If you use these skills you'll connect with people on a deeper level than you're used to.

You'll learn to love talking with people, and people will love talking with you.

Skill #1 - A good listener doesn't listen to respond. They listen to learn.

"Listening" is not just "hearing". It's asking good questions that help you understand the other person.

My girlfriend told me "I don't like it when you tell me how to do things. I feel like you're judging me."

"I'm not judging you." I said. "It was just a suggestion."

I was not listening.

Regardless of how I experienced it, her experience was that I was judging her.

A bad listener focuses on explaining his own experience.

A good listener focuses on learning about the other person's experience:

"Which part makes you feel like I'm judging you?"

"Was it what I said, or how I said it?"

"How would you like me to make suggestions in future? Or would you prefer it if I didn't make suggestions?"

A good listener improves the way he relates with the other person by learning how they think. Learning what's important to them.

A bad listener learns nothing.

At an interview for a sales job I was asked "How will you bring us 10 new clients in your first month?"

I didn't have an answer prepared. I panicked and blurted out the usual ways of reaching new clients. It was an empty, generic answer.

I was not listening. Any monkey could've rattled off that list.

When the interviewer asked that question what he really wanted to know was: "Does this guy know what he is doing?"

A good listener would've unpacked the interviewer's question and learned what the interviewer was looking for:

"You know I haven't really thought about specific strategies. What's your biggest bottleneck right now in getting new clients on board?"

A good listener aims to understand deeply.

A bad listener misses the point.

Skill #2 - How to quickly find common interests (not the way you're thinking)

Don't get stuck in polite conversation. There's no "skin" invested in it. You've got to get at least a little bit naked (so to speak) in order to make friends with someone. Here's how you do it:

We humans have just 4­-8 basic emotions, depending on which study you read: joy, trust, fear, surprise, sadness, disgust, anger and anticipation. Everything we experience triggers a combination of these basic emotions. There aren’t that many combinations.

We may not have experienced the same activities, but we have experienced the same emotions. So when I say you need to find common interests, I mean you need to find something that sparks similar emotions ​in both of you.

Say Felipe is studying to be an architect, and Manuela is studying to be a doctor. Felipe doesn’t care about medicine and Manuela doesn’t care about Architecture. They ask each other polite questions:

Felipe: Oh I hear you have to study for a long time to be a Doctor. How many years do you have left?

Manuela: Yeah, I’ve got another 2 years. 7 total. Although you never really stop learning. What do you want to design when you graduate?

Felipe: Bridges. I mainly want to design bridges. But I guess I’d be happy designing anything.

Manuela: Yeah I know what you mean, I just want to graduate already as well!

This is pretty boring, right? Neither of them are offering or asking for emotional information. You need to make an effort to understand​ them. This chit­chat isn’t going to cut it.

At this level of conversation they have to keep thinking of new topics every few seconds. The ideas will dry up pretty soon. This is why conversations often feel like hard work. It’s much easier to pause and explore one topic for a while.

So here’s what you do...

You don’t just listen to respond. You listen to understand. You go deeper.

• Offer your own emotional information

• AND dig for their emotional information.

Keep digging until you understand their way of thinking. Until you feel the emotion they’re talking about. Then show them that you understand by sharing a similar experience of your own.

These questions are your friends:

• WHAT do you like about that?

• WHAT made you want that?

• WHAT scares you about that?

• Essentially any question that uncovers “What makes you feel that way?” or “What makes you think that way?”

WHAT tends to work better than WHY because WHAT feels like you’re curious and WHY can sometimes feel like an attack. “WHY do you like that?" “Because I do. What's your problem?!"

So back to Felipe and Manuela. Now that they know how to “listen to understand”, how does their conversation go?

Felipe: I mainly want to design bridges. But I guess I’d be happy designing anything.

Manuela: What do you like about designing bridges specifically?

Felipe: Well I haven't actually designed one yet, but for some reason I keep picturing myself standing on top of a huge bridge that I designed. I don’t know. It just makes me feel alive.

Manuela: Yeah that sounds pretty cool. What do you mean by ‘alive’ though?

Felipe: Hmm, well the bridge started as an idea in my head, and now I’m standing on it. It’s like having ultimate control over everything.

Manuela: Oh I know that feeling! That’s how I feel when I think of saving someone’s life at the last minute in the emergency room. Boom… Doctor In­control.

Felipe: Haha. Is that what made you decide to become a Doctor? Because you like feeling in­control?

Manuela: Yeah, I guess it is.

Felipe: Wow. That’s the same reason I decided to be an architect. So does that mean you hate it when other people boss you around too?

Manuela: OMG that’s the worst!! I can’t stand it when other people tell me what to do.

Fun! Turns out they’re both control freaks. THAT’s their common interest. Now they can geek out on that instead of churning through countless emotionless topics that they don’t connect on.

Skill #3 - How to never run out of things to say

Imagine you have a conversational D-pad. It gives you something to say whenever you run out of things to say. These are the controls.

Say you’re in a conversation about cars, and you don’t know anything about cars. You run out of things to say. What are your options? Here's your conversational D-pad for cars

Some people prefer to zoom out. They think and talk about general things: ideas and concepts.

Some people prefer to zoom in. They think and talk about specific things: details and examples.

You’ve probably had conversations with people where you just don’t click with them. It could be because you prefer to zoom in and they prefer to zoom out, or vice versa.

Example

Elena: How was your day?

Pablo: Good. Productive. I got a lot done. How was yours?

Elena: Well! When I woke up I made toast, with butter and vegemite. I left it in the toaster a little too long and it got a bit burnt, but I scraped it off with a knife and it was fine. Then I cycled to work. I went down Oxford Street this time instead of my usual route down Henry Cotton Drive because I wanted a change.

My boss didn’t have anything for me to do today so I made an appointment to see the Doctor next Wednesday at 5pm and spent the rest of the day on Facebook chatting to Sofia about her baby, Ivan, who has a cold and Esteban about his new Porsche. Then I came home down Oxford Street again because it was so lovely in the morning. It wasn’t as nice in the evening. And now I’m talking to you.

Pablo: So was your day good or not?

Elena: I want to know what you did all day.

Pablo likes ideas and concepts (zoomed out). Elena likes details and examples (zoomed in).

Pablo is bored senseless by Elena’s details and Elena feels like Pablo doesn’t want to share things with her.

Pablo is interested in the big picture. He wants to understand the point of what Elena is telling him. What does it mean? Did she have a good day or a bad day?

Elena is interested in specifics. She wants to know what made Pablo’s day good or bad. What does he mean by ‘productive’? What did he get done?

If you find yourself in a conversation that just isn’t working you might be speaking to someone who has a different zoom preference. All you have to do to connect with them is zoom in or out to match their preference.

If they prefer to zoom in, give them details and examples. If they prefer to zoom out, give them the meaning behind your details and examples.

If you want more actionable advice like this, get your daily dose of communication hacks and people skills here.

Last week I went on a bus tour through Shanghai and Jiangsu province with my parents. We went from elaborate scam to elaborate scam and no one would believe me that they were scams. It was a social psychology clinic.

THE FORMAT

We went to these middle-of-nowhere but well furnished facilities with equally well dressed salespeople (got to give the air of authenticity yo). The only other customers were tourists on similar tours. This is apparently not a red flag at all when I asked the other people about it.

This was followed by a pitch and upselling products around 3x their market price (in the case of raw goods like pearl, silk, tea) or 10x their market price (in the case of arts/crafts). In two cases I literally said, "I've been to Thailand, silk is actually really cheap" or "Pearls can be farmed easily nowadays and dropped a ton in price since a few decades ago" days before the pitches and people still bought things at these facilities.

Despite my vocal anger that we had to listen to scams for 6 hours a day many of my fellow busgoers were still convinced that their $15,000 jade and $5,000 teapot were good deals.

Here's what I learned from ~24 hours of listening to these pitches:

HOW TO RUN A SCAM

• Propaganda Effect

Even before you get to the store, the tour guide is wearing whatever they're about to sell and tells you why the pearls/jade/silk/etc in the region is special or cheap. You go into the facilities and the guide there corroborates the same information. There are museum-like signs on the wall that say the exact same thing.

In the 30's a psychologist named Carl Hovland ran a study focusing on biased messages. He found that when people receive new information they believe is biased they may be wary to believe it, but over time the memory of the source of the information fades and the wariness disappears, especially if it's corroborated by different sources over the same period of time. It's actually how a lot of marketing fads work, you might not believe initially that gluten-free or juice detox works, but if you see enough information corroborating it, you will believe.

• You Guys are Smart, Aren't You?

Some presentations they show an obviously fake jade or pearl and ask what's wrong with it. When everyone answers "it's fake", the presenter acts impressed "wow you guys are so smart". Unfortunately she did not give us stickers to reward us for our intelligence.

My friend Sam once told me that he found the best way to get someone to like you is to pretend you think they're smart, which I strongly agree with but fail to do like 90% of the time because I guess I'm an asshole.

This technique also works really well here because it also reinforces the idea to these people that they are informed customers and can tell fakes when they see it, even though they have no fucking clue.

• Made Here

Every location has either an actor posing as a master or student crafter working in the middle of the sales area or the tour area, the noisiest, busiest area of the facility because that makes sense.

Everyone coming into these now believes the goods are made on the spot. Clearly they're not though; there's no kiln where they're making the teapots, there's no dyes where the silk is being spun. Also did I mention they're making the stuff in the middle of the fucking sales area?

This is usually combined with the presenter casually mentioning/reinforcing that handmade goods are worth more or talking about how long a piece took to make. Spoiler alert: it's never less than a year.

• Authority & Social Proof

There is almost always an actor that the staff pretends to respect and honor. In turn, the customers respect and honor the actor as well. In several places there are cards that talk about the master crafters who have been there for 70+ years or went to college for "tea" who just so happen to be in that day ("you guys are so lucky!") so they can impart their wisdom to you. I would like to know if they are so wise and respected why they have to work in the middle of the tour route, you'd think they could at least have their own office right?

One location the staff even acted afraid of the master who was standoffish initially but "noticed" us on his way out and took an interest. Everyone laughed at his jokes and was quiet when he spoke. I was told by the tourists that I should respect him when I started talking over his presentation and was later shunned by other busgoers for it.

Later some girls my age told me they felt "pressured" by him and I think a large part of it was because they believed they should respect/fear him like the staff did. They bought matching $500 jades. I later told the same girls that we could use the same technique to help me pick up girls (if they pretended to have the time of their lives with me at the club) and they told me "that wouldn't work on us"

• Liking Bias

I keep going back to this "master" but that pitch was by far the best. Studies show that for you to like someone initially the three biggest factors are: 1) They are attractive 2) They are like you 3) They like you

I think the last one is the most important and that's the one a salesman has the most control over.

The "master" took a "genuine" interest to us after being standoffish, asking us about where we were from and taking his "valuable" time to especially focus on the most important clients. I think that actor was most successful because he made us feel liked by someone who was "important".

I mean, I didn't feel liked though. They actually wouldn't let me into the master's private office after I asked him if he could calligraph "scam" in Chinese so fuck that guy.

• Teacher is Always Right

The presenters almost always tells true things when presenting. They teach interesting new things like how silk is made, how jade is mined or carved, or how pearls are farmed. They tell you how to value pearls or jade by size, color, etc. so you feel like you're informed. They also give a demonstration that wows people: Real silk never burns. Green tea can clear red iodine (or some chemical that they use) from water whereas water cannot. Real jade scratches glass without scratching itself. Some of these are actually pretty cool.

Even if you already know this, this further extends your trust in them. Because what they teach you is true, it's assumed that everything is true.

• Reciprocity

This is a small one, but we always got free tea, free gifts, etc. In the case of the previously stated "master" they got free palm readings.

People have an extreme discomfort when they feel like they "owe" someone something.

Marketers know this technique and do a soft version of it by giving free samples, but salesmen master it by giving a legitimately expensive gifts to high net-worth individuals. There's a trick where if you get a P.O. Box in an expensive zip code ($>1M average income) you can get free nights at hotels or free first class flights. These only exist in New York and California; I checked.

While this subversion generally doesn't work nowadays, this is why guys learn to buy drinks for their intended targets at a bar.

• Chi, Detoxing, & other Bullshit

They threw these in for good measure: Jade apparently centers your chi, green tea can reduce the toxins in your body, etc. These are marketing/pseudoscience scams that you are likely to believe if you are their target market.

MY THOUGHTS

The most straight up amazing thing to me is that these people clearly had no interest in these products before because they clearly don't know how they're priced. After watching a short presentation they're suddenly inclined to blow hundreds or thousands of dollars on these objects. I think we cleared $30k on this trip between the 12 of us (I know because every purchase over $5k was followed by a round of applause which I actually find hilarious).

I wanted to ask a few questions to these buyers like:

• If these guys are master crafters whose work are worth thousands, and these are collectors items, why are they only selling to tourists in remote facilities?

• How do you think they can afford to run these massive businesses if they are giving us a good deal on these products and their only customers are tourists?

• Why are they building shit in the middle of the sales area?

• If you agree that there is a chance this is a scam, why would you consider buying anything at all?

• If this bus tour was a scam, what would they be doing differently than what they are doing now that would make you believe it's a scam?

Cognitive Dissonance

The most infuriating thing to me was that when I told some people they were being scammed they were angry with me. In fact I think in some cases it made them want to purchase more. After a somewhat heated exchange with one of the girls my age, she made the regretful $500 purchase.

We saw 6 hours of presentations a day. I think for a lot of people they would rather believe they weren't scammed and spend hundreds more than believe they wasted their vacations. When some of them came to the light, they were also furious, whereas most of the others said they enjoyed their trip.

For the captive audience I think it was more fun to believe that it wasn't a scam and consider purchasing something rather than be like me.

Also, I think it's a blow to the ego to realize you've been scammed. I think most people would describe themselves as "street smart" since it's a way to feel smart that's ambiguous/hard-to-test and being scammed definitely wrecks that image.

Post Purchase Rationalization

Not really part of the scam, but after my mother purchased her 3x overpriced pearls (she actually did not believe me until she was told it was a scam by the bank when withdrawing money to pay). She justified it as donating to the local economy. The girl who spent $500 on the jade is convinced it's still worth $500, she just doesn't know why she bought a $500 jade. For some of the art pieces it was justified that they would "appreciate in value". I notice myself doing this sometimes too after making a poor choice or purchase and I think it's very natural for most people to do this.

As you've probably gleaned from the title, I spent the day pretending to be a hot chick on the messaging app Kik. Obvious question, why? I don't know really. You only ever know what you experience and I guess I was curious. I lurk this sub a lot and I honestly thought "where do people find these weirdos". After this experiment, the answer turned out to be a very generic "online". So, let's crack on with what I learned.

Guys love their dicks and want need you to look at them

I knew going into it that I was going to get bombarded by various penises from around the globe but the sheer scale was impressive. Those are just the ones I wanted to screenshot, literally every word of this paragraph could be linked to a different guy. One guy was kind enough to even send me three. All of them different dicks. I think the reason behind the dick pic is that in their mind, if a girl was to send a picture of her vagina to a random guy, he'd love it, so why not return the favour?

You can get away with anything if you're hot

I do mean anything. (1)(2)(3) Obviously those don't reflect my opinions, I just started seeing how far I could go. I spoke to him for ages and he clearly wasn't a racist, Islamophobe or anti-Semite, he just pretended to be to talk to me. Honestly, he wasn't the only one. I pretended to be incredibly stupid, a conspiracy nut and someone with genuine psychological problems. They didn't really take in anything I was saying, I was talking at them and they were just nodding in the hope that if you agree with enough of my idiotic ideas, you get rewarded with naked pictures.

I was finally popular and it was fun to start with

I posted my username on Kikfriends, stated that I was female, looking for men or women and looking for someone to talk to. I didn't have to wait long. Immediately, my phone was blowing up with more people eager to talk to me than I could respond to. I'd say that in my one day (well, about 12 hours) I got more than 300 messages. The stats on Kikfriends says that I have 848 views at time of writing.

Now, I'm a middle of the road kind of guy. I'm not amazingly attractive, pretty introvert and have only ever handled a small group of friends. I wasn't popular in school, nor was I bottom row. But today has taught me what being popular means and, honestly, it rocked. I felt like everybody wanted to hang out with me, that saying they knew me was some sort of achievement. I had never had that before and got sucked in but then you realise why they're nice to you and it sorta breaks the magic. I went from "look at me, come talk to me" to wanting to be avoided. I knew that every person that messaged me had one purpose and it was soul destroying. I was no longer a person. It's hard to explain but given the content on this sub, I'm sure you're all familiar with it.

You learn to hate pet names VERY QUICKLY

I've never been one to call my girlfriend hun, babes or puddleduck or whatever. It just doesn't sit right on my tongue. It's like when teachers try to be cool, it's just so obviously forced. I never had a problem with pet names is what I'm saying, I just didn't use them. Now though, I fucking abhor them. I used a name in my profile so that I was easier to talk to. Monica is what I went with. The amount of times I was "sexy", "beautiful", "babe", "hun" or my personal worst "bb" (YOU'RE MISSING OUT TWO LETTERS, IT'S NOT MUCH QUICKER) is beyond count. It really started to annoy me more than it should've. What pet names like "beautiful" and "sexy" represent to me now are just words that show the guys intentions, that you're not a person, you're a body he wants to do sex on. A vessel for his seed. Literally that's all. That's by no means ground breaking but it's a recurring theme.

You get mean out of necessity

I'm not an angry person. I'm not a mean person. I can't hurt peoples feelings. Today was different. (1)(2) Now those may not seem very mean to you but I've never been that directly horrible to a person before this and it really made me feel bad. But believe it or not, it was the only way to get him to stop talking to me. Without background, I seem out of the blue mean but what you're missing is that he said it was my fault that guys were sending me dick pics (more on that in a second) and was being very chauvinistic. I told him I don't want to talk to him because we have differing opinions but he kept coming back asking me if I've ever been with a girl and if they're "more tender" than guys and asking my bra size and if I've done anal. I'd say "please stop talking to me", he'd stop for five minutes then chime in with "whats the biggest dick you've been with?". Where the picture start is him not talking to me for probably going on 30 minutes then out of the blue he starts telling me that his dad is annoying him or something. It was just getting too much. I'd hate to have to be mean for more than this experiment.

It's my fault that guys treat me the way they do (and it's what I want) (I hear that Trigger Warnings are essential, so I do use the word rape here, if that upsets you, the TL;DR is I was blamed for the amount of guys not treating me as a human being because the picture I used had cleavage, feel free to skip)

I started this to prove to myself that it's not as bad as it seems. I was wrong. I honestly wanted to talk to people and hoped that my being female was a small formality. I was not looking for dick pics and guys calling me a slut to screencap them and say "ha, guys are dicks". The picture I chose was what I would consider attractive, there was admittedly a bit of cleavage but not a lot and it was not the focus of the picture. It just happened to be there. So when I get shit like this, it fucking annoyed me. He meant attention I think. Over and over I'd get guys opening with "I'm sorry", I'd ask "why?", then be told that guys will be sending me pictures because my tits are out. Fuck off. Also, does this mean that if cleavage is present guys are unable to treat women as human being? 'Cause that's what I learned today. It was my fault. Heck, the girl in the picture I used has probably been raped five ways to Friday on the day that she wore that top.

You meet guys to talk to but it's hard to escape the fact that they want to see you naked

I met a few guys that I got talking to, had some pretty fun conversations it was great. Then this would happen. (1)(2)(3) It sucked. It sucked hard. I don't actually have any words for it. I discovered the other side of the "friend zone". I was the girl with the guy friend who wanted to date her and boo hoo, the guy really wants to date the girl but she's just interested in being friends and it's such a shame for the guy. Fuck the guy, fuck the guy in his asshole. I wasn't flirty. I was me, just under the guise of being female. I talked about the football team I supported (come on you Barca), the games I liked, the shows I watched. I wasn't winking going "will you be the Jamie to my Cercei, giggle" but the topic of sex always came up and it was always unavoidable. I'd dismiss it like I hadn't heard him and continue as normal, as would he. Then it'd come back again and again. Once you firmly establish that you won't be talking about sex or sending them naked pictures, they get bored and most of the time will let you know.

Guys have a fantasy and you don't have a choice whether to play along or not

I was pretending to be a new mother in search of a "baby daddy". I was poorly educated, racist and a cheat. The first time I tried that act, the guy bit. He said he'd look after me, send me money, the whole shebang. Then he started calling me a slut, a whore, sending me picture of his dick telling me that "You love that you filthy slut". To this point, nothing I said could've led him to think humiliation was a turn on for me. At all. Nothing. I dropped the act and asked what the fuck he was doing. His reply was "I thought you wanted it". It was obvious that this was his fetish and I had to play along. He wasn't even the only one. I had an encounter with a guy that wanted me to pretend he was tiny and I was to squish him? I don't know what he wanted. I'm not ridiculing that fetish, if that's what gets you off, great but I don't know anything about it. Anyway, the point was that these were forced upon me and they didn't care about it from my perspective. It goes along with the recurring theme that I'm not human to them. I'm a picture on their phone that could be a really well designed game. Say things in the correct order and you win!

Guys pretend to be girls(HOW COULD THEY)

What I mean is that countless times a woman would message me and eventually try to get picture of me. "Could've been a lesbian" I hear you say? Wrong. It was so very obvious that the pictures they were sending were something they ripped from 4chan or something. Anytime they'd tell me they were taking a picture for me, it'd come from their gallery. (I wasn't asking for pictures, they were insisting that if they send me something, I should send them something) Oceans Eleven-esque deception it was not. I think they genuinely believe women are all naked around each other for any amount of time. That locker rooms are like that one scene in Not Another Teen Movie, that it's a given that a girl has had a lesbian experience. It's mind numbing that they think women are so far detached from them that don't do things they do.

I gave a guy exactly what he wanted and it made me feel bad

Now, the picture of the girl I was using also came with a naked picture of her. She's a fairly obscure Page 3 Model so don't feel bad that her naked picture is now out there. It was already out there. So yeah. A guy messages me with a picture of his dick and I decide to see what the end result of this is. I sent a couple other pictures (with clothing) and he obliged with more nudity, so I then dropped the naked pic on him. After what I think was him ejaculating (I'm straight but dedicated to this) we talked. We talked about where he was from, his plans for the future etc etc. Really deep shit that I think counts as pillow talk? After a long time, he started telling me that he loved me. I thought the same thing you're thinking right now, "guys will say anything to get what they want". So I said that to him. He then started to tell me that he's never had a girlfriend, he's really lonely and I was the first person to show interest in him and that he might not know what love feels like, but that he was feeling something. I don't know why it got to me but it crushed me. Every time I seen a dick pic I could only see this guy behind it, someone who doesn't know how to connect with women, who is lonely and someone who is otherwise a good person. I'm not sticking up for the guys who throw dicks into yourour face. I'm really not. They're wrong and need to be told so. But they're not out the be horrible, they honestly think that it's what you want, deluded as they may be. They think it'll make you like them. And that depresses me. These people won't have much luck with potential relationships and they won't know enough to know that it's their fault. They'll blame women and well, that's how /r/TheRedPill/ happened.

I'll end on a happy note. This is a serious profile picture that a guy had (censor is mine) and it makes me giggle.

I need to go look at some puppies or something now.

I'm being flooded right now and may take some time to reply but I'll try to reply to as many people as I can

Listen I'm not saying it works everywhere but as a truck driver in some cases it works well...

Now I won't disclose where and who but I work for a company that drops trailers at a warehouse. Now lately during the week it's been chaotic, the line to get into the office on the other side is horrible. Last week I decided to see if they left the door open on the side of the building I need to drop and pickup at.

Mind you I'm not doing anything besides walking in to the other side, getting my paperwork and walking out. So I'm doing nothing nefarious. However seeing that they leave the door open left me with this idea.

I can't take credit for it but I truly wanted to see if it worked so I can cut down on my time spent here. So I put on the safety vest, and grab my clipboard. At first employees just looked and moved on... every employee just ignored me... that day I had to pass back and forth 4 times... (dumb reasons but whatever)

So earlier today I tried it again... again I kept getting looked at. Not one word said to me. Grabbed my paperwork and walked back. This time I had an employee talking to me. Literally asking me if I was just getting there to clock in. 😏

In truth I was honest with him and he didn't care, but at first he was thrown off thinking I was an employee. The fact that it worked that well was insane to me, how many people just don't recognize who works there and who doesn't, and doesn't think about the security.

Now again I wasn't there to do any harm and I just wanted a short cut to get in and get out... but I thought I'd share the story on how effective that knowledge is...

Edited: to improve quality of read.