https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tw-mZp_KZZI
Mirroring Technique: The speaker discusses “mirroring” as a method of manipulation where a person reflects another’s thoughts, beliefs, or actions to gain their trust and agreement. This can create a strong, often false, sense of rapport.
Example of Epstein: Jeffrey Epstein, who reportedly excelled at mirroring, is cited as an example of someone who used this technique to manipulate others effectively.
Mirroring Mechanics: Mirroring involves agreeing with or repeating back what another person says or subtly aligning with their beliefs, even anticipating and expressing their views before they do, to foster trust and closeness.
Sales and Manipulation: Mirroring is frequently used in sales and business interactions to manipulate clients or customers by creating a sense of agreement and understanding, making it easier to influence their decisions.
Red Flags of Mirroring: One way to detect if you’re being mirrored is to notice if the other person never disagrees with you. Testing them by expressing an opinion that contradicts your usual beliefs can help reveal if they’re genuinely aligned with you or merely mirroring.
Personal Experience: The speaker shares an anecdote with a friend, Dr. Benway, to illustrate genuine disagreement as a sign of authenticity. When Benway vehemently disagreed with his opinion on a movie, it reassured the speaker that Benway wasn’t mirroring him.
Importance of Detection: Recognizing when someone is mirroring you is crucial, especially to avoid being manipulated. The speaker warns that people who always agree and act deferentially are likely trying to mirror for ulterior motives.
Practical Application of Mirroring: The speaker advises learning and practicing mirroring as a skill, as it can be a useful tool to influence others, from closing sales to persuading friends.
Experimenting with Mirroring: The speaker suggests practicing mirroring in simple scenarios, like choosing a restaurant, to see how effective it can be in subtly guiding decisions.
Cautionary Advice: The speaker emphasizes that while mirroring can be powerful, it’s essential to recognize when it’s used on you, as it can lead to manipulation in relationships and interactions.
Summarize the transcript of a YouTube video in 10 bullet points. The video is by CRP Patreon Archive and is titled Mirroring | CRP Patreon. The entire transcript is given below. [Music] I recently read an account about Jeffrey Epstein the uh convicted pedophile allegedly who suicided in um in police custody in New York well Jeffrey Epstein according to this account was extremely good at mirroring people that was the expression used in the in piece that I read I forget where I read it’s not really important the important thing is the concept of mirroring and how important it is you see mirroring is the idea that a person mirrors what his interlocutor is saying or doing or thinking or more important of all wanting see see a person who is mirroring you is repeating back to you your same sentences and often is not repeating back to you what you think in slightly different words but in a way that you find very agreeable and by way of mirroring a person can wind up getting awfully close to you to the point where you begin to trust them in a disproportionate way in a way that is not conasur it to the kind of relationship that you have mirroring is actually an ability that you should develop yeah and you have to understand most of all that mirroring is a form of manipulation mirroring well the the person who is mirroring the other is basically reflecting back on them what they themselves think or desire or believe and using this agreement to get them to do what they want for instance you know I say to you you know you you’re like a Patriots fan for instance I don’t care it doesn’t really matter you’re a fan of the Patriots and I say oh yeah me too man and Tom Brady the era Tom Brady uh player for this team was the greatest ever blah blah and and I repeat back to you the things that you believe and you tell me that you are a Democrat and I say me too I could be a Nazi or I could be a communist it doesn’t matter I just repeat to you that I too am a Democrat and I too believe in whatever this political party or that political party believes it doesn’t really matter what I say what I’m saying is always repeating what you’re saying and a really good guy I mean let me phrase it not a good guy rather kind of manipulative guy but somebody who’s very good at mirroring is someone who can sort of like sus out what the object he is mirroring actually thinks before he says it and this is fairly easy see and this is why we need stereotypes and why very manipulative people depend on stereotypes because you see a person let’s just say for instance is someone who is a member of the democratic party M he’s a card carrying member of the democratic party well he’s obviously going to have a set of beliefs XYZ on on a number of issues and the the odds of him being for instance uh pro-life or anti-abortion are going to be exceedingly Slim So if you’re talking to somebody that you realize is a Democrat then what are you going to say you’re going to say that you too are pro-choice and you know a women’s right to choose and her body her choice and all that stuff whether you believe in it or not if you’re mirroring somebody else you’re going to latch on to how they identify themselves and from that extrapolate other things anticipating other beliefs that they will have and saying yes I agree with this of course whether you agree with them or not this is IR relevant I agree with this issue and that way the person that is being mirrored is going to think even better of you I mean you see what’s going on uh if you’re mirroring somebody you’re lying to them because you are changing whatever beliefs that you might happen to have in order to Curry favor with them and of course it’s not just going to be with so far as your beliefs are concerned if you’re mirroring somebody you’re also going to act a certain way you’ll tend to act more submissively towards them you’re going to act more sub submissively towards them more differential towards them and of course the object of this mirroring and the object of this difference well they’re going to feel great because we all like it when somebody else repeats what we believe and we all most certain like it when somebody else acts differentially towards us and you see the power of mirroring and that’s why you have to be incredibly careful when somebody starts saying things that you wholeheartedly agree with because it could be that you are being mirrored you see and this happens all the time with salespeople you know in sales in in a sales situation it could be that you’re at a store and the the salesman is trying to sell you something or it could be that this is a business deal of some sort your company and their company and you know they’re they’re trying to work out a deal and you get mirrored okay but see you have to always know when you’re being mirrored you have to identify it it’s very important and it’s very difficult it’s it’s it’s a skill to sus out when you’re being mirrored and you know how you can tell when you’re being mirrored when they never disagree with you the way I usually figure out if somebody’s mirroring me I.E trying to to manipulate me is that I say something that goes against the the uh stereotype of my other beliefs I mean you guys all know I’m doing this for patreon of course and you all know here on patreon that I’m conservative I’m a hardcore conservative right social conservative and and you know fiscally I’m I’m more you know anti-m monopolistic anti- corporatist but that’s neither here nor that the point I’m trying to make is that you guys more or less know what I think and so it is relatively easy for you to extrapolate the different ideas I might have on different issues right if I suspect that somebody is mirroring me what I do is that I stake out a position that I might not really believe but I just stake it out to see if he agrees with it or not a position that breaks with the stereotype of my other beliefs that might even be in congruent with my other beliefs or even contradictory to my other beliefs because it’s really a quality check it it it is a compliance test it’s to see if the guy that I’m talking to with whom I’m agreeing with on so many issues I’m trying to check if he and I really agree on a lot of issues and we just happen to be on the same wavelength or he’s mirroring me let me give you a simple example you guys remember that I used to do this podcast with Dr Benway you know great he’s a great guy he’s a great guy and a guy I like very much and appreciate very much right and we agree on a whole host of things you know movies and books and politics and this and that and the other right and one time we were talking about movies we were talking about the movie network and he just loves it he thinks that network is a masterpiece blah blah and I was like no this is a piece of you know and as soon as I said that he’s like what are you talking about and he started arguing me like vehemently arguing with me right he was just arguing me and and in the end you know he was disappointed in me I could sort of tell because there are some people who find network just the the the the you know the bees knees right I just don’t like it I think it’s just pretentious and bullshitty and you know that’s that that’s my opinion but the point the point for this conversation that I’m having with you right now you see if Benway had been manipulating me and mirroring me he would have agreed with my assessment of network the fact that he so vehemently disagreed and had very good reasons to disagree and in the end I could sort of sense that he was kind of like you know I’d come down a peg in his estimation because of my my judgment on on network that proved that he wasn’t mirroring me he’s not bullshitting me of course I knew this from before but I’m just using this as a specific example so that you can understand how you can spot a guy who’s mirroring you it’s very important that you figure out if somebody’s mirring you or not as early as possible you see all the other opinions on movies that Benway and I had they matched completely and some of the the more novel ideas that he had about movies and books I would consider him and say yeah that’s pretty good and same with me I would say something that he hadn’t really considered he’d be like yeah I agree it was this network issue my opinion on the movie network just this one specific issue and he’s like what the are you talking about and that’s when I knew or like I said I knew from before but if I hadn’t known that’s when I would have known that’s when I would have known that this guy is not marrying me this guy is’s not playing me this guy is not trying to manipulate me see the fact that he disagreed so vehemently that’s how you spot a mirrorer a guy who’s trying to manipulate you he will never disagree with you on the contrary he will sort of like stop and think and say oh my God you’re a genius he will use the fact that you’re breaking out of The Stereotype to inflate your ego to praise you some more to act even more subservient and differential towards you yeah and the tragedy of course is that a lot of people fall for this yeah a lot of smart guys they fall for it hook line and sinker oh yeah they just go for it and they don’t even realize that they’re being played because that’s what’s going on you’re being played okay so it’s very important that you figure this out when you’re dealing with somebody and it’s very important that you learn to do this to other people that you need to convince because ultimately mirroring this form of manipulation is a way to convince people to do what you want them to do and the process is very simple the mirror let’s say I’m trying to mirror you and you’re saying whatever you’re saying that you’re a whatever you know you’re a Buddhist and I’m saying oh yeah Buddhism is the best religion ever I totally believe in Buddhism and I repeat everything that you say and I agree with everything you say and I anticipate what you might believe because I I read you I study you and I anticipate what you might be thinking or might believe be believing and I’ll say that to you before you have a chance to say it to me and knowing that the odds are pretty good that you all agree with me and that will just create an even stronger Bond because the object being mirrored in this case I am mirroring you you’re the object I’m mirroring right well the object he will feel more and more flattered that somebody else agrees with him and if I treat you differentially your ego will inflate and so it will be very easy for me to say to you you know what do you think of this of X you know I think that X is a good thing what do you think you’ll agree with him that’s what you’ll think it doesn’t matter what it is it could be cannibalism but you’ll agree with him yeah because when somebody has mirrored you for long enough when when you feel this back and forth where what you say is reflected right back at you when all of a sudden they say something towards you you instinctively nod because you’ve been nodding all along you see you say that you like the Patriots the guy who’s mirroring you says he likes the Patriots too and you nod you say that you’re a Democrat and the guy mirroring you says that he’s a Democrat too and you nod and then he says that he’s pro-choice and you nod and he says that he thinks that Biden is the best thing since slice bread and you nod and then he says to to you hey don’t you think X is a good thing and you just nod because you’ve been nodding the whole time you see you see how it works you see how powerful it is mirroring is is one of the best ways to manipulate somebody into getting what you want and you got to master it simple as that in life you’re going to need to mirror to make people think that you believe as they do and convince them that you and that person are on the same page get them nodding nodding and nodding and then you say and you also think that X is a goodidea a good idea right and they’re going to nod you that’s what you have to do it’s essential it’s an essential ability it’s how you make the sale every selling situation is ultimately a mirroring situation A selling situation when of course where where the buyer is not really sure when the buyer is sure there’s there’s nothing going on the guy is just showing up and buying and leaving you know forget about that I’m talking about when you’re trying to convince somebody when you’re making a sale especially to a client who’s hard to convince now this client could be a business client this client could be a woman this client could be whatever ever a lot of these male feminists for instance that’s what they’re basically doing they’re mirroring women they’re assuming that by repeating all the that the feminists are saying they’ll get laid they’ll make the make the sale see that’s their game plan that’s their scheme if you start looking at it in so many interactions of people around you you’ll see that mirroring is is the basis of the relationship and you’ll discover something horrifying too you’ll realize a lot of times that in a in a relationship where one person is being mirrored by the other they don’t even like each other or more correctly the guy mirroring does not like the object that he is mirroring he’s just doing it to get what he wants and the second he gets what he wants he’s gone understand what mirroring is understand when you are being mirrored and learn how to mirror yourself it’s exceedingly important and it seems so trivial and the fact is I’m kind of surprised that I haven’t done a video about this before but well there you are okay learn to do it and you learn it by studying people and you learn it by practice you got to go out there and practice and try it out consciously try it out with somebody over something trivial okay uh suppose that you’re with a friend and you’re going to be and you know that you’re going to be debating where to go to lunch or dinner or something like that well why don’t you mirror him for a little bit for not long you know 5 10 minutes tops and then spring the idea of going to some restaurant that he might hate but that you’ve mirrored him so well that he agrees try it try it as an experiment you’ll be deeply surprised and you’ll be rather unhappily surprised by how easy it is to manipulate pure people people rather by just mirroring them a [Music]