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.
This isn’t a guide for wannabe cult leaders. It’s a breakdown of how power works in the real world, stripped of polite lies. Manipulation happens everywhere: in families, friend groups, offices, schools.
Most of us do it without even knowing, or worse, get eaten alive by people who do it better. This post isn’t glorifying abuse. It’s exposing patterns.
The cat, the pimp, the warlord are metaphors for influence, control, and survival. You can learn from them without becoming the villain. And if any of this makes you squirm, good. That means you’re awake.
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
The biggest misconceptions are that manipulation requires you to be highly intelligent, or a master wordsmith, or have some unfair leverage on someone, but these are absolutely not true at all. Those are specific and crude types, but not the core principle.
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 the long game with spontaneity, charm and patience, a making servants out of us. 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
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?
Being seemingly randomly attentive and distant, randomly affectionate and standoffish, randomly good and bad, randomly a friend and enemy.
It’s actually not random. There is a pattern, a tempo, fine tuned to the frequency of the victim to activate their gambling addiction and point it towards their abuser’s affection and attention. The goal is to illicit a neediness response, without scaring the victim off. Charm and excuses are important.
What does it feel like to be a victim of Hot and Cold?
Your mistakes are instantly punished. Your good deeds are intermittently rewarded. Times are great when ‘they’ feel like it. You think ‘Ok, the good times are gonna last this time.’ but you fall deeper in the trap.
You feel carsick from the emotional highs and lows 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 with your heart and mind… 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.
Severe, overdone Hot and Cold results in a Trauma Bond.
Rise and Fall of a Master
Watching old footage of Russell Brand, it becomes clear how heavily he relied on ‘Push and Pull’ for comedic purposes, which is the short-term brother of Hot and Cold. He was also known as the UK’s greatest womaniser, so I’ll bet any amount of money he took the winning formula to his dating life too.
If you’ve ever read a 2000’s pick-up artist book, it’s clear he was (at least on stage) the living, breathing embodiment of Push & Pull, Peacocking, AMOG’ing, and Command Presence.
He married Katy Perry but it didn’t last. In recent years he got himself involved in conspiracy theories as a wellness guru on YouTube.
He has recently been charged with multiple rape charges involving 4 different women, including a 16 year old victim. The trial is due in 2026.
I was a big fan of Russell’s comedy, and he wrote an excellent book on beating addiction, which worked for my smoking habit, so it saddens me to see these charges which may be true, and the type of person that would make him.
Enter the Pimp: Commercialised Trauma Bonding
The everyday socio/control freak/player uses Hot and Cold, but the pimp takes it to extremes. The pimp doesn’t play with Hot and Cold, the pimp plays with Solar Plasma and Liquid Nitrogen.
The pimp is a flashy, smooth talking man or woman who creates and enslaves sex workers through violence, trickery, love bombing, charm, SA, drugs, verbal abuse and financial abuse.
This is overkill for everyday life and will land you in prison.
These brutal tools of terror are Hot and Cold dialled higher than a human mind can withstand, breaking the victim’s spirit, so that they can be “turned out” meaning enslaved.
If the pimp succeeds, the result is a traumatic, 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. It undermines their autonomy and instills 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.
Only a true psychopath with no capability for empathy can be a true pimp.
Back to everyday life
Once you learn the Hot and Cold pattern, you see it in every human interaction. The sex trafficker is simply the scum of the earth who takes the pattern to brutal extremes and serves to illustrate it in the worst and ugliest form.
The pattern is evident in all lives, everywhere you look, with sanitised, civilised, legal, and socially reinforced tools. It cannot be escaped.
There are people playing this game everywhere, most of them don’t even know what it’s called, and 99.999% of them are not involved in the sex trade.
A non-literal pimp is simply a person who understands and uses the fundamental truths of human psychology. ‘Pimping on someone’ means moving them out of their way to redirect them another way.
Ethical Mind Games
Believe it or not, in the right hands and for the right purposes, this game can even be considered the ethical and morally right thing to do.
Yes, there are ethical, good, non-literal ‘pimps’ using Hot and Cold and Push and Pull for the greater good.
There are good Samaritans, parents, disabled and elderly people, salt-of-the-earth neighbours, gospel preachers, teachers, charity-volunteers, pets and children who play on our emotions and win our hearts with Hot and Cold, leading us towards good decisions.
Sometimes we want to be conned. Sometimes we need to be conned for our own good.
Telling children that eating vegetables will make them strong like Superman, and Santa Claus will deliver if they behave, is playing the game. It’s for their own good, and nobody will tell you this is unethical.
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.
The Road To Hell..
On the flip side, when a child is always running the show, being a brat, and getting the world warped around them at the behest and expense of “good parents” who don’t have the balls to say no and refuse to educate their child with manners, what you’re witnessing is a young game player in training. This is bad for everyone.
As an Autist it infuriates me how many autists I’ve met and heard of who have fallen into this trap and became unbearable, despicable adults. Their parents were afraid to stop coddling them, and they never learned accountability.
I’m not saying they should mask. I advocate unmasking full-time. What I mean is they can’t be bothered to consider the harmful consequences of their actions. And why would they? Mom and dad always made excuses for them. They were set up to fail, because the real world holds adults accountable for their crimes, not the criminal’s parents.
I’ve witnessed poorly-raised autists become hyper-violent, kleptomaniacs, sex pests, and professional victims.
I’ve also witnessed coddled autists turn out to be shining examples of good. The purest and kindest souls on the earth.
So there is no excuse for asshat criminal victimhood behavior, but enabling it makes it worse.
The Grey Areas
Sometimes we have to play this game to get along, like when an infuriating, ego tripping gatekeeper needs their gears greased with some form of social validation to let you into the doctor’s office.
Sometimes we have to orchestrate the game to sustain peace and order, like when someone incapable of defending themself wears the mask of unpredictable craziness to deter predators.
Or when police and legal professionals use language patterns that trick people into admitting their crimes.
Who do you think you are?
In my view, the game should only be played in emergencies or if the goal is a universally accepted objective good, with the least amount of undue influence necessary to achieve the goal.
Overdoing it is pointless, cruel and actually ineffective because people aren’t stupid and can feel something’s off.
A professional pimp can overdo it because his heartless ego is so removed from the business situation he can’t trip over himself. You’re not him, you can’t be him, and you don’t want to deal with being him. For every successful pimp there are 100 failed ones.
Under-doing it still moves the needle, stays below the radar and keeps you in the game for longer. If you have to do it, try to aim low and keep your morals high.
Remember that absolutely any evil act can be falsely justified to yourself with the wrong combination of thoughts and words.
When deciding what’s best for other people, the easiest path is to give in to personal bias, lose sight of humanity, and do the wrong thing whilst feeling like an underdog hero.
The second easiest path is to debate the morals in your head or with a friend.
Stop debating and moralising what’s evil, because evil has a stronger mastery of language than good and will win the battle in your brain.
Read any comment section of any trending thread on Reddit for proof of evil disguised by intellect as good.
The hardest and correct path is being real. In your unmasked heart, beneath the personas, you know the truth.
You already know what’s right and what’s wrong.
Stop pretending it’s worth thinking about.
Go do what’s right.
The Uno Reverse Card:
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.
If they played this game their whole lives, don’t know any other way, try to make it out that it’s not their fault, dodge responsibility, and refuse to change their actions, RUN.
Power through life like a Warlord
“Your reputation precedes you” is a rare, antiquated phrase but if you've heard some variation of it said to you, or you know people talk about you whether it’s good or bad, you’re playing the Warlord game.
The literal warlord uses unstoppable Momentum, Ruthlessness but most of all, 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 identity, other people can more easily back your momentum or get out of the way with much less resistance.
Lie: Large reputations have a way of corrupting and ruining otherwise good people.
I believe they were never good people to begin with, and power just gives you opportunity to be who you are.
The bigger your reputation, the bigger bluffs you can pull. Think influencer crypto scams and political controversies. But not every influencer or politician is scamming us, just the evil ones.
“Choosing” a Base Identity
A big mistake I and many on the spectrum make is choosing an identity to play this game. I could’ve been myself the whole time and I would’ve been fine. Autistic Masking and Shielding are too expensive on our brains to last long term without severe consequences.
Many of us, myself included, developed our masks without awareness of what was happening, so to us it felt like organic personal growth, when in fact it was suffocation.
Just be yourself.
You don’t need a strong, Type-A personality to play Warlord. Sympathetic characters will always hold power.
Force Multipliers
A support network of good people has no substitute. They keep you safe, they see you and keep you sane. Don’t use or abuse these people, don’t take them for granted, they are your lifeblood.
With all character builds: your charm, charisma, wit, support network, attractiveness, but above all else- your integrity can act as force multipliers. It’s best to maximise any of these if you already have a solid start in one.
I’ll be writing more about these in the near future.
Professional Aura Farming
The third-world warlord harvests a reputation for cruelty and terror because it serves him in his terror cell’s conquest, so long as he doesn’t attract the attention of a superpower state. But in society, it pays more to have a reputation for integrity, honesty, compassion, strength and dependability.
The reason for this, is we all believe in a collective lie called “meritocracy” even in games of chance.
In Western society, positive reputations carry people further than ruthless and infamous ones, which is why the success of infamous figures stick out and bother people so much.
The optional Villain Arc (not recommended)
If you’re going to be ruthless, it’s best to keep that hidden until you suspect opposition needs to be deterred, or if ruthless is what your people need from you. Everyone loves a hero. But when times are tough they’ll call for an antihero to get the job done.
This opens you up to reputation attacks difficult to defend from, but not caring about this is a trait required to be ruthless. It’s your call.
As a ruthless person, it pays to display that you don’t care what people say, whilst actually displaying good traits and doing good deeds to wash your reputation and strengthen your support. This is known as Reputation Laundering and large companies do it all day every day so they can keep pillaging the earth.
As a Salesman, I laundered my reputation by calling customers back a week after selling them more product than they really needed. I’d ask how they were and if they had any issues with the product I could help with. It was always a casual chat to let them know I cared (I actually did and felt bad), They usually bought even more afterwards.
Integrity is Overpowered and Feels great
No matter what or where you are in life, the biggest return on investment is to have a reputation for integrity. This means not selling out your friends, not taking sides against your people, staying out of unnecessary drama, being accountable for your mistakes without excuses, keeping promises, refusing to lie, and loyalty when times get tough.
The easiest way to fake integrity is to not fake it at all and actually have integrity because it feels good and it’s easier than being fake. If you put the same energy it takes to be fake into the will to resist corruption, it pays more.
There are other traits that pay too, but integrity is number 1. This view is from my lived experience, but if you find it hard to believe, watch the reality game show Beast Games on Amazon Prime. Contestants are given countless opportunities to scheme and snake each other for large amounts of money. See who makes it to the end and who doesn’t.
In the Social and Family spaces: it pays to be Honest, Authentic, Fun, Kind and Dependable.
In the Workplace: it pays to have an expertise, cooperation, friendliness, work ethic, positional authority, and contextual social connection with the correct people.
In the Dating world: it pays to be exciting, fun, refreshing, chill, honest, fearlessly real, and a little mysterious.
In niche interests and subcultures: it pays to know everybody, know the interest well and not be a sellout.
Farm your Integrity Aura, you’ll need it later for War.
Interpersonal War
At some point or another, you’ll need something and there’s a person in the way. At work, in the friend group, in the competition, in all areas of life.
Almost all modern, civilised dispute is a reputation war.
Your reputation for integrity(hero) or ruthlessness(villain) and your force multipliers discussed earlier are your currency for war.
When you meet opposition, they will always have some trait that outmatches you. The goal is to stage or pivot the conflict to a space that you dominate and box them in, where your force multipliers are strong and theirs are weak. Surrender, escape, or reputation destruction should be the enemy’s only options.
How to win debates with dirty tricks
Try to engage them where others who share your views are present.
If the crowd or audience around you is not on your side, appeal to universal moral truths and emotionally poach them to your side. The most powerful emotional arguments are doing something for Love, for Family, or for Children. Other effective cases are appealing to fairness and equality, religious beliefs, in-group values, or your track record.
Without an emotional pull to your side, you will need to deploy charm, humour and wit to win the audience, which is more difficult in the heat of the moment.
If your enemy is more knowledgable than you, but you can be creatively insulting, don’t engage your enemy in a respectful debate where they can beat you logically. Make a scene of them and let the crowd finish them for you.
If they have an ego and like to brag, give them rope. Get them bragging and foster a sense on invincibility in them until they fuck up and admit something you can hang them with. Subtle and deniable Rage-Bait can work wonders here.
If, on the other hand, the facts are on your side and you can make a good logical point, engage others present to police the debate and keep it on the rails so the enemy can’t escape or divert the conversation. If the enemy attempts to, mock them for being scared to be wrong. Rage-bait them into re-engaging in logical debate, with their logical mind fried in frustration, then beat them.
If the debate is one-on-one, in person, with no audience, the rules are completely different.
If you have no integrity/zero respect for them, every dirty trick is allowed. Talk in circles, play Push-Pull, moralise and emotionalise. Use Strawman arguments and Ad Hominem attacks. Sound logical whilst delivering emotional curveballs. Warp their reality and mock them for trying to warp yours. Gaslight to the max. Wear them down and build them back up in your image with tactical empathy.
Finishing someone’s career/KO
If you know their weaknesses, character flaws and addictions, you can set bait and trick them into exposing their hidden side to everyone, or hold the proof and their reputation hostage. This is checkmate.
The more subtle, anonymous, deniable or far removed you are from the trap you set, the better.
If this happens to you, you will need a huge amount of built-up support to print a get out of jail card if the evidence or momentum against you is strong.
This mythical ability to deny blatant evidence based on reputation and track record alone is being chipped away by society and becomes less and less effective every year, as it should be.
If you actually committed a crime it’s basically over unless your support is unhinged or you’re an untouchable.
I will not say who the untouchables are, you know who they are.
My Old Warlord Build
For a decade, my character build (autistic mask) 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.
I used superficial charm and unspoken intimidation to melt the path in front of me to my liking. This created brittle friendships, begrudging customers and resentful, toxic codependancy relationships with equally narcissistic women (you attract what you are)..
My Current Warlord Build
I discovered something strange during my time as a salesman, in relationships, on-off friendships and casual flings: integrity got me further than deceit in the short and long term. I uncovered this gem completely by accident.
If you’ve lied most of your life like me, then integrity and honesty feel weird, scary and weak. Try it out. Don’t give up if it doesn’t work immediately. Over time, I saw more and more wins than losses, and after becoming completely real, truthful, loyal and incorruptible, after finding ultimate peace in my love life and social life, I understand that the losses were also wins in disguise.
The saying “Real recognises Real” is real. Integrity is like a perfume that attracts real people and repels fake people. Naive integrity attracts opportunists and predators, but I can smell bullshit like a shark smells blood.
After being in the wrong careers and interests for almost a decade, I want to move on to something else, something more grounded in my Autistic interest, intellect and experience. Something more authentic and real to me where I can contribute to positive change. This raw blog project has been a step in that.
I’m done playing power games.
I was only playing myself.
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.
