How To Make People Like You In 90 Seconds... and Hate You Forever
by Becky Clark
November 2024
How to push for more, beam more… or just carry on being your cheese-eating self.
Praise be. For years I’ve been wandering in the wilderness of social solipsism, but How to Make People Like You in 90 Seconds will be my oasis of acceptance. Sadly, the 90 seconds on the cover relates to your future attempts at forcing friendships, not the time to read, and so I settle in.
I start reading whilst also eating some incredibly smelly cheese. Like, a real honker. Depending on who you ask this is either a cause or symptom of my Olympic-ability-level singleness. I fully expect hospitality and the offer to share one’s cheese to be a key component of compelling people to like me but (spoiler) this is inexplicably missing. Two hours later I have finished both the book and the cheese and can reveal its inner workings.
My first observation is that the cover image includes the words ‘(continued on back cover)’. I have purchased it on Kindle because a) I live at the end of the world and book delivery is hit and miss at best and b) I don’t want anyone to know I’m reading this when I’m out in public. E-readers of the world, unite. I therefore check if (continued on back cover) is an online editing issue. Remarkably, this is not the case and is also a feature of the ‘real’ edition. I wouldn’t like someone who gave me a document that I had to flip back and forth in just to finish a sentence, and the first worm of doubt in my assured future of likeability begins to knaw. But this book is number 23 in Amazon’s ‘happiness’ category, so I carry on regardless.
The author, Nicholas Boothman, is a man who has found his niche. His biography reveals he has “spent more than 35 years studying the ways in which all types of different people connect, communicate, and succeed.” Further investigation uncovers that this study has been at the University of Life, via a career as a photographer in the world of fashion and advertising, industries both famously full of very normal people. He has written several other books, including a companion to this one about convincing people, which arguably he should request people to read first.
Meeting-Rapport-Communication
First things first. You need to meet someone to communicate with them. Fair enough. This is a book old enough to still capitalise ‘Web’ so it is possible that some of the finer nuances of Zoom calls have not been incorporated. Face-to-face is king. But before all of that, “you must have already decided on a positive attitude.”
I feared this day would come. Could the problem be… me? Apparently, I need to ‘beam’ more, which Boothman equates with both smiling and projecting positive energy. The book moves into slightly chakra-aligning territory at this point, suggesting a group exercise of ‘energy direction’ that would have all of my colleagues instantly resigning if I suggested it during a team meeting.
And this, perhaps, speaks to one of the issues of the book. Boothman is American. I know many Americans. Plenty of them would blanche at the idea of a corporate ‘energy circle’ just as much as I do, but within corporate America there seems to be an idea that humiliation, when done bigly and loudly, is a positive group experience. Whoop whoop.
So, I have failed to exhibit star quality on ‘meeting’, but maybe will do better with ‘rapport’, which is “the other person’s positive acceptance.” This section seems to be about Taking Back Control by leapfrogging the usual stages of human interaction and “syncing” with someone by mirroring body language, tone of voice, all of that. Boothman goes on to tell a story about a woman in a shiny blue dress and how she connected with a man over a shared love of stamp collecting, a story that definitely happened.
Boothman suggests that responding to a compliment on an outfit by telling someone how cheap it was is not gracious. I beg to differ. So from now on, anyone who asks me anything about my clothes will be informed exactly how little they cost and, more importantly, if they have pockets. And if that doesn’t generate instant rapport, I don’t know what will.
“I didn't read every word of the 200 pages, because I don't hate myself enough.”
Then, finally, there is communication. This is not what you might be used to. Oh no. Communication is three things, and three things only:
Know what you want.
Find out what you’re getting.
Change what you do until you get what you want.
In my head, this involves a group trying to decide on where to eat, and the person who really wants Japanese food being a complete pain until everyone else gives in and we all go to Yo Sushi, which isn’t even that nice, but is convenient for the train home. Restaurant analogies are order of the day, as Boothman gives us a way to remember his steps—KFC.
“Attraction is present everywhere in the universe”
This is about atoms, isn’t it? Or magnetism or something? No? It’s about a Really Useful Attitude.
Attitudes are infectious (ew), and how we react to situations is as important as how we approach them. OK, I actually agree with this. And now I know that if I know what I want, my attitude will be to gain that thing, and that is Really Useful. Being shouty and angry is Really Useless.
There is a helpful list of useful and useless emotions, although it puts sarcasm on the bad side, so I am once again doubtful of its bona fides. By having a Really Useful Attitude, combined with KFC and the newly introduced concept of thinking and feeling people, and you have a “full communication package.”
“Pushing for more”
I must admit I didn’t fully commit to the visualisations, quizzes and role-play exercises that make up a good portion of the book. I also didn't read every word of the 200 pages, because I don't hate myself enough. Perhaps that just confirms my Really Useless Attitude.
But in all honesty, a book that re-affirms that people like people like themselves (a major factor in unconscious and conscious bias), written by a white man entirely about situations that are familiar to him in a world where he is the dominant majority, failed to convince me. You too can be likeable if you conform to the pre-existing standards of society! Perhaps the next time I am waiting in the chalet bar for my kids to finish night-skiing, an actual example given in the text, I will try ‘synchronising’ and active listening with a hitherto grumpy neighbour in order to wrangle a dinner invitation.
But until that situation occurs, I’ll carry on being myself. Sometimes unlikeable, often eating stinky cheese, but happy that I’m not pre-planning conversations to manipulate acquaintances.
