Let’s Be Honest. You and I Are Both Liars.

“All writers are liars. They twist events to suit themselves. They make use of their own tragedies to make a better story… They are terrible people.” – Nina Bawden, Born Jan. 19, 1925.

You ain't no journalist.

You ain't no oracle.

We are making shit up to manipulate people's emotions, and thereby their behavior. That weirds normal humans out no matter how nice you try to make it sound.

Pretending we do something else more gentle is like trying to call yourself a puppeteer, while taking pride on only ever gently blowing on the strings.

That's not how you make the puppets dance.

Grab the controls willfully. Embrace what you truly are. We aren't normal people, in this profession. We are already a band apart.

To fulfill your potential, you need to learn to leverage everything at your disposal. Every raw little nerve you can twiddle in their brain should be fair game.

Now, you already know that developing this skill set will take you down some dark alleys. It's the nature of it.

The ability to invisibly control others is a fearful thing, and normal people relegate it to the shadows, and abandon these tools to the sole use of evil men.

Why should they have all the fun?

Just because we are liars, doesn't mean we aim to hurt.

Whenever I talk about lying, people get all upset. Oh, I don't MANIPULATE, I *persuade*. Yeah, OK. All that tells me is you brought a knife to this gunfight.

Deal with the reality. Advertisements are definitely a kind of lie. Storytellers lie. Songwriters lie. Joke tellers lie. We are all twisting possibly true fragments to create a more effective fiction. The BEST ones are the ones that do it the MOST.

Once you accept this, you can remove all the artificial barriers to your study and practice. Look toward the ad men, as well as the mad men, and bad men. Learn the powers that the manipulators use to serve their own ends, and put them to work for you.

Your goals. Your wealth. Your power.

And look, if you want to be one of those super honest liars, that is a perfectly fine decision to make. You can be the monster that doesn't eat people because they choose not to. That choice is up to the individual.

But you don't get to choose what you ARE. We are NOT like them. We don't WANT to be, and they will never understand our fascination with what makes the puppets dance. They're happy just dancing. They get to remain puppets.

But not you – you're still a monster. A terrible, terrible monster.

And what a fun thing it is to be. Powerful. Mysterious. Famished. Fearfully symmetric and beautiful in our dangerousness.

But only when you accept the full potential and true nature of the powers we possess. If you do – when you do – you will become really, really, really good at this thing we do.

Scary good. Like a natural, even.

Do you think you can? Do you believe you will?

I do.

Because here you are, reading this. Your inner beast is already awake and is hungry.

Now you tell me:

Am I lying?