Persuasion Bleach

[Psych Psundays] Kids are stupid

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Last Sunday, I kicked off a new series in this newsletter, Psych Psundays. The reaction to that first issue was positive:

#1 “Love this, love the concept”

#2 “LOVED THIS. Thanks!”

#3 “This was awesome, John! Grazie”

#4 “Excellent thoughts and incredibly timely… for me, anyway.”

#5 “I love Psych Psundays.”

Let me see if can keep it going for another week.

Today’s installment of Psych Psundays is built around two highly instructive videos I watched this week.

The first was posted in the subreddit r/KidsAreFuckingStupid.

It showed a girl, about 3, standing on a nice-looking wooden deck, made up of normal wooden boards laid tightly together.

In spite of this being perfectly solid and perfectly safe ground to stand and walk on, the little girl was screaming her lungs out, and was otherwise paralyzed with fear, unable to take a step. The caption for the video read:

“She thought she would fall through the cracks.”

That leads me to the first curious bit I want to share with you on this Psych Psunday:

A hundred years ago, a psychologist named Jean Piaget was one of the first psychologists to observe children very carefully — their speech patterns, their ideas, their way of looking at the world.

Piaget found that children’s thinking is black and white, magical, absolute.

To children, ideas are the same as things, with the same concreteness and reality. An idea, if it pops up in a kid’s head, must be true, has always been true, will always be true, isn’t made false by evidence or by previous ideas that contradict it.

That’s why, if a kid gets the idea idea that she can fall through a 1/8-inch crack in the floor, why, she can. WAAAAAAHHHH!

Stupid kids, right?

Anyways, let’s move on to the second highly instructive video I watched this week. It was an interview with actor Dustin Hoffman.

Hoffman was talking about the early days of his career, back when he was unknown, but had just gotten rave reviews for an off-Broadway play.

Even though he had no movie experience, Hoffman suddenly got an invitation to come out to Hollywood and read for a part in a big new movie that was being cast.

Hoffman flew out, and met the director, Mike Nichols. The meeting went down like this, in Hoffman’s words:

===

He [Mike Nichols, the director] comes over to me, and immediately I’m feeling miserable.

I just have bad feelings about the whole thing. This is not the part for me. I’m not supposed to to be in movies.

I’m supposed to be where I belong. An ethnic actor is supposed to be in ethnic New York in an ethnic off-Broadway show.

I know my place. And I can read him. I feel I can read him, like he feels like he’s made a big mistake.

===

Turns out, Nichols didn’t feel he had made a big mistake.

In fact, Nichols gave Hoffman the lead role in that movie, the Graduate, which would make Hoffman into an international star, and would in time lead him to a couple Oscars and an estimated net worth of around one hundred million dollars.

So kids are stupid. They think that just because a thought popped up into their heads that they can fall through a 1/8-inch crack between wooden boards, that this makes it so.

But, I’d like to claim, the kind of black-and-white, imagined-is-real thinking of children stays inside us forever. Adults still operate on the same basic machinery.

We feel we know how the world is. In fact we KNOW how it is, with 100% certainty. You can hear it in Dustin Hoffman’s words above:

“This is not the part for me.”

“I know my place.”

“He feels like he’s made a big mistake.”

So that’s my second curious bit for this this Psych Psunday. Great. Now what? What do you do with this?

Does it mean that your intuition, your gut feeling, your sense of what’s real is always wrong, because kids are stupid, and we’re all kids inside?

No, clearly not.

But it does mean that how you feel, I mean, how you know the world to be, with 100% certainty, is not necessarily what the world really is like.

And maybe that’s an inspirational takeaway we can end this Psych Psunday on.

The next time you are faced with a new opportunity and you find yourself knowing for sure that this is not for you… this is not your place… the world does not want you to go in this direction… take another step.

You might find the ground under you solid and safe, and you might also find a couple Oscars, or at least a million dollars or two, in your future.

[Psych Psundays] Why don’t you… yes, but

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I thought to introduce a new little series I could do every week, Psych Psundays.

I’m not a psychologist nor do I play one on TV, but I am interested in pop psychology. I read books about it, and I have a kind of live lab via this newsletter and other marketing I do. Plus I have a mind myself. I keep tabs on it. Sometimes I learn stuff that way too.

Let’s see if this new series could be interesting to you or not, and if it is, how long I can keep it going.

The first installation of Psych Psundays starts off with a reader question I got a few days ago:

===

Hey John, how are you? I just wanted to ask if you could recommend a resource for audience building without video based content.

I’m writing daily emails but I can barely grow my newsletter, Twitter is filled with AI and it feels hollow.

The little subscribers I’ve gotten are from communities where I shared a little value with a link in my bio.

What would you recommend?

Thanks a lot and I hope you have a great weekend.

[name]

P.S. You don’t owe me crap of course so feel free to ignore this and go on with your day!

I just thought I’d ask you because I love your daily emails, it’s actually why I started writing daily.

===

I didn’t reply to this guy.

On the one hand, I enjoyed the flattery.

On the other hand, I suspect this was an attempt at playing a game, one that I no longer enjoy.

Right now, I’m reading a book called Games People Play by a guy named Eric Berne. The book was kind of a big thing back in the 1960s. It’s basically about repeated “games” — patterns of communication that people engage in, not for the stated and obvious purpose, but for ulterior motives.

The first “game” discovered by Berne was called “Why don’t you… yes but.” It’s the game I feel my reader above is asking me to play with him. It goes like this:

First, one person brings up a problem, say, they can’t grow their newsletter.

Then other person (or persons) jump in with suggestions:

– Why don’t you get on Twitter? Yes, but Twitter is filled with AI and feels hollow

– I hear YouTube works well, why don’t you try that? Yes, but I don’t want to create video content

– Why don’t you just keep posting in communities if that’s worked for you? Yes, but that takes way too much time

– Why don’t you try running ads? Yes, but I can’t afford ads

– Why don’t you try doing list swaps? Yes, but my list is too small for list swaps

– Why don’t you just invite perfect prospects to your list one by one? Yes, but that would be so slow and anyways who would say yes

The fact is, there are 1,001 ways to grow your newsletter. There are entire (free and high-quality) websites dedicated to cataloguing those ways. I myself have written about the topic dozens of times, including earlier this month.

But none of that really matters.

Because the point of playing “Why don’t you… yes, but” is not to get a workable solution, but to keep going until all the suggestions run dry, and the original person asking for advice can say, “See, I knew they had nothing for me.”

Ok. So now I probably sound like a dick, and a conceited dick at that.

I mean, have I really told you anything new here? Or have I just put a fancy new label on something that everybody already knows and does, while singling out a poor reader who just asked a question?

Fine. Let me tell you something else I read in Games People Play, which might be genuinely new and useful to you. Says Berne:

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While almost anyone will play this game under proper circumstances because of its time-structuring value, careful study of individuals who particularly favor it reveals several interesting features.

First, they characteristically can and will play either side of the game with equal facility.

This switchability of roles is true of all games. Players may habitually prefer one role to another, but they are capable of trading, and they are willing to play any other role in the same game if for some reason that is indicated.

===

I can tell you that, until not too long ago, I myself was a ready player of “Why don’t you… yes but.”

Like Berne says, I happily played either side. I would both bring up frustrations and dismiss offered solutions… and at other times, I would also offer advice, have that advice dismissed, and then offer more advice.

I played either side happily because it made me feel smart and righteous.

Curious thing:

I noticed recently that I don’t play this game much any more.

These days, if people offer me advice, I nod. If it’s somebody I trust and respect, I do exactly as they say. Otherwise, I just let it go.

And on the other hand, when people come to me with their frustrations, I also nod. And then I say, “That sounds frustrating. What do you think you will do?”

Maybe, maybe, this change is tied to a bigger change in me, to being more proactive, less of a “thinker” who is mainly interested in collecting information, and a little more of a “doer” who at least sometimes tries and sees what will happen for real.

So that’s my mildly inspiring takeaway for you on this Pysch Psunday.

Maybe you are a habitual player of “Why don’t you… yes, but.”

If so, it’s not any kind of lifelong condition. If you like, you can change, starting right now.

And if you are having trouble getting yourself to take action, in spite of knowing what you should do… well, maybe Eric Berne is right about the “switchability of roles.”

I could tell you how to apply Berne’s idea to become more proactive, more of a doer. Except it would kind of defeat the whole point of this email.

The Bejako starter pack

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You might be familiar with the concept of a starter pack. It’s a kind of meme format.

In a starter pack, people put together a few images or phrases or whatever, which are representative of something — a gym bro, a local Mexican restaurant, a 1980s heavy metal video.

New Yorker magazine does its own variant, where it asks people they profile to create a starter pack for themselves, consisting of a movie, a TV show, a book, and an album, which are somehow representative.

I had to try it. So here goes:

Bejako starter pack ingredient #1 (movie): The Princess Bride

If you’ve been a reader of this newsletter for a while, this should be no surprise.

My optin page literally says:

“I write a daily email newsletter about direct marketing, copywriting, and my love for the books and screenplays of William Goldman.”

Well, Goldman wrote the screenplay for The Princess Bride, based on his book of the same title.

(He also wrote the famous line, “Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.” On my website, that morphed into, “Hello. My name is John Bejakovic. You found my website. Prepare to decide.”)

The fact is, I saw The Princess Bride for the first time when I was 11. It was the perfect mix of adventure, romance, and self-aware humor for 11-year-old Bejako.

I guess I’ve never really matured past 11.

The only thing that’s changed for me over the years, as I’ve continued to re-watch this movie, is that I appreciate how it doesn’t talk down or moralize to you.

“Life is pain,” is the core message of the story. In the end, the bad guy goes free. And the main character, Westley, dies. Though ok, miracles do sometimes happen, as do happy endings.

Bejako starter pack ingredient #2 (TV show): Twin Peaks

David Lynch, who made Twin Peaks, died a couple weeks ago. There aren’t many celebrities whose deaths I care about… but I cared about Lynch. He was hinting there might be a season 4 of Twin Peaks, and now it will never happen.

Season 2 of Twin Peaks, which came out in 1990, was largely atrocious.

Season 3 of Twin Peaks, which came out 25+ years later in 2017, was surprisingly good.

But the best is still the original season 1, which Lynch directed and co-wrote.

It has the usual Lynch blend of mystery, sex, horror, weirdness, and quaintness. Plus beautiful shots of wind blowing through the trees.

Bejako starter pack ingredient #3 (book): Dune

I had the most trouble choosing a book for my starter pack.

That’s because, as I wrote a few weeks ago, I don’t particularly enjoy reading, even though I’ve read a lot my whole life.

I also wasn’t sure how to choose a book here. A book that influenced me? Or that I enjoyed reading? Or that I thought was particularly well written?

I ended up going with enjoyment, and picked Frank Herbert’s Dune.

I first read Dune when I was 20, and then a couple more times since.

The story is familiar enough after all the TV shows and movies made based on it in recent years.

I guess what I like in it, beyond the familiar but rousing story of the arrival of “The One,” are the elements of religion… the formation of legend… plus simply the promise of a drug you can take, which makes you so smart you can literally predict the future by seeing all possible outcomes in parallel.

Bejako starter pack ingredient #4 (album): Station To Station by David Bowie

I like a lot of Bowie albums. This one is my favorite. I like the style, sound, strangeness of it, all mostly fueled by cocaine and paranoia.

By the way, coked-up Bowie from this period has inspired the central tenet of this newsletter. In an interview with Playboy, Bowie said:

“Nothing matters except whatever it is I’m doing at the moment. I can’t keep track of everything I say. I don’t give a shit. I can’t even remember how much I believe and how much I don’t believe. The point is to grow into the person you grow into. I haven’t a clue where I’m gonna be in a year.”

Maybe in a year, I’ll have to do another, different starter pack.

For now, this one will give you more insight into me than most people who know me in person have.

As you can probably guess, today’s email was based on the Daily Email Habit “puzzle” I sent out today.

Sometimes it’s good to write emails like this, to surprise people, and to simply let them a bit into your own world.

But other times, entirely different emails are called for. And that’s what I make sure Daily Email Habit puzzles do, day in and day out.

If you’d like to get started with your own daily email habit, starting with tomorrow’s puzzle, which is entirely different and much more difficult to guess at than today’s, here’s where to go:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

The original live recording of Purple Rain

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After Prince died in 2016, a bunch of Prince videos suddenly flooded onto YouTube. These included both the legit, MTV videos, which Prince wasn’t allowing on YouTube before, as well as crazy bootleg recordings of various Prince concerts.

Among these, you can now find the original live recording of Purple Rain.

​​It turns out the album version, the same one that’s in the movie, was really recorded live in 1983 at a benefit concert in Minneapolis. I find this pretty incredible — but it’s a testament to how tight of a band Prince ran and how crazy talented they all were.

I think there are a bunch of persuasion and influence lessons that could be squeezed out of this whole story and the live performance that Prince and the Revolution put on. ​​But for today, I want to give the persuasion stuff a bit of a break — something I called “persuasion bleach” in an earlier email.

Instead, I just want to share with you the original live recording of Purple Rain.

​​If you’re not a Prince fan, this probably won’t be meaningful to you and you will want to pass. ​But if you do like Prince or at least his particular song, then this original version is definitely worth a look and listen. ​​Here it is if you’re curious:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kE8gScJGfa4

2 theories about the turkey and its name

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There are two theories how the turkey got its name:

Theory one says that confused colonizers thought the turkey, originally a native of Mexico, was a type of guinea fowl, which Turkish merchants were already selling in Europe.

Theory two says that the turkey traveled around the world before making its way to England, where it was imported by Middle Eastern poultry peddlers.

Either way, the beast became known as a turkey cock or turkey hen. Eventually we dropped the cock and the hen, got out the cranberry sauce, and the party started.

I bring this up because today is Thanksgiving, and everybody in the marketing space is sending out emails and writing Facebook posts saying, “I’m grateful for you, dear reader.”

Perhaps they really are grateful. Perhaps it’s just the pilgrim bandwagon everybody has to jump on. “You gotta build a relationship with your subscribers!”

Which reminds me of something I read from Travis Sago. Travis is a very successful marketer and one of the very best at building a relationship online with a bunch of people who don’t really know him. Says Travis,

“You don’t make friends by dropping off Encyclopedia Britannica’s at somebody’s house.”

My gut feeling is that you don’t make friends by sending out emails either, as long as their gist is, “I’m so grateful for you, and here’s a coupon for 10% off.”

But what do I know. Maybe I’m all messed up in the head. Maybe I’m just envious, and irritable because I’m dreaming of the pounds and pounds of turkey cock, the ladles of mashed potatoes, the fat slices of pumpkin pie many people will be eating today.

(Where I live it’s unfortunately not a tradition, although I did develop a Thanksgiving tooth during my long life in the US.)

Anyways, if you are celebrating today, happy Thanksgiving. Enjoy your feast. And we will get back to our regular relationship-building program tomorrow.

Persuasion bleach

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About a week ago, I decided to make some changes to these posts and as the first step, I made a list of possible topics to cover in the future. The list starts with…

a the basics of persuasion
b marketing
c comedy
d magic

… then it keeps going with 20-odd topics and finally concludes with…

w political systems
x physical violence
y cults
z competitive debate

All that is good and wohl. But honestly, I find it exhausting to constantly harp on about influence and persuasion and manipulation of one form or another. It needs a break on occasion, at least once or twice per woman’s cycle.

After all, the world is a big place, filled with sociologists and ballet dancers and urban planners and radiologists. Many of these are smart and good people, even though they’ve never heard of Gary Halbert. What are they all doing?

I don’t know. But I can tell you what a group of volunteers is doing in Kuterevo, Croatia. Kuterevo is in the Lika region of Croatia, which is the wooded, hilly, and deserted center of the country. And you know what you get in wooded, hilly, deserted areas? That’s right, bears.

So if you can find your way to Kuterevo, you can visit the Kuterevo bear sanctuary. This is apparently not a zoo, but a large enclosure, consisting of rescued or orphaned bears, living in pretty much their native habitat, except their basic needs, such as honey pots and picnic baskets, are taken care of. And according to Lonely Planet:

“From spring to late autumn, volunteers will happily take you around the large enclosures, explaining the history of each bear and touching on the wider issues of bear conservation. Your best chance of seeing the bears in an active state is in the couple of hours before sunset.”

So there you go. A bi-weekly dose of completely different content to bleach out the deep stains that persuasion and influence can leave over time. Maybe your brain needed it. Mine certainly did.