I want to give you a quick anti-manipulation tutorial. There’s an ancient manipulation technique—I’m talking day one of human history—called playing dumb, and it shows up all the time.
Here’s how it works. You try to tell someone something they did that bothered you, and instead of addressing it, they flip it on you. Not by accident—on purpose. Because if they did stay on your point, they’d have to take responsibility. So instead, they throw out bait. And the bait is designed to make you defend yourself.
Let me show you exactly how it works.
How the bait works in a real conversation.
You go to someone—friend, partner, whatever—and you say, “Hey, I didn’t like how you treated me in front of your friends. It made me uncomfortable.” A normal response would be, “I’m sorry, I didn’t realise that. What exactly made you feel that way?”
But someone playing dumb can’t do that, because that would mean they messed up. So instead they go, “You’re never happy with anything. You’re the only one uncomfortable. Everyone else was having fun. You always want everything your way.”
Now watch what just happened. You brought up their behaviour, and suddenly you’re defending your personality. That’s bait. And most people bite.
Why defending yourself is exactly what they want.
The moment you feel yourself wanting to say, “That’s not true, I’m not like that,” you just got your invitation to the asylum. Because now you’re arguing inside their version of reality. And once you step in there, you lose.
It’s like arguing with someone who says the sky is green. You know it’s blue. They know it’s blue. But they don’t care. The goal isn’t truth. The goal is to pull you into chaos so you look emotional and they look like the victim.
This tactic works because it triggers something primal in us. When someone questions our character, our instinct is to correct them—to defend our reputation, to set the record straight. But that’s exactly what they’re counting on. They’re not interested in understanding your perspective. They’re interested in derailing the conversation and putting you on the defensive. And once you’re defending yourself, you’re no longer holding them accountable for their actions.
How to stop taking the bait.
So what do you do? You don’t argue. You don’t explain. You don’t defend. You just bring it back to the original point, every single time.
They say, “You’re never happy with anything.” You say, “Maybe. But what I said was I didn’t like how you treated me.”
Calm. Simple. No detours. Because the moment you start defending yourself, you’ve already lost the frame. The frame is the underlying context of the conversation—who is being examined, who is being held accountable. When you defend, you hand them the frame. When you simply repeat your original point, you keep the frame where it belongs: on their behaviour, not your personality.
You don’t need to prove you’re a good person. You don’t need to convince them that you’re not “too sensitive” or “never happy.” You just need to stay on your point. And if they won’t engage with it, that tells you everything you need to know about whether they’re interested in a real relationship or just in winning an argument.
