This isn’t satire, it’s a survival manual dressed in metaphor. Manipulation isn’t evil by default, but if it’s misunderstood, we are vulnerable to being played. By educating ourselves on these things we can avoid the pain of being blindsided by them.
On the spectrum, we pay close attention to people, trying to learn how they work. Sometimes this studying of humans leads us to unpleasant knowledge we didn’t originally set out to find. Today I decided to write about manipulation.
Sun tzu said the acme of excellence is winning without fighting; to position your troops and resources in such a way that the opponent arrives at the decision to surrender or retreat of their own volition, even if they outnumber you.
In the civilised society, this means positioning your words, actions, reputation and resources to get your way without struggle or opposition. The excellent manipulator has us do their bidding whilst being happy to serve them.
Chances are you know a few and chances are you are one in some way.
Elude them like a Cat
Cats understand the core principle of manipulation. They get their way with willing participants, even though they can’t speak a lick of English, are physically small, and have no financial or social leverage.
If you struggle to understand what it means to be an elite manipulator, it can be easily understood by owning a cat.
They manipulate us all day long, we’re aware of what they’re doing, and yet we love them for it.
Now have you ever tried to get a cat to obey you? They do not care about our silly notions, they do as they please. We love them more for it.
The only way to beat the cat is to play their own game back at them. You display what you have to offer, and wait for them to come to you without chasing them.
If you don’t want to wait, you can bait the cat into chasing with a string or treat (breadcrumbing). This only works with patience and subtlety, as they are master bullshitters and cannot be easily bullshitted.
If you rush the cat, it knows what you’re doing and the game is over. Sometimes they know the game and fall for it anyway of their own free will, because it’s nice to play a game.
Humans are like this too
The oldest version of The Carrot and The Stick is Money and Violence. Society still runs on this but we act like it doesn’t.
If you stopped participating in society and don’t pay your bills, eventually they take the house. If you refuse, they remove you. If you resist, Violence. Stick.
If you participate and generate capitalist value to the system, you are often rewarded with Money. Carrot.
Workplace managers have a toolkit of civilised verbal and written carrots and sticks to keep the place running smoothly.
Parents have a toolkit of carrots and sticks to keep the family going.
Schools, Religions, Social Circles, Clubs, basically every gathering of humans is a collectively agreed upon set of evolving, conflicting written and unwritten rules, carrots and sticks.
Cats have mastered Carrot and Stick. The Carrot is their elusive affection and funny charm, the stick is where they stick their tail and nose in the air and strut off, content to not speak to you for a day or so. They play us for damn fools and we love it.
You think humans are different? Have you ever seen a guy behave like a cat? It goes like this:
“Why won’t he text me back?! Aghh!” she says to her friend.
“You’re an asshole!” she says when her man returns.
He grunts and does the bare minimum.
“I’ll do anything for you🥺” she says when she feels his unpredictable affection again.
This relationship is toxic, and I’m not saying become a cat. I’m saying a cat can out-pimp you without a word of English, and that’s worth thinking about.
You think that’s intense? It goes so much deeper…
Manufacture Loyalty like a Pimp
This is going to be controversial and hard to read. You may not be ready to hear this.
The pimp is a flashy, smooth talking man who controls women through violence, trickery, love bombing, charm, drugs, abuse and financial coercion.
These unnecessary, brutal tools of terror are the pimp’s bread and butter to create a specific control pattern: an emotional cocktail so powerful the victim discards their entire identity in place of total obedience and loyalty. A victim at this stage will take a bullet for their abuser and smile because they caught it.
The pattern is a calculated cycle of adrenaline-fueled highs and traumatic, rock-bottom lows in his victims, undermining their autonomy and instilling a deep-rooted sense of dependency, fear, loyalty, and even misplaced love towards the pimp, who seems like the only person that can provide order, stability, love and identity within the vortex of misery and chaos he or she creates.
Before you send yourself to prison:
This control pattern can be watered down and recreated without breaking any laws. It’s still extremely potent, and this legal version is called ‘Hot and Cold’.
Your parents did it to you. Your dickhead boss did it to you. Your toxic ex did it to you. Katy Perry sang about it.
What’s Hot and Cold?
Your mistakes are instantly punished. Your good deeds are intermittently and randomly rewarded. Times are great when the ‘pimp’ feels like it. You think ‘Ok the good times are gonna last this time.’
You feel carsick from the emotional roller-coaster but don’t know how to get off the ride. You tell yourself it’s all gonna be ok after the next turn, but it’s really a roll of the dice. Life feels like high-stakes gambling, and you’re addicted.
Hot and Cold is the mechanism by which we have our reality warped through our emotions to suit others. It’s a close cousin of Gaslighting, but more effective and deniable.
Like with the cat game, gentle finesse is required, or the victim is spooked off. Less is more.
Once you learn the Hot and Cold pattern, you see it in every human interaction. The sex trafficker is simply a scumbag who takes the pattern to brutal extremes and serves to illustrate it.
The pattern is evident in all lives, everywhere you look, with sanitised, civilised, legal, and socially reinforced tools. It cannot be escaped.
There are ‘pimps’ everywhere, and 99.999% of them are not involved in the sex trade.
A non-literal pimp is simply a person who understands the fundamental truths of human psychology and exploits them for his or her own gain. ‘Pimping on someone’ means moving them out of their way to help you with your way.
Yes, there are ethical, good, non-literal ‘pimps’
There are female pimps, disabled pimps, elderly pimps, salt-of-the-earth neighbourly pimps, gospel pimps, teacher pimps charity-volunteering pimps, and even pets and children who play on our emotions and win our hearts with Hot and Cold.
Have you ever seen a child switch from being happy, to crying, and back to happy again in the space of a minute? Chances are they got what they want. Sometimes, all they want is to know they’re cared about, and we can’t punish them for being human.
Sometimes we have to play this game to get along, like when a gatekeeper needs their ego padded (validating the reality warp)
Sometimes we have to orchestrate the game to sustain order, by randomising reward and punishment, or warping reality altogether to serve the greater good.
In my view, the skill level of the player is determined by how ethically they can play this game, with the least amount of undue influence necessary to achieve the goal.
Telling children that eating vegetables will make them strong like superman is playing the game. It’s for their own good, and nobody will tell you this is unethical.
Deciding what’s best for other adults is where it gets murky.
You already know what’s right and what’s wrong.
Go do what’s right.
The Reversal/Counter/Uno Reverse:
If you ever catch someone pulling Hot and Cold crap on you, the Uno Reverse Card is to tell them it’s called ‘Coercive Control’ and it’s very illegal, even if none of the individual parts of it were illegal, so long as intent is there, and you’re well aware of what they’re doing, no matter how stupid they try to play it off.
It probably is illegal lol.
Advance through life like a Warlord
The warlord uses unstoppable Momentum and his Reputation to clear the path ahead of him.
In order to successfully play this game, you must assume your role, your character, and build your reputation around this role to solidify it. With a strong enough reputation, other players will fall in line with much less resistance.
The bigger your reputation, the bigger bluffs you can get away with.
You don’t even have to be strong. Sympathetic victim characters have been in vogue for long time now.
In the civilised world, positive reputations carry people further than ruthless and negative reputations.
If you’re going to be ruthless, it’s best to keep that quiet unless you suspect opposition needs to be deterred, or if ruthless is what your people require of you. Everyone loves a hero.
A support network is a good substitute for overt ruthlessness. They can deter opposition and assist in your life battles whilst deflecting the heat and scorn off you for “being bad”. After all they were just “standing up for what’s right.”
With all builds, your charm, charisma, wit, support network, and attractiveness can act as force multipliers. It’s best to max out any of these if you already have a solid start in one.
I’ll be writing more about these in the near future.
When you meet opposition, they will always have some trait that outmatches you. The goal is to pivot the conflict to a space that you dominate and box them in, where surrender, escape, or destruction are the enemy’s only options.
The warlord’s reputation for cruelty and terror serves him, but in civilised world, it pays more to have a reputation for honesty and dependability.
In the professional world, it pays to have a reputation for expertise, cooperation, authority on a topic, positional authority, and contextual social authority.
In the dating world, it pays to be exciting, fun, refreshing, chill, honest, fearlessly real, and a little mysterious.
In niche interests, fandoms, scenes, and subcultures it pays to know everybody and know the interest well.
My character build was ‘Big muscly guy who can talk his way in or out of anything’. The Gym and the Sales Conversations were my training grounds to beef this character up and give him real abilities.
After being him for almost a decade, I want to move on to something else, something more grounded in my Autistic intellect and linguistics. Something more authentic, and real to me. This raw blog project has been a step in that.
How have you used your reputation or momentum to push through barriers and warp reality?
Stay real, Stay Sane.
-Patient Zero
References and Further Reading
Cialdini, R.B., 2001. Influence: Science and Practice. 4th ed. Boston: Allyn & Bacon.
Greene, R., 1998. The 48 Laws of Power. New York: Viking Penguin.
Slim, I., 1969. Pimp: The Story of My Life. Los Angeles: Holloway House.
Goffman, E., 1959. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Garden City, NY: Doubleday Anchor.
French, J.R.P. and Raven, B., 1959. The Bases of Social Power. In: D. Cartwright, ed. Studies in Social Power. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, pp.150–167.
Sun Tzu, 2005. The Art of War. Translated by L. Giles. New York: BN Publishing.
Foucault, M., 1982. The Subject and Power. Critical Inquiry, 8(4), pp.777–795.
Milgram, S., 1974. Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View. New York: Harper & Row.
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