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Giant oligopolies are unpleasant to deal with for their own reasons. You want to appear indifferent to any particular sale for the same reason that playing har

Giant oligopolies are unpleasant to deal with for their own reasons. You want to appear indifferent to any particular sale for the same reason that playing hard to get works in dating: It implies that you are desirable/successful enough to pick and choose your partners. These strategies take advanage of humans' built-in decision making and survival heuristics. Women like a man who's already taken because they can assume that his current mate has already extensively vetted him for desirability. Anyone who smells desperate trips alarms and gets you wondering why they can't find a mate / job /client. There's a fine line between putting your best foot forward and cynically manipulating everyone around you of course. Robert Cialdini's book "Influence" shows you where the line is and how to stay on the clean side. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Cialdini#Six_.22Weapons_of_Influence.22 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Cialdini#Six_.22Weapons_... (P.S., thanks for prgmr. I enjoy my service.)

lsc 16y ago
>You want to appear indifferent to any particular sale for the same reason that playing hard to get works in dating: It implies that you are desirable/successful enough to pick and choose your partners. But, I thought that traditionally, that was only supposed to work with women. Men, from my understanding, seem to place a higher value on the physical attractiveness of their mates, and a lower value on the perceived social status of their mates. Not that I'm an expert on selling or dating; it's just that most of the dating advice I've seen women given has to do with becoming more physically attractive, rather than the advice given to men, which seems to be about raising one's perceived social status. I mean, it could be that the advice (or my perception of that advice) is wrong, but it lines up with my personal observations. This ignoring the vast differences between initiating short-term relationships and maintaining a long-term relationship, and the differences between selling a product and initiating a relationship. (Oh, and thanks for being a customer. This is what I've always wanted to do.)
- dpritchett 16y ago
  You should read (a synopsis of) The Rules. It's the female equivalent to the PUA craze, and it focuses on consistently acting like a high-value mate. The idea is that a man with a passing interest in you will slowly convince himself that you are worth striving for and when he finally "wins" your hand he will feel like he has successfully proven himself and earned something he dearly wanted. It's an implementation of the idea that things you work for are dearer to you than things that come your way with little effort. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rules http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rules
  - lsc 16y ago
    Huh. sounds like a strong counterexample to what I was saying. Interesting.

lsc 16y ago

>You want to appear indifferent to any particular sale for the same reason that playing hard to get works in dating: It implies that you are desirable/successful enough to pick and choose your partners. But, I thought that traditionally, that was only supposed to work with women. Men, from my understanding, seem to place a higher value on the physical attractiveness of their mates, and a lower value on the perceived social status of their mates. Not that I'm an expert on selling or dating; it's just that most of the dating advice I've seen women given has to do with becoming more physically attractive, rather than the advice given to men, which seems to be about raising one's perceived social status. I mean, it could be that the advice (or my perception of that advice) is wrong, but it lines up with my personal observations. This ignoring the vast differences between initiating short-term relationships and maintaining a long-term relationship, and the differences between selling a product and initiating a relationship. (Oh, and thanks for being a customer. This is what I've always wanted to do.)

dpritchett 16y ago
You should read (a synopsis of) The Rules. It's the female equivalent to the PUA craze, and it focuses on consistently acting like a high-value mate. The idea is that a man with a passing interest in you will slowly convince himself that you are worth striving for and when he finally "wins" your hand he will feel like he has successfully proven himself and earned something he dearly wanted. It's an implementation of the idea that things you work for are dearer to you than things that come your way with little effort. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rules http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rules
- lsc 16y ago
  Huh. sounds like a strong counterexample to what I was saying. Interesting.