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Amanda Montell
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Part 1: Repeat After Me . . .

> Page 6 Often, familiar English terms that once held a positive meaning were recast to signify something threatening.
> Page 12 What techniques do charismatic leaders use to exploit people's fundamental needs for community and meaning? How do they cultivate that kind of power?
> Page 12 The real answer all comes down to words. Delivery. From the crafty redefinition of existing words (and the invention of new ones) to powerful euphemisms, secret codes, renamings, buzzwords, chants and mantras, "speaking in tongues," forced silence, even hashtags, language is the key means by which all degrees of cultlike influence occur.
> Page 12 In both positive ways and shadowy ones, "cult language" is, in fact, something we hear and are swayed by every single day.
> Page 13 Part 1 of this book will investigate the language we use to talk about cultish groups, busting some widely believed myths about what the word "cult" even means. Then, parts 2 through 5 will unveil the key elements of cultish language, and how they've worked to inveigle followers of groups as destructive as Heaven's Gate and Scientology . . . but also how they pervade our day- to- day vocabularies. In these pages, we'll discover what motivates people, throughout history and now, to become fanatics, both for good and for evil. Once you understand what the language of "Cultish" sounds like, you won't be able to unhear it.
> Page 13 Language is a leader's charisma. It's what empowers them to create a mini universe -- a system of values and truths -- and then compel their followers to heed its rules.
> Page 14 "Without language, there are no beliefs, ideology, or religion," John E. Joseph, a professor of applied linguistics at the University of Edinburgh, wrote to me from Scotland. "These concepts require a language as a condition of their existence." Without language, there are no "cults."
> Page 14 But with a glimmer of willingness, language can do so much to squash independent thinking, obscure truths, encourage confirmation bias, and emotionally charge experiences such that no other way of life seems possible.
> Page 15 Whether wicked or well- intentioned, language is a way to get members of a community on the same ideological page.
> Page 19 But, like everything in life, there is no good cult/ bad cult binary; cultishness falls on a spectrum.
> Page 19 Hassan says that groups toward the destructive end use three kinds of deception: omission of what you need to know, distortion to make whatever they're saying more acceptable, and outright lies.
> Page 21 It's really no coincidence that "cults" are having such a proverbial moment. The twenty- first century has produced a climate of sociopolitical unrest and mistrust of long- established institutions, like church, government, Big Pharma, and big business. It's the perfect societal recipe for making new and unconventional groups -- everything from Reddit incels to woo- woo wellness influencers -- who promise to provide answers that the conventional ones couldn't supply seem freshly appealing.
> Page 22 Our behavior is driven by a desire for belonging and purpose. We're "cultish" by nature.
> Page 24 We need to feel connected to something, like we're put on earth for a reason other than just dying.
> Page 25 Following a guru who provides an identity template -- from one's politics to one's hairstyle -- eases that chooser's paradox.
> Page 25 It cuts the overwhelming number of answers you need to have down to a manageable few.
> Page 28 Ultimately, the needs for identity, purpose, and belonging have existed for a very long time, and cultish groups have always sprung up during cultural limbos when these needs have gone sorely unmet. What's new is that in this internet- ruled age, when a guru can be godless, when the barrier to entry is as low as a double- tap, and when folks who hold alternative beliefs are able to find one another more easily than ever, it only makes sense that secular cults --
> Page 32 Over the decades, the word "cult" has become so sensationalized, so romanticized, that most experts I spoke to don't even use it anymore. Their stance is that the meaning of "cult" is too broad and subjective to be useful, at least in academic literature.
> Page 32 A few scholars have tried to get more precise and identify specific "cult" criteria: charismatic leaders, mind-altering behaviors, sexual and financial exploitation, an us-versus-them mentality toward nonmembers, and an ends-justify-the-means philosophy.
> Page 33 a power imbalance built on members' devotion, hero worship, and absolute trust, which frequently facilitates abuse on the part of unaccountable leaders.
> Page 33 "brainwashing" is a term that is tossed around incessantly by the media, but that almost every expert I consulted for this book either avoids or rejects. ... Not all "cults" are depraved or perilous. Statistically, in fact, few of them are.
> Page 37 "The biggest joke in religious studies is that cult + time = religion."
> Page 37 labeling something a "cult" becomes not just a value judgment, but an arbiter of real, life-or-death consequences.
> Page 46 A linguistic concept called the theory of performativity says that language does not simply describe or reflect who we are, it creates who we are. That's because speech itself has the capacity to consummate actions, thus exhibiting a level of intrinsic power.
> Page 47 When repeated over and over again, speech has meaningful, consequential power to construct and constrain our reality.
> Page 47 This book will explore the wide spectrum of cults and their uncanny lexicons, starting with the most famously blatantly dreadful ones and working its way to communities so seemingly innocuous, we might not even notice how cultish they are.
> Page 47 Each part of the book will focus on a different category of "cult," all the while exploring the cultish rhetoric that imbues our everyday lives:
> Page 48 The words we hear and use every day can provide clues to help us determine which groups are healthy, which are toxic, and which are a little bit of both—and to what extent we wish to engage with them.
Part 2: Congratulations—You Have Been Chosen to Join the Next Evolutionary Level Above Human

> Page 57 Instead of sticking to one unchanging lexis to represent a unified doctrine, they customize their language according to the individual in front of them.
> Page 58 "His vocabulary could change quickly from being rather backwoods and homey to being quite intellectual," .... code-switching can be used to connivingly gain trust.
> Page 58 Jones learned how to meet each follower on their linguistic level, which sent an instant signal that he understood them and their backgrounds uniquely. ...Contrary to popular belief, the tragedy wasn't premeditated, at least not how the press painted it to be... And most of its victims did not die voluntarily.
> Page 65 This is what every leader of the half dozen "suicide cults" in history have done: Taking an apocalyptic stance on the universe, with them at its center, they believe their imminent demise means everyone else must go down, too.
> Page 66 At one meeting, Jones became so exasperated by Christine's opposition that he pulled a gun on her. "You can shoot me, but you are going to have to respect me first," she retorted—and he backed down.
> Page 68 rhythmic repetition and deceptive hyperbole.
> Page 70 March 1997, ... Heaven's Gate, a group of UFO- believing doomsdayers, systematically took their lives over a three- day period. ... Marshall Applewhite, A sixty-five-year-old seminary school dropout who went on to obtain a master's degree in musical theater, Applewhite boasted a snow-white buzz cut, saucerlike eyes, and a passion for sci-fi tales.
> Page 70 A heaven-bound spacecraft trailing the Comet Hale–Bopp was going to bypass Earth in March 1997, allowing followers a chance to leave this "temporal and perishable world," board the flying saucer, and transport themselves to a distant space dimension Applewhite swore was the Kingdom of God.
> Page 71 Applewhite spoke in long strings of esoteric space talk and Latin-derived syntax to make his small, pseudo-intellectual following feel elite.
> Page 72 In Heaven's Gate, every student chose a new first name as well (and renounced their last name), which, per Applewhite's instructions, ended in the suffix –ody. There was Thurstonody, Sylvieody, Elaineody, Qstody, Srrody, Glnody, Evnody, etc. ... [ thus they were ] rhetorically reborn
> Page 74 Applewhite's rhetoric was heavily influenced by the 1990s' UFO mania.
> Page 74 Applewhite concocted a whole Heaven's Gate vocabulary of niche, sci-fi-esque terms. There was a severe regimentation of daily life in the mansion, and the lingo helped keep things in order.
> Page 75 By marinating in this specific, thematic vernacular every day for years, followers began to picture life on that spacecraft, drifting toward the Kingdom of God. "It was doing real religious work," said Zeller. "It wasn't just gobbledygook."
> Page 77 Within and outside cultish environments, language can accomplish real, life-or-death work.
> Page 77 Using systematic techniques of conversion, conditioning, and coercion, with language as their ultimate power tool, Jones and Applewhite were able to inflict unforgettable violence on their followers without personally laying a finger on them.
> Page 78 Across the influence continuum, cultish language works to do three things: First, it makes people feel special and understood.
> Page 78 This is called conversion.
> Page 78 Then, a different set of language tactics gets people to feel dependent on the leader, such that life outside the group doesn't feel possible anymore. This is a more gradual operation, and it's called conditioning -- the process of subconsciously learning a behavior in response to a stimulus.
> Page 78 And last, language convinces people to act in ways that are completely in conflict with their former reality, ethics, and sense of self. An ends-justify-the-means ethos is embedded, and in the worst cases, it results in devastation. This is called coercion.
> Page 78 The first key element of cultish language? Creating an us-versus-them dichotomy.
> Page 79 The goal is to make your people feel like they have all the answers, while the rest of the world is not just foolish, but inferior.
> Page 79 This is part of why cults have their own jargon in the first place: elusive acronyms, insider-y mantras, even simple labels like "fiber-lab." It all inspires a sense of intrigue, so potential recruits will want to know more; then, once they're in, it creates camaraderie, such that they start to look down on people who aren't privy to this exclusive code.
> Page 79 This goal of isolating followers from the outside while intensely bonding them to each other is also part of why almost all cultish groups (as well as most monastic religions) rename their members:
> Page 80 It's not just followers who gain new names; outsiders get them, too. ... inflammatory nicknames used to exalt devotees and villainize everyone else.
> Page 82 Over time, the memorable nicknames and insider-y terminology acquire a strong emotional charge. ... This lingo is what some psychologists call loaded language. ... Sometimes loaded language works by twisting the meaning of existing words until the new significance eclipses the old one. ... Other times, loaded language comes in the form of misleading euphemisms. ... But Jones's and Applewhite's euphemisms recast death as something actively aspirational. ... There's a companion tool to loaded language that can be found in every cultish leader's repertoire: It's called the thought-terminating cliché. Coined in 1961 by the psychiatrist Robert J. Lifton, this term refers to catchphrases aimed at halting an argument from moving forward by discouraging critical thought.
> Page 84 Thought-terminating clichés are by no means exclusive to "cults." Ironically, calling someone "brainwashed" can even serve as a semantic stop sign.
> Page 84 Once these phrases are invoked, they choke the conversation, leaving no hope of figuring out what's behind the drastic rift in belief.
> Page 86 Thought-terminating clichés provide that temporary psychological sedative.
> Page 86 Digging for more information is poison to a power abuser; thought-terminating clichés squash independent thinking.
> Page 87 Both Applewhite and Jones kept their followers from conversing not only with the outside world but also with each other.
> Page 88 Cultish language isn't a magic bullet or lethal poison; it's more like a placebo pill. ..likelier to "work" on certain people and not others.
"recovered memory therapy" ... this exercise actually implants false memories and can be deeply traumatic for patients.
> Page 94 Techniques like us-versus-them labels, loaded language, and thought-terminating clichés are absolutely crucial in getting people from open, community-minded folks to victims of cultish violence; but importantly, they do not "brainwash" them—at least not in the way we're taught to think about brainwashing.
> Page 95 language doesn't work to manipulate people into believing things they don't want to believe; instead, it gives them license to believe ideas they're already open to. Language—both literal and figurative, well-intentioned and ill-intentioned, politically correct and politically incorrect—reshapes a person's reality only if they are in an ideological place where that reshaping is welcome.
> Page 97 A common belief is that cult indoctrinators look for individuals who have "psychological problems" because they are easier to deceive. But former cult recruiters say their ideal candidates were actually good-natured, service-minded, and sharp.
> Page 99 Letting people tell us only what we want to hear is something we all do. It's classic confirmation bias: an ingrained human reasoning flaw defined by the propensity to look for, interpret, accept, and remember information in a way that validates (and strengthens) our existing beliefs, while ignoring or dismissing anything that controverts them.
> Page 103 If a form of language cues you to have an instant emotional response while also halting you from asking further questions, or makes you feel "chosen" just for showing up, or allows you to morally divorce yourself from some one-dimensionally inferior other, it's language worth challenging.
Part 3: Even YOU Can Learn to Speak in Tongues

> Page 111 Having big dreams makes you vulnerable; Scientologists know this, and they claim to hold the keys to help you unlock your potential.
> Page 117 Whatever negative experience you're having, it's no one's responsibility but yours.
> Page 125 People need something to help make the supernatural feel real, Luhrmann told me, and language does precisely that.
> Page 126 To enter ritual time, some symbolic action typically must take place, like singing a song, lighting a candle, or clipping on your SoulCycle shoes (really).
> Page 126 But an oppressive group doesn't let you leave ritual time. There is no separation, no going back to a reality ... terminology makes speakers feel, well, cool. "In the early days, it was really fun . . . or 'theta,' as we'd say," Cathy told me, referencing Scientology's slang term for "awesome."
> Page 136 Who doesn't love a secret language? "It made you feel superior, because you had these words that other people didn't, and you did the work to understand them."
> Page 137 Confusion is part of the big trick. Feeling so disoriented ... When language works to make you question your own perceptions, whether at work or at church, that's a form of gaslighting.
> Page 137 Gaslighting is a way of psychologically manipulating someone (or many people) such that they doubt their own reality, as a way to gain and maintain control.
> Page 137 Sometimes gaslighters aren't even 100% aware that what they're doing is manipulative.
> Page 142 Scholars tend to use the term "glossolalia" to describe this practice, in which a person utters unintelligible sounds that seem to approximate words from some perceived foreign language during states of religious intensity.
> Page 142 Among believers, glossolalia is typically thought to be a heavenly gift.
Part 4: Do You Wanna Be a #BossBabe?

> Page 167 And their commodity isn't merchandise, it's rhetoric.
> Page 170 The truth is that this toxically positive rhetoric is fundamentally baked into American society. The cult of multilevel marketing is a direct product of the "cult" that is Western capitalism itself. ... networking marketing as we know it got its start in the 1930s.
> Page 194 Impulsivity, says Bosley, is a common diagnostic indicator of people's vulnerability to fraud.
> Page 195 Red flags should rise when there are too many pep talks, slogans, singsongs, code words, and too much meaningless corporate jargon,
> Page 197 Bezos created his own version of the Ten Commandments called the Leadership Principles. It's a code for how Amazonians should think, behave, and speak.
Part 5: This Hour Is Going to Change Your Life . . . and Make You LOOK AWESOME

> Page 245 call-and-responses [community building technique] Part 6: Follow for Follow
> Page 261 As far as the average 1990s imagination could stretch, cults required an in-the-flesh location to have real influence. Without a secluded commune or isolated mansion, how could anyone possibly become separated from their family and friends, have their individuality suppressed, and ideologically convert to a destructive dogma in a way that incited real-world harm?
> Page 262 For better and for worse, social media has become the medium through which millions of us construct kinship and connection in an ever-transient society.
> Page 262 Twenty years post–Heaven's Gate, most zealous fringe groups rarely convene IRL. Instead, they build an online system of morality, culture, and community—and sometimes radicalize—with no remote commune, no church, no "party," no gym. Just language. In lieu of a physical place to meet, cultish jargon gives followers something to assemble around.
> Page 270 It's not that smart people aren't capable of believing in cultish things; instead, says Shermer, it's that smart people are better at "defending beliefs they arrived at for non-smart reasons."
> Page 271 Being smart and hip to the zeitgeist is not enough to protect someone from cultish influence online.
> Page 273 In broad strokes, QAnon started in 2017 as a fringe-y online conspiracy theory surrounding an alleged intelligence insider called Q. The ideology began as something like this: Q, a faceless figure, swore to have "proof" of corrupt left-wing leaders—"the deep state," or "global elite" -- sexually abusing little kids around the world. (According to Q, Donald Trump was working tirelessly to thwart them before being "fraudulently" dethroned.) The only way to undo this evil cabal of high- powered liberal predators was with the support of Q's loyalists, known as "Q Patriots" or "bakers," who'd hunt for meaning in their anonymous leader's secret clues—" Q drops" or "crumbs" -- which were sprinkled throughout the web.
> Page 275 Like most manipulative cults, QAnon's magnetism is largely the promise of special foreknowledge, which is available only to members of its enlightened underground collective.
> Page 275 The glossary goes on and on. And it's always changing, branching off into different "dialects" of QAnon-ese, in order to accommodate new additions to the belief system . . . and, so that social media algorithms don't catch up, flag the language, and block or shadowban the accounts using it. New code words, hashtags, and rules for how to use them are introduced all the time.
> Page 277 Virtual treasure hunt creates a form of conditioning called a variable-ratio schedule, where rewards are dispensed at unpredictable intervals. [See Habit]
> Page 277 Some of the psychological quirks thought to drive conspiracy theory belief in general, Pierre writes, include a craving for uniqueness, plus the needs for certainty, control, and closure that feel especially urgent during crisis-ridden times. With all their plot twists and good/evil binaries, conspiracy theories seize our attention, while supplying simple answers to unresolved questions make believers feel special that they're privy to secrets to which the rest of us 'sheeple' are blind," Pierre explains.
> Page 279 On the internet, however, a mysterious epigram with no clear source can serve as an on-ramp leading seekers to something much more sinister.
> Page 281 It would be easy enough for me to write off all these groups, from SoulCycle to Instagram, as cultish and thus evil. But in the end, I don't think the world would benefit from us all refusing to believe or participate in things. Too much wariness spoils the most enchanting parts of being human.

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Anna Merlan
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Prologue We've been a nation gripped by conspiracy for a long time.
Page 7 Sometimes, too, conspiracy theories are the "official story," the cause of real and far- reaching state action, as with the Red Scare, where a fear of Communists undermining the country led to life- ruining hearings and blacklists.
Page 8 There's a perpetual tug between conspiracy theorists and actual conspiracies, between things that are genuinely not believable and truths that are so outlandish they can be hard, at first, to believe.
Page 8 To understand why people believe things that are at odds with all provable truths is to understand how we form our views about the world and the resultant world we have made together.
Page 8 We're all prone to believing half- truths, forming connections where there are none to be found, finding importance in political and social events that may not have much significance at all.
1. False Times

Page 14 [A conspiracy theory is ] a belief that a small group of people are working in secret against the common good, to create harm, to effect some negative change in society, to seize power for themselves, or to hide some deadly or consequential secret.
Page 14 An actual conspiracy is when a small group of people are working in secret against the common good, and anyone who tells you we can always easily distinguish fictitious plots from real ones probably hasn't read much history. Note - Page 14 This definition undermines the idea of theory. Conspiracy fantasy would be better.
Page 15 Frank Donner wrote that conspiracism reveals a fundamental insecurity about who Americans want to be versus who we are.
Page 15 It is worth noting that conspiracy theories frequently echo the spirit of the religious zealots who founded this country.
Page 15 Like religion, conspiracy theories don't just identify a common enemy, but outline a path to a better life and provide hope for the future. Numerous studies have noted that insecure and threatened populations—nonwhite people and unemployed people among them—show higher rates of conspiracy thinking.
Page 16 Thus conspiracy theories, in the more sophisticated academic readings, look like a way to give corporeal form to hard-to-define anxieties, a foe on which to pin the varied worries and misfortunes of a group that senses marginalization, like conservatives during the 1960s and again in the Obama years, when they sensed power and cultural influence slipping from their grasp.
Page 17 Sometimes they originate from the state itself, as in Russia, where disinformation and elaborate conspiratorial explanations emanate constantly from both the government and respected public intellectuals.
Page 17 Richard Hofstadter's "The Paranoid Style in American Politics," a long essay that first ran in Harper's in November 1964, which posits conspiracism as a type of mental illness infecting a swath of Americans, particularly those on the far right. Time is forever just running out."
Page 18 The point is more often to identify an enemy than outline precisely what they've done.
Page 19 Mark Fenster points out that conspiracy theories are often an exaggerated expression of American populism: our suspicion of authority figures, our fear of consolidation of power.
Page 19 there's a distinct class element to them: people with only a high school education are more likely to believe at least one, and people who report a higher income are less likely to declare conspiratorial beliefs.
Page 20 the Nero-fiddling-as-Rome-burns version is one of the earliest known examples of two things. First, it's a conspiracy theory about the government unleashing chaos to extend control; second, a government official used a conspiracy theory to realize political ends.
Page 22 Antigovernment conspiracy theorists tend to overestimate the ability of bureaucrats to scheme in secret. Grand conspiracies are hard to conceal.
Page 22 Yet it's not unreasonable—at all, even a little bit—to believe that the government is still engaged in nefarious and secretive behavior, because we know that it has done so in the past.
Page 22 We have found ourselves at a point in history where both real government conspiracies and their shadows loom large in our collective imagination. Those two things, working in tandem, destabilize the public perception of what's true, what's possible, and what we're ready to pin on those running the country.
Page 24 One persistent question is why some people go further into conspiracy thinking than others. There are clearly psychological, cultural, emotional, and circumstantial elements at work and, predictably, a mess of slightly conflicting studies to tell us how much weight to lend to each.
Page 24 motivated reasoning: we tend to give more weight to studies, news articles, and any other form of information that confirms our pre-existing beliefs and values, and find ways to reject things that don't line up with what we feel to be true,
Page 25 we're not particularly receptive to information that makes us feel defensive or attacked about our existing values or beliefs.
Page 32 There is evidence that some disinformation peddlers are influenced and fed information by governments that find them useful.
2. "None of It Is Crazy"

Page 40 There's often (though not always) some relationship in America between conspiracy theory and actual conspiracy, between the shadows on the cave wall and the shape of the thing itself.
Page 55 The existence of such fake sites confirms one distressing, permanent point: actual government conspiracies have generated a long afterlife. They linger in the collective memory, give rise to new conspiracy theories, and lay out a detailed, easy-to-follow playbook for fomenting further division and distrust.
3. Nocturnal Ritual Pizza Party

Page 67 "coded rhetoric" meant to incite "scripted violence." 4. False Flags
Page 80 One of the most intense and immovable American fears is of subliminal, hidden government control. We're also worried about the other, more overt kind—armies marching down the street, doors kicked in, guns in our faces—
Page 81 the fear of invisible government manipulation is also largely accountable for the prevalence of theories of false flags: the idea that mass casualty events have been orchestrated or carried out by the government to consolidate its power.
Page 87 the first major school shooting, at Columbine High School, wasn't a popular false flag theory when it took place in 1999, before the age of YouTube, easily buildable blogs, and widely used social media platforms. Instead, that shooting was retroactively identified as a possible false flag years later by the truther community.
Page 97 school in a long time.""This category of recent conspiracy theorists is really a global network of village idiots," Pozner told me by phone. "They would have never been able to find each other before, but now it's this synergistic effect of the combination of all of them from all over the world.
7. A Natural Man

Page 163 Although redemption theory targets desperate people, it also takes advantage of two facts: the tax code is impossibly, impenetrably hard to understand; and there is always someone, somewhere who has found a way to beat it. Anyone who knows that corporations and millionaires often end up paying very little in taxes is primed to find that argument persuasive.
10. Conspiracism Is for Everyone: The Deep State and Russiagate

Page 222 Sometimes paranoia around the government and the White House turns out to be well founded:
Page 222 Despite much scoffing from the right, a persuasive case was made that the Russian government did meddle in the 2016 elections. The CIA, FBI, and NSA—not the most left-wing institutions, traditionally—jointly issued a report in January 2017 stating that Russian president Vladimir Putin ordered the meddling efforts to harm Hillary Clinton's presidential bid and undermine American democratic processes.
Page 225 Russian fever stemmed from a desperate liberal fantasy of a speedy Trump impeachment. "The dream fueling the Russia frenzy is that it will eventually create a dark enough cloud of suspicion around Trump that Congress will find the will and the grounds to impeach him."
Page 226 The concept is not new, either in the United States or abroad; in some countries it is a very real phenomenon—a permanent ruling class within the military, the judiciary, and intelligence agencies that remains in power no matter which party is elected.
Page 231 claiming that an external enemy threatens the sovereignty of the state—an enemy to be repelled by any means necessary—is historically a hallmark of authoritarian leaders.
Epilogue

Page 243 But in the early years of the twenty-first century, people feel particularly dispossessed by a political process bound by two unresponsive parties, an ever-growing ocean of dark money, and representatives who become more inaccessible with each passing year.
Page 243 our lives are controlled by corporations and federal agencies they cannot see or appeal
Page 243 For some, inaction feels morally intolerable.
Page 244 we like conspiracies and seem to genuinely enjoy sharing them.
Page 244 "the proportion of misinformation was twice that of the content from experts and the candidates themselves.
Page 244 The word "polarizing" has a specific, and alarming, meaning, the authors noted. "This content uses divisive and inflammatory rhetoric and presents faulty reasoning or misleading information to manipulate the reader's understanding of public issues and feed conspiracy theories."
Page 244 Truth and fact-checking travel along the same paths that conspiracies do. But the truth is often complicated, shaded, and demanding, and there's no denying that it often lacks the powerful, emotional, gut-level appeal of a conspiracy.
Page 244 Beyond building an environment of misinformation and secrecy, conspiracy theories also have the worrisome effect of inducing paralysis, even as they galvanize those at the extreme end to extreme action.
Page 245 there is no shortage of people willing to profit from a population's distrust and disengagement, from the impulse to expose evil and the desire to right wrongs.
Page 245 people become the willing foot soldiers of a mob of fame-hungry provocateurs such as Mike Cernovich and Alex Jones, whose paranoid fantasies then ripple outward and touch us all.
Page 246 The popularity and durability of conspiracism means that it will always have its huckster street preachers such as Jones and Cernovich. But beyond the individuals, we need to look at the systems that made them so influential. Social media has created the world's most efficient vehicle of delivery for conspiracy theories. Combined with the hyperpolarized state of American politics and the resurgence of white supremacist and nationalist movements, social media provides a virtual assembly line for scapegoats, a systematized and lightning-fast way to spread blame, doubt, enmity, and politically expedient rumormongering.
Page 246 Ultimately, social media cannot be held directly responsible for the virulence of conspiracy theories. The same Internet that spreads garbage has also toppled regimes, created a megaphone for marginalized voices, exposed injustice, fomented discussion, and held power to account.
Page 247 Yet some proposals—like pressuring social media platforms to flag conspiracy theories as hate speech and remove the pages spreading them on those grounds—involve trusting companies like Facebook to distinguish between constitutionally protected speech and other kinds.
Page 247 Social media aside, it is our job to counter bad speech with better speech.
Page 248 Conspiracy theories can lose their draw if we turn to the work of improving the environment in which they grow by creating a more just, equitable, economically secure, and politically representative society. Conspiracism, like the xenophobia and suspicion that grow from the same gnarled roots, is fed by social instability.
Page 249 We will not be a less paranoid country until we are a fairer one. We need genuinely representative elections, better education in science and media literacy, a less moneyed system of democracy, true and permanent government transparency.

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Chin-Ning Chu
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[What follows is Chin-Ning Chu's representation of Li ZongWu's Thick Black Theory, a Chinese text about how success depends on shamelessness and ruthlessness. That text, which is translated here, was published in China in 1911. It caused an uproar, apparently, because it was so directly disrespectful of tradition and ritual and decorum. It is profoundly cycnical, to use a Western word. If you look at Li ZongWu's text you will see that it is, as Chin-Ning asserts, difficult to understand. Thus I'm suggesting you read Chin-Ning's representation of it. Wiki has an entry you might find helpful.] Full text download (pdf)

Introduction

Thick Black Theory ... is a relatively modern work and is still virtually unknown outside of China.... an erratic, difficult book. Lee's writing is obscure. His chaotic style makes Lee difficult to understand even for learned Chinese. ... brief, disconnected epigrams that are meaningless to anyone not deeply immersed in Chinese literature. ... bluntly honest vision of the world.
There is the superficial aspect: learning the methods and practices by which you can get what you want by imposing your will on others. And there is the deeper, spiritual understanding of Thick Face, Black Heart as the natural and proper state of your soul.
1: The Essence of Thick Face, Black Heart

each one of us will discover the destiny to which we must be true.
Understanding how to surmount pain, doubt, and failure is a vital component in winning the game of life.
Thick Face: a shield to protect our self- esteem from the bad opinions of others. A person adept at Thick Face creates his own positive self- image despite the criticism of others.
The thick- faced person has the ability to put self- doubt aside. He refuses to accept the limitations that others have tried to impose on him and, more importantly, he does not accept any of the limitations that we commonly impose on ourselves. By his absolute self- confidence, the thick- faced person instills confidence in others. A Thick Face need not be assertive or aggressive. He may be humble and submissive. Thick Face is the ability to adopt whatever manner the situation calls for without regard for what other people think of you.
Adopt the thick face of a man with a strong sense of his own worth.
Black Heart is the ability to take action without regard to how the consequences will affect others. ... ruthless, but it is not necessarily evil. The black- hearted person is above shortsighted compassion. He focuses his attention on his goals and ignores the cost. A black- hearted person has the courage to fail.
Ignore the criticism and disapproval of the masses.
Ignore criticism, ridicule, and vilification from others, while simultaneously carrying out his duties as he sees fit.
Detachment and dispassion that enables the warrior to face life's challenges with calm and grace.
Our objective in practicing Thick Face, Black Heart is to be able to defend ourselves against others' aggression. ... neither seeks nor needs external approval.
2: Preparation for Thick Face, Black Heart: Eleven Principles of Unlearning

I am not advising you to become an amoral, self- centered person, but to recognize the difficulties that are involved for a naturally caring, sensitive person such as yourself to pursue your own legitimate self- interest. ... gradually replace the beliefs you were taught with the truths you discover.
Self- knowledge is a more reliable guide to behavior than adherence to arbitrarily imposed standards, though both are susceptible to error. ... the false and arbitrary nature of many of the standards under which you are laboring. ... success means change and the risk of failure.
Success also requires the courage to risk disapproval.
MASTER THE DISTINCTIONS BETWEEN VIRTUE AND VANITY
Perform your duty without attachment or aversion
Creation and destruction are not opposites,
3: Dharma: The Wish-Fulfilling Tree

Dharma is often defined as that which supports life. People who practice Dharma accept life as it comes and perform their duty accordingly. Dharma is a natural law that guides us to recognize at any given moment the role each one of us is playing in life. Being true to the duty of that particular role at any given time. The opposite of Dharma is Adharma, which is defined as going against one's proper duty in life. Dharma, the natural law that guides the rightness of our actions, is the foundation of Thick Face, Black Heart.
5: Winning through Negative Thinking

If You Have Chicken Manure, Sell Fertilizer. As the Tibetans say, "If you are lying on the ground, you must use the ground to raise yourself."
Only the mediocre are always at their best.—JEAN GIRAUDOUX
6: The Magical Power of Endurance

The Chinese word for crisis is made by combining two characters: crisis and opportunity.
Have you ever noticed that you are frequently quite good at solving someone else's problems?
The person who lives in our head is not our true self.
7: The Mystery of Money

The Chinese character for wealth— the accumulation of money and other assets— is composed of two symbols: one is a seashell, the other is the symbol for the unique ability or talent that each of us has
12: Acquiring the Killer Instinct

finish the job quickly and cleanly--that is the killer instinct,
To sacrifice the smaller for the larger is natural in Asian culture, whereas to Westerners this is barbaric and inhumane.
he abandoned his objective and took refuge in a false image of his own nobility, masking his weakness as the "noblesse oblige" of one great warrior to another. ... neither was he encumbered by Xiang Yu's concept of honor.
The greater your ambition, the more able and willing you must be to exercise your killer instinct. You have to ignore totally whatever your mind is telling you and whatever you're feeling. Just focus wholeheartedly on your task: "Whatever state of mind you are in, ignore it. Think only of cutting."
A totally focused state of mind is the essential driving force behind the perfect killer instinct.
The killer instinct is the power that propels us to take proper actions in spite of ourselves, keeping us on the path to our objectives. ... The lesson of acquiring the perfect killer instinct is not only in the drama of bullfights and the high finance of the business world; it also exists in its entirety in the flipping of a pancake.
13: Thick Face, Black Heart Leadership (a literal translation from Kung Ming's Art of War)

turn disadvantage into advantage
Sometimes it is necessary to do some biting and scratching in order to accomplish one's just objectives, ... and these people are also useful for one's own self- defense.
Set clear standards of expectations for their performance, and praise or reprimand them accordingly.
Notice all the "little right things"
If there were no laughter, the Tao would not be Tao.
14: Thick Within, Black Within

remove the barriers and discover that which you already possess.
Through our "proper" social upbringing, we have disfigured the intuitive understanding of the natural law of winning that is within each one of us. ... undo the wrongs that have been imposed upon you since your birth. The first step is self- reflection and self- discovery. ... The only reward for being good is good itself. ... You have been denying and depriving yourself, ... By ignoring your individual needs and totally catering to the needs of others in accordance to the role you are playing, you have betrayed your inner nature and sacrificed your well- being. ... It is too painful to live your life without the liberty of self- expression and self- nurturing.
be aware that a great courage exists within you, the power of courage that enables you to acknowledge your own existence and your own needs. ... Uproot this limited concept of goodness and embrace the expanded virtue.... Stand up against your automatic, habitual actions and thoughts and venture into new frontiers. ... By breaking through your notion of others' standards and expectations, you find a new surge of inner harmony: The highest code of living is detachment.
He is indifferent to pain and struggle. The situation might be devastating, but he is not devastated. He graciously rides the waves of life through glory and disgrace. ... indifferent to human judgments. ... uncompromising ...
Freedom and the courage of action. ... free yourself from trivial concerns and find the peace you seek in the "bigger picture." .. get petty-mindedness out of the way and simultaneously master ultimate humility and frailty.
East and West may have different metaphors and symbols, but the differences are only in the wrapping, not in the essence.
power gives you the strength to stand up to your automatic habitual actions and thoughts and venture into new frontiers.
Detachment is the secret key to obtaining everything you "want."
Nature is the embodiment of Thick Face, Black Heart.
15: Paths to Thick Face, Black Heart

believe our Maker has forgotten to deliver them a copy of the operation manual. ... We simply do not know where to find this manual or how to ... read it. ... There is no place or time in which this manual is not present.
artificial standards encumber and distract us. ... we become what we think. ... The mind is easily distracted; it loses its focus and becomes restless. If it is not directed positively, its power will be diffused. ... When your breathing is short and shallow, your mind is restless.
"No matter where you are, make sure you are there." Mahatma Gandhi
16: How a Piranha Eats the Shark
As our experience expands, our reality is also altered
Appendix: Thick Black Theory

Lee Zhong Wu was a social philosopher and critic.
He described the methods by which men obtain and hold on to power: how they use their power and wealth to accumulate more power and wealth. ... Being banned by the government. It was banned because too many people were made uncomfortable by the truth in Lee's observations. They were not used to seeing the ruthlessness and hypocrisy underlying many Chinese institutions laid bare.
The first requirement is to empty your mind of everything that does not pertain to your appointment to the position you seek. You must have no other goals, no other thoughts. ... You must seize every little opportunity to advance your prospects. ... You must constantly seek to bring your qualifications and importance to the attention of those who are in a position to help you. ... You must ingratiate yourself with those who can help you. ... You must be very subtle with your threats, because you may unknowingly threaten people with a great ability to do you harm.
There are two kinds of bribery. The first involves small gifts, meals, drinks. Often these small gifts create a sense of obligation far exceeding their cost. ... Large bribes are used to seal the appointment. They should also be given to those who have great influence with the official who has the power to appoint you. ... You should smear yourself with a layer of false benevolence and pretend to be a religious, moral man.
You should say and do nothing. Talk about everything, but say nothing. Make an appearance of being very active, but do nothing. You should never take a definite position, because it might turn out to be wrong or might offend some powerful person.
Claim credit for anything that might go well and disown responsibility for anything that might go wrong.
You must bow and scrape before your superiors.
You must cultivate a haughty and disdainful attitude toward your inferiors.
You must be ruthless... vulnerable to your will, you must maintain a virtuous image. You must join organizations that have virtuous purposes so that people will not believe you capable of ruthless actions.
You must not hear criticism. You must not see the disapproving looks of others.
the importance of avoiding accountability for your actions and making your actions seem much more important than they really are. ... Do as little as possible and always try to leave someone else to finish the job. ... if something goes wrong so long as the blame can be laid on whoever gave the final approval or finished the job. ... Oftentimes it is necessary to make the situation a little worse than it actually is in order to ensure the proper level of appreciation for your efforts.
TWO TYPES OF FOREIGN POLICY: THE THUG AND THE PROSTITUTE

The prostitute has a thick face. The thug has a black heart. ... Whenever it became expedient for them to do so, they would break their treaties and make the same promises to another country. ... The thug is a brute without a conscience who will use whatever weapons are available to him in order to beat his victims into submission.
Lee maintains ... a man rises in the world exactly to the same degree that he fears his wife.
Lee attaches an almost mystical significance to wife fearing. A man's wife is the person to whom he entrusts his whole life. Out of love for her and fear of her, he goes out into the world to make a name for himself.

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Dale Carnegie
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It isn't what you have or who you are or where you are or what you are doing that makes you happy or unhappy. It is what you think about it.
Don't be afraid of enemies who attack you. Be afraid of the friends who flatter you.
You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.
Any fool can criticize, complain, and condemn—and most fools do. But it takes character and self-control to be understanding and forgiving.
When dealing with people, remember you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but with creatures bristling with prejudice and motivated by pride and vanity.
Talk to someone about themselves and they'll listen for hours.
Actions speak louder than words, and a smile says, 'I like you. You make me happy. I am glad to see you'.
Personally I am very fond of strawberries and cream, but I have found that for some strange reason, fish prefer worms. So when I went fishing, I didn’t think about what I wanted. I thought about what they wanted. I didn't bait the hook with strawberries and cream. Rather, I dangled a worm or grasshopper in front of the fish and said: "Wouldn't you like to have that?" Why not use the same common sense when fishing for people?
You can't win an argument. You can't because if you lose it, you lose it; and if you win it, you lose it [the other person will resent you].
Names are the sweetest and most important sound in any language.
To be interesting, be interested.
If You Want to Gather Honey, Don't Kick Over the Beehive
If some people are so hungry for a feeling of importance that they actually go insane to get it, imagine what miracle you and I can achieve by giving people honest appreciation this side of insanity.
By fighting you never get enough, but by yielding you get more than you expected.
Why talk about what we want? That is childish. Absurd. Of course, you are interested in what you want. You are eternally interested in it. But no one else is. The rest of us are just like you: we are interested in what we want.
A barber lathers a man before he shaves him.
Instead of condemning people, let’s try to understand them. Let’s try to figure out why they do what they do. That’s a lot more profitable and intriguing than criticism; and it breeds sympathy, tolerance and
Winning friends begins with friendliness.
Arouse in the other person an eager want. He who can do this has the whole world with him. He who cannot walks a lonely way.
Only knowledge that is used sticks in your mind.

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Edward Bernays
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The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. 1
We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. 1
we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons a trifling fraction of our hundred and twenty millions who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind, who harness old social forces and contrive new ways to bind and guide the world 9 -10
From our leaders and the media they use to reach the public, we accept the evidence and the demarcation of issues bearing upon public questions; 11
To avoid such confusion, society consents to have its choice narrowed to ideas and objects brought to its attention through propaganda of all kinds. 11
The instruments by which public opinion is organized and focused may be misused. But such organization and focusing are necessary to orderly life. 12
It is the purpose of this book to explain the structure of the mechanism which controls the public mind, and to tell how it is manipulated by the special pleader who seeks to create public acceptance for a particular idea or commodity. It will attempt at the same time to find the due place in the modern democratic scheme for this new propaganda and to suggest its gradually evolving code of ethics and practice. 18
Propaganda is the executive arm of the invisible government 20
Universal literacy was supposed to educate the common man to control his environment. Once he could read and write he would have a mind fit to rule. So ran the democratic doctrine. But instead of a mind, universal literacy has given him rubber stamps, rubber stamps inked with advertising slogans, with editorials, with published scientific data, with the trivialities of the tabloids and the platitudes of history, but quite innocent of original thought. 20
propaganda, in the broad sense of an organized effort to spread a particular belief or doctrine. 20
Modern propaganda is a consistent, enduring effort to create or shape events to influence the relations of the public to an enterprise, idea or group. 25
And if nowadays the successors of the rulers, those whose position or ability gives them power, can no longer do what they want without the approval of the masses, they find in propaganda a tool which is increasingly powerful in gaining that approval. 27
They not only appealed to the individual by means of every approach visual, graphic, and auditory to support the national endeavor, but they also secured the cooperation of the key men in every group persons whose mere word carried authority to hundreds or thousands or hundreds of thousands of followers. 27
[The New Propaganda] takes account not merely of the individual, nor even of the mass mind alone, but also and especially of the anatomy of society, with its interlocking group formations and loyalties. 28
It was he who arranged for the distinguished Countess This or Duchess That to wear the hat or the gown. 29
The created circumstances had their effect 30
In the active proselytizing minorities in whom selfish interests and public interests coincide lie the progress and development of America. Only through the active energy of the intelligent few can the public at large become aware of and act upon new ideas. 31 Small groups of persons can, and do, make the rest of us think what they please about a given subject. 31
Many a congressman, in framing his platform, follows the suggestions of a district boss whom few persons outside the political machine have ever heard of. 33
our thoughts and habits are modified by authorities 35
The invisible government tends to be concentrated in the hands of the few because of the expense of manipulating the social machinery which controls the opinions and habits of the masses. To advertise on a scale which will reach fifty million persons is expensive. 37 [Still?]
Public opinion [does it actually exist?] is the unacknowledged partner in all broad efforts. 38
The counsel on public relations [cool job title created by bernays to sell bernays], after he has examined all these and other factors, endeavors to shape the actions of his client so that they will gain the interest, the approval and the acceptance of the public. 39
The counsel on public relations must be in a position to deal effectively with rumors and suspicions. 43
His function may include the discovery of new markets, the existence of which had been unsuspected. 44
If we accept public relations as a profession, we must also expect it to have both ideals and ethics. The ideal of the profession is a pragmatic one. It is to make the producer, ... understand what the public wants and to make the public understand the objectives of the producer 44
[The public relations counsel] nevertheless refuses a client whom he believes to be dishonest, a product which he believes to be fraudulent, or a cause which he believes to be antisocial. 45
He does not accept a client whose interests conflict with those of another client. He does not accept a client whose case he believes to be hopeless or whose product he believes to be unmarketable. 45-46
He should be candid in his dealings. It must be repeated that his business is not to fool or hoodwink the public. If he were to get such a reputation, his usefulness in his profession would be at an end. 46
If we understand the mechanism and motives of the group mind [is there such a thing?], is it not possible to control and regiment the masses according to our will without their knowing it? 47
[Propaganda] is now scientific in the sense that it seeks to base its operations upon definite knowledge drawn from direct observation of the group mind, and upon the application of principles which have been demonstrated to be consistent and relatively constant. 48
If you can influence the leaders, either with or without their conscious cooperation, you automatically influence the group which they sway. 49
when the example of the leader is not at hand and the herd must think for itself, it does so by means of cliches, pat words or images which stand for a whole group of ideas or experiences 50
By playing upon an old cliche, or manipulating a The Psychology of Public Relations new one, the propagandist can sometimes swing a whole mass of group emotions 50-51
Men are rarely aware of the real reasons which motivate their actions. 51
He creates circumstances which will swing emotional currents so as to make for purchaser demand. 54 [the music room -- the parlor]
Under the old salesmanship the manufacturer said to the prospective purchaser, "Please buy a piano." The new salesmanship has reversed the process and caused the prospective purchaser to say to the manufacturer, "Please sell me a piano." 56
A number of familiar psychological motives were set in motion in the carrying out of this [Ivory soap carving] campaign. The esthetic, the competitive, the gregarious (much of the sculpturing was done in school groups), the snobbish (the impulse to follow the example of a recognized leader), the exhibitionist, and last but by no means least the maternal. 59
If to-day big business were to seek to throttle the public, a new reaction similar to that of twenty years ago would take place and the public would rise and try to throttle big business with restrictive laws. 62
[Mass production requires mass consumption, the manufacturing of desire]
Mass production is only profitable if its rhythm can be maintained that is, if it can continue to sell its product in steady or increasing quantity. The result is that while, under the handicraft or small-unit system of production that was typical a century ago, demand created the supply, to-day supply must actively seek to create its corresponding demand. 63
Business must express itself and its entire corporate existence so that the public will understand and accept it. It must dramatize its personality 65 [Mac vs PC]
The public relations activities of a business cannot be a protective coloring to hide its real aims. It is bad business as well as bad morals to feature exclusively a few high-class articles, when the main stock is of medium grade or cheap 68
[public relations works indirectly] A gas company maintains a free school of cookery. 76
The new technique of public relations counsel is serving a very useful purpose in business by acting as a complement to legitimate advertisers and advertising in helping to break down unfair competitive exaggerated and overemphatic advertising by reaching the public with the truth through other channels than advertising. 79
[The new competition is inter-industrial competition]
Modern business must have its finger continuously on the public pulse. It must understand the changes in the public mind and be prepared to interpret itself fairly and eloquently to changing opinion. 91
The voice of the people expresses the mind of the people, and that mind is made up for it by the group leaders in whom it believes and by those persons who understand the manipulation of public opinion. It is composed of inherited prejudices and symbols and cliches and verbal formulas supplied to them by the leaders. 92
But the haphazard staging of emotional events without regard to their value as part of the whole campaign, is a waste of effort 101
the program itself [as opposed to the president] should be emphasized in a sound campaign plan 101 [anti the cult of personality.]
Events and activities must be created in order to put ideas into circulation 103
In actual fact, it [political persuasion] can be done only by meeting the conditions of the public mind, by creating circumstances which set up trains of thought, by dramatizing per-sonalities, by establishing contact with the group leaders who control the opinions of their publics. 104-5
Propaganda is of no use to the politician unless he has something to say which the public, consciously or unconsciously, wants to hear. 109
The function of this official [Secretary of Public Relations as member of the President's Cabinet] should be correctly to interpret America's aims and ideals throughout the world, and to keep the citizens of this country in touch with governmental activities and the reasons which prompt them. He would, in short, interpret the people to the government and the government to the people.114
In a democracy an educator should, in addition to his academic duties, bear a definite and wholesome relation to the general public. The public cannot understand unless the teacher understands the relationship between the general public and the academic idea. 122
The teaching profession, as such, has the right to carry on a very definite propaganda with a view to enlightening the public and asserting its intimate relation to the society which it serves. 123
Men [academics] who, by the commonly accepted standards, are failures or very moderate successes in our American world (the pedagogues) seek to convince the outstanding successes (the business men) that they should give their money to ideals which they do not pursue. Men who, through a sense of inferiority, despise money, seek to win the good will of men who love money. 126
Today the privilege of attempting to sway public opinion is every one's. 135
In art as in politics the minority rules, but it can rule only by going out to meet the public on its own ground, by understanding the anatomy of public opinion and utilizing it. 141
Ideas must be made intelligible to the public to be fully successful. 149
Propaganda is simply the establishing of reciprocal understanding between an individual and a group. 150
[The public relations counsel] creates some of the day's events, which must compete in the editorial office with other events. Often the events which he creates may be specially acceptable to a newspaper's public and he may create them with that public in mind. 152

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Maria Konnikova
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INTRODUCTION

Page 4 It's the oldest story ever told. The story of belief -- of the basic, irresistible, universal human need to believe in something that gives life meaning, something that reaffirms our view of ourselves, the world, and our place in it. "Religion," Voltaire is said to have remarked, "began when the first scoundrel met the first fool." It certainly sounds like something he would have said. Voltaire was no fan of the religious establishment. But versions of the exact same words have been attributed to Mark Twain, to Carl Sagan, to Geoffrey Chaucer. It seems so accurate that someone, somewhere, sometime, must certainly have said it.
Page 5 In some ways, confidence artists have it easy. We've done most of the work for them; we want to believe in what they're telling us. Their genius lies in figuring out what, precisely, it is we want, and how they can present themselves as the perfect vehicle for delivering on that desire.
Page 6 The con artist doesn't force us to do anything; he makes us complicit in our own undoing. He doesn't steal. We give. He doesn't have to threaten us. We supply the story ourselves. We believe because we want to, not because anyone made us. And so we offer up whatever they want -- money, reputation, trust, fame, legitimacy, support -- and we don't realize what is happening until it is too late.
Page 6 When something doesn't make sense, we want to supply the missing link. When we don't understand what or why or how something happened, we want to find the explanation. A confidence artist is only too happy to comply -- and the well-crafted narrative is his absolute forte.
Page 7 We want deception to cover our eyes and make our world a tiny bit more fantastical, more awesome than it was before.
Page 9 The con is the oldest game there is. But it's also one that is remarkably well suited to the modern age. If anything, the whirlwind advance of technology heralds a new golden age of the grift. Cons thrive in times of transition and fast change, when new things are happening and old ways of looking at the world no longer suffice.
Page 9 Transition is the confidence game's great ally, because transition breeds uncertainty.
Page 9 Today, we have the technological revolution. And this one, in some ways, is best suited to the con of all. With the Internet, everything is shifting at once, from
Page 9 the most basic things (how we meet people and make meaningful connections) to the diurnal rhythms of our lives (how we shop, how we eat, how we schedule meetings, make dates, plan vacations).
Page 10 Technology doesn't make us more worldly or knowledgeable. It doesn't protect us. It's just a change of venue for the same old principles of confidence. What are you confident in? The con artist will find those things where your belief is unshakeable and will build on that foundation to subtly change the world around you.
Page 11 At a fundamental, psychological level, it's all about confidence -- or, rather, the taking advantage of somebody else's.
Page 11 This book is an exploration of the psychological principles that underlie each and every game, from the most elementary to the most involved, step by step, from the moment the endeavor is conceived to the aftermath of its execution.
Page 11 From the artist's perspective, it's a question of identifying the victim (the put-up): who is he, what does he want, and how can I play on that desire to achieve what I want? It requires the creation of empathy and rapport (the play): an emotional foundation must be laid before any scheme is proposed, any game set in motion. Only then does it move to logic and persuasion (the rope): the scheme (the tale), the evidence and the way it will work to your benefit (the convincer), the show of actual profits. And like a fly caught in a spider's web, the more we struggle, the less able to extricate ourselves we become (the breakdown). By the time things begin to look dicey, we tend to be so invested, emotionally and often physically, that we do most of the persuasion ourselves. We may even choose to up our involvement ourselves, even as things turn south (the send), so that by the time we're completely fleeced (the touch), we don't quite know what hit us. The con artist may not even need to convince us to stay quiet (the blow-off and fix); we are more likely than not to do so ourselves. We are, after all, the best deceivers of our own minds. At each step of the game, con artists draw from a seemingly endless toolbox of ways to manipulate our belief. And as we become more committed, with every step we give them more psychological material to work with.
Page 12 the satisfaction of knowing that clever old you would be smarter than all that, that you can laugh at the poor sap who fell for something so obvious and still be safe in the knowledge that you are keener, savvier, more cynical and skeptical? They may fall for it. You? Never.
CHAPTER 1: THE GRIFTER AND THE MARK

Page 15 Here's the thing about cons: the best of them are never discovered. The best confidence games remain below the radar. They are never prosecuted because they are never detected.
Page 21 If the vast majority of the people who surround you are basically decent, you can lie, cheat, and steal all you want and get on famously.
Page 23 Psychopathy is part of the so-called dark triad of traits. And as it turns out, the other two, narcissism and Machiavellianism, also seem to describe many of the traits we associate with the grifter.
Page 24 the Machiavellian-minded among us made for more convincing liars than the rest:
Page 24 Machiavellianism, it seems then, may, like psychopathy, predispose people toward con-like behaviors and make them better able to deliver on them.
Page 26 Psychopaths, narcissists, and Machs may be overrepresented in the grift, but they are also overrepresented in a number of other professions that line the legitimate world. As Maurer puts it, "If confidence men operate outside the law, it must be remembered that they are not much further outside than many of our pillars of society who go under names less sinister."
Page 27 As the popular saying among scientists goes: genes load the gun; the environment pulls the trigger.
Page 28 For most people to go from legitimacy to con artistry, three things need to align: not just the motivation -- that is, your underlying predisposition, created by elements like psychopathy, narcissism, and Machiavellianism -- but alongside it, opportunity and a plausible rationale.
Page 28 A third of perpetrators aren't simply willing to go one step beyond what's technically legal
Page 32 Thus is a grifter born. There's no such thing as an innocent cutting of the ethical corner. Once you've decided to get on the sled, and have eased yourself over the edge of the hill, it's too late to break. It starts with a small thing.
Page 33 Who, then, is the con artist? He displays a dark triad–influenced bent, and he acts when the opportunity arises, for unlike other, less sinister-minded counterparts, he can rationalize away just about any behavior as necessary. And yet, despite this seeming underlying commonality, con artists can still surprise us and resist easy classification. Some conform to expectations, others do not, and there may be significant divergence from the profile that emerges from one study to the next.
Page 36 Even some legitimate professions find it difficult to escape the image of playing a bit loose with the truth.
Page 36 Con artists, in some sense, merely take our regular white lies to the next level. Plagiarists. Fabulists. Confabulists. Impostors. They take that desire to shine, to be the best version of something, and they fly with it.
Page 40 the more you lie, the fewer identifying signs, even tiny ones, you display.
Page 47 We think we know the typical victim profile. We think we know what makes a mark. And we think absolutely wrong.
Page 48 it's not who you are, but where you happen to be at this particular moment in your life. If you're feeling isolated or lonely, it turns out you're particularly vulnerable.
Page 48 Likewise if you're going through a job loss, divorce, serious injury, or other major life change, are experiencing a downturn in personal finances, or are concerned with being in debt. People in debt, in fact, are also more likely to fall for fraud that's completely unrelated to finances, like weight-loss products.
Page 48 our impulsivity and appetite for risk are some of the only reliable indicators of fraud susceptibility.
Page 48 When we're feeling low, we want to get out of the slump. So, schemes or propositions that would look absurd in another light suddenly seem more attractive. When we're angry, we want to lash out. Suddenly, something that once seemed like a gamble looks awfully appealing. A victim isn't necessarily foolish or greedy. A victim is simply more emotionally vulnerable at the exact moment the confidence artist approaches.
Page 49 There's an entire subset of cons, in fact, devoted to catching the master grifter at his own game, often perpetrated by others who feel he might have gotten too big for his boots.
Page 51 It ends up that the more you know about something, the more likely you are to fall for a con in that specific area.
CHAPTER 2: THE PUT?UP

Page 57 One of their great skills is to discern details of a victim's life without her knowledge, so that she doesn't even realize how much she's given away -- and then, to use those very details to impress the victim with their insight.
Page 57 That ability is, indeed, the first step of a con: the put-up.
Page 57 We listen to their words and their voice, read their gestures and their tone, infer between the lines to get a sense of their inner world.
Page 59 We never learn to be expert people-readers because that expertise can backfire spectacularly. Why form accurate judgments when the inaccurate ones make our lives far more pleasant and easy?
Page 63 con men don't just want to know how someone looks to them. They want to correctly reflect how they want to be seen.
Page 63 confidence artists can use what they're learning as they go in order to get us to give up even more.
Page 64 If we mimic someone else, they will feel closer and more similar to us; we can fake the natural liking process quite well.
Page 64 mirror back someone's words or interests, feign a shared affinity for a sports team or a mutual hatred of a brand.
Page 64 Dale Carnegie advised in his treatise on winning friends and influencing people, a sort of unwitting bible for cons in training. And if you're having trouble?
Page 64 "Talk in terms of the other person's interests."
Page 68 People chose the shapes they had seen earlier as more pleasing -- even though they had no conscious memory of ever having seen them and couldn't distinguish old from new at above-chance levels.
Page 68 the mere exposure effect: familiarity breeds affection.
Page 69 In one series of experiments, people were more likely to buy something from a relative stranger if that relative stranger happened to recall their name.
Page 69 A seasoned technique: pretend you're someone's relative and that you met at a wedding. All you need to know is the name of the wedding party in question, and you're golden.
Page 71 All you needed to do was successfully friend someone on Facebook or connect with them socially on some other network -- and if you could get them to see you as friendly long enough to click on just one link or download just one file, the whole system would eventually be yours. One entry point is all that is required.
Page 74 Things that trip us up, Epley has found, include pressure -- time, emotional, situational -- and power. When we're feeling pressure, we grow far less able to think logically and deliberately. When we're feeling more powerful, we tend to feel as if we don't need others quite as much, and our ability to read their minds and the cues they throw off falters.
Page 75 There's nothing a con artist likes to do more than make us feel powerful and in control: we are the ones calling the shots, making the choices, doing the thinking. They are merely there to do our bidding. And so as we throw off ever more clues, we ourselves become increasingly blind to the clues being thrown off by others.
Page 75 always deferring to their power and seniority -- even though he, too, had a claim to an elevated status. That way, he could glean all he could from them, and they, in turn, would be too flattered to scrutinize him too closely.
Page 82 If they aren't looking for you, they don't see you."
CHAPTER 3: THE PLAY

Page 89 Be a patient listener (it is this, not fast talking, that gets a con man his coups). -- THE FIRST COMMANDMENT OF THE CON MAN, FROM VICTOR LUSTIG, CON ARTIST
Page 91 The put-up is all about choice of victim: learning what makes someone who she is, what she holds dear, what moves her, and what leaves her cold. After the mark is chosen, it is time to set the actual con in motion: the play, the moment when you first hook a victim and begin to gain her trust. And that is accomplished, first and foremost, through emotion.
Page 92 emotions, says psychologist Seymour Epstein, cause us to think in "categorical, personal, concretive, unreflective, and action oriented" fashion. They have us thinking reflexively instead of reflectively, reacting instead of considering. They have us just where someone who may wish to take advantage wants us.
Page 98 Con men are likewise expert at rapidly invoking greed, pity, and other emotions that can eclipse deliberation and produce an override of normal behavioral restraints.
Page 101 When we're immersed in a story, we let down our guard. We focus in a way we wouldn't if someone were just trying to catch us with a random phrase or picture or interaction.
Page 101 relations. "Popper proposed that falsifiability is the cornerstone of the scientific method," Bruner told the American Psychological Association at their annual meeting in Toronto in the summer of 1984. "But believability is the hallmark of the well-formed narrative."
Page 103 so strong is narrative that it has been shown to be one of the few successful ways of getting someone to change her mind about important issues.
Page 103 "I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him," Marc Antony says in his first speech to the Roman people.
Page 103 "I'm not trying to sell you anything!""You can take it or leave it!""I'm not looking for charity!" So many prefaces to a story can catch you off guard Marc Antony–style.
Page 104 nothing compels us to receptivity, emotional and behavioral, quite like the neat, relatable narrative flow.
Page 106 "People think it's all about sex or humor or animals," he told the Johns Hopkins Magazine. "But what we've found is that the underbelly of a great commercial is whether it tells a story or not." The more complete the story, the better.
Page 110 the most engaged readers were also more likely to agree with the beliefs the story implied
Page 110 wants to create to further his scheme. According to a theory of persuasion known as the elaboration likelihood model, we process a message differently depending on our motivation level. If we're highly motivated, we will focus on and be persuaded by the arguments in the message itself. If we're not motivated, we're more likely to be influenced by external cues, like a person's appearance, what she's wearing,
Page 111 like. Visceral cues, like the basic emotion brought forth by a powerful story, however, can override even motivation. Instead of processing a message logically, we act like the unmotivated person and take in all the wrong things.
Page 111 The con artist can employ something called "wishful identification." We don't feel
Page 111 sorry for the character; we want to be him.
Page 111 The more we like the confidence man, the more we relate to him.
Page 111 wishful identification at its finest: invest with me, and you, too, will have all this and more. Don't you want others to see your exquisite taste?
Page 113 practiced deceivers were better at one of the basic skills of the con: the ability to tell a good story.
Page 117 Con artists lie for a very specific reason: personal gain, whether it be financial or other. They lie to set the play in motion, so that they can gain your confidence and then lead you down a reality of their making. And their lies are believable whereas a pathological liar's are often too big and elaborate to be taken seriously.
Page 120 When we're angry, we think future events that are bad are the result of human error; when we're sad, that they're situationally determined. They called the phenomenon "mood as information." How I happen to be feeling is giving me concrete evidence of how I should act -- even if, in fact, my decision is totally distinct. The way I process the information will be colored by my emotion all the same.
Page 120 affect heuristic: we make decisions based on whether we feel that something is "good" or "bad," without much conscious analysis.
Page 121 What visceral states do is create an intense attentional focus. We tune out everything else and tune in to the in-the-moment emotional cues. It's similar to the feeling of overwhelming hunger or thirst --
Page 122 "They are so eager to get their hands on the proffered scam payoff that they fail to pay even rudimentary attention to the details of the proposed transaction and ignore scam cues that may be obvious to others not so overwhelmed by desire," he wrote.
Page 122 Sadness likewise makes us more prone to risk taking and impulsivity -- the perfect play for a certain type of con. If you want someone to take a risky financial gamble? Say, invest in your perfect scheme or chance it on a game of three- card monte? Sadness is your best friend.
Page 123 Con artists love funerals and obituaries, divorces and scandals, company layoffs and general loneliness.
Page 123 When we're happy, we don't analyze data nearly as systematically as we otherwise would, and thus, become far more open to persuasion. In one study, happy people
Page 123 were equally persuaded by a strong and a weak argument, whereas sad ones were only swayed by the strong.
Page 124 When executing the play, fear is one of the con artist's great friends. In one study, a team of psychologists decided to test the effects of different types of fear on people's willingness to comply with a request.
Page 124 the emotional drain of anxiety followed by the wave of emotional relief created a state of relative mindlessness.
Page 125 From the first snake oil sale, cons that play on our anxieties about our health have been among the leading scams of the world.
Page 126 Fearmongering knows no expiration date. It is a venerable course for the play to take -- one of many, but one that is endlessly powerful.
CHAPTER 4: THE ROPE

Page 132 The rope, then, is the alpha and omega of the confidence game: after finding a victim and lowering his defenses through a bit of fancy emotional footwork, it's time for the actual persuasive pitch. It's Matthew roping Barrett in by convincing him that he's the perfect person for the job (alpha) and that there's no good reason why he shouldn't do it (omega). What's the worst that could happen? The put-up identified the mark and mapped out his idiosyncrasies, hopes, and fears. The play caught the mark's attention and baited the hook. The rope makes sure he bites and the hook sinks deep -- else, with a bit of wiggling, the almost-sure-deal prey swim hastily away.
Page 132 The psychologist Robert Cialdini, one of the leading experts on persuasion, argues that six principles govern most persuasive relationships: reciprocity (I rub your back, you rub mine), consistency (I believe the same thing today as I did yesterday), social validation (doing this will make me belong), friendship or liking (exactly what it sounds like), scarcity (quick! there isn't much to go around), and authority (you seem like you know what you're talking about).
Page 136 someone who has already agreed to a small request -- like opening the door for you -- would become more, not less, likely to agree to a larger request later on.
Page 136 be perceived as a favor -- picking up a dropped glove (how many con artists love the dropped clothing article!), lending you a quarter for the phone (only a quarter! it's an important call), spending a few minutes on that phone with you in conversation -- that person becomes more likely to keep doing even more on your behalf.
Page 137 the foot-in-the-door technique.
Page 137 The funny thing is, they later found, the approach worked even if the person doing the requesting the second time around was someone else:
Page 137 There's the roper, the one who makes the first request, engaging his chosen persuasive strategies of choice, and then there's the inside man, a second member of the group who sweeps in for the kill, with the real request (the con that will be played out). You are already in a giving mood, and you become far more likely to succumb than you would've been without the initial prime.
Page 137 one of the elements that make us more vulnerable to persuasion is our desire to maintain a good image of ourselves.
Page 139 But niceness isn't the only way to go. Another effective technique that Cialdini first identified in 1975 is the door-in-the-face, a near opposite of the foot-in-the-door.
Page 139 When someone we don't really know asks us for a large favor -- or even someone we do know catches us on an off day -- and we (understandably) refuse, we do indeed feel rude, just as Bem would have predicted. But we don't like feeling rude. And so we also feel something else we don't like: guilty. So what happens when the person we turned down asks us for something else, something smaller, something that seems far more reasonable in comparison? We say yes. Guilt assuaged -- and con artist's mission accomplished.
Page 139 Cialdini found, more people agreed to a relatively small request --
Page 139 after they'd rejected a much larger one --
Page 140 The technique only worked, Cialdini found, if the same person did the asking both times. If you're nice, you're nice to everyone. If you're guilty, only one person can assuage that guilt: the one who caused it in the first place.
Page 142 In 1986, Santa Clara University psychologist Jerry Burger proposed a persuasion -- or roping, if you will -- tactic that relied not on a comparison between two separate favors but on a comparison within the favor itself: the that's-not-all technique. An effective approach, Burger found, is to start with a false baseline (that is, not at all what you're planning to eventually propose) and then, in quick succession, make changes and additions to that starting point that make it seem increasingly attractive.
Page 143 "That's not all.
Page 143 That's-not-all is actually a member of a broader set of persuasive tactics, known as disrupt-then-reframe techniques.
Page 143 Here's how it works. Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert proposes that we understand the world in two stages. First we take it at face value, in order to decipher the sense of what someone is telling us. And then we evaluate it, in order to judge the soundness of what we've just deciphered. Disrupt-then-reframe attacks the evaluative part of the process: we don't have a chance to give a proper assessment because each time we try to do so, the situation changes.
Page 144 the even-a-penny-would-help.
Page 144 as the "legitimization effect." A request for a tiny amount of money legitimizes you in the eyes of others.
Page 144 If you're looking for a tiny donation -- a dollar or another inconsequential-seeming amount -- you look like you're working hard for very little.
Page 145 A closely related approach is Cialdini's lowball technique. This time, you tell your intended victim that what you want is actually quite small -- and once he commits to doing it, raise the stakes.
Page 145 "Actually, sir, this particular model comes with . . ." and so forth.
Page 145 Cialdini's principle of scarcity. The scarce is inherently valuable by very virtue of its scarcity: there isn't much to go around, so only the very lucky few can have it. The limited edition. The forbidden fruit. The offer only good till midnight. The members-only sale. The collector's item. Pose something as unique or rare, and takers will line up where there used to be none. It works for goods. It works for information. It works for most anything.
Page 149 In their influential 1959 work "The Bases of Social Power," John French and Bertram Raven posited that there were five major bases from which power derives: reward power, or the belief that someone is able to reward you; coercive power, or the belief that someone is able to punish you somehow; legitimate power, or an actual basis of authority; referent power, or power derived from your affiliation with someone (or desire to be affiliated with them); and expert power, from someone's expertise on a topic.
Page 149 The grifter will avoid coercion at all costs. That would be unaristocratic.
Page 150 in establishing their legitimacy, the victims said, their scammers appealed often and early to trust and authority. The logic is clear. If you know someone is asking for something, you need to know early on who that someone is and why, exactly, you should listen.
Page 150 We get authority in two ways: by virtue of what we know (authority based on expertise) or by virtue of who we are (authority based on position). The confidence artist will exploit both. But the second is much easier to fake than the first; indeed, the first, or at least the perception of it, often follows in its wake.
Page 154 We often obey power reflexively, without ever quite stopping to reflect on why we're doing what we are and whether it is, in fact, something we should be doing.
Page 154 One of the first things a con artist does is establish trust -- often by being the exact type of person he thinks you aspire to be, or at least, want to be associated with.
Page 155 Con artists often use communities to quickly gauge character and belief and acquire a veneer of the same.
Page 155 The authority we grant someone comes often as more of an afterthought than anything else, by virtue of their belonging to the exact right group, one that we're particularly eager to either join or be liked by.
Page 159 The rope depends on multiple elements: not just the persuasive strategy you use and your identity, but how, exactly, you frame the proposition. Power, in other words, can come from the construction of the argument rather than its substance: power through how you phrase something rather than what you're actually saying.
Page 161 The psychology of why nudges work forms the entire basis of a confidence artist's soft power. Just as a grifter never coerces in any observable way, a nudge never actually forces one behavior or forbids another -- a smoking ban is not a nudge but a policy regulation -- but rather changes the nature of the choice itself.
Page 161 The order effect is the tip of a very large iceberg that includes things like position effects -- where something is located physically. Con artists manipulate this all the time by placing objects or people they want you to gravitate toward in more privileged positions.
Page 161 There are anchor effects -- the initial cues you see that then influence your subsequent decision, like the price that first catches your eye on a menu, that then makes other prices seem more or less fair, or a monthly payment plan that forms a reasonable-seeming anchor for a sum you might otherwise question as too high.
Page 162 Precisely how something is presented to you matters a great deal.
Page 162 Con artists can even influence choice by limiting it -- a take on the default effect.
Page 162 We often like to have our choices constricted. Too much choice, and we just shake our heads and walk away -- a phenomenon known as choice fatigue.
Page 162 If the statement seems persuasive -- your granddaughter is in trouble and you have no choice but to send money immediately to help her -- we'll be all the more likely to concede the point rather than stop and think about alternatives.
Page 163 Information priming works so well because it exploits an effect we've already seen several times: the ease that comes from familiarity. Mention something in passing, and then when you elaborate on it later -- especially if it's a few days later -- it seems that much more convincing.
Page 163 It's a phenomenon known as the illusion of truth: we are more likely to think something is true if it feels familiar.
Page 163 "Picture this,""Imagine that .
Page 163 One of Cialdini's many studies of persuasion had people watch an ad about cable television. Those who were told to "imagine the benefits" were much more likely to actually subscribe to it a month later than those who were simply told about "the benefits of cable TV."
Page 164 trick.) And a final construction that can win an argument: it doesn't actually matter what you say, in what order, or how. All that matters is that you say a lot, quickly, and that it sounds convoluted and has many moving parts. Simply put, we tend to make worse decisions when we have a lot on our minds -- even after that "lot" is removed.
Page 167 there were all the expected culprits, neat as you'd like. Scarcity (get it while you can!). Credibility appeals (I'm from a legitimate institution). Phantom fixation (the promise of future wealth -- that is, a fixation on a future phantom). And social consensus (everyone else is doing it!). Real scammers, it turns out, operate just as we would theoretically expect them to.
CHAPTER 5: THE TALE

Page 172 At this stage in the confidence game, the mark has been chosen, the play has begun, and the rope has been cast in a very specific way. We're no longer deciding between abstract, cold courses of action that we don't much care about. We're emotionally involved. We've already had the case persuasively laid out for us, in a way that makes it seem like a version of what we ourselves would most want, in the way we most want it. And so when the tale is told -- that is, we're told how we, personally, will benefit -- it's no longer really being told to us.
Page 172 "Actually, this makes perfect sense": I am exceptional, and I deserve it. It's not too good to be true; it is exactly what I had coming to me. The chances may be less than 1 percent, but then again, I'm a less than 1 percent kind of guy.
Page 172 One of our fundamental drives is the need for self-affirmation: we need to feel worthy, to feel needed, to feel like we matter.
Page 173 we systematically represent ourselves and our reality in a way that favors our preferred version.
Page 173 Each one of us is exceptional in our own minds.
Page 174 And exceptional individuals are not chumps. Exceptional individuals are in charge. They don't get conned. Which is precisely why the tale works as well as it does.
Page 176 Professionally, we are also all better than our colleagues at our jobs, despite any potential protests to the contrary.
Page 178 When we're asked to select which words better match our personalities and key characteristics out of a list of possible contenders, we overwhelmingly select more positive than negative options.
Page 179 When we compare ourselves to others, we tend to emerge ahead for a simple reason: we focus on our own most positive traits.
Page 180 The tale tells itself: it's how so many con artists justify their actions to themselves, getting swept up in their own stories so strongly that they forget, at least for a moment, that they are lying. The belief in exceptionalism, after all, applies just as much to the con artist as to the mark: I am allowed to act like this because I am an exception to society's rules.
Page 183 Simply put, when it comes to ourselves -- our traits, our lives, our decisions -- our personal attachment overshadows our objective knowledge. We systematically misevaluate evidence based on our own characteristics, and if we're given evidence that something about us poses a threat, instead of thinking about how to change our own behavior, we call the evidence itself into question.
Page 184 Because of our self-serving bias, we tend to rationalize after the fact, focusing on reasons that justify our choice rather than those that went against it. It's a kind of confirmation in reverse:
Page 185 One of the reasons that the tale is so powerful is that, despite the motivated reasoning that we engage in, we never realize we're doing it. We think we are being rational, even if we have no idea why
Page 187 Not only does our conviction of our own exceptionalism and superiority make us misinterpret events and mischaracterize decisions; it also hits us a second time long after the event in question. Because of this, we rewrite the past in a way that makes us less likely to learn from it, selectively recalling everything good and conveniently forgetting the bad.
Page 190 Cons are often underreported because, to the end, the marks insist they haven't been conned at all. Our memory is selective.
CHAPTER 6: THE CONVINCER

Page 201 One of the key elements of the convincer, the next stage of the confidence game, is that it is, well, convincing: the convincer makes it seem like you're winning and everything is going according to plan. You're getting money on your investment. Your wrinkles are disappearing and your weight dropping. That doctor really seems to know what he's doing. That wine really is exceptional, and that painting exquisite. You sure know how to find the elusive deal. The horse you bet on, both literal and figurative, is coming in a winner.
Page 202 We are terrible at predicting the future. It's unpredictable by definition, true, but that doesn't keep us from thinking it isn't. When things are going well, we tend to think they will continue doing so -- and, quite possibly, even improve.
Page 205 As information from our environment comes in, we home in on the positive and tend to isolate and filter out the negative. That selective perception makes us more empathetic, happier, better able to care for others, more productive, and more creative. When we receive negative feedback, we can (usually) deal with it, because, we rationalize, it's not really our fault. We are good at what we do; it's just that, this time, things went a bit awry. And even if we don't rationalize, it's easier to take the bad when you think yourself capable. Yes, I messed up, but I'll be able to make it work.
Page 207 Though few people would think of bubbles as confidence schemes, the line between bubble and con can be a very fine one: they operate on many of the same principles, occur for many of the same reasons, and are so incredibly persistent, despite past evidence, based on much the same rationale.
Page 209 was he a hustler, or merely unlucky? Ultimately, we'll never know: it is, for the most part, a question of knowledge and intent.
Page 211 One of the simplest short cons revolves around getting people to place bets on outcomes they think either highly unlikely or highly likely because of their recent experience (an experience that, in the convincer, is unerringly positive) -- and then to upend those perfectly reasonable-seeming expectations.
Page 211 Prop bets take advantage of what we expect and then do something completely different.
Page 214 Each year, Roderick Kramer teaches a class on negotiation at Stanford's business school. And each time he teaches it, he poses a question:
Page 214 how good are you at judging someone's trustworthiness?
Page 214 About 95 percent of people, he has repeatedly found, think themselves better than average -- and not just any average.
Page 219 Anticipated emotion -- that is, the emotion we can anticipate feeling if we take a certain course of action -- strongly favors the status quo. Anticipated regret makes us want to keep doing what we're doing; anticipated stress makes us want to cope proactively, by not doing anything that might provoke said stress; and anticipated guilt makes us likewise want to prevent it from ever happening.
Page 220 The possibility of regret loomed so strongly on the chance that the player had given up a winner that it overcame all rational considerations.
Page 221 And that is precisely what the confidence artist is depending on in the convincer. That nagging feeling in your gut: what if you scream foul and it ends up that it wasn't a con after all?
Page 226 It starts with one word. One quote. One scene. One massaged fact. One altered data point. Did anyone notice? No one? Then let's keep going. Soon the ruse takes on a life of its own and you're fabricating whole fictional worlds as you bring ever more dupes into the fray. You're not a psychopath. You're probably not even a pathological liar. You're just a grifter who got a bit too enamored of his own scheme, and too certain of his own success, to believe he can ever fail.
CHAPTER 7: THE BREAKDOWN

Page 236 Francis Bacon
Page 236 "And such is the way of all superstitions, whether in astrology, dreams, omens, divine judgments, or the like," he wrote, "wherein men, having a delight in such vanities, mark the events where they are fulfilled, but where they fail, although this happened much oftener, neglect and pass them by."
Page 236 To reduce dissonance, Festinger argued, we can do several things. We can revise our interpretation of the present reality: there actually isn't any inconsistency; we were just looking at it
Page 237 wrong.
Page 237 We can revise our prior expectation: I thought this would happen all along, so it's actually not discordant.
Page 237 Or we can alter the reality itself: stop smoking.
Page 237 Changing your perception or your memory is easier than changing behavior. It's easier to change what we believe about smoking than to actually quit.
Page 239 One of the earliest scientific demonstrations of the power of belief to change reality came again not from a lab, but this time from the classroom. In 1965, Harvard psychologist Robert Rosenthal joined with an elementary school principal, Lenore Jacobson, to determine whether how a teacher expects a student to perform would, in turn, affect how she would see the student's performance.
Page 240 While Rosenthal's results are most often cited in the literature on self-fulfilling prophecies rather than confirmation bias, they illustrate one of the reasons the bias persists.
Page 242 Almost immediately, each juror had constructed a plausible story out of the events, spontaneously filling in uncertain holes to fit into the resulting narrative.
CHAPTER 8: THE SEND AND THE TOUCH

Page 267 The sunk-cost effect gives us a continued, strong motivation to believe in something even when the landscape has changed significantly since we first invested ourselves in it. In theory, we should only care about new, incremental costs.
Page 267 What we've already put into something shouldn't matter: it's lost anyway, whatever "it" happens to be -- time, money, energy, whatever else.
Page 272 Experimentally, the endowment effect is remarkably well documented. Repeatedly, people who don't own something -- say, a pen or a mug, two items often used in these studies -- will be willing to pay less for it than they would to sell the exact same object.
CHAPTER 9: THE BLOW-OFF AND THE FIX

Page 285 Our reputation is the most important thing we have. It determines not only how we're seen by others, but also how they will act toward us. Will they trust us? Will they want to do business with us? Do they consider us responsible, reliable, likable, effective? In medieval Europe, fama meant two things: what people said about others' behaviors, and reputation. The fact that both ideas were represented in a single word signals a fundamental truth: our reputation, in effect, is what others say it is.
Page 285 That is precisely what the confidence artist is counting on, even after, despite our best efforts at self-delusion, it becomes apparent that we've been taken for a ride: that
Page 285 our reputational motivation will be strong enough to keep us quiet.
Page 288 The whole world doesn't in fact lie, cheat, and steal, and life isn't nasty, brutish, and short, because we know that others will know how we act and that we can suffer for it. We care what they think -- and what they think can impact how we fare later on.
Page 299 It's not that the confidence artist is inherently psychopathic, caring nothing about the fates of others. It's that, to him, we aren't worthy of consideration as human beings; we are targets, not unique people.
Page 299 We must forever be just another statistic -- one in a stream of "jobs" rather than individuals in our own right.
CHAPTER 10: THE (REAL) OLDEST PROFESSION

Page 307 We want to believe. Believe that things make sense. That an action leads to a result. That things don't just happen willy-nilly no matter what we do, but rather for a reason. That what we do makes a difference, however small. That we ourselves matter. That there is a grand story, a higher method to the seeming madness. And in the heart of that desire, we easily become blind. The eternal lure of the con is the same reason religions arise spontaneously in most any human society. People always want something to believe
Page 311 It is our need to hold on to belief, to meaning -- logic be damned -- that continues to fuel the great cons of the world, even as their contours shift with the times.
Page 317 Meaninglessness is, well, meaningless. It's dispiriting, depressing, and discouraging, not to mention profoundly disorienting and disturbing.
Page 318 It's little wonder that so many cons flourish in the world of religious experience -- and, indeed, that religiosity is one of the few factors that consistently predicts susceptibility to fraud.
Page 320 In other words, all of us believe, intrinsically and instinctively. We just differ on where we draw the line between "legitimate" and "illegitimate." One man's confidence artist is another man's spiritual leader.
Page 320 Nobody joins a cult, Sullivan repeated often and emphatically. People join something that will give them meaning. "They join a group that's going to promote peace and freedom throughout the world or that's going to save animals, or they're going to help orphans or something. But nobody joins a cult." Nobody embraces false beliefs: we embrace something we think is as true as it gets. Nobody sets out to be conned: we set out to become, in some way, better than we were before.
Page 321 Ultimately, what a confidence artist sells is hope.

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Preface

11 these 'Sleight of Mouth' patterns are made up of verbal categories and distinctions by which key beliefs can be established, shifted or transformed through language. They can be characterized as "verbal reframes" which influence beliefs, and the mental maps from which beliefs have been formed. In the nearly twenty years since their formalization, the Sleight of Mouth patterns have proved to be one of the most powerful sets of distinctions provided by NLP for effective persuasion. Perhaps more than any other distinctions in NLP, these patterns provide a tool for conversational belief change.
11 it is important to distinguish genuine magic from trivial 'tricks'.
11 magic of change comes from tapping into something that goes beyond the words themselves.
12 belief change techniques,
Chapter 1: Language and Experience

Page 15 Sigmund Freud,
Page 15 Words and magic were in the beginning one and the same thing, and even today words retain much of their magical power. By words one of us can give another the greatest happiness or bring about utter despair; by words the teacher imparts his knowledge to the student; by words the orator sweeps his audience with him and determines its judgments and decisions. Words call forth emotions and are universally the means by which we influence our fellow- creatures.
Page 19 how the right words at the right time can create powerful and positive effects.
Page 19 Unfortunately, words can also confuse us and limit us as easily as they can empower us.
Page 19 The term "Sleight of Mouth" is drawn from the notion of "Sleight of Hand." The term sleight comes from an Old Norse word meaning "crafty," "cunning," "artful" or "dexterous."
Page 19 create dramatic shifts in perception and the assumptions upon which particular perceptions are based.
Language and Neuro-Linguistic Programming
Page 20 The essence of Neuro- Linguistic Programming is that the functioning of our nervous system (" neuro") is intimately tied up with our capability for language (" linguistic"). The strategies (" programs") through which we organize and guide our behavior are made up of neurological and verbal patterns.
Page 20 All the accomplishments of the human race, both positive and negative, have involved the use of language. We as human beings use our language in two ways. We use it first of all to represent our experience - we call this activity reasoning, thinking, fantasying, rehearsing.
Page 20 Secondly, we use our language to communicate our model or representation of the world to each other. When we use language to communicate, we call it talking, discussing, writing, lecturing, singing.
Page 21 The ancient Greeks, in fact, had different words for these two uses of language. They used the term rhema to indicate words used as a medium of communication and the term logos to indicate words associated with thinking and understanding.
Page 21 Aristotle described the relationship between words and mental experience in the following way:
Page 21 Spoken words are the symbols of mental experience and written words are the symbols of spoken words. Just as all men have not the same writing, so all men have not the same speech sounds, but the mental experiences, which these directly symbolize, are the same for all, as also are those things of which our experiences are the images.
Page 21 words can both reflect and shape mental experiences.
Page 21 By accessing the deep structure beyond the specific words used by an individual, we can identify and influence the deeper level mental operations reflected through that person's language patterns.
Page 21 Considered in this way, language is not just an 'epiphenomenon' or a set of arbitrary signs by which we communicate about our mental experience; it is a key part of our mental experience.
Page 22 'talking about' something can do more than simply reflect our perceptions; it can actually create or change our perceptions. This implies a potentially deep and special role for language in the process of change and healing.
Page 22 Heraclitus (540- 480 B.C.) defined 'logos' as the 'universal principle through which all things were interrelated and all natural events occurred'.
Page 22 According to Philo, a Greek speaking Jewish philosopher (and contemporary of Jesus), 'logos' was the intermediate between ultimate reality and the sensible world.
Map and Territory
Page 23 The cornerstone of Sleight of Mouth, and the NLP approach to language, is the principle that "the map is not the territory." This principle was initially formulated by General Semantics Founder Alfred Korzybski (b. 1879 - d. 1950), and acknowledges the fundamental distinction between our maps of the world and the world itself.
Page 24 NLP contends that we all have our own world view and that view is based upon the internal maps that we have formed through our language and sensory representational systems, as a result of our individual life experiences.
Page 25 Korzybski's distinction between map and territory implies that our mental models of reality, rather than reality itself, determines how we will act.
Page 25 Albert Einstein, "Our thinking creates problems that the same type of thinking will not solve."
Page 25 the people who are most effective are the ones who have a map of the world that allows them to perceive the greatest number of available choices and perspectives.
Experience
Page 27 Our sensory experience is the primary way we get new information about reality and add to our maps of the world. Often our preexisting internal knowledge filters out new and potentially valuable sensory experience.
Page 27 To "use sensory experience" rather than to project or hallucinate.
Page 27 Effective change comes from the ability to "come to our senses." To do this, we must learn to drop our internal filters and have direct sensory experience of the world around us.
Page 27 Uptime is a state in which all one's sensory awareness is focused on the external environment in the 'here and now'.
Page 28 Primary experience is a function of our direct perceptions of the territory around us. Secondary experience is derived from our mental maps, descriptions and interpretations about those perceptions– and are subject to significant deletion, distortion and generalization. When we experience something directly, we have no self- consciousness or dissociative thoughts about what we are sensing and feeling.
Page 28 People who are successful and enjoy life have the ability to experience more of the world directly, rather than dilute it through the filters of what they "should" experience or expect to experience.
Page 29 Sleight of Mouth patterns can be characterized as "verbal reframes" which influence beliefs, and the mental maps from which beliefs have been formed. Sleight of Mouth patterns operate by getting people to frame or reframe their perceptions of some situation or experience. Sleight of Mouth Patterns lead people to 'punctuate' their experiences in new ways and take different perspectives.
How Language Frames Experience
Page 30 Words not only represent our experience, but, frequently they 'frame' our experience. Words frame our experience by bringing certain aspects of it into the foreground and leaving others in the background.
Page 31 Some people, for instance, have a habitual pattern in which they are constantly dismissing the positive side of their experience with the word "but."
Chapter 2: Frames and Reframing

34 implies, a "frame" establishes the borders and constraints surrounding an interaction. Frames greatly influence the way that specific experiences and events are interpreted and responded to because of how they serve to 'punctuate' those experiences and direct attention.
35 Some common "frames" in NLP include the "outcome" frame, the "as if" frame and the "feedback versus failure" frame.
Page 36 The application of the Outcome Frame involves such tactics as reformulating problem statements to goal statements, and reframing negatively worded descriptions to those which are stated in positive terms.
Page 36 A feedback versus failure frame places attention on how seeming problems, symptoms or mistakes can be interpreted as feedback, which helps to make corrections leading to a desired state, rather than as failures.
Shifting Outcomes
Page 40
transforms what might be considered "failure" with respect to one outcome (handling the situation), into feedback with respect to another outcome (" reacting to the good and the bad, and dealing with it adequately').
Page 43 Psychologically, to "reframe" something means to transform its meaning by putting it into a different framework or context than it has previously been perceived.
Page 45 The paradox for the fish in the middle is that it has focused its attention so much on one particular behavior related to survival that it has put its survival at risk in another way.
Changing Frame Size

Page 47 Childbirth can be an intense and frightening experience for a person who is experiencing it for the first time. Being reminded that it is a process that has evolved over millions of years by millions of women, can help the person to have greater trust and less fear in what is happening within her body.
Page 49 widen our frame of perception to the larger life cycle
Context Reframing

Page 51 Negative responses often serve to maintain and even escalate problematic behaviors, rather than extinguish them.
Page 53 Instead of shifting contexts, content reframing involves altering our perspective or level of perception with respect to a particular behavior or situation.
Page 53 Separate one's "behavior" from one's "self."
Page 54 Content reframing involves determining a possible positive intention that could underlie a problematic behavior.
Reframing Critics and Criticism

Page 56 Critics are frequently perceived as "spoilers," because they operate from a "problem frame" or "failure frame." (Dreamers, on the other hand, function from the "' as if' frame," and realists act from the "outcome frame" and "feedback frame.")
Page 56 A major problem with criticisms, on a linguistic level, is that they are typically asserted in the form of generalized judgments,
Page 56 Thus, criticism usually leads to polarization, mismatching and ultimately conflict, if one does not agree with the criticism.
Page 56 The most challenging problems occur when a critic doesn't merely criticize a dream or a plan, but begins to criticize the "dreamer" or "realist" on a personal level.
Page 57 "Avoiding stress," and "becoming more relaxed and comfortable," for example, are two ways of verbally describing a similar internal state, even though they use quite different words.
Page 57 many criticisms are framed in terms of what is not wanted, rather than what is wanted.
Page 58 "If (stress/ expense/ failure/ waste) is what you do not want, then what is it that you do want?" or "What would it get for you (how would you benefit) if you were able to avoid or get rid of what you do not want?"
Page 58 "It is too expensive,"
Page 58 "How are we going to afford it?"
The Sleight of Mouth Patterns of 'Intention' and 'Redefining'
Page 61 Identifying and acknowledging the positive intention of the critic, and turning the criticism into a "how" question, is an example of a type of 'verbal magic trick', using Sleight of Mouth to shift attention from a problem frame or failure frame to an outcome frame and feedback frame.
Page 61 Redefining involves substituting a new word or phrase for one of the words or phrases used in a statement or generalization that means something similar but has different implications. Substituting a positively stated phrase for a negatively stated one is an example of "redefining."
Page 61 Applying the pattern of Intention would involve responding to the positive intention( s) behind a particular generalization or judgment, rather than directly to the statement itself.
Page 62 "I like this, but I'm afraid it is too expensive." To apply the pattern of intention, the salesperson might say something like, "I hear that it is important to you that you get good value for your money."
Page 62 "Is it that you think the item is overpriced, or are you concerned that you cannot afford it?"
Page 63 "Thinking" and "being concerned" are in many ways very different from being "afraid." They imply cognitive processes more than an emotional reaction (thus, more likelihood that something will be perceived as feedback).
Page 63 Relabeling "pain" as "discomfort," is another good illustration of the impact of the Sleight of Mouth pattern of redefining.
One Word Reframing Exercise

Page 65 "I am firm; you are obstinate; he is a pigheaded fool."
Perceiving a Situation from a Different Model of the World by Taking 'Second Position'
Page 68
Taking second position involves stepping into another person's point of view, or 'perceptual position', within a particular situation or interaction. Second position is one of the three fundamental Perceptual Positions defined by NLP.
Chapter 3: Chunking

Forms of Chunking
Page 73
In NLP, the term "chunking" refers to reorganizing or breaking down some experience into bigger or smaller pieces. "Chunking up" involves moving to a larger, more general or abstract level of information– for example, grouping cars, trains, boats and airplanes as "forms of transportation." "Chunking down" involves moving to a more specific and concrete level of information– for example, a "car" may be chunked down into "tires," "engine," "brake system," "transmission," etc.
Page 73 Chunking, then, has to do with how a person uses his or her attention.
Page 74 Given a particular situation, the way a person is chunking his or her experience may be helpful or problematic. When a person is attempting to think "realistically" it is valuable to think in smaller chunks. When brainstorming, however, attention on small chunks may lead the person to "losing sight of the forest for the trees."
Chunking Laterally (Finding Analogies)

Page 81 Inductive reasoning involves classifying particular objects or phenomena according to common features that they share - noticing that all birds have feathers for example. Inductive reasoning is essentially the process of 'chunking up'. Deductive reasoning involves making predictions about a particular object or phenomenon based on its classification; i.e., if - then type logic. Deduction involves 'chunking down'. Abductive reasoning involves looking for the similarities between objects and phenomena - i.e., 'chunking laterally'.
Page 82 Abductive or metaphorical thinking leads to more creativity and may actually lead us to discover deeper truths about reality.
Punctuation and Repunctuation

Page 86 The various forms of chunking (up, down and laterally) provide a powerful set of linguistic tools to help us enrich, reframe, and "re- punctuate" our maps of the world. Different "punctuations" of our perception of the world allow us to create different meanings of the same experience.
Page 86 that that is is that that is not is not is not that it it is
Page 86 That that is, is. That that is not, is not. Is not that it? It is!
Page 87 The content of our experience is like the first string of words. It is relatively neutral and even void of any real meaning. Cognitive processes, such as chunking, time perception, and representational channels, determine where we place our mental and emotional question marks, periods and exclamation points. Our mental punctuation influences which perceptions are clustered together, where our focus of attention is placed, what types of relationships are perceptible, etc.
Chapter 4: Values and Criteria

The Structure of Meaning

Page 90 From the NLP perspective, meaning is a function of the relationship between "map and territory." Different maps of the world will produce different inner meanings for the same experiential territory.
Page 90 Meaning is the natural consequence of interpreting our experience.
Page 91 Because meaning is a function of our internal representations of our experience, altering those internal representations can alter the meaning an experience has for us.
Page 91 Meaning is also greatly influenced by context.
Page 91 The mental frames we place around our perception of a situation, message, or event serves as a type of internally generated context for our experience.
Page 91 Another influence on meaning is the medium or channel through which a message or experience is received or perceived.
Page 92 the way a person makes meaning of a communication is largely determined by the para- messages and meta messages that accompany that communication.
Page 92 there is a difference between "No?", "No.", and "No!").
Page 92 One of the fundamental principles of NLP is that the meaning of a communication, to the receiver, is the response it elicits in that receiver, regardless of the intention of the communicator.
Page 92 Beliefs relating to cause- and- effect and the connection between perceived events and our values largely determine the meaning we give to those perceived events. Altering beliefs and values can immediately change the meaning of our life experiences.
Values and Motivation

Page 94 values are "principles, qualities or entities that are intrinsically valuable or desirable."
Page 94 axiology (from the Greek axios, meaning "worthy") to describe the study of values.
Page 95 Values, then, are the basis for motivation and persuasion, and serve as a powerful perceptual filter. When we can connect our future plans and goals to our core values and criteria, those goals become even more compelling.
Criteria and Judgment

Page 96 One of the challenges in defining, teaching, debating, or even talking about values and criteria is that the language used to express them is often very general and 'non- sensory based'. Values and core criteria are expressed by words such as: "success," "safety," "love," "integrity," etc. These types of words, known as nominalizations in NLP, are notoriously "slippery." As labels, they tend to be much farther removed from any specific sensory experience than words like "chair," "run," "sit," "house," etc. This makes them much more susceptible to the processes of generalization, deletion and distortion. It is not uncommon for two individuals to claim to share the same values and yet act quite differently in similar situations, because their subjective definitions of the values vary so widely.
Chunking Down to Define "Criterial Equivalences"

Page 100 "Criterial equivalence" is the term used in NLP to describe the specific and observable evidences that people use to define whether or not a particular criterion has been met.
Page 100 The type of sensory evidence, or criterial equivalences, that a person uses to evaluate an idea, product or situation will determine to a large extent whether it is judged as being interesting, desirable or successful, etc.
Page 100 Effective persuasion, for example, involves the ability to identify and then meet a person's core criteria by matching their criterial equivalence.
Page 100 1. Think of some value or criterion that is important for you to satisfy (quality, creativity, uniqueness, health, etc.) 2. How do you know, specifically, that you have met this value or criterion? Is it something you see? Hear? Feel? Do you know it based solely on your own evaluation, or do you need verification from outside of yourself (i.e., from another person or an objective measurement)?
Page 101 The sensory perceptions that form our criterial equivalences greatly influence how we think and feel about something.
Reality Strategies

Page 102 Reality strategies involve the sequence of mental tests and internal criteria an individual applies in order to evaluate whether or not a particular experience or event is "real" or "really happened." It is essentially the strategy by which we distinguish "fantasy" from "reality."
Page 102 Our brain doesn't really know the difference between imagined experience or remembered experience.
Page 103 The quality of information that we have in our senses is somehow coded more precisely for the real experience than the imagined one, and that's what makes the difference.
Page 103 If I want to make something real for you, or convince you about something, I have got to make it fit your criteria for your reality strategy.
Page 103 By identifying your reality strategy, you can determine precisely how you need to represent a change in behavior in order to be convinced that it is something that is possible for you to accomplish.
Chunking Up to Identify and Utilize Hierarchies of Values and Criteria

Page 116 Recognizing that people have different criteria (and different hierarchies of criteria) is essential for resolving conflicts and managing diversity. Some individuals and cultures value the 'achievement of tasks' more than they do the 'preservation of relationships'. Others have exactly the reverse set of priorities.
Chapter 5: Beliefs and Expectations

Beliefs and Belief Systems

Page 122 Beliefs are essentially judgments and evaluations about ourselves, others and the world around us. In NLP, beliefs are considered to be closely held generalizations about 1) causation, 2) meaning and 3) boundaries in: (a) the world around us, (b) our behavior, (c) our capabilities and (d) our identities.
Page 122 Beliefs function at a different level than behavior and perception and influence our experience and interpretation of reality by connecting our experiences to our criteria or value systems.
Page 123 typical belief statement links a particular value to some other part of our experience. The belief statement, "Success requires hard work," for instance, links the value "success" to a class of activity (" hard work"). The statement, "Success is mainly a matter of luck," connects the same value to a different class of activity (" luck"). Depending upon which belief a person had, he or she would most likely adopt a different approach to attempting to reach success. Furthermore, the way in which a situation, activity, or idea fits (or does not fit) with the beliefs and value systems of an individual or group will determine how it will be received and incorporated.
Page 124 Beliefs tend to have a self- organizing or "self- fulfilling" effect on our behavior at many levels, focusing attention in one area and filtering it out of others.
The Power of Beliefs

Page 125 Beliefs are a powerful influence on our lives. They are also notoriously difficult to change through typical rules of logic or rational thinking.
Page 126 Certainly, these examples seem to demonstrate that our beliefs can shape, effect or even determine our degree of intelligence, health, relationships, creativity, even our degree of happiness and personal success. Yet, if indeed our beliefs are such a powerful force in our lives, how do we get control of them so they don't control us?
Limiting Beliefs

Page 129 Obviously, the most pervasive beliefs are those regarding our identity. Some examples of limiting beliefs about identity are: "I am helpless/ worthless/ a victim." "I don't deserve to succeed." "If I get what I want I will lose something." "I don't have permission to succeed."
Page 129 Limiting beliefs sometimes operate like a "thought virus" with a destructive capability similar to that of a computer virus or biological virus.
Page 129 the most influential beliefs are often out of our awareness.
Page 129 Ultimately, we transform limiting beliefs and become 'immunized' to 'thought viruses' by expanding and enriching our models of the world,
Page 130 Many limiting beliefs arise as a result of unanswered 'how' questions. That is, if a person does not know how to change his or her behavior, it is easy for the person to build the belief, "That behavior can't be changed."
Expectations

Page 132 Beliefs, both empowering and limiting, are related to our expectations. Expectation means "to look forward to" some event or outcome.
Page 133 In self- managed activities, for instance, people who are skeptical about the possibility of the outcome occurring, or about their abilities to perform, tend to undermine their own efforts when they approach their limits.
Page 137 our expectations exert a strong impact on our motivation and the conclusions we derive from our experience.
Page 137 beliefs and expectations about future reinforcement have more influence on behavior than the objective fact that the behavior has received reinforcement in the past.
Page 137 the more a person is able to see, hear and feel some future consequence in his or her imagination, the stronger will be the expectation.
Expectations and the Sleight of Mouth Pattern of Consequences
Page 139 No response, experience or behavior is meaningful outside of the context in which it was established or the response it elicits next. Any behavior, experience or response may serve as a resource or limitation depending on how it fits in with the rest of the system.
Using the 'As If' Frame to Strengthen Beliefs and Expectations

Page 150 The 'as if' frame is a process by which an individual or group acts 'as if' the desired goal or outcome has already been achieved, or by which an individual or a group pretends to be some other person or entity. The 'as if' frame is a powerful way to help people identify and enrich their perception of the world, and or their future desired states. It is also a useful way to help people overcome resistances and limitations within their current map of the world.
Page 150 Acting 'as if' allows people to drop their current perception of the constraints of reality and use their imagination more fully.
Chapter 6: The Basic Structure of Beliefs

The Linguistic Structure of Beliefs

Page 154 Cause- effect statements (characterized by words such as: "cause," "make," "force," "leads to," "results in," etc.) link values causally to other aspects of our experience. Such linguistic structures are used to define the causes and consequences of particular values.
Complex Equivalence

Page 155 In the statement, "He is in poor health, he must really hate himself," for example, the speaker is implying that "poor health" is in some way equivalent to "self hatred." These two experiences are somehow the "same thing" in the speaker's map of the world (although they may have no connection at all in reality). Some other examples of 'complex equivalences' would be statements such as, "Thinking or acting outside of the social norms means that you are mentally unstable;" "Safety means having the power to fight unfriendly forces;" "If you don't say much, then it must mean you don't have much to say."
Page 156 whether one is able to find interpretations which offer a new perspective,
Cause-Effect

Page 159 our senses do not actually perceive things like "causes", they can only perceive that first one event happened and then another event happened right after the first one.
Page 159 only the sequence of the events is what is perceived– "cause" is a freely chosen internal construct that we apply to the relationship we perceived.
Page 159 The closer we get to the actual primary relationships and rules that determine and run our experience, the further we are from anything that is directly perceivable.
Page 161 Looking for precipitating causes leads us to see the problem or outcome as a result of particular events and experiences from the past. Seeking constraining causes leads us to perceive the problem or outcome as something brought out by ongoing conditions within which the current situation is occurring. Considering final causes leads us to perceive a problem or outcome as a result of the motives and intentions of the individuals involved. Attempting to find the formal causes of a problem or outcome leads us to view it as a function of the definitions and assumptions we are applying to the situation.
Page 163 In many respects, our language, beliefs and models of the world function as the 'formal causes' of our reality.
Sleight of Mouth and the Structure of Beliefs
Page 168 All Sleight of Mouth patterns revolve around using language in order to relate and link various aspects of our experience and maps of the world to core values.
Page 169 from the NLP perspective, the issue is not so much whether one has found the "correct" cause- effect belief, but rather what types of practical results one is able to achieve if one acts "as if" a particular equivalence or causal relationship exists.
Chapter 7: Internal States and Natural Belief Change

The Natural Process of Belief Change

Page 190 People often consider the process of changing beliefs to be difficult and effortful; and accompanied by struggle and conflict. Yet, the fact remains that people naturally and spontaneously establish and discard hundreds, if not thousands, of beliefs during their lifetimes. Perhaps the difficulty is that when we consciously attempt to change our beliefs, we do so in a way that does not respect the natural cycle of belief change. We try to change our beliefs by "repressing" them, disproving them, or attacking them. Beliefs can become surprisingly simple and easy to change if we respect and pace the natural process of belief change.
The Belief Change Cycle

Page 193 When we 'want to believe' something, it is usually because we think that the new belief will produce positive consequences in our lives.
Page 193 Becoming 'open to believe' is an exciting and generative experience, typically accompanied by a sense of freedom and exploration.
Page 194 when we first attempt to take on a new belief, it comes into conflict with existing beliefs.
Page 195 In order to reevaluate and let go of existing beliefs that are interfering with the establishment of a new belief, we must become 'open to doubt' the existing belief.
Page 195 "If I view it from a larger perspective, what other possibilities do I become aware of?"
Page 195 "What is the positive purpose that this belief has served, and are there other ways to achieve that positive intention that are less limiting and more enriching?"
Page 195 When we truly change a belief, we no longer need to exert any effort to deny or suppress the belief. Our relationship to it is more like the experience we have of seeing historical items in a museum.
Page 196 In many ways, trust is the cornerstone of the natural process of belief change.
Page 197 Trust, in fact, is often something we must rely on when we have no proof.
Belief Change and Internal States

Page 199 A basic premise of NLP is that the human brain functions similarly to a computer - by executing "programs" or mental strategies that are composed of ordered sequences of instructions or internal representations. Certain programs or strategies function better for accomplishing certain tasks than others, and it is the strategy that an individual uses that will to a great extent determine whether his performance is one of mediocrity or excellence. The efficacy and ease with which a particular mental program is carried out is to a large degree determined by the physiological state of the individual.
Page 200 By becoming more aware of the patterns and cues that influence internal states, we can increase the number of choices we have in responding to a particular situation. Once we are aware of the factors that define and influence the characteristics of our internal states we can sort them and "anchor" them to help make them available for use. Some of the methods used in NLP to sort and anchor internal states include: spatial location, submodalities (colors, tones, brightness, etc.), and non- verbal cues.
Page 201 learn how to take an internal inventory
Page 201 A physiological inventory
Page 201 A submodality inventory
Page 201 An emotions inventory
Chapter 8: Thought Viruses and the Meta Structure of Beliefs

Thought Viruses

Page 226 Limiting beliefs arise from generalizations, deletions and distortions that have become placed in a 'problem frame', 'failure frame', or 'impossibility frame'. Such beliefs become even more limiting and difficult to change when they are separated from the experiences, values, internal states and expectations from which they were derived. When this happens, the belief can become perceived as some type of disassociated "truth" about reality. This leads people to begin to view the belief as "the territory" rather than a particular "map," whose purpose is to help us effectively navigate our way through some portion of our experiential territory. This situation can become even further exaggerated when the limiting belief is not even one that we have formed from our own experiences, but which has been imposed upon us by others.
Page 227 a thought virus has become disconnected from the surrounding 'meta structure' which provides the context and purpose of the belief, and determines its 'ecology'.
Page 227 Unlike a typical limiting belief, which can be updated or corrected as a result of experience, thought viruses, are based on unspoken assumptions (which are typically other limiting beliefs).
Page 227 When this happens, the thought virus becomes its own self- validating "reality" instead of serving a larger reality.
Page 228 Because a good deal of the meaning of the message is implied and not stated, it is more difficult to recognize, "That's just his opinion".
Presuppositions

Page 235 One of the major factors that prevents a thought virus from being naturally updated or corrected by new data and counter examples provided by our experience, is that significant portions of the belief are presupposed, rather than explicitly stated by the belief. In order to be changed, the other beliefs and presuppositions upon which the thought virus is based must be identified, brought to the surface, and examined.
Page 235 True linguistic presuppositions should be contrasted with assumptions and inferences. A linguistic presupposition is something that is overtly expressed in the body of the statement itself, which must be 'supposed' or accepted in order for the sentence or utterance to make sense. In the question, "Have you stopped exercising regularly?" for example, the use of the word stop implies that the listener has already been exercising regularly. The question, "Do you exercise regularly?" has no such presupposition.
Page 236 Because presuppositions, assumptions and inferences do not appear in the surface structure of a particular statement or belief, it makes them more difficult to identify and address directly.
Page 239 the more presuppositions the sentence has, the more potential it has to become a 'virus'.
Self Reference

Page 242 Healthy systems generally have a balance of 'self reference' and 'external reference' (or 'other' reference).
Page 244 "you are damned if you do, and damned if you don't."
Page 244 According to anthropologist Gregory Bateson, who originally defined the notion of the double bind, such conflicts are at the root of both creativity and psychosis (depending upon whether or not one is able to transcend the double bind or stays caught inside of it).
Meta Frames

Page 255 Meta framing frequently diffuses the impact of a limiting belief by shifting a person's perspective to that of an observer to his or her own mental processes.
Logical Levels

Page 260 Rewarding or punishing particular behaviors will not necessarily change someone's beliefs, because belief systems are a different type of process mentally and neurologically than behaviors.
Changing Logical Levels

Page 264 One of the most common and effective Sleight of Mouth tactics involves recategorizing a characteristic or experience from one logical level to another (e.g., separating a person's identity from his or her capabilities or behavior).
Chapter 9: Applying the Patterns as a System

Definition and Examples of Sleight of Mouth Patterns

Page 268 the purpose of Sleight of Mouth is not to attack the person or the belief, but rather to reframe the belief and widen the person's map of the world in such a way that the positive intention behind the belief can be maintained through other choices.
"In unusual circumstances, unusual things can happen" (applying the generalization to itself).

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Notable Quotations
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PREFACE

"It's difficult to get a man to understand something," Upton Sinclair once said, "when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."
INTRODUCTION

It is a simple hustle. Someone pays me, I manufacture a story for them, and we trade it up the chain— from a tiny blog to a website of a local news network to Reddit to the Huffington Post to the major newspapers to cable news and back again, until the unreal becomes real.* Sometimes I start by planting a story. Sometimes I put out a press release or ask a friend to break a story on their blog. Sometimes I "leak" a document. Sometimes I fabricate a document and leak that. Really, it can be anything, from vandalizing a Wikipedia page to producing an expensive viral video. However the play starts, the end is the same: The economics of the internet are exploited to change public perception— and sell product.
We can't even talk to each other anymore, each of us running our own polarized little world on Facebook.
I didn't write this book for free, of course, and no narrator is fully trustworthy, myself included. I'm simply speaking personally and frankly about what I know, and I know this space well. Some have tried to claim that I was lying even in this book but my reply remains the same: Why would I bother?
We live in a world of many hustlers, and you are the mark. The con is to build a brand off the backs of others. Your attention and your credulity are being stolen.
you. Sure, I am explaining how to take advantage of these weaknesses, but mostly I am saying that these vulnerabilities exist.

BOOK ONE | FEEDING THE MONSTER: HOW BLOGS WORK

Blogs make the news
By "blog" I'm referring collectively to all online publishing. That's everything from Twitter accounts to major newspaper websites to web videos to group blogs with hundreds of writers. I don't care whether the owners consider themselves blogs or not.
Most people don't understand how today's information cycle really works. Many have no idea of how much their general worldview is influenced by the way news is generated online. What begins online ends offline.
In short, blogs are vehicles from which mass media reporters—and your most chatty and "informed" friends—discover and borrow the news.
If something is being chatted about on Facebook, Twitter, or Reddit, it will make its way through all other forms of media and eventually into culture itself. That's a fact.
To understand what makes blogs act—why Politico followed Pawlenty around, why the media ended up giving Trump something like $4.6 billion worth of free publicity—is the key to making them do what you want (or stopping this broken system). Learn their rules, change the game. That's all it takes to control public opinion.
The constraints of blogging create artificial content, which is made real and impacts the outcome of real world events.
The economics of the internet created a twisted set of incentives that make traffic more important—and more profitable—than the truth.

TRADING UP THE CHAIN: HOW TO TURN NOTHING INTO SOMETHING IN THREE WAY-TOO-EASY STEPS

In the introduction explained a scam call "trading up the chain." It's a strategy developed that manipulates the media through recursion. can turn nothing into something by placing a story with a small blog that has very low standards, which then becomes the source for a story by a larger blog, and that, in turn, for a story by larger media outlets. create, to use the words of one media scholar, a "self-reinforcing news wave." People like me do this every day.
"sources." Online publications compete to get stories first, newspapers compete to "confirm" it, and then pundits compete for airtime to opine on it. The smaller sites legitimize the newsworthiness of the story for the sites with bigger audiences. Consecutively and concurrently, this pattern inherently distorts and exaggerates whatever they cover.
It's bloggers informing bloggers informing bloggers all the way down.
social media, for research. Recklessness, laziness, however you want to categorize it, the attitude is openly tolerated and acknowledged.
Having registered multiple stories from multiple sources firmly onto the radar of both local and midlevel outlets, you can now leverage this coverage to access the highest level of media: the national press.
Certain blogs are read very heavily by the New York City media set. You can craft the story for those sites and automatically set yourself up to appeal to the other reporters reading it—without ever speaking to them directly. A media example: Katie Couric claims she gets many story ideas from her Twitter followers, which means that getting a few tweets out of the seven hundred or so people she follows is all it takes to get a shot at the nightly national news.
It's a simple illusion: Create the perception that the meme already exists and all the reporter (or the music supervisor or celebrity stylist) is doing is popularizing it. They rarely bother to look past the first impressions.
Every person in the media ecosystem (with the exception of a few at the top layer) is under immense pressure to produce content under the tightest of deadlines. Yes, you have something to sell. But more than ever they desperately, desperately need to buy. The flimsiest of excuses is all it takes. It freaked me out when

THE BLOG CON: HOW PUBLISHERS MAKE MONEY ONLINE

Blogs are built to be sold. Though they make substantial revenues from advertising, the real money is in selling the entire site to a larger company for a multiple of the traffic and earnings. Usually to a rich sucker.
This is really why they need scoops and acquire marquee bloggers—to build up their names for investors and to show a trend of rapidly increasing traffic. The pressure for this traffic in a short period of time is intense. And desperation, as a media manipulator knows, is the greatest quality you can hope for in a potential victim.
Professional blogging is done in the boiler room, and it is brutal.
a pageview-based compensation system that gave bonuses to writers based on their monthly traffic figures.

IV | TACTIC #1: THE ART OF THE BRIBE

To give you a sense of the numbers, Henry Blodget, the founder of Business Insider, once explained that his writers need to generate three times the number of pageviews required to pay for their own salary and benefits, as well as a share of the overhead, sales, hosting, and Blodget's cut, to be worth hiring. In other words, an employee making sixty thousand dollars a year would need to produce upward of 1.8 million pageviews a month, every month, or they're out.4 This is no easy task. I'd argue it's getting harder over time as people get better at getting traffic and flood the market with inventory.
Social media influencers are straight-up mercenary. Through various ad networks you can actually pay influential accounts to post prewritten messages or endorse products.
V | TACTIC #2: TELL THEM WHAT THEY WANT TO HEAR

Once during a lawsuit needed to get some information into the public discussion of it, so dashed off a fake internal memo explaining the company's position, printed it out, scanned it, and sent the file to a bunch of blogs as if were an employee leaking a "memo we just got from our boss." The
truth: Blogs love press releases. It does every part of their job for them: The material is already written; the angle laid out; the subject newsworthy; and, since it comes from an official newswire, they can blame someone else if the story turns out to be wrong.
press releases through services like PRWeb are deliberately search-engine optimized to show up well in Google results indefinitely.
It's not a stretch to convince anyone that it's easy to become a source for blogs. Cracking the mainstream media is much harder, right? Nope. There's actually a tool designed expressly for this purpose. As mentioned in the preface, there is a site called HARO (Help a Reporter Out),
While HARO essentially encourages journalists to look for sources who simply confirm what they were already intending to say, the practice spreads far beyond that singularly bad platform.

V| TACTIC #3: GIVE 'EM WHAT SPREADS

If you make it threaten people's 3 Bs—behavior, belief, or belongings—you get a huge virus-like dispersion.
The advice that MIT media studies professor Henry Jenkins gives publishers and companies is blunt: "If it doesn't spread, it's dead."
Every blog, publisher, and oversharer in your Facebook feed is constantly looking to post things that will take on a life of their own and get attention, links, and new readers with the least work possible. Whether that content is accurate, important, or helpful doesn't even register on their list of priorities.
An ordinary blog post is only one page long, so a thousand-word article about Detroit would get one pageview per viewer. A slideshow about Detroit gets twenty per user, hundreds of thousands of times over, while premium advertising rates are charged against the photos. [An article gets one page view per user but a slide show, which asks users to click through a deck, will get as many views as in the deck per user, or there abouts. People get tired of slideshows.]
"if something is a total bummer, people don't share it." And since people wouldn't share it, blogs won't publish it.
Simple narratives like the haunting ruins of a city spread and live, while complicated ones like a city filled with real people who desperately need help don't.
The problem is that the truth—your response—is often much less interesting than the accusations.
"Look, if your response isn't more interesting than the allegations, no one is going to care. You might as well not bother."
According to the study, "the most powerful predictor of virality is how much anger an article evokes" [emphasis mine].
extremes in any direction have a large impact on how something will spread, but certain emotions do better than others.
The angrier an article makes the reader, the better. But happy works too.
A powerful predictor of whether content will spread online is valence, or the degree of positive or negative emotion a person is made to feel.
The problem is that facts are rarely clearly good or bad. They just are. The truth is often boring and complicated. Navigating this quandary forces marketers and publishers to conspire to distort this information into something that will register on the emotional spectrum of the audience. To turn it into something that spreads and to drive clicks. Behind the scenes work to crank up the valence of articles, relying on scandal, conflict, triviality, titillation, and dogmatism. Whatever will ensure transmission.
Things must be negative but not too negative. Hopelessness, despair—these drive us to do nothing. Pity, empathy—those drive us to do something, like get up from our computers to act. But anger, fear, excitement, laughter, and outrage—these drive us to spread. They drive us to do something that makes us feel as if we are doing something, when in reality we are only contributing to what is probably a superficial and utterly meaningless conversation.
Manufacture chatter by exploiting emotions of high valence: arousal and indignation.
As Rob Walker wrote for the Atlantic in an analysis of the event, a core principle of our new viral culture: "Humiliation should not be suppressed. It should be monetized." Instead of being ashamed of its crappy television journalism, CNBC was able to make extra money from the millions of views it generated.
What spreads on the web—humiliation, conspiracy theories, anger, frustration, humor, passion, and possibly the interplay of several or all of these things together.
As Chris Hedges, the philosopher and journalist, wrote, "In an age of images and entertainment, in an age of instant emotional gratification, we neither seek nor want honesty or reality. Reality is complicated. Reality is boring. We are incapable or unwilling to handle its confusion."
Though viral content may disappear, its consequences do not—be it a toxic political party or an addiction to cheap and easy attention.
Through the selective mechanism of what spreads—and gets traffic and pageviews—we get suppression not by omission but by transmission.

V | TACTIC #4: HELP THEM TRICK THEIR READERS

As Brian Moylan, a former Gawker writer, once bragged, the key is to "get the whole story into the headline but leave out just enough that people will want to click."
being evasive and misleading is one of the best ways to get traffic and increase the bottom line.
When I want someone to write about my clients, I might intentionally exploit their ambivalence about deceiving people. If I am giving them an official comment on behalf of a client, I leave room for them to speculate by not fully addressing the issue. If I am creating the story as a fake tipster, I ask a lot of rhetorical questions: Could [some preposterous misreading of the situation] be what's going on? Do you think that [juicy scandal] is what they're hiding? And then I watch as the writers pose those very same questions to their readers in a click-friendly headline. The answer to my questions is obviously "No, of course not," but I play the skeptic about my own clients—even going so far as to say nasty things—so the bloggers will do it on the front page of their site.
For blogs, practical utility is often a liability. It is a traffic killer. So are other potentially positive attributes. It's hard to get trolls angry enough to comment while being fair or reasonable.
of these obviously positive attributes is avoided, because they don't bait user engagement. And engaged users are where the money is.
"The fundamental purpose of most people at Facebook working on data is to influence and alter people's moods and behaviour. They are doing it all the time to make you like stories more, to click on more ads, to spend more time on the site."
Nobody involved actually cares what any of these people think or are feeling—not even a little bit. They just care about the reaction and the attention.
A click is a click and a pageview is a pageview. A blogger doesn't care how they get it. Their bosses don't care. They just want
the customer along as long as possible, to deliberately not be helpful, is to turn simple readers into pageview-generating machines. Publishers know they have to make each new headline even more irresistible than the last, the next article even more inflammatory or less practical to keep getting clicks. It's a vicious cycle in which, by screwing the reader and getting screwed by me, they must screw the reader harder next time to top what they did before.
As Juvenal joked, "What's infamy matter if you can keep your fortune?"

TACTIC 5 #: SELL THEM SOMETHING THEY CAN SELL (TO BE IN THE NEWS, MAKE NEWS)

When news is sold on a one-off basis, publishers can't sit back and let the news come to them. There isn't enough of it, and what comes naturally isn't exciting enough. So they must create the news that will sell their papers. When reporters were sent out to cover spectacles and events, they knew that their job was to cover the news when it was there and to make it up when it was not.*
As Benjamin Day put it: "We newspaper people thrive best on the calamities of others."
often felt I could take media criticism written one hundred years ago, change a few words, and describe exactly how blogs work.
headlines. A subscription model—whether it's music or news—offers necessary subsidies to the nuance that is lacking in the kind of stories that flourish in one-off distribution. Opposing views can now be included. Uncertainty can be acknowledged. Humanity can be allowed.
With Ochs's move, reputation began to matter more than notoriety. Reporters started social clubs, where they critiqued one another's work. Some began talk of unionizing. Mainly they began to see journalism as a profession, and from this they developed rules and codes of conduct.
For most of the last century, the majority of journalism and entertainment was sold by subscription (the third phase). It is now sold again online à la carte—as a one-off. Each story must sell itself, must be heard over all the others, be it in Google News, on Twitter, or on your Facebook wall.
The death of subscription means that instead of attempting to provide value to you, the longtime reader, blogs are constantly chasing Other Readers—the mythical reader out in viral land.
Whereas subscriptions are about trust, single-use traffic is all immediacy and impulse—even if the news has to be distorted to trigger it. Our news is what rises, and what rises is what spreads, and what spreads is what makes us angry or makes us laugh.
Our media diet is quickly transformed into junk food, fake stories engineered by people like me to be consumed and passed around. It is the refined and processed sugars of the information food pyramid—out of the ordinary, unnatural, and deliberately sweetened.
Daniel Boorstin called these things pseudo-events.
Why does a movie have a premiere? So the celebrities will show up and the media will cover it. Why does a politician hold a press conference? For the attention. A quick run down the list of pseudo-events shows their indispensability to the news business: press releases, award ceremonies, red-carpet events, product launches, anniversaries, grand openings, "leaks," the contrite celebrity interview after a scandal, the sex tape, the tell-all, the public statement,

TACTIC # 6: MAKE IT ALL ABOUT THE HEADLINE
For media that lives and dies by clicks (the One-Off Problem) it all comes down to the headline. It's what catches the attention of the public—yelled by a newsboy or seen on a search engine.
You make up the news; blogs make up the headline.
Outside of the subscription model, headlines are intended not to represent the contents of articles but to sell them
Come up with the idea and let them think they were the ones who came up with it. Basically, write the headline—or hint at the options—in your e-mail or press release or whatever you give to the blogger and let them steal it.
Is there a great headline here?
They'll be so happy to have the headline that they won't bother to check whether it's true or not.

TACTIC # 7: KILL 'EM WITH PAGEVIEW KINDNESS
Low-tracking articles are removed; heat-seeking articles get moved up.
Bloggers publish constantly in order to hit their pageview goals or quotas, so when you can give them something that gets them even one view closer to that goal, you're serving their interests while serving yours.
To understand bloggers, rephrase the saying as "Simplistic measurements matter." Like, did a shitload of people see it? Must be good. Was there a raging comments section going? Awesome! Did the story get picked up on Media Redefined? It made the Drudge Report? Yes! In practice, this is all blogs really have time to look for, and it's easy to give it to them.
I exploit these pseudo-metrics all the time.
Pageview journalism is about scale. Sites have to publish multiple stories every few minutes to make a profit, and why shouldn't your story be one of them?
leaving fake comments to articles about you or your company from blocked IP addresses—good and bad to make it clear that there is a hot debate. Send fake e-mails to the reporter, positive and negative.
all "we'd have ended up with was a faster horse." Pageview journalism treats people by what they appear to want—from data that is unrepresentative to say the least—and gives them this and only this until they have forgotten that there could be anything else. It takes the audience at their worst and makes them worse.

TACTIC #8: USE THE TECHNOLOGY AGAINST ITSELF
'

The way news is found online more or less determines what is found. The way the news must be presented—in order to meet the technical constraints of the medium and the demands of its readers—determines the news itself.
as media critic Eric Alterman explained in Sound and Fury: The Making of the Punditocracy. TV is a visual medium, he said, so to ask the audience to think about something it cannot see would be suicide. If it were possible to put an abstract idea to film, producers would happily show that instead of pithy sound bites. But it isn't, so conflict, talking heads, and B-roll footage are all you'll get. The values of television, Alterman realized, behave like a dictator, exerting their rule over the kind of information that can be transmitted across the channels.
Since content is constantly expiring, and bloggers face the Sisyphean task of trying to keep their sites fresh, creating a newsworthy event out of nothing becomes a daily occurrence.
The Huffington Post Complete Guide to Blogging has a simple rule of thumb: Unless readers can see the end of your post coming around eight hundred words in, they're going to stop.
This gives writers around eight hundred words to make their point—a rather tight window.

TACTIC #9: JUST MAKE STUFF UP (EVERYONE ELSE IS DOING IT)

Shit becomes sugar.
If there is one special skill that journalists can claim, it is the ability to find the angle on any story. That the news is ever chosen over entertainment in the fight for attention is a testament to their skill. High-profile bloggers rightly take great pride in this ability.
They need to find not only the angle but the click-driving headline, an eye-catching image; generate comments and links; and in some cases, squeeze in some snark. And they have to do it up to a dozen times a day without the help of an editor.
Since bloggers must find an angle, they always do. Since you know how hard they're looking, it's easy to leave crumbs, fragments, or stray gems that you know will be impossible for them to resist picking up and turning into full-fledged stories. Small news is made to look like big news. Nonexistent news is puffed up and made into news. The result is stories that look just like their legitimate counterparts, only their premise is wrong and says nothing. Such stories hook with false pretenses, analyze false subjects, and inform falsely.
Whatever will be more exciting, get more pageviews, that is what blogs will say happened.
practice and showed how bad things were. He orchestrated a study that collected loads of random data and then, finding simply a correlation between dieting and eating chocolate, created a fake institute to announce his monumental but absurdly unscientific findings: You can lose weight by eating chocolate! And bam, everyone from the Huffington Post to the Daily Mail was cheering the news. Of course you can't seriously lose weight that way. The institute didn't exist. The science was junk. The whole thing was a prank. Yet millions of people were given this fake news.
Set up your own think tank. Call it the Millennial Entrepreneurs Foundation and put out "research" that really just makes companies think they need to hire you as a consultant. Don't think climate change is real? Have a business interest in making people think it isn't? Fund "studies" that confirm what you want and then blast the internet with them. Want to invent some ridiculous new trend? Hire experts to say it's correlated with higher sex drive or that it's all the rage with celebrities. Sadly, no one is going to question you.
Cooley, the products of our imagination become the solid facts of society.

BOOK TWO | THE MONSTER ATTACKS: WHAT BLOGS MEAN

IRIN CARMON, THE DAILY SHOW, AND ME: THE PERFECT STORM OF HOW TOXIC BLOGGING CAN BE

Emily Gould, a former editor of Gawker, later wrote a piece for Slate entitled "How Feminist Blogs Like Jezebel Gin Up Page Views by Exploiting Women's Worst Tendencies," in which she explained the motivations behind such a story: It's a prime example of the feminist blogosphere's tendency to tap into the market force of what I've come to think of as "outrage world"—the regularly occurring firestorms stirred up on mainstream, for-profit, woman-targeted blogs like Jezebel and also, to a lesser degree, Slate's own XX Factor and Salon's Broadsheet. They're ignited by writers who are pushing readers to feel what the writers claim is righteously indignant rage but which is actually just petty jealousy, cleverly marketed as feminism. These firestorms are great for page-view-pimping bloggy business.7
make enough accusations, and eventually get enough mainstream media attention that some people began to think it was real.
The tactic has come to be called "concern trolling"—acting like you're upset and offended in order to exploit the ethics and empathy of your opponent.
The manipulators are indistinguishable from the publishers and bloggers.

THERE ARE OTHERS: THE MANIPULATOR HALL OF FAME

Breitbart was the first employee of the Drudge Report and a founding employee of the Huffington Post. He helped build the dominant conservative and liberal blogs. He wasn't simply an ideologue; he was an expert on what spreads—a provocateur.
the media doesn't mind being played, because they get something out of it—namely, pageviews, ratings, and readers.
the best way to make your critics work for you is to make them irrationally angry. Blinded by rage or indignation, they spread your message to every ear and media outlet they can find.
Their subtle felonies against the truth are deliberate and premeditated. The way to beat them is not by freaking out. It's by beating them at their own game. And sooner is better—because every day we wait there is more collateral damage.
SLACKTIVISM IS NOT ACTIVISM: RESISTING THE TIME AND MIND SUCK OF ONLINE MEDIA

James Fenimore Cooper presciently observed in the nineteenth century, "If newspapers are useful in overthrowing tyrants, it is only to establish a tyranny of their own."
The idea that the web is empowering is just a bunch of rattling, chattering talk. Everything you consume online has been "optimized" to make you dependent on it. Content is engineered to be clicked, glanced at, or found—like a trap designed to bait, distract, and capture you. Blogs are out to game you—to steal your time from you and sell it to advertisers—and they do this every day.
You see a link to a video in a YouTube search that makes it look like a hot girl is in it, so you click. You watch, but she's nowhere to be found. Welcome to the art of "thumbnail cheating." It's a common tactic YouTube publishers use to make their videos more tantalizing than the competition.
Be discerning. Be cynical. Don't let "close enough" be your standard for truth and opinion. Insist on accuracy and on getting it right.
Psychologists call this the "narcotizing dysfunction," when people come to mistake the busyness of the media with real knowledge, and confuse spending time consuming that with doing something.

JUST PASSING THIS ALONG: WHEN NO ONE OWNS WHAT THEY SAY
Apparently we live in a world where at even the highest and most sensitive level information is passed on without being vetted, where the final judgment of truth or falsity does not fall on the outlet reporting it or the person spreading it but on the readers themselves.
In the link economy, the blue stamp of an html link seems like it will support weight. This link could go to anything—it could go to a dictionary definition of "felonious acts," or it could go to a pdf of the entire penal code for the state of Virginia, or it could just go to a gif that when you click it says, "Ha! You shouldn't have trusted me!" But by linking to something, I have vaguely complied with the standards of the link economy. I have rested my authority on a source and linked to it, and now the burden is on the reader to disprove the validity of that link. Online links look like citations but rarely are. If readers give sites just seconds for their headlines, how much effort will they expend weighing whether a blog post meets the burden of proof? As Jeff Jarvis put it: "Online, we often publish first and edit later. Newspaper people see their articles as finished products of their work. Bloggers see their posts as part of the process of learning."
Michael Arrington, founder of TechCrunch, put it more bluntly: "Getting it right is expensive, getting it first is cheap."*
as a way of avoiding ever being embarrassingly off base, blogs couch their claims in qualifiers: "We're hearing . . ."; "I wonder . . ."; "Possibly . . ."; "Lots of buzz that . . ."; "Chatter indicates that . . ."; "Sites are reporting . . ."; "Might . . ."; "Maybe . . ."; "Could . . . , Would . . . , Should . . ."; and so on. In other words, they toss the news narrative into the stream without taking full ownership and pretend to be an impartial observer of a process they began.
The link economy encourages bloggers to repeat what "other people are saying" and link to it instead of doing their own reporting and standing behind it. This changes the news from what has happened into what someone said the news is. Needless to say, these are not close to the same thing.

CYBERWARFARE: BATTLING IT OUT ONLINE
Afghan warlords have a name for this strategy: ghabban, which means to demand protection from a threat that you create.
The Russian tactic of kompromat—releasing controversial information about public figures—is real and only more dangerous in an era where blogs publish first and verify second (if at all).
The essence of kompromat is that it doesn't matter if the information is true or not, or whatever disturbing means it was acquired, it just matters that it can intimidate and embarrass. And the media enables this tactic—they thrive on it. The real trick in this game is to repeat something enough times that it begins to sound true. One of the things I noticed during the 2016 election was anytime I said something negative about Trump, I would suddenly get hit with tweets from accounts with no followers. By that I mean literally zero followers. How hard is it to get one friend? Hard when you're a fake account. Increasingly, smart media manipulators have realized that one way to make things seem real is by straight up gaslighting.
Iterative journalism is possible because of a belief in the web's ability to make corrections and updates to news stories. While fans of iterative journalism acknowledge that increased speed may lead to mistakes, they say it's okay because the errors can be fixed easily. They say that iterative journalism is individually weak but collectively strong, since the bloggers and readers are working together to improve each story—iteratively.

THE MYTH OF CORRECTIONS

The reality is that while the internet allows content to be written iteratively, the audience does not read or consume it iteratively. Each member usually sees what he or she sees a single time—a snapshot of the process—and draws his or her conclusions from that.
It turns out that the more unbelievable headlines and articles readers are exposed to, the more it warps their compass—making the real seem fake and the fake seem real.
comments section. It is clear to me that the online media cycle is a process not for developing truth but for performing a kind of cultural catharsis. These acts of ritualized destruction are known by anthropologists as "degradation ceremonies." Their purpose is to allow the public to single out and denounce one of its members. To lower their status or expel them from the group. To collectively take out its anger at them by stripping them of their dignity. It is a we-versus-you scenario with deep biological roots.
New Yorker critic David Denby came closest to properly defining snark in his book Snark: It's Mean, It's Personal, and It's Ruining Our Conversation. He didn't succeed entirely, but "[s]nark attempts to steal someone's mojo, erase her cool, annihilate her effectiveness [with] the nasty, insidious, rug-pulling, teasing insult, which makes reference to some generally understood

THE TWENTY-FIRST-CENTURY DEGRADATION CEREMONY: BLOGS AS MACHINES OF MOCKERY, SHAME, AND PUNISHMENT

Snark is the grease of the wheels of the web. Discussing issues fairly would take time and cognitive bandwidth that blogs just don't have. Snark is the style of choice because it's click-friendly, cheap, and fast.
To be called a douche or a bro or any such label is to be branded with all the characteristics of what society has decided to hate but can't define. It's a way to dismiss someone entirely without doing any of the work or providing any of the reasons. It says, "You are a fool, and everyone thinks so."
These results are unreality. A netherworld between the fake and the real where each builds on the other and they cannot be told apart. This is what happens when the dominant cultural medium—the medium that feeds our other mediums—is so easily corrupted by people like me.
Let's start with a basic principle: Only the unexpected makes the news. "For the news is always finally," ‘something that will make people talk.'" "The job of journalism is to provide surprise."* from the routine of daily life. But what if most of what happens is expected? Most things do not depart from the routine. Most things are not worth talking about. But the news must be.
The news, whether it's found online or in print, is just the content that successfully navigated the media's filters. Possibly with my help. Since the news informs our understanding of what is occurring around us, these filters create a constructed reality.

WELCOME TO UNREALITY

Today, with almost every major media outlet opening their platform up to self-interested contributors, when all the protections against conflicts of interest or even basic factual inaccuracies have disappeared, the vast majority of the information we find in the media is biased or manipulated. Worse, every major television channel seems to think that campaign surrogates—that is, naked shills for certain politicians—deserve airtime as a means of being balanced.
The process is simple: Create a pseudo-event, trade it up the chain, elicit real responses and action, and you have altered reality itself.
As Walter Lippmann wrote, the news constitutes a sort of pseudo-environment, but our responses to that environment are not pseudo but actual behavior.
When you see a blog begin with "According to a tipster . . . ," know that the tipster was someone like me tricking the blogger into writing what I wanted.
Words like "developing,""exclusive," and "sources" are incongruent with our long-held assumptions about what they mean or what's behind them. Bloggers use these "substance words" (like Wikipedia's weasel words) to give status to their flimsy stories. They use the language of Woodward and Bernstein but apply it to a media world that would make even Hearst queasy.
And so fictions pass as realities. Everyone is selling and conning, and we hardly even know it. Our emotions are being triggered by simulations—unintentional or deliberate misrepresentations—of cues we've been taught were important. We read some story and it feels important, believing that the news is real and the principles of reporting took place, but it's not.

CONCLUSION: SO . . . WHERE TO FROM HERE?

More than twenty-five years ago, in Amusing Ourselves to Death, Neil Postman argued that the needs of television, then our culture's chief mode of communicating ideas, had come to determine the very culture it was supposed to represent. The particular way that television stages the world, he wrote, becomes the model for how the world itself is to be staged

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Chapter : Dare to Want More

Once we accept that we deserve to want more and we understand how giving birth to ambition requires knowing ourselves better, we're ready to actually start figuring out what lights us up and then plotting out our pathways to get it.
Because I didn't know people who had grand dreams, moving beyond make - believe seemed harder and harder as I grew older and games lost their allure.
Logic is a seductive excuse for setting low expectations. Its cool, rational precision urges you to believe that it makes sense to limit yourself. And when your goal means you'll be the first, or one of the few, as I desired, logic tells you that if it were possible, someone else would have done it by now.
Embracing ambition means learning not to listen too closely to anyone.
Ambition should be more than a title or a position. I'd focused on the what, not the why, and for more than a decade, I organized my life around that what. I understand now that knowing the real reason for your ambition allows you to figure out if a different path will get you there.
Realizing the why of my ambition allowed me to alter course and explore new roles that could accomplish the outcomes even more effectively.
Give yourself the space to explore why you don't know what you want.
When you decide what you want and why you want it, take action immediately. Do not wait for an invitation to act.
If you can walk away for days, weeks, or years at a time, it is not an ambition; it's a wish.
We tend to measure our passions by their likelihood of success, not the joy and excitement they bring.
Fear is a paralyzing force that twists deep in the gut, churning out anxiety and reasons not to act. Its seductive logic convinces us that now is not our time and winning is not our right.
Conditioning doesn't just happen to us, it happens around us, touching everyone and everything.
We learn not to want, not to expect, because we're trained not to see ourselves as more than what we've been told to be. Thus, fear becomes as familiar as air, an automatic caution against bucking the system.
For minority leaders to move forward, we must oftentimes first confront layers of anxiety holding us back.
We must name what scares us and acknowledge what scares those who are afraid of us.
A deep apprehension for many of us is the stereotype threat : the idea that we will always be judged by the worst example of someone in our community.
How do we retain a sense of identity without abandoning the true similarities shared with our kindred groups?
Wanting more than we're supposed to forces us to confront not only the possibility of failure but also the responsibility of success.
Fear is a common obstacle. Men experience fear " even white, powerful men who have rarely known the word "no. " But for the marginalized groups " those whose skin tone, gender, geography, or bank account signals "lesser than " , it can become a permanent companion eating away at confidence, ambition, relationships, and dreams.
Navigating power is difficult enough without adding the dimensions of otherness to the mix, but that's our reality.
Demonstrate to those in power the value in our difference.
For minority leaders, we often operate first as representatives of our communities, only tangentially as individuals.
Disappoint with deliberate care.
If you think you were right to behave as you did, then own it and move on. But do not avoid the internal investigation, however painful it might be.
Embracing your authentic self means being clear about how you wish to be seen. This doesn't mean feigning a personality that is artificial and then cutting loose at home.
It means bringing forth who we really are while being acutely aware of our surroundings.
Engage. I do not tell self - deprecating jokes about my race or gender, though I will do so about my personal idiosyncrasies.
Part of the job of leaders is to show why difference doesn't have to be a barrier.
We don't ignore the fear of others. We understand it and harness it to our advantage.
I'd never be invited into smoke - filled rooms or to the golf course, I instead requested individual meetings with political colleagues where I asked questions and learned about their interests, creating a similar sense of camaraderie.
The results should speak for themselves, but they do not always shout loud enough to drown out the objections.
Self - made is a misnomer, a stand - in for a more complex narrative that includes the ability to work for no pay, to borrow from friends and family, to experiment and fail without falling too
Despite the American fascination with the gutsy move, society is more likely to punish rather than praise those of us whose performances stray from a prescribed plan.
We have to first deconstruct the fictions of golden opportunity and realize not all worlds operate the same.
We aren't going to win playing by the written rules.
Doing exactly what we're told, amassing the education and the accolades and the experiences, guarantees absolutely nothing.
Once we understand our ambitions and learn how to admit and manage our fears, the next step is putting these lessons to work to find opportunity and own it.
Own opportunity and write our own story.
Confronting issues of access requires that you know where to look for the work - arounds or how to create your own. The second part, entry, means discovering the passwords to get inside.
In the wake of the elections, dozens of groups sprang up to encourage marginalized communities to take action and run for office. These groups are perfect examples of uncommon points of access.
By only hiring those I knew, who had been picked by others who knew them, I wound up with a team that looked exactly like those who preceded me.
Take too big a risk and you might lose what you have and not latch on to anything new.
Beyond interning, one often overlooked hack for moving up is volunteering as a way to get inside an organization, then making the most of that position.
One key approach is to cultivate relationships with those who have information and are typically ignored.
I am always genuinely engaged with support staff wherever I work.
The power of the invisible workers, hose whose knowledge may sometimes exceed that of the boss with the massive paycheck.
we often play down our capacities, thinking we are being humble, when humility has little to do with our hesitation.
Self - doubt is vicious and corrosive, transmitting internalized messages that say we lack something essential for true success.
often disguises an embarrassment about ambition and a lack of self - confidence.
Owning opportunity can feel like standing on a rickety ladder reaching for something on a higher shelf, knowing all along that, with one wrong move, everything could fall.
When we doubt ourselves into inaction, that paralysis becomes a habit.
Her graduation from college had been difficult, more â€œ thank you lordy " than â€œ magna cum laude. "
Regardless of how we get in the door or up the ladder, we can never forget that the expectations for us are not the same.
Whether the bona fides come in the form of advanced education, respected training courses, or job titles, be prepared to show your credentials.
Beyond the paper endorsements, real live validators are the most critical prospects for advancement. Be certain others are willing to sing your praises " to you and others.
reason, I have a regular habit of asking a small group of trusted friends to perform an informal - degree evaluation of me.
you also want to be certain these folks will tell others about you, particularly if they are sitting in rooms to which you have not yet gained entry. These supporters can explain you to the powers that be.
We need to be in it for others like us.
When no one in a poor neighborhood owns a business, the idea of entrepreneurship scarcely takes root.
We are, by our natures, often required to manufacture our own breaks, identify new openings even before others know they exist. The best hack is to know this is the case, accept it, and move on, prepared to take full advantage.
Chapter 3 : The Myth of Mentors

Not used to management, I valued substance over style, giving out assignments but rarely engaging in social conversation, coming across as brash and unfriendly.
I made it a point to learn a new personal fact about each employee and to ask about their weekends before jumping into an assignment.
Instead of summoning staff to my office, I would walk to theirs to connect.
Once you've decided to fire someone, she warned, the kindest action is to be swift and final. Don't offer false hope or try to assuage your conscience.
Too often the idea of a mentor is a self - limiting device that has most of us hunting for someone we'll never find because of access or because our chosen guide already has a waiting list.
This is a professional courtship, so ease into it. My business partner, Lara, is fearless about reaching out to those whose careers pique her interest ; thus she has cultivated one of the broadest networks I've ever seen. She maintains quality relationships by calibrating her outreach based on the preferences of each person.
we became friends and business partners because she heard me speak at an event, and she reached out to me to learn more. And a peer mentorship was born.
A good mentorship network has a number of advisers with specific profiles.
A good adviser should offer a contrasting view
Because we do not share identical life histories, his perspective gives me a window into how to filter discussions and sift through my own readings of events.
Add in someone who has skills you admire.
Building real connections that make up a broad network is most effective when you learn how to be helped. With the proliferation of the mentor myth, I find too many have false expectations of the relationship. More than once, I've been asked to be a mentor, as though there's some â€œ mentor handbook " with a set of instructions. Worse, those who ask to be mentored tend to have only a vague notion of what they want. Fundamentally, the responsibility is on you, as the mentee, to create the mentorship that you want and manage expectations, especially your own.
You want to be aggressive in your curiosity. Ask important questions that you need answers to that you can't find anywhere else.
Don't wait for them to offer aid. Ask for what you need.
It is your responsibility to affirmatively ask for engagement and support. Do not drop hints; they'll lie on the ground forever.
Do not extrapolate : a "no" or a failure to help on one issue should not lead to an existential crisis about the relationship.
The worst reaction is to spin out a false theory rather than gain useful information.
People tend to help those who are open to helping others, not those who help themselves.
if you see a turtle sitting on a fence post, you know he didn't get there alone.
Professional friendships should not be mistaken for slumber - party friends. Professional friendships can also seem more transactional, but that's not always a bad thing.
Generosity in our engagements transforms who we are and expands where we can go.
We mistake income for wealth, not understanding the difference until too late.
Women and people of color find themselves accused more often of potential corruption driven by nothing more sinister than unexpected success.
Command of financial lingo and the dexterity to read and understand the spreadsheets and balance sheets behind institutions dramatically alters our authority and potential.
When we master the art of raising money across the board, we are prepared to move from participant to leader.
To get out of debt, consider the side hustle.
Entrepreneur magazine had a great list of options for the side hustle :
The takeaway : the difficulty of catching up and moving forward isn't all in your head. Systemic biases, legacy barriers, and current explosions of inequality conspire constantly to undermine wealth generation among minorities, especially women in these communities. But, as with all obstacles, our obligation is to acknowledge they exist and then fight like hell to subvert and circumvent them.
The more we understand, the more power we possess. Learning about the finances of a company or an organization is like learning a secret code.
Know how to effectively manage budgets and raise funds for projects are usually the ones calling the shots.
Terrible choices are often cloaked in the seemingly impenetrable world of finance.
Fund - raising is essential to success. Yet women and people of color or those who do not come from money often botch the ask or refuse to make it in the first place.
My first piece of advice : do not go it alone if you don't have to. I have usually started my businesses with a partner, based on the strong belief that I'd rather have percent of something than percent of nothing.
You also need to get specific. Not only should you try to know different types of people, you and your partners must know how much money you need to raise. Understand intimately what you want the money for, and you should have a clear, well - constructed plan. Be familiar with your details inside and out. No room for "umms" or vagueness. When making an ask, you usually only get one shot unless the person with resources finds your story or product compelling.
While I wouldn't recommend a barrage of asks or a hard sales pitch, engage them to seek out counsel and advice. Allow an organic conversation to develop. Often, these conversations reveal if they possess a hidden capacity to support your endeavor.
"Never tell yourself no. Let someone else do it."
The more we know, the better we get and the more we can control for our destinies and the world around us.
A central tenet to success is to show up " again and again and again " to take an alternate approach, and keep at it until it works.
The habit of not going beyond others ' expectations can transmute self - awareness, until the meek begin to believe they are less than.
we must cease being participants in our own oppression.
Harriet Tubman once declared, "I freed a whole lot of slaves. I could have freed a whole lot more, if they'd only known that they were slaves. "
Sam's preparation to win, his refusal to wait his turn, and his boldness in asking for and working for our help are pitch - perfect examples of how to prepare to win.
Timidity warned me that at only twenty - eight, I had never run anything as large as the division she described. Meekness urged me to demur, as I had no municipal legal experience. And logic demanded I not give up my private - sector salary for a city job. But boldness, the willingness to take risks, and the drive to do the hard work of learning this role demanded I say yes. So I did.
Crossing bright lines, being bold, has consequences. Not everyone will embrace the more aggressive you. The backlash might be subtle, like no longer being invited to participate in events or meetings. Or it could be starker, like a blocked promotion or a termination, or losing an election.
if you are bold, you will alienate others. There's no way around it. The best approach is to plan what you are going to do. Not only plan your action and anticipate the reaction, but then think through what you are going to do with what you've done.
Boldness lies not simply in having the thought but in claiming ownership, accepting responsibility for moving it forward, and then dealing with the consequences. Prepare to win, but also prepare to fail, always using boldness as your guide.
Risk taking inevitably leads to missteps or bad decisions. Unfortunately, admitting mistakes is a fundamental skill too few of us learn.
some people have thirty great years but others have the same crappy year thirty times.
Knowing how to be wrong is fundamentally about honing the ability to admit that you don't know.
I have learned lots of ways to say, â€œ I don't know. " My favorites are, â€œ I have some ideas, but let me do a bit more digging " and â€œ Here's what I think, but I could be wrong. I'll check. " Or I direct the person to the proper authority and I make the introduction myself.
The best way to admit you don't know is to always couple it with a way to find out.
We have to be careful who we ask for help or to whom we admit ignorance.
in every facet of our lives, if we are willing to risk, we will lose.
We create change when we eschew the instinct to only play when we know the outcomes.
One of the best things about being in the minority is the fact that limited resources often lead to extensive creativity.
At the core of leadership is the issue of power " the ability to secure what you need and the capacity to influence others to help you get
We cannot fight a war with resources we don't possess " so we must inventory what we do have and figure out how to use them in unexpected ways.
examine everything and leave nothing out.
understand the difference between position and power.
Access to real power also acknowledges that sometimes we have to collaborate rather than compete.
authentic leaders know what we believe and why, in order to have a clear sense of our direction.
one of the aspects of holding power is understanding the long game "
sometimes, a single act of defiance raises awareness and action,
But the creative ability of minority leaders lies in excavating the valuable in what is available.
I used a foil, which increased rather than diminished my efforts.
One of the dangers of guerrilla tactics and challenging power is the reality that those who stand to benefit may not stand with you.
They may not have been willing to fight with me at the time, but they admired my courage and ingenuity.
real and discernible differences exist between title and authority.
to rewrite the rules of power, never allow the position to limit your sphere of influence and control.
The other job of understanding the distinction between position and power is knowing which one you actually want.
just because someone has the office, do not assume he can do the work.
The opportunity for command may come in the form of overwork, sloughed onto your plate by a lazier boss.
the means to become a micro - boss shouldn't be ignored.
build skills, gain experience, and position oneself for the next big opening.
Another critical lesson in position versus power is not simply doing what you're hired to do ; the ones who move up also do what needs to be done, even if it's not their job and no one asks them to do
Power is directly tied to winning, and for those of us on the outside, the definition of winning must be adaptable to the circumstances.
Those who hold power have no interest in handing it over.
rely on two approaches : first, I distinguish my idea of a win from that of the ones in power, and second, I locate who can help me achieve my objectives, often through an activity known as power mapping.
identifying who had control or influence, understanding their relationships to others, and then targeting them to promote social change.
change the rules of engagement.
At its core, a power map identifies who is in charge of what and forces you to think about how you interact with each person.
Once I understand who is involved, I determine if they are willing to help me or if they'll be challenges to navigate.
Smart leaders internalize the limits of their own actions and search for counterparts who can help them move farther along.
The best ideas and the best policies are typically collaborative, and those that succeed are the product of a community.
The final essential element to changing the rules of engagement is to know what you believe and why you believe it.
If a leader doesn't have any hard - core internal holdings, she runs the risk of opportunism " making choices because others do so or because it's easy, not because the decision is correct.
I do have core beliefs, but I don't have an unshakable position on every issue. I accept that I may not know enough about a situation to render immediate judgment, which is why I attend meetings and read everything
My success tends to happen when I take on challenges that others refuse because the risk is too high and because it's hard to see the reward.
leading from a position of weakness is risky.
I reject the idea of work - life balance. It's worse than a myth. The careful binary of work or life entirely misses the point. The standards are stupid and arbitrary and make very little sense in universal application.
By prioritizing our interests, whatever they may be, we can distinguish between what we want and what we're told we should desire. And in the process, we find out what matters.
Invest early in the items that need to happen because they impact your ability to keep your options open.
Build up a reserve of goodwill and accomplishments, something we can dip into when the unforeseen happens.
The question to ask is whether their crisis will prevent you from achieving your goals " your firsts.
Untold amounts of lost time have been ceded to the urgent but not important, but you don't have to play.
DON'T DEAL WITH JERKS. The "jerks" label extends to flaky friends, the colleague with the constant emergencies, and the guy who always borrows but never lends. I've expanded the description to cover a host of people who are essentially unkind, those who place their needs above others and have little patience for the issues that don't involve them. "We don't deal with jerks also means looking in the mirror.
Reach out to the lowest - paid members of our teams to ask them about interactions with me. Am I short - tempered, distant, or terse ?
Being nice and suppressing our feelings can be taxing in its own way. We become numb to our own emotions, oblivious when they leak out, and start to damage relationships or even our health.
Good leaders are always at the ready but not always at the front.
I get a lot of things done because I do what I'm good at and let others shine in their roles.
Their prowess allows me to focus on the areas of my greatest capacities.
Doing a job another person can do, particularly better, is a waste of a precious resource.
Are you an essential element for success ? If so, go all in. If not, go away.
We are doomed to burnout if we fail to incorporate time for hobbies or just doing nothing.
When we buck against the conventional wisdom, we can be charged with being too disruptive or problematic. And with the absence of role models to show us the way, we are left with our own narrow experiences as guides.
To take power is to use the best of what resides within us for sketching a vision for the future, written large or small.
Power requires a conscious effort on our part to move our own lives to where we want them to be, because we've got to move against what historically has been defined as the way we should live our lives or inhabit this space.
Taking power demands self - analysis. You should regularly challenge yourself to do more, to be more, to examine your life and the world around you. Then endeavor to make modest improvements, knowing that, together, those incremental changes alter perceptions and then reality.
And let's not forget, privilege exists even within those who are encompassed by a minority identity.
There's a colloquialism I've embraced : let your haters be your motivators.

Recommended

Notable Quotations

Part 1: Repeat After Me . . .

Part 2: Congratulations—You Have Been Chosen to Join the Next Evolutionary Level Above Human

Part 3: Even YOU Can Learn to Speak in Tongues

Part 4: Do You Wanna Be a #BossBabe?

Part 5: This Hour Is Going to Change Your Life . . . and Make You LOOK AWESOME

Notable Quotations

1. False Times

2. "None of It Is Crazy"

3. Nocturnal Ritual Pizza Party

7. A Natural Man

10. Conspiracism Is for Everyone: The Deep State and Russiagate

Epilogue

Notable Quotations

Introduction

1: The Essence of Thick Face, Black Heart

2: Preparation for Thick Face, Black Heart: Eleven Principles of Unlearning

3: Dharma: The Wish-Fulfilling Tree

5: Winning through Negative Thinking

6: The Magical Power of Endurance

7: The Mystery of Money

12: Acquiring the Killer Instinct

13: Thick Face, Black Heart Leadership (a literal translation from Kung Ming's Art of War)

14: Thick Within, Black Within

15: Paths to Thick Face, Black Heart

16: How a Piranha Eats the Shark

Appendix: Thick Black Theory

TWO TYPES OF FOREIGN POLICY: THE THUG AND THE PROSTITUTE

Notable Quotations

Notable Quotations

Notable Quotations

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER 1: THE GRIFTER AND THE MARK

CHAPTER 2: THE PUT?UP

CHAPTER 3: THE PLAY

CHAPTER 4: THE ROPE

CHAPTER 5: THE TALE

CHAPTER 6: THE CONVINCER

CHAPTER 7: THE BREAKDOWN

CHAPTER 8: THE SEND AND THE TOUCH

CHAPTER 9: THE BLOW-OFF AND THE FIX

CHAPTER 10: THE (REAL) OLDEST PROFESSION

Notable Quotations

Notable Quotations

Preface

Chapter 1: Language and Experience

Language and Neuro-Linguistic Programming

Map and Territory

Experience

How Language Frames Experience

Chapter 2: Frames and Reframing

Shifting Outcomes

Changing Frame Size

Context Reframing

Reframing Critics and Criticism

The Sleight of Mouth Patterns of 'Intention' and 'Redefining'

One Word Reframing Exercise

Perceiving a Situation from a Different Model of the World by Taking 'Second Position'

Chapter 3: Chunking

Forms of Chunking

Chunking Laterally (Finding Analogies)

Punctuation and Repunctuation

Chapter 4: Values and Criteria

The Structure of Meaning

Values and Motivation

Criteria and Judgment

Chunking Down to Define "Criterial Equivalences"

Reality Strategies

Chunking Up to Identify and Utilize Hierarchies of Values and Criteria

Chapter 5: Beliefs and Expectations

Beliefs and Belief Systems

The Power of Beliefs

Limiting Beliefs

Expectations

Expectations and the Sleight of Mouth Pattern of Consequences

Using the 'As If' Frame to Strengthen Beliefs and Expectations

Chapter 6: The Basic Structure of Beliefs

The Linguistic Structure of Beliefs

Complex Equivalence