Social Life

Donald Trump used masterful persuasion in his dark horse candidacy for U.S. President. Six (6) powerful persuasion tactics underpin his success.

A reader asks:

“it’s been a year now since donald trump has been succesfully running his campaign.

Love him or hate him, the guy is a master persuader, really alpha, entertaining and never boring. He’s also extremely concise and repetitive in the way he speaks.

Exactly what robert greene would define as charismatic in his art of seduction

The funny thing though is I’ve noticed that he does a lot of things that you advocate not too do. ( explicit qualifying is the bread and butter of his persuasive effectiveness and constant repetition is another one. Plus, he’s got this essential quality of being brutal and effective when being under attack – an approach that is probably going to revolutionize politics world forever. )

Love him or not, what’s obvious is that he CAN persuade

Can u deconstruct his main strenghts and maybe reccomend some sources to how one can master verbal attack and , mainly, DEFENSE, like he does? I guess you could call that frame control. ”

Donald Trump is a persuasion phenomenon the likes of which the U.S. presidential election has not seen before. There are Donald Trump parallels in other civilizations and other eras; for instance, quite possibly ancient Rome’s Cato the Elder. But we haven’t seen a Donald Trump in the American presidential elections before.

In this article, I’m going to break down some of Donald Trump’s most oft-used persuasion techniques. I’ll point out what they are to you, show you how to use them, and give you plenty of examples.

If you’re reading this and you’re already bristling for political bias, I should note that I won’t be voting in this election (because I’m outside the U.S. with a Nevada citizenship, a Pennsylvania address, and a California driver license; I have no way to receive a mail-in ballot). I do not agree with all of any of the candidates’ policies, although I am a white male small business owner high in what psychologists call Traditional Masculinity Ideology, so that will necessarily bias me toward candidates offering some solutions over others. This article will be about tactics and strategies, not politics, but we’re all men and all men are inherently biased, so take that as you may. If any of my own bias leaks through, my apologies in advance; I am a (flawed) human, like you.

Disclaimers aside, let’s peel back the skin on Donald Trump-style persuasion... and see what we’ve got underneath.

Make the wrong social move, and you’re a buzzkill no one wants to be around. There are nine (9) such wrong moves, including bad topics, zero confidence, and talking over the other party.

A reader asks:

“Chase, could you write about things that turn you into a buzzkill around people? I read your article on how to overcome depression and I’m currently working hard to get myself out that rut. But sometimes when I’m around people I turn into buzz killington without even knowing it. What are the things I can consciously do to hide my depression?”

It’s a great question.

This site’s about pulling yourself up by the bootstraps, self-improvement, and doing better. Various guys start out at various places. Some guys start out dealing with depression or saddled with victim mentality. Either of these can make you a downer in conversation who sends others running in the opposite direction.

Or even if these aren’t your particular afflictions and you’re content with life, you still may have behaviors you’ve picked up somewhere that inadvertently make you a total buzzkill to other people... Without even realizing you’re doing it.

So, to help you be a more pleasant interlocutor and allow you to rack up positive conversational reference points all the faster, I’ve compiled a list of nine (9) things that serve to kill the buzz any time you use them in a conversation with other people.

Stamp these behaviors out of your repartee repertoire, and you’ll notice people start to like you a whole lot more, more girls say “yes” when you ask them out, and more of the folks you meet want to see you again and include you in what they’re doing.

Here’s our list.

Lots of people struggle to make new friendships outside school or work (or even in these places). Yet, follow the 6 steps to new friends, and friends start to come easy.

Until I turned 19, I had no real friends. I had no idea how to make friends. I was disturbingly alone. It was painful.

Now I am 24 and can say that I am the leader and popular guy in every clique I am a part of.

What am I doing differently that changed things so much that now I write about the social arts for a site called GirlsChase? And how can you use my experience to make new friendships, enjoy an awesome social life... And, oh, by the way – get girls chasing you?

Men in STEM fields, despite their smarts, often don’t do well with girls. What’s the cause of this handicap – and what can you do about it?

STEM is an acronym for the academic disciplines of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics. It is a moderately strong stereotype that men educated in these fields are socially awkward nerds who struggle with women.

Why is this the case (that STEM men are so often nerdy and awkward and not good with girls), and what can be done about it?

The author has studied math, physics, and computer science and would like to give his thoughts on this issue.

The first thing to be said about this problem is that it IS to some extent true that STEM-educated guys have problems with socializing and women, and thus the corresponding “nerd” stereotype is rather common with students and workers in such fields.

Obviously not all STEM guys have problems, and for those who do have problems, they are rarely unsolvable. The challenges STEM guys face have several different causes, and some personality traits should be reviewed before we start discussing solutions.

In a moral panic, no one is safe. Neighbors turn on neighbors, and opportunists use the panic to advance their careers. To survive the hysteria, you must be smart.

Last week I wrote an article titled “When Does ‘No’ Actually Mean ‘No’?” to help you stay smart and safe without having to hole up in a bunker and outwait an age of ambiguity and fear around sex. Today, I want to talk about survival during a general moral panic.

You may have come of age during the ‘rape culture’ witch-hunt. So this might be your first such experience with moral panic. Yet hysterias like this are a fixture of civilization.

A moral panic is a big fear that snakes through society, egged on by crusaders and amplified by the media. In a moral panic, an opportunistic minority become inquisitors in a grab for power. Meanwhile the rest of the population hunkers down and tries to wait out the storm. The few who try to fight back early on are often crushed.

Moral panics turn neighbor against neighbor. They do this by encouraging one man to condemn another for his own protection. If you accuse your neighbor of being a witch, surely you must not be one yourself.

So how do you survive a moral panic? Are you forced to keep your head down and hope no one fingers you as a boogeyman? Should you join the mob and gang up on others until the whole thing blows over, then pretend it never happened?

As I’ll lay out, these are the last things you want to do... Because they leave you defenseless against any accusations leveled against you.

Instead, you must seek to actively define yourself. You must make your identity so clear that the idea of accusing you seems not only pointless, but foolish.

When you’re approaching girls in groups, one of the most vital tasks you have ahead of you is to quickly ferret out who is the leader of the group, and who are the followers.

If you can tell who the leader is, you know how to proceed with courting the girl you like. If you don’t know who the leader is, it’s easy to mess this up, have all the girls bail on you, and end up standing around wondering what the heck happened.

You’ll tend to develop a natural instinct for discerning the group leader from the other girls in the group as you gain more exposure, so if you’re a veteran of bar/club game or social circle pickup, you’ll probably find you intuitively know which girls the leaders are soon into an interaction (or even before you say hello).

So if that’s you, this article may be a little basic for you... though I’d encourage you to tune in for the later two installments in this 3-part series, which will focus on picking up followers (one article) and picking up leaders (another article), for some important process distinctions.

If you’re just beginning to dip your toes into meeting women in non-solo situations (e.g., she’s not some girl you’ve approached on the street all by her lonesome), this guide will be just the thing to help you understand who’s who in the girl groups you meet.

If you’re reading a site like Girls Chase, there’s a fairly good chance you’re a rather defiant, rebellious, countercultural individual to some extent:

• You’ve got the whole of mainstream dating advice telling you to ‘just be yourself’ and wish upon a star and the right girl will come along if you just wait long enough, and any girl who doesn’t like you, well, that’s her problem, because you’re perfect as-is.

• You’ve got legions of nice guys out there swamping the radio with the tragic tales of the women who’ve cheated on them and broken their hearts, and drowning the theaters and television stations with romantic comedies that depict them losing women again and again to the bad boy until finally, one day, the girl realizes she’s tired of hooking up with sexy bad boys and wants someone who isn’t going to break her heart for the long-term, and there’s Mr. Nice Guy, ready to sweep up the pieces of her broken heart and try to heal and fix her with marriage.

• You’ve got women themselves telling you they don’t even like all those sexy guys they have sex with, and you should just stay the way they are and don’t change one bit. Don’t worry, someday when she’s done with the bad boys, you may yet get your shot with her.

• You’ve got the downers, who want you to know it’s impossible to get girls if you don’t have movie star looks, investment banker income, basketball player height, and the right racial background.

• You’ve even got books like The Game telling you you just need to memorize a few tricks, learn a few routines, and then basically repeat this script with every girl, and the flood gates will open up.

Yet, somehow, you’ve ended up here, studying the nuances of various tactics, fundamentals, and abilities, and coming at doing better with women in a systematic, skill-based way, where you mix experimentation and good old fashioned elbow grease to achieve the results you desire with women (whatever those results may be).

It’s pretty obvious you’re a defiant personality type... or at the very least, you’ve stumbled in here and are feeling defiance toward many of those other people and sources of information telling you to do things this way or that.

That brings me to today’s cautionary tale: be careful whom you’re defying.

Because defiance, improperly aimed, can be as big a handicap as it can a helper.