But we've been doing it our entire lives. Children learn their parents and learn how to best manipulate them. Men learn what women respond to and try to orient themselves towards that.

Televangelist Robert Tilton manipulated people in an anti-social way - so don't do that. But Bernie Sanders manipulated millions to become politically and socially engaged.

I think for me, the gauge is: if the other person found out I was actively using tactics on them, would they be angry, or accepting and curious? Tact has a lot to do with it, and who you are otherwise.

It's not a hack. It's SYN/ACK.

You know you're in a place for nerds when you see social interaction being explained in terms of TCP/IP instead of the other way around.

Did you read the article? It's not really about manipulating other people. It's more a list of basic social graces that some people learn on their own or from their parents, but others need to be taught explicitly.

It's just like anything else; some people can tackle new subjects completely on their own, but almost everybody benefits from good advice. Why should advice on getting along well with others be withheld?

I don't think anybody intends to be a bore or a jerk, yet obviously some people are. It affects their lives profoundly, and they may lead lonely lives. Withholding advice on how they could be more likable, if they're so inclined, seems a little cruel. If you'd use the same advice to manipulate people, that's on you.

Some of the techniques seem that way.

On the other hand, prompting people to talk about themselves, assuming you actually listen, doesn't seem terrible to me. I suppose there's a line between purposefully trying to make an impression and hacking people.

Communication skills aren't about manipulation, and if you think of it that way you'll be a bad communicator unless you're a sociopath. Instead, think of interactions as an opportunity to create happiness. If you make people happy when you talk to them good things will come to you.

No, it does feel weird, especially when we suppose that the "hacked" person derive no benefit from being "hacked." However, if the "hacker" provides more value to the "hacked" person than the "hacker" captures as a result, the "hacked" person might be OK with the exchange.

This sounds a bit more OK to me, but still the notion of manipulating others does get under my skin.

In a sense it is manipulative to consciously direct someone else's behavior in a way that benefits you. But interacting with people is rarely a zero-sum game. Whatever benefit you derive, warm feelings and enjoying the person they are talking to are both things that the other person probably wants from the conversation as well.

If you go into a conversation and the result is that the other person thinks you are uninteresting and they don't have anything to say, it is negative for everyone involved. Productive conversations are usually productive for both people, it's not likely that you are somehow sapping away something that belonged to another person, rather that you are turning time spent by both parties into something of value to both of you instead of wasting it.

What if I said that in any conversation of two strangers one person is being hacked and the other is doing the hacking?

I'm not sure that's true, but it does occur pretty often in all sorts of situations.

I'd bet if you took that view into many of those types of conversations, you wouldn't feel bad

(Finally, please note that I am explicitly excluding anything immoral. )

It's much more about giving up the attempt to hack people. The last three sentences of the article sum it up well:

Stop trying to impress people or "win" the conversation. It's really much simpler than that. Just listen intently and make people feel good about themselves.

I don't think the article is about hacking other people; it's about relating to them.

Nah, me too, but I've eventually learned that everyone else expects me to be hacking them slightly. They also expect that they're hacking me, and get pretty shocked when it turns out some of their social graces were flying completely over my head.

The idea is uncomfortable to me at least. I think it's useful to learn better social skills, but there's a risk of being less genuine when the approach is geared towards people specifically liking you.

You would be at disadvantage if you think it's wrong.

No. However, I have found that it is often 'expected'.