Hey what’s up guys! Kathy Gibbens here…
Let’s start off with a review of a fallacy we discussed earlier in this season: the Appeal to Novelty or the Appeal to High Tech. The Appeal to Novelty or High Tech says that something must be better just b/c it’s new.
Pretty much anything tech is advertised using an appeal to High Tech b/c it’s always about how much better the latest & greatest version of something is. But how often do we ever stop and ask if there’s actually any proof that it’s better than what we already have or if it’s better than what we’re already doing?
The question to ask yourself when you're faced with an Appeal to Novelty or High Tech is this: “Is it really true that it’s better just b/c it’s new?”
If you want to hear more about this fallacy, check out Episode 27.
Alright, let’s dive into Part 7 of our Manipulation mini-series and talk about something called love-bombing. Love-bombing is an attempt to influence another person through over-the-top or unnatural displays of attention or affection.It’s typically used to create loyalty and obedience in a person.
So here’s what this means - Love bombing is when you meet someone and they begin showering you with attention or care or compliments or gifts or time…but they’re doing it with an ulterior motive. Because it sounds nice, right? “Oh, this person is so great! They’re really nice, they like me, they make me feel good! They’re clearly a wonderful person!” And from everything you can see, they are. And if it just ended there, they likely would be a wonderful person, but what makes it love-bombing (and therefore manipulative) is when they’re doing all of those things with an ulterior motive. They either want something, OR, they’re trying to make you feel a certain way about and towards them. A lot of times, love-bombing is used to create loyalty or obedience in the person being love-bombed.
Here’s an example of what that could look like. As I told you a few episodes ago, my husband and I used to be in a business group that turned out to be manipulative & very emotionally unhealthy. But we didn’t know it in the beginning b/c we didn’t know all this stuff I’m teaching you in the podcast! Lol… (and yes, we did leave the group once we did learn all this stuff and realized that’s what we were being taught to do! I’m telling you, these things can be really sneaky & hard to recognize, which is why I want you to be able to recognize them!)
But one of the things they and we did when we were in the group is what I now know is actually love-bombing. When someone was considering joining the group is when the love-bombing would start. We were taught to be super friendly & make them feel good about themselves, then when they did join, our whole goal was to “serve them more than anyone else has ever served them before”. We would go above & beyond to be a friend, to be there for them when they had questions and to help them with anything they needed in their business. Well…that all sounds good, right? What could possibly be wrong? What’s wrong is that we were doing it with an ulterior motive. We knew that, for most people at least, when we served them that much, they would start to feel a loyalty toward us and our business team. And we WANTED them to begin feeling that loyalty b/c then they would stay in the group, which benefited us. EWWW, right??? At the time, we were pretty young and we didn’t know that people could even be manipulative and we certainly didn’t have the language for it like I’m teaching you here. So we totally fell for it! It worked.
And that’s the thing with all these manipulation tactics: they work. Now, will everyone who is nice to you & treats you well be love-bombing you? Not at all! You’re going to have lots of great people in your life who are just kind and love you for who you are and you’ll end up being great friends with them. But you need to know that this is a thing…and what makes love-bombing manipulative is, again, the motivation behind it. Are they doing it to GET you to feel a certain way? Are they trying to make you feel like you OWE them something? Sometimes it can be individuals who do this, but a lot of times it’s organizations or groups who do this sort of thing.
So, the Question to ask yourself if you think you’re being love-bombed is: “Does this person have an ulterior motive for treating me in such an over-the-top way?” *repeat*
Alright, that’s it for today!
Remember: When you learn HOW to think, you will no longer fall prey to those who are trying to tell you what THEY want you to think and it all starts with asking one simple question: “Is that really true?”
