I just read an article on Medium about a phrase that makes people instantly like you.  The author called it a trick.  I was intrigued, but put off; I don’t like a con, and in the set up it felt smarmy, like reading PUA.

The article claims science and psychology, and in that regard it talks about stuff we have known for a long time about brain science and brain chemistry, and we know what happiness and sadness do to the chemistry.

And we can use some ‘tricks’ to make the happy place make happy juice.

The ‘trick’ is to show some interest.  When you meet someone, whatever they say, reply “Tell me more!” and then after you _listen_ ask another question about what they just told you.  The psychology, so it says are The Spotlight Effect, Active Listening and The Zeigarnik Effect.  Basically you show interest and then pay attention, and then leave the conversation open to them continuing, and that in itself will create an obsession with finishing the story.

OK, good enough, and then comes the ‘fun’ stuff.  Good advice is to ‘match their energy’, ‘match their tone’ and which sounds exactly like stuff from PUA.

This is all good stuff.  We are wired to find trust, or not, in other people; all too often people make poor judgements in this regard.

I think that this kind of advice for timid or shy people is not bad, but it is the wolves who learn this that draw my ire.  I would prefer they, well, were not.  They tend to turn in to bullies, and they are not just.

It goes on to a challenge, which kind-of makes no sense: day 1-2 use it daily (i.e. ask for _more_), then day 3-4 ‘Note their reaction’, which, uh, we didn’t do on day 1-2?  Not sure about splitting it up like that, and then adding the follow-up for two days after that.  I get the point of getting you thinking about how you are interacting with other people, but I wish the tone was about connecting with other people, with good purpose and honest intent to actually improve their happiness instead of manipulating them in to liking you.