Sounds like a lot of manipulation techniques described in this book being used: A little treatise on manipulation for honest people Book by Jean-Léon Beauvois

Sounds like a lot of manipulation techniques described in this book being used: A little treatise on manipulation for honest people Book by Jean-Léon Beauvois I had a psych teacher who shared an anecdote of how she spent a few 100 on Venetian glassware key-rings to gift everyone due to a combination of those techniques, despite knowing and teaching them for years. Knowing something is manipulation and how it works doesn’t make one immune to it. It made no sense to the teacher why she fell for it. She couldn’t really explain it either, except for that is how the techniques work. It uses how your brain functions to shortcut your ability to think rationally, and get you to do something you normally wouldn’t, and that seems obvious in hindsight. You could compare it to hacking someone’s thoughts, except there’s no way to fix vulnerabilities with a software update.