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.