10 Helpful Tips For Bending The Masses to Your Will
If you're anything like me, you're constantly, pants-soilingly furious that the world hadn't given you your due. "Damn you, you motherfuckers!" I scream every morning at the world, or more accurately, the portion of the world visible from my front door - which includes a length of sidewalk and a day care across the street. "If there was any justice in the world, I'd be carried around on the backs of people like you," I tell fellow commuters at the bus stop, who often concede my point and offer to make space for me as a sort of token reparation. "When I'm in charge, pants will be an option, and not the chains of your tyranny," I tell the human resources director, again every morning. But unlike you, with your Cheetos stained fingers and Cheetos stained private parts, I've actually got the tools to correct these deficiencies in the world, to bend these simpler minds to appreciate the glory I have hammered out with my brain. Although there's some ethical issues with this (it's completely unethical, that's the main one) I feel I've learned enough from my experience to share these techniques of manipulation and coercion with you. Whether you use these persuasion techniques to start your own cult of personality, or merely get a date, I wish you well on your journey.
#10: Rational and Coherent Arguments
Difficulty: 4 Effectiveness: 1 If you were to go to the library, and start shrieking demands at the clerk to research the best persuasion techniques history has recorded, you might hear a timid suggestion that you deploy a rational, well thought out argument, instead of, for example, wailing obscenities. This is because the pale and wan folk who live in this world filled with the words of dead men know nothing of the gentle caress of sunlight, nor how the world actually works.
#9: Oration
"I can seriously bite a pencil in half."
#8: Become a Coach
Difficulty: 5 Effectiveness: 7 This classic, Svengali-esque method, involves taking on a legitimate position of authority with a wide mandate over your targets' lives, which dramatically increases the odds that they will be deferential to your morally dubious words. You'll soon have a ready made group of intermediate level ballroom dancers just waiting to be hurled into a fight with government agents, who will rue the day they ever entered your adult learning annex of the malevolent arts. The specifics of this technique involve alternating use of both generous praise and relentless, childish bullying - basically an escalated carrot and stick approach. I like tying my carrot to the stick with a short length of string, and using it as a flail. Then when I need to reward the students, I simply turn it around and strike them with the carrot end.
Sometimes I'll douse a few in LSD and serve them to schoolchildren.
#7: Become a Media Mogul
Difficulty: 10 Effectiveness: 8 People like Rupert Murdoch and Oprah Winfrey have an outsized influence on the thinking of modern society, in a way that David Spade doesn't, because of the massive media empires they've established. Whether it's indirect, like the world-spanning conservative media empire Murdoch has established, or intimate like the personality driven Oprah-cracy Ms. Winfrey has built, a huge number of the public discussions today are influenced by these individuals. Now what's stopping you from doing the same?
Lack of stretch pants?
Highly visible tattoos are also acceptable.
#6: Show Them the Money
Difficulty: 2 Effectiveness: 5 When I find that I can't convince people with my words, I can usually convince them with my fists, assuming those fists are clutching wads of money. It turns out that - thanks to a primitive instinctual lust for Prada handbags inherited from our caveman ancestors - there're few humans alive that can't be bought.
Except for the people who make the bags of course. They envy no man.
Just stare at the sky for a few more wheels and everything will be OK.
#5: Hold the Whole World Hostage
Difficulty: 10 Effectiveness: 6 This is the most difficult entry on this list simply due to the problem of finding a credible way to actually threaten the world. Getting your hands on a nuclear weapon is the obvious choice, but given the tight security those are under, it might be more realistic to threaten the world with a man made plague, or an ancient dragon that only listens to you. Regardless of your chosen menace delivery vector, once you're ready, you'll need to contact the world (use the hashtag #HeedMeFools on Twitter) and issue your list of demands.
Perhaps if I just solder dozens of Komodo dragons together. There is no way that wouldn't be worth at least a shot.
#4: Petnapping
Difficulty: 1 Effectiveness: 7 This one's pretty straightforward to execute, and the only equipment you'll really need is a piece of meat and a box propped up with a stick. After seizing the beast, leave a note explaining what's up (immediate, permanent obedience) and what will also be up (animal soup) should their obedience be anything less than permanent. An Example: "I HAVE YOUR CAT. YOU WILL REPORT TO THE ARBY'S OFF MAIN STREET AT 7:30AM TOMORROW TO BEGIN CONSTRUCTION ON SUBTERRANEAN FORTRESS BENEATH ARBY'S OR THE CAT WILL BECOME BEEF N' CHED'S."
Every knee shall bow. In the direction of the Arby's off of Main Street.
#3: Arm Twisting
#2: Gun hidden in a newspaper
"Now unzip your pants."
#1: Hypnosis
Difficulty: 9 Effectiveness: 10 Here's where we get to the good stuff. Using the three classic hypnotism techniques: suggestion, brainwashing, and microscopic robots, you will plant ideas in people's brains so convincing, that they'll think they're their own. The conventional way to do this is in front of an audience of seniors while wearing a kind of bad haircut, but if you want a more classic approach, try practicing your craft while traveling from town to town in a covered wagon.
If this wagon's a-rockin, vile plots are a-foot.
An Example: "Look into my eyes. Look deep into my eyes. You are my iron fist. You are my will. You are the sharpest tool in my shed. Here, beneath this Arby's you will learn the skills you need to enact the final phase of my plan: breaking into Christian Bale's apartment and stealing a lock of his hair." "Because then, and only then, will all be right in the world." _______________
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