Five Tips on Manipulating Fools
1. Dumb it all down
Make things really simple, even if they weren't particularly complicated before. Idiots want the payoff of having a skill or "knowledge" without the unpleasantness of having to study or practice. You need to oversimplify life, convince them by summarizing and redacting, knowing that anything requiring education or even common sense to grasp will go completely over their heads. They need the comfort of being told that there are certain things they don't have to know. They want the difficult issues of life taken from their hands. Boil complexity down to black and white and they will follow you into the jaws of hell out of relief and gratitude.
2. Terrify them
Every single human is terrified of the unknown. Some of us try to learn in order to deal with it, while some go into denial, and others choose to just remain fearful. Morons tend to avoid the first option, due to a tendency to not understand shit and to be bored by the sheer difficulty of reading. The third option makes people pliable. Note that we have already established that they are not fond of thinking, fear only makes that worse. Simpletons usually know very little of history, and cannot understand long-term goals, making them very much like sheep. Myopic and ignorant. You can convince them to do anything as long as you make the alternative irreversible and dangerous.
3. Be one of them
People want a face they can relate to. If you are selling a product you need a spokesman, not just a logo. As has already been stated in this post, morons have trouble with understanding things. Therefore if you tell them something, they need to know if they like you before they decide whether or not to go along with it. It's an easy way to make difficult decisions. You buy from the salesman who makes you laugh and feel generally comfortable, not the one who merely tells you lots of stuff about the product. You listen to a preacher because he makes you feel good, feel at home, not because what he says makes sense. What intellectuals usually fail to grasp is that stupid people really are not interested in knowing things, truth is not important to them, therefore things like good reportage, thoughtful writing, accurate analysis, logic, cannot sway them one way or the other.
http://dirtytim.bloghi.com/2007/12/28/five-tips-on-manipulating-fools.htmlMy sister is smart, however she is a fundie and die hard republican. I already do #1 & 5 to her. She is #2 with most things in her life. I can't be #3, however she only spends time with others just like her. As for #4, she KNOWS she is smart and is never wrong. Not only that, few outside her circle have anything worthwhile to contribute so I'd say this covers #4.