Ken Hurley
“It’s a hoax” is manipulation when it is a lie. – kgh
“The unexamined life is not worth living.” If that were true we should have many more dead people. – kgh
Let me start with an old joke. A Catholic priest, a Baptist preacher, and a Rabbi meet up (in-person) every week and talk about religion and their respective places of worship. One week, they discussed how to convert people to their faith. Convert! They each agreed that people are easily manipulated and that to convert people was not a true test of religious leadership. However! To convert a bear from the wildness of the wilderness would be a true test. So, the three religious leaders agree to each go into the forest and try to convert an unsuspecting bear to their respective faith.
At their next meeting, the Catholic priest arrives with a cast on each arm and one on his leg. He wears a neck brace and has scratches all across his face. As he tells his story, he says, “Well, I went out into those woods and before long, I walked right up on a bear. I got the bear’s attention and started in on my homily. The bear didn’t respond well and attacked me. As we fought, I splashed holy water on the bear and baptized him on the spot. Immediately, the bear calmed down and was at peace.”
The Baptist preacher was up next. He was in a wheel chair with casts on both legs and an arm in a sling. “Similar to your experience Father, I too found a bear very quickly and began my sermon. The bear seemed to listen for a while but as I continued he grew more and more agitated. As I read passages from the Bible, the bear attacked me and we began wrestling on the side of a hill. Locked in a stalemate, we began rolling end over end down the steep hillside until we landed with a splash in a narrow stream. Right then, I dunked the bear underwater and baptized him in the name of Jesus. Immediately, the bear calmed down and was at peace.” The priest and the preacher look at the Rabbi, who is laid out on a stretcher in a full body cast, barely hanging on to life. The priest asks, “So, Rabbi, tell us your story.” The Rabbi is barely audible as the preacher and priest lean in close to hear. “Well, I too found a bear, and I don’t know what I could have done to convert him, but I do know that starting with a circumcision was a bad idea.”
One classic example of manipulation is known as gaslighting. The term “gaslighting” comes from the 1938 Patrick Hamilton play Angel Street (American title), which was later adapted into the film Gaslight (1944) in which a man (Charles Boyer) manipulates his newly wed wife (played by Ingrid Bergman) into madness through psychological torture so he can enrich himself by stealing from her. When he turns on the lights in the attic to search for her jewelry collection, and the gas lights dim downstairs, he tells her it’s all in her imagination. All sorts of subtle seemingly unexplainable things happen to her that gradually cause her to question her own memories, perceptions, and sanity. Have you ever been gaslighted?
Other forms of manipulation include: guilt-tripping, emotional blackmail, lying, withholding affection, playing the victim, love bombing, isolation, all designed to control or exploit someone by distorting their reality or exploiting their emotions for personal gain. Take a peek at the crazy tariffs used to manipulate foreign governments and the stock market. Especially, when they are inappropriately used to coerce global partners for political concessions. When tariffs create intentional market instability so the high-balanced players can buy low and sell high, it’s no wonder this leads to the charge of manipulating stock prices for strategic advantage.
Look at the Federal Reserve, which raises and lowers interest rates in an effort to manipulate the economy, which in turn manipulates the stock market.
The word “manipulation” often conjures images of puppeteers in shadows, Machiavellian schemes, and the deep desire to control the behavior of other people. Religion comes to mind. Manipulation is a word heavy with negative connotation, suggesting a violation of personal autonomy and a deceitful commandeering of another’s actions.
However, to understand manipulation solely as a mechanism of malice is to ignore its etymology and its pervasive, sometimes benign, presence in the human experience. The Latin manipulus means “a handful.” In French, the term originally referred to the skillful handling of objects as a master puppeteer would do. It is a word of craft, not cunning. In the mid-19th century it evolved to describe the shrewd management of people. Religion still comes to mind.
At its core, manipulation is the art of bypassing the conscious guard of the intellect to trigger the primal aspects of the psyche: fear, desire, guilt, and vanity. It is an interaction where one party perceives how another’s mind may think and seeks ways to instill their beliefs. The manipulator wants to redirect the energy of another. They identify an existing insecurity or aspiration in the subject and attach their own objective to it, making the victim believe that the manipulator’s goal is actually their own desire.
Hostage negotiators minimize threats by establishing trust through active listening, stalling for time to lower emotions, and using calm, empathetic communication to de-escalate crisis situations. They shift the focus from violence to problem-solving, often utilizing techniques like “tactical empathy” to make the hostage-taker feel heard, reduce their stress, and build momentum toward a peaceful surrender. That’s manipulation at its best. The manipulator knows something the victim does not, whether it is the true cost of an action, the real nature of a relationship, or a fabricated reality. By controlling the flow of information, the manipulator constructs a plan where the victim feels they are making a free decision, yet all available paths lead to the manipulator’s desired outcome. I am reminded that George Orwell’s 1984 (1949) presents manipulation on a large systemic scale. The Party does not just manipulate individuals, it manipulates reality itself. Through “Newspeak,” the government shrinks the vocabulary available to the populace, thereby shrinking the range of thinkable thoughts. If there is no word for “freedom,” the concept cannot be articulated or fought for. In 1984, manipulation transcends psychological trickery and becomes ontological control. The protagonist, Winston Smith, is not just tricked, he is rewired. The chilling conclusion is that he learns to love Big Brother, which shows that total manipulation does not just control action, it colonizes the personality. You know, like MAGA.
Current events are replete with examples of how technology has monetized influence. Social media platforms, driven by the profit imperative of the “attention economy,” utilize algorithms designed to manipulate user behavior. These systems are not neutral. They are optimized to maximize engagement, often by amplifying outrage, fear, and tribalism. The “Facebook Files” leaks and subsequent congressional hearings revealed that platforms were aware their algorithms could lead users down “rabbit holes” of misinformation and radicalization, yet the mechanisms remain because they are extremely profitable. Perhaps we should let robots vote like any other person, so the bots won’t have to manipulate elections through social networks.
The social media form of manipulation is subtle because it is invisible. Unlike a human con artist (Think Prez 47), an algorithm does not blink, stutter, or slur words. It simply feeds the user a stream of content that confirms their existing biases, which creates an echo chamber that feels like how the world should be. Furthermore, the rise of AI-generated content creates a problem of epistemology — you know, the study of how we know what we know. You know? When video and audio can be convincingly fabricated, the shared reality necessary for democracy begins to fracture. The manipulator no longer needs to persuade the audience that a lie is true; they only need to persuade the audience that nothing is true. Look how many lies we hear from the current administration every day. This geopolitical information warfare creates a cynicism that conditions much of the public into complacency. That’s unfortunate. It’s action — way beyond social media posts that make effective changes.
The word “manipulation” remains a test for our views on power, influence, and agency. It is a tool, and like any tool — from a hammer to a nuclear reactor — its moral weight is determined by the hands that use it.
Ultimately, the defense against malicious manipulation is not to shut out the world, but to cultivate critical awareness that can turn into meaningful action. Let’s ask: Who is framing this choice? What is being omitted? And, does this influence serve my growth, or does it merely serve the manipulator’s design? We are all manipulated in one way or another. Me, too. In recognizing the strings of the many puppeteer wannabees, we take steps toward cutting them, or at least, choosing which ones we allow to guide us.
What do you call a dog that manipulates dolls? A puppyteer. Did that access your inner smile?
We prefer not to call it manipulation. We prefer to think we are not manipulated. The negative connotations are too strong. We prefer to call it something artful. Like the art of persuasion. If I ever get some superpowers, I would include the art of persuasion, along with invincibility, of course.
