Welcome to the dark art of social manipulation.
You get a thick, big and strong erection when you see a naked women. Likewise, you can get popular if you push people’s emotional buttons just right. When you get people to like you, you get free drinks, easy job promotions and more dates.
The social game is strategic.
Unfortunately nobody taught you this in school; you learned by trial and error. The popular kids in high school “gets it”.
In the working world, those with better social skills will get better jobs and easier promotions even if they’re below average skilled, ie the scheming guy becomes the CEO through social connections or the incompetent secretary who got the promotion by suck the boss’s dick.
Here are the strategies you want to follow.
1. Show, don’t tell
Never brag about your accomplishments or drop names. Instead, let people see your accomplishments on Linkedin or your vacation pictures on Instagram.
People are noisy, voyeuristic creatures who love snooping – that’s why the best selling magazines of all times are, you guessed it, celebrity gossip magazines.
People are more impressed when they “spied” on your vacation via Instagram than you outright bragging about your vacation. Better yet, let others brag for you.
I grew up around a pleb father who loved bragging with his pleb friends. Together they spent the nights drinking beer and bragging. Their pleasure derived from one upping each other.
My father accomplished very little in his life – he worked at a factory job for minimum wage, doesn’t read, doesn’t travel, just worked and gossiped at the coffee shop.
He didn’t have many friends either because he would destroyed friendships by spreading lies and rumors.
If you did something cool, explain it in 1 or 2 sentences and don’t elaborate unless asked.
“Yeah, I went to Las Vegas and drove a Lamborghini around a race track. It was fun.”
2. Praise people
How do you come across as sincere even if you have seething contempt for them? Praise occasionally. “Nice haircut! Did you lose weight? You look good today etc.”
Some people fall into the trap and overly praise which makes the compliment seem insincere. You’ll get an intuitive feel when to praise without crossing the line.
Praise everyone, even the obnoxious person at the office – you want her to be on your side?
Why?
Because even annoying people in numbers can wield power, ie fat feminists and social justice warriors. When you help the weak, old and young, people will immediately like you.
Politicians know this, hence kissing the baby on every televised election.
3. Have an obsession with hygiene, dress style and fitness
People subconsciously want to associate with winners. After all nobody respects a fat slob with bitch tits.
Since you have the discipline and will power to dress well with impeccable hygiene, what other amazing things you have in your life, they wonder.
Curiosity will drive them to WANT to be your friend. It’s no secret that people judge by appearance – use this to your advantage.
4. Develop a caricature version of yourself
People get famous on TV by playing a role – David Dempsey is famous for throwing tantrums, PewDiePie is famous for screaming at the screen like an autistic (he made $7 millions USD off youtube last year), Simon Cowell from American Idol is famous for making mean comments at contestants.
You can make yourself known as the “funny and intelligent guy” or “the guy who travels the world” or “the guy who is popular with the ladies”
The worse thing you can is the boring nobody. Never express your insecurities and fears.
Let people see the caricature you.
5. Send them a happy birthday card and New Year card, via email or post card
Create a template for your class mates or co-workers to save time.
Something like “It’s been a pleasure working with you. Who’s awesome? You’re awesome. I wish you the best of luck and make this an amazing year. See you at work tomorrow!”
6. Got an invitation? Turn them down
You want to strategically hang out with them. For every 2 invites the send, turn down one.
This implies you’re a busy person who values your time and hence, people will treat you with respect. All of this is done without saying a word.
7. Only say positive or neutral things about people
Never gossip, even if you have seething contempt for them.
It’s easy to talk behind a co-worker’s back. But the person you’re gossiping with thinks you talk shit about him too. Remain neutral on the topic, even if you have a strong opinion.
I learned from my pleb father who loved talking about negativity. He complained and bitched about everything in life – the economy, the people, the life he’s living, how people treated him at work.
Nobody gives a shit.
What’s more, only misery loves misery. Always be smiling and talk about neutral or positive things.
If there’s a sensitive topic that comes up, give a terse neutral answer.
8. Your time has high value
Ever attended an event that you don’t even like but you went there out of politeness?
What a waste of time.
When someone ask you to attend an event, give a non-committing answer. “Maybe” is a good answer. If someone pressures me, I simply say no.
Because you give non-committing answers, when you finally say “yes” – this means you follow through. You’ll be known as the guy who keeps his words.
Never get used by people who repeatedly ask you for requests but give no value in return. Turn them down by saying no. Tell them you’re not an expert in this subject matter.
Never ever waste your time with a fucking nobody. Occasionally you’ll come across an idiot – never argue or pick a fight.
9. Appear to have no agenda, even if you have one
People have a hard time buying from a sale man but an easy time buying from a friend. You want to come across as genuine and sincere.
Don’t try too hard to offer help or freely give people things (remember the try hard kid in class who always raise his hand first or brown nose the teacher by offering help?)
Be selective in giving your time, money and praise. Strange fact in life: the more you give people free stuff/time/effort, the more likely they are to abuse you.
You have a small circle of close friends who you can be your true self – “Mother fucker tried to scam me the other day. I’m going to fuck him and his mom!”
Then you have the huge circle of people who you play the social game to get ahead life – “Hey man, looking good! Nice haircut.”
10. Always be playing dumb
A dumb person is like-able. Innocent, like a child.
You can sense that I’m a calculating, anal person who stresses on success. When I’m meeting people offline, I’m a very easy going person who is funny and never critical.
That’s because I don’t talk about reading patrician tier books or hardcore self improvement.
Instead I tell jokes, listen to other people’s problems, discuss about interesting things and take things very easy.
I don’t try to explain high level concepts or rant about high brow stuff.
A poker player, Jim, once went on a breathless rant about photography using big words. Other players around the table listened quietly. Later they told me Jim sounded like a try hard.
Because socialization is a game, you can master the skill
Imagine coming across as the humble, nice guy whom everyone likes. This is the image you’re creating. This is a safe, default persona to have. And you don’t even have to put much effort into it.
Get ahead of the social game. Put this guide into practice and you’ll have co-workers eagerly buy you drinks in the bar, just because you’re the popular one.
Sounds a bit dark? It is. But it’s amoral. Use this with great care, Jedi.
Have a nice day.
Your comrade,
Max Uber.
Fantastic piece, Max. I noticed that it seems focused on building a strong and likeable persona, so I had some questions:
1. What works best for defending yourself against a social rival who is deploying his charisma against you? I’ve had situations where coworkers who liked me reject a proposal I made (which actually benefited them) because a charismatic rival of mine spent a lot of effort turning them against it.
2. How should I execute a social attack on a rival? Essentially, how does a man mimic the methods employed by an alpha-female who uses cattiness, passive aggression and bitchiness to take down her rivals?
Hi thinkingabout it,
I can’t give you advice on office politics because I never worked in an office environment before, but socially speaking, here’s what I would do.
1. Ignore them (but it’s hard to do since you work in an office)
2. Care less about the drama (better option is just to do you work, build a second income stream etc)
3. Be blase – the cattiness, passive aggression and bitchiness is to get a reaction from you. Act like you don’t care by agreeing and amplify.
For example:
“I heard you got a small dick?”
“Yeah, it’s 3 inches on a good day”
4. Finally, verbally punch back at them
“I heard you got a small dick?”
“Yeah, it’s 3 inches on a good day. You look like the type that like small dicks, I can fuck you if you want”
LOL – of course, you would tone it down in an office but the principle remains. If she takes a verbal jab at you, verbally slug her face in.
But at the end of the day, office politics is annoying. I simply recommend you drop the need to execute a social attack on a rival, only care about yourself and let your “alpha female” drown in her own mediocrity.
– Max
Thanks Max. I didn’t mean there was literally an alpha female out to get me, I meant that office politics is similar to the social dynamics of girls’ high school cliques, where charismatic females set the agenda and exclude girls they don’t like.
I agree that disengaging is best for your happiness, but I do wonder if being unwilling to play the game simply results in you turning into a bystander. Politics is as old as humanity, we can’t shut our eyes to it.
Ah well shutting your eyes to “the game” is known as being a gamma male. You see the bullshit, you see the games people play. You choose to ignore it and go about your business as if it never happened and rise above it.
I used to be a gamma male.
I tried not playing the game in college, but you can bet your ass that it played me. Me being a not-giving-a-fuck, tall, handsome unfuckwitable person can make some guys really jealous. I got hit on by most of the girls in that class, 3 or 4 of them being hot girls in my art class and I dated one of them.
But I had to deal with shit loads of bullying, ribbing and generally being on the receiving end of social manipulation, mainly because of the guys I hanged around figured out they would always play second fiddle to me. So they decided they would fuck me over by giving me shit constantly to make me look weak, but it really didn’t help that I didn’t stick up for myself and acted above them and just ignored them. One of them was really clever and my attitude towards dealing with attacks backfired big time.
I would say don’t try and win their game and stoop to their level, but don’t just not play it. Some will stop, but some will just see it as a chance to attack you further. The more I ignored it, the worse it got.
Try to come up with brutally honest insults. Point out how they are really fake, they game the fuck out of everyone. Give examples. Really go in on them. For e.g “You say that no-one likes me, but at least they’re honest about it. Everyone pretends to like you because they’re scared of you, I mean every time you tell a joke you fucking eye every one up like a sociopath to make sure they all laugh. Why won’t you just let the fuck up for a few seconds jesus.”
It’s brutal, but it’s probably completely true, it’ll go quiet. Get awkward, everyone puts there head down and you walk away looking like a fucking boss who doesn’t put up with bullshit.
Girls love honesty and that is a great example of being a badass gamma male who doesn’t play the game but also doesn’t let it fuck him.