This reminds me of a dialogue in the movie "The Social Network" where Mark Zuckerberg decides to reduce Eduardo Saverin's Facebook equity from 30% to 0.3% usin

This reminds me of a dialogue in the movie "The Social Network" where Mark Zuckerberg decides to reduce Eduardo Saverin's Facebook equity from 30% to 0.3% using some loophole. Mark Zuckerberg tells the lawyer who is tasked with pulling this off "Make it less painful". If that actually happened, then this strategy of making bad news "less painful" could be a possibility too.