The Subtle Art of Manipulation

**Reposted from the first Lair, original date: 1/8/04

I really value my friends.  In fact, I cherish my friends.  If you’re my friend, I will bend over backwards to help you, because in my view, you’ve earned the right to recieve my help.  Being my friend also means you’ve earned the right to recieve my trust.  And being my friend means that no matter what happens, in the end, I’ll always be on your side.  Its very hard to find good friends in life.  The type of friends you’d entrust your life to.  One quality about friendship I admire is that true friends never really NEED anything from each other.  Its just enough to be together, to enjoy each other’s company, to share time with someone without any expectation whatsoever.  Our friends help define our lives.

That is why it is SO important to know who your friends are.  True friends can be very valuable, becuase they will return your loyalty and trust with their own.  Fareweather friends can be quite detrimental, because they will use you as long as they have use for you, and when that use no longer exists, they will betray all that you have given them.  And finally, you have the most volitile category, which is the people you WANT to be your friends.  They are people who embody the values and traits you look for in friends, yet are not your friend — and therefor not responsible to you in anyway.  This can lead to great friendships, or terrible disasters.  I bring this up because I recently had something similar happen to me.

There’s a man who I greatly respect out there, whom I admire in many respects.  He’s not only successful with women, but also life in general.  I feel I owe this guy a great debt, because he has helped me in the past, and the only way I knew how to repay such a debt with with my friendship.  But when it was offered, it was met with rejection.  I basically got the jist that I was not important enough to be his friend.  All my offers for meetings were met with excuses, and most phone calls were not returned.  This isn’t a bad thing, though.  It’s fine if someone does not wish to be my friend, I won’t think any less of them.  I knew this man whom I admire probably wouldn’t want me as a friend, but I felt I had to offer it anyway.  When it was declined, I accepted the result and went on with my life.  But that never really affected the way I felt about him.  I still look up to the guy, because he has a skillset and attitude that I am, to put it simply, in awe of.  And I can only hope to achieve some of the success he has.

So I guess I was a little surprized when I hear from him out of the blue after literally months of not hearing a peep from him.  And of course, its because he wants something from me, which isn’t necessarilly a bad thing, but it was the way he did it that somewhat irked me a bit.  Now, I guess its pretty obvious I’d love to have this guy as a friend.  I’d like to have him as someone I can trust and rely on, which is why I suppose I still look up to him.  But what happened today really opened my eyes to a few things and served as a nice wake-up call to me about certain aspects of my life.

Simply put, I consider this guy to be the master at manipulation.  Better than anyone who’s in the community.  He is really awe inspiring because of the fact that he is so good at manipulating others, you don’t even know he’s doing it!  If I had a fraction of the skill this guy has, I’d be getting laid every night of the week.

But he made a mistake with me when he called.  I’m not sure if it was intentional or not, but its something that put me on guard instantly.  Basically, he called me as a friend.  I found this funny because he made it fairly clear that he had no use for me as a friend, and because of this, I put up my guard.  And in a way, it helped me to see what this guy was doing to me.  If I hadn’t been aware of it, I could have fallen for everything he was doing.  It was so subtle and amazing what he did, that I’m actually inspired to break it down and use it on women.

The first thing he did was compliment me.  This is a great tactic because it disarms your target.  It puts the target in a power position because a compliment is inherently a form of qualification.

The second thing he did was ask me for a small favor, which I returned graciously because it wasn’t a big deal to do so, and the compliment paved the way for this to be reciprocated.  But what the favor really did was pull me into his realitiy.  But it doesn’t have to be a favor, it could be a simple question, just as long as the target is giving you something you wat.  What he did set the frame where its okay for me to give him what he wants, which is exactly where you want your target to be for the next step, which is:

Go for the kill.

At this point, you basically go after exactly what you want from the person your manipulating, and you frame it in such a way where its of great benefit for them to do so.  You’ve already established that they have the "power" and it’s okay to give you what you want, so as long as you go after it powerfully enough, you can get what you’re after from your target.  But there’s a greater depth to this part of the tactic than meets the eye.  In a way, this is where the manipulation gets the most evil, because in order to go in for the kill, you have play off other people’s insecurities and put them in a position where they have to start qualifying themselves to you — basically giving you ALL the power you want while still having the illusion that it’s all theirs.

This man, whom I admire, was doing many things to turn the tables on me.  Basically, he was trying to make me feel pathetic by pointing out things he was hoping would touch on an insecurity of mine (he was mistaken about these insecurities, but I think that may have been the point).  If I hadn’t had my guard up, I probably would have instantly started qualifying myself and giving him EXACTLY what he wanted.

However, at this point I balked.  I kept my mouth shut.  It is here where most guys might give up (especially if their target is a woman), but being the master this dude is, he kept going, and his tactics got even more manipulative.

The first thing he did was point out all the other people who had agreed to what he was asking me for.  They are people I admire and respect as well, so he was qualifying his request by implying that I could join part of this crowd by going along with what he wanted, and in a way, be validated by them.  When I balked again, he did a takeaway.  But when he did the takeaway, he also changed his tone to one of frustration and disappointment.  Now, this takeaway did work — like it usually does in most cases because after you feel someone has qualified themselves to you, if they get angry they are going to take the validation you recieved from that qualification away from you — but I was still not ready to commit to what he wanted from me.  I think I was in such awe with what was happening to me that I really didn’t want it to end because I found it fascinating, but by this point it seemed all pretext of friendship was dropped and this guy whom I respect had already made his decision to move on, but not before adding in a false time constraint to put pressure on me to make up my mind.  This added an immediacy to the situation that may or may not have existed, but regardless, the intended effect worked.  I felt under the gun.

When I got off the phone with him, I was stunned at what had taken place.  I imagine it was much like what the architect of the atomic bomb felt when he witnessed the beauty of the destruction he helped create, torn between his feelings of utter terror and utter amazement.  To think that someone out there possesses such power as this — and not only that, is AWARE of the power and KNOWS what he’s doing… well, that’s just frightening.  But it gave me such an incredible insight into how his mind works and the process he goes about interacting with people… well, I guess I’m still speachless to a certain extent.

I’m very much aware this man isn’t my friend.  But I still harbor such respect and admiration for him, it’s hard to be angry about what he attempted to do.  In fact, I’m probably more in awe of him now than I’ve ever been.  Whether or not it was intentional or he’s incorporated these skills so seamlessly that it’s part of who he is doesn’t really matter.  The fact is, it happened, and the process of which I got a glimpse into is utterly amazing.

So much so, I am now convinced of the Power of the Dark Side.

Thundercat