Help Me Polish This Aphorism, Will Ya?
You hear the complaint all the time: “you’re just telling them what they want to hear!” Ok, but what’s the alternative: telling you what you don’t want to hear? Who’s going to listen to that?
The trick is telling them what they didn’t know they wanted to hear until they heard it.
Many people, myself included, could profit from being told what I don’t want to hear.
— cw · Jun 12, 10:15 PM · #
I thought that the trick was telling them what they didn’t want to hear in such a manner as to make them think that in fact they really did want to hear it…
— E.D. Kain · Jun 12, 10:25 PM · #
“The trick is telling them what they didn’t know they wanted to hear until they heard it.”
That is a trixy trick indeed!
— Tony Comstock · Jun 12, 11:14 PM · #
I hear that.
— H.C. Johns · Jun 13, 01:55 AM · #
From Eric Hoffer: “To most of us nothing is so invisible as an unpleasant truth. Though it is held before our eyes, pushed under our noses, rammed down our throats—we know it not.”
If it was easy to tell people what they need to hear, everyone would be doing it.
— Hubbard · Jun 13, 09:55 PM · #
Tell them what you want them to hear, in the way you want them to hear it.
Their wants and expectations factor in as strategy cues only.
— Sargent · Jun 15, 12:42 PM · #
Or, alternatively, a hefty catering fee.
— Sargent · Jun 15, 01:35 PM · #