The Power Of "The Story".

My buddy and I have this phrase that we've taken to using, sort of a personal little meme that the two of us make reference to often.  It's a phenomenon that we call "The Story".

The Story is great.  It's not any specific story, but rather, sort of a conceptual representation of any given story that serves the purpose of the phenomenon.  It's the meta-story, the whole collection of all relevant stories.

The concept is, basically, this:  By openly telling someone an unsolicited, highly personal, and surprisingly candid account of some aspect of one's life (past or present) that would normally be cause for shame or guilt, one can evoke a strange sympathy or fascination in that person, enough to serve all kinds of very useful manipulative purposes.

The most basic form of The Story is the escalating confession.  Our discussions about the curious power of The Story began when I made the observation that there is an absurdly effective means of causing someone to forgive you for whatever it is they are currently angry or disapproving about.  You simply confess to something worse.  This seems almost counter-intuitive, but it's amazing to watch the effects.

When I've done something wrong, or been found out in some unpleasantness, and a friend or lover or other associate is now upset with me, judging me harshly, making demands or ultimatums, or attempting to sever relations with me, I've found that simply launching into a sudden bit of personal narrative about some even more ugly aspect of myself, or some specific past sin of an even more serious nature virtually always defuses their negative feelings, and causes them not only to forgive me, but to actually feel sympathy and admiration for me.

The more shameful or horrible the confession, the better this works.  It doesn't seem like it should, but oh, how it does.  It's like magic.  Now, I'm not talking about making something up.  This isn't about lying or conning someone.  It's a surgical use of truth, which is what makes it so potent.  The sincerity and vulnerability, the courage to speak out on something that nearly any person would normally wish to conceal, that's what evokes the empathy from the other, that's what makes them suddenly see your humanity.

The more hideousness you admit to, the more of a sympathetic figure you become.  I'm not even exactly sure how or why it works, but I've done it so many times and been delighted with the results.  It's almost a guaranteed outcome.  Someone's mad at me, I've hurt them, they've just discovered that I'm a far less kind and noble man than they formerly believed . . . bam, break out a bit of The Story and the tables turn in the blink of an eye!

One moment you're a petty asshole who disgusts them, and the next, you're a richly complex, darkly nuanced survivor who has just stripped himself bare before them and courageously revealed some buried depths of his soul.  Now they're actually proud of you, for "coming clean" about something which must be "so difficult to talk about".  Now they feel like they've been let in, like you've entrusted them with something really meaningful.  Suddenly that silly little thing they were so worked up about a minute ago seems small and insignificant.  No wonder you did this minor wrong now . . . they had no idea you were carrying this psychic weight from being such a worse person than they suspected!  Oh, how they just want to hold you...

Heh.  The Story wins again.

Maybe some folks are clever enough to pull this off with fabrications, but I'm not that daring.  I use real material for my implementations of The Story, and it's enough.  Then again, I've also had a relatively colorful life, and the palette has contained plenty of dark hues.  In my younger days especially, I used to do a lot of things, put myself in situations, just so I could honesty say I did it, just for solid use later in The Story.  I've always found that credibility is much easier to achieve when you're actually telling the truth, and there's really no need for elaborate fictions, anyway.

Another use of The Story is in simply making yourself more interesting to someone, for all of the obvious reasons why that would be beneficial.  By parceling out small bits of The Story to someone over time, you can become progressively more and more fascinating, even if most of your interactions with them are quite unremarkable.  The Story is a great thing to throw into a conversation when you just don't have the wit, charm, or knowledge needed at the time to sufficiently engage someone.  I try to reserve it for those cases, however, sort of a backup fuel tank for when my more mundane social resources are running dry.

Have you found that despite your best efforts to be enthralling, to garner someone's attention, they just don't seem to find you particularly interesting?  Just drop some of The Story on 'em, and watch the addiction to you blossom.  You'd think that telling someone about the worst parts of you, or the most unpleasant things you've done, would push them away, make them uncomfortable with you, cause them to look down upon you, right? In rare special cases, or when handled especially poorly, it can have that effect, but really . . . almost never.  The vast majority of the time, it makes someone like you a whole lot more.  Which is bizarre, but quite lovely.

I'm not an expert on human psychology, so I really can't say why The Story works.  I just know that it does.  And it amuses me to no end.  I laugh about it, and my buddy, who is not at all sociopathic like me, can't help but laugh in a sort of head-shaking way about it, too, at the sheer ridiculousness of it.  It strikes him as very devious and manipulative, something that shady people, like myself, do.  But he finds the results ironically humorous, nonetheless.  I take great joy in it.  I get to be honest, reveal something about myself which I would ordinarily be hiding, and reap immediate rewards from it, pushing someone into a more favorable opinion of myself.

The Story has lasting value, as well.  You can always bring it back up later, make reference to it, sort of haul it out and bash someone with it whenever you need to.  Plus, once you've confessed to any given piece of your fucked up personality or past misdeeds via The Story, you've acquired a sort of de facto forgiveness or permission for whatever it is, so you don't have to worry about the person confronting you about it later on.  If you pull out your bigger guns in The Story, you can also basically count on using something like the legal concept of "lesser included offenses" to completely wave off lots of other displeasing things they may find out about you in the future, because they'll fall under the aegis of the broader, more serious truths you've already disclosed.

It's very empowering, having this confidence in my ability to spin threads of gold from my shit by way of The Story, because I don't feel afraid of my secrets, my flaws, or the stains on my past.  Instead of having to hide things, and being worried about someone finding out, I can simply hold them in my hand like a deck of cards, waiting to play them at my convenience.  Rather than feeling like my dark bits are a social burden, they become social ammunition.  I revel in those things which are the "worst" in me, in my life, because for me, they are not sources of shame or guilt -- they are delicious morsels of emotional currency, available to sway the opinions of others whenever I wish.

Somehow, I suspect that "normal" folks do not see things quite the same way, and that this, too, points to a sociopathic bent in me.  Rather than feeling remorse for what's ugliest in me, I delight in the thought of using it to manipulate others.  Using their own empathy against them, tricking them into swallowing my most bitter pills and then thanking me for the privilege.  But hey, sometimes The Story is the only way to make someone think reasonably about me, so it's only fair.