Seek to Misconstrue + a
Failure: The Blog 
February 2012
- Unfinished, But Inhabited
- The Success of Failure, via CNN
- Einstein Actually Had Excellent Grades
- The Physics of Discarded Paper
- The Power of Failing
January 2012
- Offensive Advertising, Increased Sales?
- I Sold Out For Millions, Then Worked At McDonald's
- Steve Jobs on Failure
- The Famous Western Failure
- Thank Goodness for Drug Addicts
December 2011
- It's a Wonderful Failure
- Stadium Destroyed, Reborn
- Failure to Trust the Astronauts
- Failure and the Baggy Pants Tradition
- Failure at The Happiest Place on Earth
- Saving What Was Lost
- FailureBank: A Social Learning Utility
November 2011
- A Thanksgiving Failure
- Harriet Tubman's Clever Lie
- The Failures of Lemieux
- Failed to Return a Text
- Admitting Failure
- A Leaders Job: Support Failure
October 2011
Failed to Return a Text
A new Wall Street Journal explains how text messaging plus telling white lies can be an effective way to establish relationships. Really.
Read the
article in full, but here’s an example:
Want to play it cool with someone? Seem busy and important? Then send a text—with a term of endearment—that appears to be written to someone else. Or ask “who is this?” when you receive a text. Have a friend text you repeatedly when you’re on a date. Claim not to have gotten a text you actually received.
Let’s call it bluffting: A text with a little bluffing.
Bluffing, as you know, is lying. It’s a type of failure, although it may be smaller than getting into a fender bender or bombing a test. Normally, we expect this kind of screwup to be limited to the poker table. But bluffing while texting can be a great technique for using failure to your advantage.
“It’s perfect for manipulation,” says Sherry Turkle, a psychologist in the program in Science, Technology, and Society at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “We can create anxiety because it’s so intimate.”
Texting is also immediate. Most people see texts faster than they see email or pick up their voice messages. And they expect a reply right away, according to Dr. Turkle, who has researched this. When we send a text, we expect a reply in three minutes, she says. If we haven’t received one in five minutes, we get antsy. “And if we still haven’t heard back in 10 minutes, we believe something is wrong, that we are being ignored.”
No matter where you are in life, failure is the secret to success. The best way to get someone’s attention might be to trick them with a weird text message. The best way to someone in their place might be to ignore their text or pretend you don’t know they are. It may bring the conversation back to reality and honesty. Try it!
