I had to escalate to Stage 5 on the Charming Manipulation Scale (CMS) to shut that down. The stages were, as follows: Stage 1: Plead. “Can you please not tell my mom?” Stage 2: Elicit pity. “She’s going to whup me so hard. She just doesn’t understand what it’s like to be a kid.” Stage 3: Engage empathy. “If you had been out there with me, you would have done the same thing.” Stage 4: Appeal to values. “I saw Tao on the corner and I thought he could help me with my homework.” Stage 5: Appeal to self-interest. “I’ll clean your back room if you don’t tell.” Stage 6: Run out of angles. Get ass
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