> Remembering (and using!) someone's name is a magic spell, too.

When it's done to me, it's the magic spell of "I Distrust You". A time or two is fine, as is its usage if one is -say- in a group conversation where it can be difficult to understand to whom one is speaking, or -say- one needs to get my attention when I'm focusing on something else.

In my many years of personal experience, I've found that people who behave as if speaking my name to me is a magic spell absolutely do not have my best interests at heart. At best, they want to manipulate me into doing something that I don't wish to do. I recognize that my opinion is not universal, but I am absolutely not the only person on earth who's like this.

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argee 14 days ago | parent | next [-]

Isn’t the magic in the "time or two"? For example I always make it a point to thank call center people by name after they’ve helped me, even though their name comes up exactly once before that point (when they introduce themselves). It’s just extending a basic courtesy, treating someone like a human being. (Of course, remembering the name of who was helping you is not just basic courtesy but also useful for other reasons.)

Seems the message got distorted from "remembering people's names shows you care about them" to "use people's names unnecessarily or in bad faith". I was pretty upset by that Apple Intelligence ad where Bella Ramsey pulls up someone's name and then pretends she remembered it – yuck.

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elzbardico 14 days ago | parent | prev [-]

In defense of Dale Carnegie he always said that for this to work, you need first to learn to GENUILY CARE about other people.

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interviewitis 14 days ago | parent [-]

The worst thing about even relatively-good advice of this sort, like Dale's, is that applying it well requires being so good at these kinds of things that you probably didn't need the advice in the first place.

People who've read a couple of these books and are trying to use them are usually transparent, and it hurts way more than it helps. If they weren't inept at applying the advice, they probably wouldn't have needed it. Especially if they're not very young—if they're older and haven't picked up most of that stuff through natural observational skills and curiosity-driven trial-and-error, their odds of reading and practicing their way to significant improvement seem low.

This goes for "nonviolent communication" and similar, too. Trying to use these things if you weren't already a natural just red-flags "I'm trying to manipulate you".

"First, genuinely care" is only a little less useless than "be attractive; don't be unattractive". In practice, most of the folks with a problem in that area aren't going to read the book and do the work on that bit before trying to apply the rest. Those without such a problem, likely don't need the book.

	▲	elzbardico 10 days ago \| parent [-]
		I think it is a generational thing. Those kinds of things can be learned, but they take time. If you try to systematically be more positive on how you see other people, you’ll feel weird at the beginning, but over times it will come as more natural to you. But this was easier in the past, people used to trust more, and be somewhat more naive. Our current generation, jagged by years of manipulative advertising, Nigerian prince scams, SEO, religious and political leaders scandals and so on, it is not so naive anymore, and thus, someone trying too hard can’t escape our detection antennas.