• Humpty Dumpty Elegy 6 | five books on 🎩INFLUENCE🗝 •
who does Malchrome Gladwell work for?
I have a boring life goal: Become a stone mason.
My far-fetched fantasy goal is to join a gang of psychic criminals in New Orleans. A chiseler either way, I guess.
What? Magical scofflaws, tip-toeing through cobblestone creeks of beerpiss? I seen it with my own eyes!
If you've been to Jackson Square on a busy day, you've seen them. By the paintings on the fence, across the park from the silver guy pop-locking around a hat, Jackson Square Allstars playing somewhere within earshot. Doreen Ketchens, a block upriver with a licorice stick. They're the people at the tables, with the umbrellas, between the benches.
They don't look like a gang of any sort. They range widely, in terms of hosts and décor. Hosts vary from homeless looking, to Dr. John, to kindergarten teachers with glittery scarfs. Tables can be either wagoned-in backyard furniture with sturdy parasols, or a couple of milk crates with a beach towel thrown overtop. Décor is just an eye-spy cluster of magic knickknacks; pebbles, bones, geodes, pentacles, lacquered lockboxes, candles, feathers etc.
My brother and I were sitting under the sign in front of Pere Antoine alley, watching them grift. When suddenly, a tall slim man, with shark eyes, in a bespoke burgundy pinstripe suit, came out of the alley behind us, with two plainer looking men. The three closed in on a table that had been left unattended for only a couple seconds.
The psychics recognized Skinny, and exchanged knowing looks. Nobody looked threatened, but they knew he had a grave intentions. The three walked up to the table, gathered the four corners of the table cloth, bindled it all up, and walked away in front of at least a hundred people.
The psychic returned to her empty table, furious but unsurprised. Her neighbors just ghosted her. She didn't waste time pondering the fix, she started shouting over the horizon at everyone in the square. She wasn't just shouting for Skinny's sake, she was aiming at the anonymous eyes and ears that worked for him in the square. Screaming about the betrayal, cowardice, and evil among the tables.
"WELL, MERRY CHRISTMAS MOTHERFUCKERS! I GOT A STORAGE CONTAINER FULLA THAT SHIT ANYWAY!" She retched out, as she stormed down the alley behind us, sobbing.
Once she was out of sight, a new psychic came from the corner of Chartres and St Anne. He redecorated the table in minutes, sat down, and opened for business. The customers and neighbors didn't blink. It seemed the only people in the square to notice anything were my brother and I.
We learned in one quick instant that these people have a boss, this territory is protected, and that woman wasn't just being robbed, she was being fired. We felt the magnitude of a shadowy network around us. A psychic union.
It captured my imagination, and I've wanted inside this network for years now. But if I wanna be an underground Derren Brown, and not have my business bindled by a burgundy burglar, I better be binging beneficial books.
Humpty Dumpty shouldn't be too much of a punching bag this time. These are just tools, there's little to moralize about. Only my usual frustration, that he believes he's too autistic to grasp anything in these books. But we'll pick that apart as we go along.
Here are five outstanding books on influence. Whether you wanna be a psychic, or psychic-proof; On Skinny's good side, or Skinny himself; or whether you wanna just be friendly and earnest without being a stupid mark. These are some essentials.
• #1 Influence by Robert Cialdini •
Props to my brother for finding this one. He won friends and influenced all the way to a fancy job, as a slave, on top of a mountain, making omelets for rich helicopter-snowboarders.
He quickly started to sense the ways his workplace had employed influence traps, or straight up coercion to get backbreaking work out of people. So he looked for a book on the topic, and jumped straight into this baby right here.
He was able to break down, step by step, all the tricks used to punk and exploit him. His fancy job was a set of golden shackles. So he timed his plane ticket to come when his bosses needed him most, then that morning just casually climbed into an uber with his luggage, smiled and waved goodbye from a distance, to his coworkers on their way into work, and let them wrap their heads around the fact that he 86'd that bitch on their busiest day. They called, he ignored them, and rejoiced all the way home.
Now, my brother is a former school bully, and a real con artist. As kids, his favorite thing to do was lie to me to get me to perform whatever terrible idea he imagined. But eventually my lie-spotting skills caught up, and he had to start training on others. Since then I just watch him fuck with people now, highly amused.
Point is, even experienced con artists can be influenced into pitfalls. Influence techniques exploit automatic biological functions in our head. Functions that otherwise play extremely helpful roles, and make our life 100x more efficient. This book is similar to You Are Not So Smart in that it emphasizes the usefulness of things that also trip us up every day.
Cialdini writes from the point of view of a former all-day sucker. His goal is to free the reader from that automaticity. Certain stimuli can trigger us, like hitting play on a cassette tape. "Click, whirr" as he puts it. The key is to hear the clicks, and chose for yourself whether you let things whirr.
He also highlights many schemes in the world designed to exploit our whirrs. Most commonly, they're designed to get you to buy things. This pandemic, for example, has just been a food fight of people flinging influence techniques back and forth at one another, for a myriad of reasons. This was a tad mind-blowing to reread, after almost two years of this lockdown quagmire.
Humpty, as a recluse, is really only exposed to the influence of salespeople. Jesus fucking murphy have salespeople ever run a train on that egg. He thinks because he's not a hypebeast, that somehow means he's not a brainless consumer. Like all his escapism and dopamine fetishes are a reflection of refined taste, and none are a form of mental enslavement.
Keep in mind, I'm all for playtime. But remember, Humpty complains about how constantly bored and disappointed he is by the games and toys he buys. He considers every day wasted, on repetitive trash. Then describes in absolute terms how he must buy more. I lost track of how many remastered/rereleased games he was so excited to buy, only to get upset that it's basically the exact same game he owned already, just with negligibly better graphics. He's the stupidest fuck on the whole everywhere.
The info definitely can be used either way, offensively or defensively. But nothing about it is unfair or shady. No more than the average salesperson. Everyone has their own grasp of concepts like: reciprocity, social proof, authority, scarcity, etc. But for most people it's just an intuitive grasp. Which makes them vulnerable to people who have studied it deliberately.
Of course, Dump thinks he's off the hook, here. He says there's no way to sharpen his social skills. But like I discussed in my entry on The Science Of Evil, Humpty is just a systematizer, as opposed to an empathizer. Empathizers learn intuitively, face-to-face with peers. Whereas systematizers are better with an objective, structured, systematic approach, i.e. they learn from books.
• #2 The Like Switch by Jack Schafer and Marvin Karlins •
Humpty believes people are naturally biased against him. But I doubt he'd say he has it as hard as an FBI agent, trying to befriend a guilty criminal, that he's obviously hoping to throw in jail.
Honestly, I just thought FBI agents growled at you and pointed low hanging lamps in your face. I didn't know good rapport was something they had any conscious control of.
I think Humpty has been hoping his whole life that the charisma of TV, movie, and videogame characters would rub off on him. Sadly, research is starting to show that people who model their personalities based on modern popular media have the worst relationships and mental health. Most notably, people trying to learn romance from romance fiction, and action from action movies. It's disastrous, that shit is designed to be sensational and fun, not informative.
The books in this post, and much of this series, have one pesky habit, and that's how self-conscious they can make you after reading them. Which is discussed in this one. It's the "spotlight effect", where the more you know about psychology, the more self-aware you get, which can make you anxious in the moment, and awkward. You begin to worry that people are tracking your moves, and the intentions in your head, and that you'll be seen as manipulative for even knowing these techniques.
I find myself still succumbing to the spotlight effect. I wonder sometimes if I'm overusing people's names, like in hellos or goodbyes, and whether they'll recognize I'm a Dale Carnegie fan, and find that insincere or glib. But they just smile more. Some things are simply pleasant.
Nobody can read your mind, there's nothing wrong with putting forethought into your actions and other people's reactions, and at the end of the day the result of all this scheming is that people enjoy your company more. There's an aches-and-pains period in the beginning, as you put these ideas into practice, because the Dunning-Krueger effect applies as always.
The advice is similar to Atomic Habits, in that they're tiny improvements you can work into your life, that make you more pleasant in self-compounding ways.
I'm talking things as simple as letting yourself make trivial mistakes, so people can correct them, and give you the opportunity to graciously accept their criticism. Doing that just once can blow a person's mind, and improve rapport.
Negative self disclosure normally goes a long way too, but only up to a certain point. Admitting you're too dumb to hold a list in your head if it exceeds two items, or read an analogue clock, can be highly endearing. Repeating every 10-60 minutes that you want to kill yourself or others is not so productive.
A lot of it is about vulnerability and reciprocity. When dogs become friends, they bow, and show their bellies and necks. We do that in the form of being honest about our shadows.
Schaffer discusses the idea of a "friend-stranger-foe" continuum, between animals. A major part of Humpty's anxiety is from the fact that any time he's perceived as a stranger, he automatically thinks he's perceived as a foe. Since he puts in no effort to socialize with new people, he's perpetually a stranger.
But the stranger zone is a perfectly comfortable place to start from. And honestly, only assholes expect to be treated like friends immediately. Being likeable isn't fate, you can cultivate it. No matter how crazy you might think you are.
• #3 Pimp by Iceberg Slim •
Whoever told you this is a glorification of pimping, I want you to flick imaginary water from your hand in their face a bunch of times, so they blink wildly, and say, "get outta here, you fibber!" 👋💦
It only glorifies cocaine. But hey, who doesn't? Nothing misogynistic about good ol Lady Caine.
Full disclaimer, I didn't bother rereading this one. When I got it, after I heard Dave Chapelle talking about it, I made it almost half way through and put it down for more than a year. I think it was after he busted out a wire hanger. I just decided I wasn't having fun and fucked off for a sec.
Second time around I completed it, and got to enjoy the redemptive side of the book, where Slim explores his regrets, and discusses psychology. It's a one-of-a-kind book, and as time goes by, I think it'll become an increasingly sought-after piece of reading for future economic historians, criminologists, and linguists.
I'm not afraid of Humpty becoming a violent pimp or anything. He's not going from wet toilet paper, to a state-of-the-art plastic prison shank in one book. And it won't hurt his non-existent game. He's better off seeing dating as a matter of strategy, rather than seeing it as a swordfight against a fart. Though I'll stress, this is not a book on dating.
There's a great number of lessons about acting like you're someone of value, and what happens to those who don't. Lessons about standing up for yourself, and conditions you must NOT accept from others. It's a book about boundaries from a master of dissolving them.
This book instantly came in handy at work. My current job, where I've been since 2019, is so under control I finally started getting coworkers telling me they're jealous and impressed.
I've been throwing around pimp analogies from day one, talking about how, bitch, I give handjobs for a handjob wage. You ain't gonna sidle up next to me like "Psst, hey if you also gave blowjobs for the same fee, you'd be everyone's favorite ho." Motherfucker if you want a blowjob, you better peel me off some head scratch, UP FRONT.
In this case, I'm talking about how I'm a fry cook, and I won't cross train till they say the word "money". Which they won't. So while the other cooks on line get to spend the day pissed off and burnt out, trying to run 2-3 other stations, while the kitchen managers loiter in the office and ponder trivial emails, I'm by my fryers, making tendies and fries, like an angel. I could do it in my sleep. Meanwhile we all get paid the same handjob wage, except for the salaried pigs sitting up stairs, staying cool and unstained, pretending like they're the ones getting airtighted every day.
My fellow cooks are mystified by how little this workplace dicks with my free time. I'm now officially the least exploited human in the building. Not the richest guy, I'll admit. But I value my time more than my money. And I get my time. Plus consistency at one job makes holding a second one easier, should I suddenly value my money more than my time.
Fundamentally this is a general workplace manual. Whether you're the boss, the employees, or the customer; The pimp, the ho, or the trick. It may sound silly for a creamy white boy to break the world down into a glossary of Pimpanese, but what can I say, it's a clarifying lens. Marx broke down capitalism from inside factories. Slim breaks it down from Gropecunt Lane.
Courage, vulnerability, shame, and worthiness are the primary topics of all of Slim's work. He's just the pimp version of Brené Brown.
Spotting a fellow reader of this book is exciting. Part of it is from how taboo it is, like you both read from the same spooky grimoire. Another part is from knowing it's not as evil as its reputation suggests. It's graphic, but not corrupt. I read more violent things in 6th grade.
One of my supervisors has read this, and he's the best supervisor I've ever had. I think he's just naturally a great guy, but he sees eye to eye with me on all this stuff, and I think Pimp has helped him be an anti-pimp. Where he treats people with an abundance of dignity, rather than a pure lack of it.
People have credited Iceberg Slim for having gotten young men involved in pimping. But I believe for every one pimp this book creates, it keeps at least a thousand people safe from pimps, and all other long-legged mackdaddies tryna georgia your square ass out of time and money.
If I wanna work for a guy like Skinny, I better keep my head on straight. But I mean what's the worst that can happen? It's just palm reading. Simple handiwork.
p.s. the whole ass book is free on audible, or YouTube. Enjoy!
• #4 How To Win Friends And Influence People by Dale Carnegie •
How could I not include this? The OG modern self-help book.
One day Dale was like "Jeez, a lot of these businessfolk working at this company are complete assholes. Lemme just grab a book on not being an asshole real qui-- wait nobody wrote a book on that yet? How? Why? Fuck? Shit."
So he wrote this. He beat everyone to the best points a book on personality could make, and wound up surpassing nearly all of his successors.
It's safe to say this series takes the exact opposite of Dale's approach, towards Humpty. The days of me using these tricks to leverage against Humpty's bullshit are over. He will not be sweettalked out of his mud puddle. Believe me I tried.
Here's how you know this book nails it, you just want to be Dale's friend by the end. Man sounds like an absolute sweetie pie. 11/10. I know Humpty would find Carnegie's words touching, knowing how inconsiderately he says everyone treats him.
It's full of advice you already knew was lovely, but maybe you never consciously made a rule out of it. Like never scold people, expect 99% of people to never self criticize, appeal to people's self importance, never get caught flattering like a sneaky pimp, treat people's names with great significance, ask tons of questions, admit your faults before people spot them, be like a dog, the list goes on. And most importantly they're all things any high functioning autist can master. I guarantee.
This book helped put an end to my internet arguing. That, and the fact that it's a pastime that can get you shamed off of the internet, if you have too much fun doing it. I still think there should be safe places on the internet for people to consensually let their memes mosh about violently. But knowing that it doesn't convince anyone, the fun kinda vanished.
I tried changing strangers through comment sections, nothing made a difference. Then I tried hunkering down and changing a friend, face to face, still no luck. Either I'm a shit teacher, or we can only teach ourselves.
I even tried the "make a suggestion, let them mull it over in their head, then let the seed grow till they think they came up with the idea themselves" trick. Problem was, Humpty never mulled over ideas, or repeated anything back to you, unless it was sarcastic.
These books also told me if I listen intensely to Humpty, he'll feel compelled to reciprocate and listen back.... nope.... just a fucking ne'er-do-well.
Now, Christopher Lasch in The Culture Of Narcissism partially blames books like these for our society's increasing narcissism. But I don't know if I can fully agree. The emphasis on giving a shit about other people in this book is enormous. The real magic happens when you care about your fellow man, not just pretend to. Granted, this book is a philistine masterpiece. It's not about being an ethical person per se, just a damn charming one, and a successful capitalist; Ivan Ilyich virtues.
As The Gift Of Fear puts it, "charming" is a verb, not an adjective. Charming is not something you are, but something you do. Doesn't make you good, just makes you lovely. It's compatible with any moral system you want, unless you think it's immoral to have charisma.
There's a lot of cool similarities between Carnegie's advice and ancient Egyptian religion. Like the idea that the most powerful thing a being has is its own ability to pay attention, and give things its awareness; the eye. And that your power over the gods depends on your ability to speak their name correctly. It's timeless wisdom.
• #5 The Prince by Nicolo Machiavelli •
This has been a very red topic. Influence is a red thing, I guess. Lets take a sec and enjoy some other colours:
nice
Machiavelli's got an unfairly bad reputation. "Machiavellian" is fancy booktalk for "a manipulative, amoral piece of shit." In psychology, it's known as a "dark triad" trait, alongside narcissism and psychopathy; a pathological will to power. In politics, it means cynicism, heartless realism, and the pursuit of power for power's sake.
But Machiavelli was a cool dude, and y'all better quit talkin shit. It's all catholic propaganda. Before him, political philosophers and theologians were the same thing. I'm talking baldy-headed monk looking dicks like Thomas Aquinas.
Then Nicolo came along, and told everyone that politics is in fact not informed by god, but by mundane humans, with mundane forms of power and influence. Always has been, always will be. No more mysterious or esoteric than a game of poker.
Odious thing to say, from the church's point of view. They were the Google of the renaissance, and wanted a monopoly on control over the creation and elimination of princes. They also, most importantly, wanted it all done in secret.
Nico's goal wasn't to blow the lid off of their scheme, his goal was to kiss one guy's ass, land a sweet gig in his court, and enjoy a wealthy life. Son of a lawyer, shooting for an advisor's position. What's new?
As Gladwell might put it, he wrote the first book on the political full-court press. Books on leadership back then just listed off moral ideals, and stories of virtue from history. Instead of flowery aikido poses and chakra alignment, Machiavelli gave instructions for making molotov cocktails and Millwall bricks.
It takes some deciphering, however. Everything he talks about requires a sense of analogy, since it's 500 years old, and he most definitely wasn't talking to you. Nobody's becoming a prince nowadays, so who gives a fuck? Well a "prince" is just a boss, and a "principality" is just a corporation of any kind; a body, a super organism. It's a book on group behavior. Skinny was the prince of the Jackson Square psychics.
Don't get me wrong, the more openly Machiavellian a leader is, the more terribly they seem to act. But I don't value this book as a wannabe prince. I wanna be prince-proof. And a book like this helps put you in the mind of the people in charge of you. They have weaknesses, and they're predictable. It's all poker, and Machiavelli irreversibly exposed cards in every boss's hand. And not just what's in their hand, but what their tells are. Should be considered a must-read by all political journalists who consider themselves "watchdogs".
He uses an analogy that I love: the idea that any painter knows, if he wants a good look at the plains, he should view from a mountain, and if he wants a good look at a mountain, he should view from the plains.
From the mountain side of the equation, where power lives, this book didn't fundamentally change much (unlike Nicolo's Discourses on Livy, which hugely influenced republicanism). Up there, they were always Machiavellian. But down here on the plains, it gave us telescopes, topographic maps, geological charts, and seismography.
You don't want Machiavelli in your leadership, you want him in your populace. Nicolo brought down fire from the gods, and he was punished by both parties. The gods for theft, and man for illuminating bad news. He was all light, without any sweetness.
Humpty is no idealist. And he's Machiavellian in only the colloquial sense; he's cynical, secular, and pessimistic. But he'd be way better off being so in the direct sense, in line with the man's actual sound advice. Because the real deal isn't nihilistic, it's empowering.
• End Bit •
Each of these books are spotlight-effect-inducing pieces of work. There's a fine line between conscientious and insecure. I hesitate to tell people how much I read about psychology, because I don't want Machiavelli's bad name to rub off on me. I constantly interrogate myself as to whether this journey is about truth, or manipulating others.
My brother and I have, since we were kids, recognized the manipulative power of comedy. How you could disarm, hypnotize, distract, or humiliate people. We wonder how much our sense of humor is a martial art we picked up along the way. As opposed to some beautiful generous impulse, from the muses. All I know is it has kept me out of fights with perfect reliability, despite how many ass beatings I truly deserved.
Humpty's pretty funny, by the way. When he's not Eeyore, and he forgets he's autistic, he's as witty as the best of them. Wednesday didn't only bring him into the group because he was pitiful. It's not like there's no prince in this frog, he just won't kiss back. The motherfucker.
It's hard to say exactly how much these books improved my personality or behavior. I know I learned a lot of these techniques independently, and I wonder how much I chose books just to hear my own thoughts reflected back at me. To feel vindicated, like "Aooh! I knew that was a good idea!"
But I also know when I started reading about this topic in the 10th grade, a therapist of mine had me written down as "extremely pessimistic, rudderless, and angry." By the 12th grade, though I was fully intent on dropping out of highschool, I seemed to have otherwise made a mental flip. Wednesday was 10x worse, and took longer to flip. But now he's actively working in a homeless shelter, becoming a therapist himself, filling his life with meaning, and helping people who actually need it.
All the shit I said in earlier entries, about morality and meaning, those are lovely, but they are slow goals; eulogy stuff. In the meantime, he can get his charisma under control in a fraction of the time. He's better off being scrumptiously unscrupulous, than scrupulously unscrumptious. He's not looking to get into heaven, just invited back to hang out.