This is a tweet analysis. Here’s the previous one.
This tweet is not as deep as previous tweets. However, I wanted to publish an article using it because it is a fantastic example of a specific phenomenon I talk about in “Goal Orientation, Perception, and Action.” Here’s what I said in the article.
We’ll title this article Delimiters of Identity. This is probably the best tweet I’ve seen so far from our master persuader for showing the careful association of negative features with the identity of the reader and positive features away from the identity of the reader. Let’s go feature by feature so you see the distinction in careful detail.
We can bucket “mentally ill” and “deranged” as they have similar meanings and a similar cluster of connotations. As these are negative characteristics, they are unsurprisingly assigned to the reader as identities. After all, we know the master persuader’s endgame. He seeks to persuade readers towards bad decisions. When you live a good and fulfilling life, you buy less advice from internet strangers.
Let’s talk a bit more about how these identities affect Goal Orientation, Perception, and Action once assigned to a person and, worse, if he accepts them and willingly integrates them into his mental conception of his own identity. The straightforward implication of these identities is that people with these identities make bad decisions. Being “mentally ill” and “making bad decisions” are effectively synonymous. Thus we have a goal orientation (making a bad decision) that perfectly fits this identity (being mentally ill).1
Here’s one way I like to describe the effect of identity on outcome: the human subconscious seeks to resolve discontinuities of identity. If your self-conception of your identity is out of sync with your actions, it disturbs your subconscious. The world isn’t making sense to the subconscious. The subconscious seeks to resolve the disconnect. This can happen one of two ways: you can alter that self-conception, or you can alter your behavior.
Much of the time, it is easier to alter our self-conception, because habits are strong. However, the master persuader is persistently and relentlessly drilling these self-conceptions into his readers’ heads through repeated usage in tweets. The subliminal messages are going through their optic nerves over and over again. You can easily see how after a couple of times resolving it one way, the subconscious might give up and take the other road. With a strong enough and persistent influence, the road of changing behavior can become the path of least resistance.
This is why so many people swear by the value of affirmations. Your subconscious is like an improv partner: it agrees and amplifies. It doesn’t have a logical side. It does the best it can with what you tell it. If you tell it, “I am a genius,” it won’t have the capacity to dispassionately assess that and know that your results have always been a standard deviation below that level. It accepts it and tries to resolve the discontinuity as best it can. It points you towards what it feels are “smart decisions.”
Will it make you a genius if that’s not accurate? No, not exactly. But it will put your subconscious in the best place to maximize your latent cognitive potential. Often, this can make a big difference.
The next identity signifier is “homeless.” Let’s compare this straight out to the closest comparable in the positive side of the post: “house.” See the difference in how they delimit identity? One is an adjective that gloms onto the person and the other is a noun, an object that “just happens to be around.” Now is a good time to share my counter-propaganda Xost to the master persuader’s Xost.
What does “homeless” do to the reader’s affirmational structure from the perspective of identity? It makes the reader tell his subconscious that his identity is the same as that of homeless people. Most people have a concrete and clear mental image of homeless people. The master persuader’s Xost encourages readers to self-identify as a person who has that image.
This has all sorts of behavioral implications, affecting simple things like cleanliness or more serious habits such as substance usage. Contrast to the affirmational impact of: “house is majority of utility.” There’s no identity aspect to that at all. It’s purely abstract. There’s no push-pull here from the perspective of persuasion. It’s a one-way street.
Hence, I prefer “you are a rich man who lives in a big, beautiful house.” As with “homeless person,” this also evokes a distinct image. For example, I’m currently imagining tall windows with sunlight pouring in. A man in a golden bed is doted upon by a butler and a maid as he stretches his arms out in joy. It’s not necessary for me to explain further why this leads to better behaviors than self-identifying with a “homeless” person, is it?
“Car” is similar. I want to focus in on “financial independence,” because expressing this as an abstract concept rather than an affirmation is particularly egregious.
Putatively the master persuader is helping you understand how your life would be better in this fictional scenario. I can’t think of a single more powerful carrot than to tell you that you are a free man. The distinction between a free man and slave is an essential one and one that rightfully inspires massive feelings of satisfaction in being the favored party as well as desire if in the unfavored status.
“Financial independence is a beneficial aspect of utility.” Pshaw! The master persuader might as well not be talking about the same thing.
Let’s add a few comments on the other combinations of words I saw fit to highlight.
The master persuader uses the phrase “you never sold.” Notice how I highlighted the words “you” and “sold.” Please make sure you understand that this phrase draws your attention to the potential action of selling, even when there is a “never” in between. A similar phenomenon occurs with negations that use the word “not.”
You want to positively declare the action you want to take rather than putting a negation “not”/”never” next to the action you don’t want to take. This is because the action described draws your attention, and people move towards what they face. I would instead say, “I wonder what would happen if you were guaranteed to hold the lows.”
This is a big deal, because the biggest improvement most people can make in their investing is to successfully hold the lows.2 Assets go up over time. In fact, the historical record shows improved results when people reduce the aggression of their portfolios precisely because it means you will hold the lows no matter what. Read that article if you want to understand more.
The people who struggle to hold the lows are people who listen to people like our master persuader, and jump into extremely volatile portfolios without knowing what they are getting into. Here you can see the master persuader pushing them into the bad outcome using the words “you … sold” instead of phrasing it according to the desired outcome, which would be, “you are guaranteed to hold the lows.”
Finally there is “you didn’t miss out.” This phrase falls under the same principle of negation. The operative words in this comment are “you miss out.” If you want to read another article about the effects subliminal messages like this have on a reader, check out “Turtles all the way Down.” The key here is that the phrase is broad. A reader who is constantly fed this subliminal message will move towards it in all sorts of life phenomena where “missing out” could apply.
We will continue tweet analyses on this essay page at a reduced pace. I have ideas for new article series about the master persuader which will pick up the slack.
It has been fun. See you underground.
“Bro, it’s a joke.” I’m aware. There’s another fact I’m aware of: your subconscious doesn’t know the difference. If the literal words in a guy’s jokes “somehow” all point in a negative direction, perk your ears up.
I am speaking with reference to past results, which are not a guarantee of future results.