Efimeridopolis
I am also including a very extreme example of silence being used for manipulation purposes by You Know Who, just before a speech before a hostile crowd. The Mexican artist Diego Rivera describes this in his autobiography, My Life My Art:
A few days later I saw Adolf Hitler address a mass meeting in Berlin, [...] As he prepared to speak, Hitler drew himself rigidly erect, as if he expected to swell out and fill his oversized English officer's raincoat and look like a giant. Then he made a motion for silence. Some Communist workers booed him, but after a few minutes the entire crowd became perfectly silent. As he warmed up, Hitler began screaming and waving his arms like an epileptic. Something about him must have stirred the deepest centers of his fellow Germans, for after awhile I sensed a weird magnetic current flowing between him and the crowd. So profound was it that, when he finished, after two hours of speaking, there was a second of complete silence. Not even the Communist youth groups, instructed to do so, whistled at him. Then the silence gave way to tremendous, ear-shattering applause from all over the square. As he left, Hitler's followers closed ranks around him with every sign of devoted loyalty. [...] [Muenzenberg] had been watching Hitler, then nearly at the other end of the square. He had noticed that the crowd was still applauding. Before leaving the square, Hitler turned and gave the Nazi salute. Instead of boos, the applause swelled. It was clear that Hitler had won many followers among these left-wing workers.
So you know, it CAN be a dick move.