BEYOND THE SURFACE
Shapeshifters: Introductory Elements of Advanced Manipulators
The less you truly know about a manipulator’s real personality, the better.
While amateur manipulators strive for quick results through operant conditioning and fear-induced patterns, advanced manipulators strive for loopholes, invisibility, double standards, etc. Often the least likely to be identified until too late, this group specializes in constant adaptability rather than switching around between 1–3 tactics. By all means, advanced manipulators can be very difficult to pin down — which can give off the “you don’t want to mess with me” demeanor.
However, despite vast differences between amateurs and advanced manipulators, advanced individuals still use a few forms of the most basic tactics of “image building” that is fully explained in The Imposter Among Us article that I wrote some time ago; which consists of breaking down the process in 4 steps.
The only addition to this basic step of “image building” is the integration of creating many different personalities for the types of people they interact with.
For example, a Person A could be friendly, bubbly, and loves to party with Person B. But with Person C, Person A acts stoic, serious, and loves to take charge. In a way, the average person already subconsciously does this with their coworkers, professors, family, friends, etc. And because of that, this entire process is rarely suspected to be suspicious.
With the difference of many personalities, the strength of evidence collected or remembered by witnesses can be reduced if they choose to work together to expose the manipulator; usually, this reduction is significant enough to allow the manipulator an opportunity to bounce back or to escape. To summarize, it becomes extremely difficult to pinpoint the manipulator even if the evidence is presented through social media.
In the case of being confronted, advanced manipulators will often have a variety of backup phrases to redirect people’s focus to create neutral ground, or to create an advantage. With enough neutral ground (where everything they say is what most people would agree with or doesn’t particularly take a side), an advanced manipulator can then twist and accuse questioners/skeptics of attacking them. Through an average person, this makes it seem as if the manipulator is simply defending something that is common sense, etc.
While not always to twist and accuse, establishing neutral ground can also help an advanced manipulator to pick up cues, topics, etc. to use to create good impressions with people (so that they are less likely to suspect the manipulator of anything). Con-artists that find themselves needing to interact with people are more likely to use this tactic because it only requires a hint of charisma or none at all (a lot of actions or gestures can be perceived as charismatic without needing to talk smoothly).
Conclusion:
While this article was short, advanced manipulators in general, do not try follow a specific pattern. To be able to continue benefiting from people, they need to be unpredictable, constantly adapting, and always finding more ways to replace the old ones already exposed or known.
Additionally, because advanced manipulators do not follow a specific path, the average person is limited to observing/contemplating their reasoning for identification.
Even with the sneakiest minds, advanced manipulators are still prone to committing logical fallacies.
