Social Hacking

  For the first time I am actually going to talk about a practical exercise. To make this work you need to have one or more friends to work with and someone to target.

  First I am going to tell you about a quick way to make someone (can be more than one person) be really impressed with you. Secondly I am going to tell you about a fun mind trick (actually a prank) that can seriously confuse one of your friends (just as much fun every time). When I am talking about these techniques I will refer to the victim as the target and you will be "hosting" the attack.

  So the first one was to impress someone. This is quite easy if your friends help you. This can be done in some different ways and it is quite commonly used. What you want to do is to first discuss some discussion topics with your friends. The important part here is not to pick the right topic, it is to just to agree on one (or more) topic(s) to talk about. The thing you want to accomplish is to make the target believe that you have all the answers. Your friends need to ask questions that you know the answer to and they should always agree with you.

  Here is an example: You are trying to impress Laura. Ben is helping you. You are talking about politics. Ben says that he just saw a really impressive debate on TV between the candidates in the governor election in Massachusetts. Ben tells that he was amazed by the way one of the candidates presented themselves and that this candidate reminded him of you. However, he does remember the name of this candidate but of course you know the name. The target only plays the role of a listener in this technique. If it is well executed the target will not realize that almost everything said was already planned out.

  This technique has been used, ad is still used, in many places and situations. In commercials for various products almost all testimonials are based on this technique (reminds you of seed planting?). This has to do a little with the group psychology; if other thinks its good, I should think so to.

  The second trick is just for fun and can get some really fun reaction. What you need is a friend that you want to play the trick on (the target), and another friend (the puppet) that the target does not know. So you tell the puppet some information about the target. This can be name, address, birth date, mother's name and so on. The the target just walks up to the target and pretends to know him or her. The most challenging part to play is the puppet since you need to be really convincing and play with the information you got about the person. This is also a really good exercise in communicating in general.

  This trick can also be taken to the next level if you have not seen the target in a long while. Have the puppet try to pretend to be you and convince the target that he or she really is you.

  This is how strange I am: The other night I when I was writing the last post (12) and got to the part where I told you to see how good you where at reading people, I stopped in my writing and started to think. Yes, when I get to something more interesting my mind tends to wander off easily. However, I started to think about how well I really know people so I was on MSN (more money for m$) and I thought up a simple question. Then I picked my subject, a group of people I know differently well. I though of which responds they would give me and why.

  The first person I asked answer exactly as I predicted. My prediction was that I would have to ask the question twice, first time I would get a question back as response and the next time I would get an answer. Pretty impressed with myself I went on and kept asking people. In the end I was right about 80% of the time (Yea, it was really 100% but I want to make me look human).

  Now for the strange part, the question I asked was: "Right or left?" (in Swedish though: "Höger eller vänster?"). If you see this as a strange question, you are absolutely right. I did also notice something else. I asked 9 boys and 6 girls the question. All boys answered left and all girls answered right (ok, all but one..). Can someone explain this to me?

  When I talk about reading people I mainly mean the ability to predict how that person will act. The easiest way to do this is to get to know the person in question really well. This might not be that easy and, from why I have experienced so far, there will always be people that you will never be able to read.

  The basic technique for reading someone is to put yourself in the persons shoes and make the decision. This is much easier said then done. The term "putting yourself in someone else's shoes" is used too much and in most cases it is to experience only a single incident. However, to use this reading technique you need to become that person. To make this persons decision you need to consider everything that you know about him or her.

  Almost all of our decisions are made from what we have experienced so far. This means that if you now a lot about a person and you are able to take everything into consideration you should be able to accurately predict what that person is going to do.

  When using this technique it is important to establish the order of how to take different things into consideration. For example; if you knew that I ate a ham and cheese sandwich for lunch that would not affect my decision on whether or not to watch a movie with you. However, if you had that information you would probably going to predict that I would not have a ham and cheese sandwich for dinner (I am not that crazy about ham and cheese sandwiches).

  I will know present the way I would rank the information that you know about a person. I am glad if you don't agree with me since that means that you are thinking (hopefully). First of all I take prior decisions into mind. Next I think about the current emotional state of the person. Third I think about the general status of the persons life. Last I try to factor in everything else. This all means that I have to be very judging with the person, something that I don't really like. However, with this technique it is the only way to go.

  Over a week since my last entry, sorry about that. I have had too much school work and I even had a couple of sick days. However, I will try to give you a couple of posts the coming week even though my workload is increasing exponentially.

  This time I want to talk about human in groups. As I have said before; people act differently depending on the situation. Being in a group with people you know will probably increase your confidence. You know how the group usually acts and you probably know your own roll in the group. However, being in a group like that could also mean that you agree to thing you don't usually agree with. Yes, I am talking about peer pressure.

Todays work:

  Start out by thinking about a group that you are usually in. This can be a class, your work, or just a clique of friends. What role do you have in this group? Think of who in the group takes the decisions. Who changes the subject when you are talking? Who comes with new ideas? Who is quiet most of the time? Give every person in your group a role that you think fits. Multiple people can have the same role. To see the role that a person fills can tell you a lot about the person and how the person acts. What can be really hard to see is if the person likes the role he or she is in. Do you like your role?

  Any school book would now start listing these different roles. I will not do that. The reason for this is that I don't think that there is a set number of roles. I believe it is not even possible to define all different roles in a group. And if you do manage to define say the top 100 roles, there will always be someone in some situation that would not fit any of these roles perfectly. If someone does not fit a role perfectly it will not be able to make perfect assumptions.

  Yes, taking this to an extreme. You will never be possible to make correct assumptions all the time (only I can do that)..

  The next step is to define relations between these roles. Ever played pokémon? Think of the relation as the big chart of the different strength and weaknesses of the different pokémons. If you never played pokémon then.. well really, who has never played pokémon?

  So, with all that done you probably know where I am headed with this. If you have defined the different roles and relations you should be able to predict what will happen in different situations a little better. If your group happens to be only your closes friends you can even try to create a situation yourself and see if it turns out the way you predicted.

  This exercise (as I will call it), is only about learning more about the people you are with. This is one way of getting to know your friends without being with them. It's also a great exercise to practice your social hacking skills and see how good you are at reading people.

  The evolution (devolution?) continues. I will in this post talk more about some observations that I have made and not really try to teaching anything. I will also start to label the post more carefully. For example this post will be labeled with observation and rant. The posts in which I try to teach something will be labeled with lesson. Still, in my own opinion, observations are an important part of understanding. Reaching your own conclusions and coming up with your own ideas will help you understand. Also, I will try to make the observation more entertaining to read. If anyone has any objections or ideas, as usual: tell me.

  It has not been a great day today. First I experienced the first “attack” towards this page. Someone in Spain (nothing against Spanish people but the attackers IP was hosted in Spain) was probably trying to find weaknesses in this page's structure. Even though I am fairly sure the attacker did not manage to get anywhere before I put an end to it, he or she did manage to completely screw up my statistics system and waste my time. I spend about an hour getting the person away from the page and I did not have anymore time correcting the stats. I also had to remove the poll as you might have noticed. Anyway, if you are looking for a page to hack and you don't really know what you're doing; please target someone who's not a computer engineer. It's just a big hassle for me and it wastes both your and my time.

  Secondly my guitar broke today, but you probably don't want to hear about that so lets get back to the subject of social hacking. I had a seminar in one of my courses today and we had three minor debates. I will not mention the subject since it is completely irrelevant. However, I did make some interesting observations and got some ideas on how to be more successful in a debate. I will spend some post later own trying to teach you these different methods.

  There were a couple of different strategies that I saw different people use. The most annoying one, which I personally cannot stand, was what I would like to call get-in-your-opponents-face-method. I saw one person doing this. As soon as this person heard some negative about what he had said, he instantly raised his voice, interrupted the critic and ask him to clarify what he though was wrong. The thing that I don't like about this method was that he made it seem like he talked down to the critic, making it seem like the negative feedback was nothing but nonsense, almost like calling the critic stupid.

  Another technique that I saw, that I was more impressed by, was ones person ability to almost force a question from the audience that he had a really good answer to. I don't think he did it intentionally but if someone is able repeat this, it can be a very powerful strategy. What this person did was that he talked around the subject, almost leaving out obvious information and forcing someone in the audience to ask the question that he has the perfect answer to. When giving a perfect answer you show the audience that you know the subject and you will earn some of their trust.

  One last observation I made when I looked at others debate was that in most cases you can clearly see if someone is paying attention to what you say, if they agree or disagree with what you are saying, and/or if they are waiting to tell their own opinion. To realize when your opponent does not pay careful attention anymore can be used in many different ways depending on what situation you are in. Can you think of when or why it could be useful?

  As a last thing I would like to mention something that hopefully will give you something to think about (if you are what people refer to as a "geek" or a "nerd"). For you who don't understand this I will say this: Look at what people do instead of what they say that they do. "Do as I say, not as I do" is commonly used. The example I want to share is from my physics lecture today. It was a lecture in basic mechanics but me and some friends discussed how the lecturer unintentionally came up with a new way to explain some quantum physics. Here is a picture of the board. My guess is that about maybe 5% of the people who look at the picture will understand what I am talking about. If you really, I mean really, want me to explain, send me an message.

  Our subconscious is the operating part of our mind that we can't really control or tell if it's there (most of the time). However, everyone has a subconscious and it is constantly effecting how we act.

  A quick example of how our subconscious is constantly at work: Say that you are sitting in a crowded restaurant with a friend. The noise level is really high and you have to concentrate on what your friend is saying. Your brain is able to, or at least trying, to filter out everything besides your friends voice. Suddenly, someone on the other side of the restaurant calls out your name and even tough the call is not much louder than the rest of the restaurant, you react and respond to the call.

  This is an example of how even if you don't listen to anything but what your friend is saying, your subconscious still pays attention to the rest and alerts you if something important happens. There have been multiple tries to use this as an way to advertise products or persuasion people, so called subliminal messaging. Subliminal messaging is targeted to your subconscious and when executed properly your conscious mind should not be aware of the message.

  Subliminal messaging has been a popular research subject for many companies. Even though that nothing has been proven, many studies show that subliminal messaging does affect our decision making. One study that I know of was performed in cinemas. Towards the end of the movie, single frames with a Coke bottle were shown. The frames flash by so quickly that the conscious mind did not react. However, when offered a Coke or a Pepsi bottle after the movie, most viewers chose Coke. Our subconscious did see the bottle.

  A good way to understand once subconscious is to look are yourself in a decision making situation. Say for example that you are choosing between two more or less unknown brands of tooth paste. If your “gut feeling” tells you to chose one of the brands, it is probably your subconscious playing with you. Try to think of any situation that you have seen or heard anything about any of the two brands. This is why advertising is so important and so powerful. Even if you don't consciously remember a commercial, your subconscious remembers it and when it comes to buying a product, you are much more likely to buy the product that you know about.

  I talked before about using others subconscious when talking to them or when trying to persuade them. Things like seed planting (post 5) is very effective and relies mostly on people's subconscious.

  The scary thing about our subconscious is that it is almost free from reasoning skills. If you succeed with planing a seed into someone's subconscious, he or she will probably start believe in what was planted. Say for example that someone was able to plant a seed in my head that said that the world is flat. The next time I am thinking about if the world is round, my gut will probably tell me that the world in reality is flat. Ok, this is an extreme example. In real life seed planting is done in much smaller doses and with more reasonable facts. However, it is still an amazingly effective technique.

  If you want to gain more knowledge about your subconscious I would start experimenting a little. See what triggers your subconscious, what things do you react to. Try to think about why you make the decisions you make. Even simple decisions, like if you take the fork or knife first from your kitchen drawer, have to come from somewhere. There are also some exercises that you can do to get better control of your subconscious. However, I will cover that at another time.