

Strap-On: Experiment: To literally have sex with myself.

Selling Panties on Craigslist: Could I pay my bar tab by hawking my dirty laundry?

Princess Reform School: Our prima donna scientist gets a surprising education in how to submit.

Live Nude Girl: Our scientist shimmies for her supper at a high-class gentlemen's club named Wiggles.

Female-Friendly Porn: All my liberated friends were into it. Why wasn't I?

Female Ejaculation: Our scientist attempts to let her love flow, with the aid of an eager lab partner and various accessories.

Fellatio School: A blowjob class puts our intrepid scientist to the test.

Experiment: Dude for a Day

Cock Ring: Nerve's guinea pig tries a cock ring on for size.

Ladies Night: He came, he stripped, he cowered!

Adult Film Shoot: Posing as an ambitious lube girl, our scientist infiltrates the porn industry.

To achieve orgasm via the Aneros massager.

More at Nerve

posted by Blasdelb (29 comments total)

As a definite non-player, I have to observe that this game must be a lot less fun from being so one-sided. Has anyone considered reviving actual flirting?
posted by dhartung at 11:57 AM on December 11, 2011 [4 favorites]

I was unaware of this feature on Nerve. I am amused. Thank you!
posted by rmd1023 at 12:01 PM on December 11, 2011

*winks at dhartung*

I'm a giver.
posted by jonmc at 12:04 PM on December 11, 2011 [2 favorites]

TLDR: Seduction techniques designed for male assholes with patterned shirts and unjustifiably high self esteem don't work so well for girls. And even if they did, pretending to be someone else is no way of finding a life partner.

Douglas Adams' finest creation may have been the Maximegalon Institute for Slowly and Painfully Working Out the Surprisingly Obvious. Unfortunately we may never need it now we have the Internet.

I liked this bit though:

He cocked an eyebrow and smirked, "Oh, I see what you're doing." He was negging me! I had been negged! And I guess it sort of made me want to fuck them, if by "fuck" you really mean "punch in the nose."
posted by Sebmojo at 12:06 PM on December 11, 2011 [6 favorites]

(ps nice post)
posted by Sebmojo at 12:07 PM on December 11, 2011 [1 favorite]

"This was the sketchiness I was hoping to avoid"

In the context of trying to sell your used panties to strangers, this has to be one of the funniest things I've ever read.
posted by Decani at 12:12 PM on December 11, 2011 [1 favorite]

Yeah, among my current social circle I seem to be the only person left who bothers to slowly charm anyone without resorting to... well I suppose I could say now that I didn't resort to science.
posted by Slackermagee at 12:13 PM on December 11, 2011

People who actually want hookups get them by email. There are sites for it.

PickUpArtistry is the art of overcomplicating the whole business in order to make yourself feel like a goer.
posted by LogicalDash at 12:15 PM on December 11, 2011

The Game isn't about just hooking up. That's what Craigslist is for.

As far as I can tell, The Game really is about teaching men to sleep with women who they think outclass them. That's the point of the rating system. To identify women that the men in the program shouldn't have a shot at. Does it work? Statistically, if you hit on enough women you think outclass you, you're likely to actually have a few successes. Especially in a meat-market situation, where horny women might have their beer goggles on.

Hopefully, this is enough to get people past whatever social inhibitions got beat into them in high school, and get them started looking for the sorts of things in sex that aren't defined by low-self-esteem and childhood pecking orders. Like similar goals and interests, and shared fascinating for elaborate bondage rituals.
posted by Bunny Ultramod at 12:34 PM on December 11, 2011 [7 favorites]

Does anyone want to make any pithy observations weaving together the mentality behind the comments on the Nerve site, the GQ posts on trafficked women and the international sex industry, and all the women in Ask agonizing over their shitty relationships with mentally ill abusive losers?

The human race really gets me down sometimes.
posted by aquafortis at 1:03 PM on December 11, 2011 [9 favorites]

Pretty much all random sex hookups are flukes. It weird how people don't want to accept that.
posted by jonmc at 1:22 PM on December 11, 2011 [4 favorites]

I've always enjoyed the more crazy I Did it for Science articles, where someone does something that makes you sit back and squirm a little.
posted by Forktine at 1:24 PM on December 11, 2011

Several Craigslist ads, as mine kept getting flagged and removed (why, I still don't know).

At least two reasons; one, an overzealous religious nut who actually thinks they are doing gods work by sitting around and flagging the ever living shit out of all the ads. Two, guys will immediately respond and flag any ads they like so they have a better chance at getting a date.
posted by P.o.B. at 1:30 PM on December 11, 2011

Pretty much all random sex hookups are flukes. It weird how people don't want to accept that.

I agree that it is very often a case of "right place, right time" and also that The Random Sex Hookups would be a good name for a band name.
posted by drjimmy11 at 1:40 PM on December 11, 2011

They'd have lots of groupies, at any rate.
posted by jonmc at 1:44 PM on December 11, 2011 [1 favorite]

It weird how people don't want to accept that.

I don't know. I think the idea of "getting lucky" has a lot of interesting aspects to it and a great conversation could be had about it, but I don't think it's a set-in-stone fact.
posted by P.o.B. at 1:58 PM on December 11, 2011 [1 favorite]

Used to enjoy these when it was (I think) just Grant Stoddard doing them, but it's been awhile. Thanks for the reminder.
posted by Durn Bronzefist at 3:31 PM on December 11, 2011

This has always been my favorite Nerve feature. The one where Grant tries out a Real Doll is hilarious as hell. Also depressing and utterly non-arousing. But that's okay too.
posted by zomg at 5:07 PM on December 11, 2011

I LOVE THIS! Thank you.
posted by AzzaMcKazza at 6:06 PM on December 11, 2011

As a definite non-player, I have to observe that this game must be a lot less fun from being so one-sided. Has anyone considered reviving actual flirting?

A lot of us aren't attractive enough for actual flirting to work.
posted by planet at 7:39 PM on December 11, 2011 [2 favorites]

A lot of us aren't attractive enough for actual flirting to work.

Nonsense, planet. Such people do not exist. Flirting engages the mind, which sees more clearly than the eyes.
posted by IAmBroom at 9:00 PM on December 11, 2011 [7 favorites]

what are your thoughts on the banjo?

Someone's been reading Metafilter.
posted by arcticseal at 2:29 AM on December 12, 2011 [1 favorite]

Does anyone want to make any pithy observations weaving together the mentality behind the comments on the Nerve site, the GQ posts on trafficked women and the international sex industry, and all the women in Ask agonizing over their shitty relationships with mentally ill abusive losers?

Sure: Male privilege.
posted by fraula at 4:32 AM on December 12, 2011 [3 favorites]

> The human race really gets me down sometimes.

The internet tends to have that effect.
posted by The Card Cheat at 6:13 AM on December 12, 2011 [1 favorite]

The problem I have with the Game is that instead of powerups, extra lives and gold coins you accumulate crabs, herpes and gonorrhea and in the end are stuck with less life than you started out with and no save points to retreat to unless you go the born again route which is frankly a pretty buggy mod.
posted by srboisvert at 6:49 AM on December 12, 2011 [2 favorites]

Nonsense, planet. Such people do not exist. Flirting engages the mind, which sees more clearly than the eyes.
posted by IAmBroom at 5:00 AM on December 12

Still doesn't help those of us with ugly minds, does it?
posted by Decani at 9:36 AM on December 12, 2011 [4 favorites]

there's a fetish for that
posted by LogicalDash at 1:25 PM on December 12, 2011 [1 favorite]

I seem to recall reading a pretty solid observation someone on MeFI made, that The Game is just a gender-reversed The Rules; that where The Game is about all these stupid methods to have sex, The Rules were stupid methods to deny it in order to entrap someone into a relationship -- totally non-feminist crap like "Don't Talk to a Man First (and Don't Ask Him to Dance)," "Don't Call Him & Rarely Return His Calls," and so on. I just wish I lived in a world where the men and women who abide by this idiocy would just find each other and leave the rest of us alone.
posted by Amanojaku at 1:52 PM on December 12, 2011 [1 favorite]

Amanojaku: Randall Munroe is in your head
posted by d. z. wang at 6:52 PM on December 12, 2011 [1 favorite]