Ever heard of the Benjamin Franklin effect? It’s a play on cognitive dissonance where if you “get someone” to do a favor for you they become your friend, because through cognitive dissonance their mind has to register you automatically as a friend because it doesn’t do favors for enemies.
That’s kind of the manipulative way of looking at it but asking for help makes friends.
I feel like if I have to manipulate people into liking me, Im doing it wrong. I dont much care if people like me, and some pretend to, i know they're probably lying, either to me or themselves. My mom used to always tell me people can only see me as a person in terms of what they can get from me, and I believe her. Didn't have many friends in middle school, high school, but part of me thinks my mom was preparing me for the real world, or rage dumping her own feelings onto me. I have to say, her feelings are not really that far off from reality.
Everyone is manipulating everyone all the time unfortunately. Whether they mean to, know they’re doing it, doing it for good or evil etc. That’s one reason god / religion is so important, it tries to give us a bearing with that information. Tell us what to do / what is right despite ie knowing everything we do is manipulating.
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