So, I know this sounds a little stereotypical, but I’m terrible with people. I know that social engineering is an excellent tool and can speed up things like active recon, but I just can’t figure it out. Does anyone know any resources for learning or just have general tips?
Have you ever considered doing community theater or taking an improv class?
Not only is it the best place to authentically practice these skills with kind feedback you generally meet a diverse range of very intelligent people in the process.
I’m kind of a social hermit, but I have a couple friends who do stuff like that. I’ll check it out.
Depending on the local theater/improv community you might be surprised how many introverts and/or computer people there are hiding in plainsight as if they were extroverts too!
“Learning social engineering” will only make you worse with people. People are not machines to be manipulated, and getting out of your comfort zone and interacting with others is the only way it will get easier.
I understand that, but the goal of learning this isn’t to get better with people, it’s to be a better hacker. I want to get as many resources as possible for doing so. Learning social engineering will allow me to be better at both attack and defense (since I will be able to spot early warning signs)
I am working on my problems with people separately. I know what my issue is and I am trying to fix it. But it won’t help with social engineering
That makes sense, the first lesson of theater however is that the audience always knows when you are trying to lie to them, they might not be able to put it into words like you will be able to as a practicioner of theater when you get better at directing and understanding why some performances flop and others soar, but the audience will feel a hollowness and become bored and anxious at the unreality of the emotions they are being asked to inhabit by the story falls flat to them.
Theater and especially improv is about establishing trust with your fellow performers and with the audience, the objective of “social engineering” as far as theater is concerned with it is as a vehicle to bringing an audience into contact with truth, not as a means to manipulate, steal or undermine.
You simply cannot trust any community that seeks to become good at changing people if it is not dominated by artists who possess an immense power to change others and desire to wield it only in the destruction of hateful, reductive, oppressive and segregating narratives, never with a desire to construct them.
What honestly studying theater or improvised theater does is make you aware of how to establish trust with good people and in the process the gift you get is a better awareness of how you are perceived by others in ways that might surprise you and you could have never realized all by yourself. It might be as simple as a common phrase or physicality you use feels more intimidating than you intend, or an affirmative statement comes off a bit hollow when you don’t intend it… not big things but a rising awareness of this forms most of what people refer to as “charisma”. Usually it is much more nuanced and broadly applicable to the ways in which you pretend and act in your everyday life without consciously even realizing it.
https://archive.org/details/improforstorytel0000john
A good book by one of the best improvised theater teachers/directors… ever?
Get a job in retail.
It’s a skill like any other, and the only way to get good at it is to do it.
Also, calling it ‘socializing’ makes you sound normal; calling it ‘social engineering’ makes you sound like a weirdo.
