from their world, create a bond through their prmary sense with
Anatomically Correct Empathizers, and establish subliminal friendship with
words like we.
What else do friends, lovers, and close associates have in comon? A
history. The final technique in this section is a device to give a fairly new
acquaintance the warm and fuzzy feeling the two of you have been together
for a long, long time.
Technique #49
The Premature We
Create the sensation of intimacy with someone even if youve met just
moments before. Scramble the signals in their psyche by skipping
conversational levels one and two and cutting right to levels three and four.
Elicit intimate feelings by using the magic words we, us, and our.
How to Create a Friendly Private Joke with Them
Lovers whisper phrases in each others ears that mean nothing to anyone
but themselves. Friends crack up over a few words that sound like
gobbledygook to anyone overhearing them. Close busness associates
chuckle about shared experiences.
One company Ive worked with has seen reengineering, empowerment,
TQM, and team building come and go in one decade. At company parties,
the employees never fail to crack up over the time when the whole
companymanagers to mail-room clerksscrambled up a twenty-nine-foot
pole together all in the name of team building. The CEO slipped down the
pole and broke his big toe. At the next weekly meeting, the CEO shook his
crutch and caustically announced, No more team exercises! Thus, the death
of team buildingand the birth of a private joke.
Out of shared experiences like this, a company culture grows. These
employees have a history and a language to go with it. To this day,
whenever they want to put an abrupt end to any idea, they say, Lets shake a
crutch at it or Lets slide that one down the flagpole. They all smile. Nobody
knows what they mean except fellow employees.
The playwright Neil Simon, sometimes with a single word, can make an
entire Broadway audience understand two perform195
ers onstage are either married or longtime friends. The actor siply says
something to the actress that makes no sense to the audence. Then both of
them laugh uproariously. Everybody gets the message: these two people are
an item.
ooja
(Ooja)
#1