Social Engineering # 9

The task: To have an emotional breakdown in class to social engineer fellow players.

Did I accomplish it? No, but I tried.

Narrative/method: My first approach was to think about a good moment to do it, the main issue I had with this task was that I hate being the center of attention and to execute this you kind of have to, there is no other way to execute it, so it was a really hard task to plan. Also another problem is that I am a terrible at acting.

After thinking about it a lot I decided to do it while we were in the hallway and  to pretend I was embarrassed so that I could avoid making it a big deal and then becoming the center of attention of everybody around. I decided to go hang out with a few class fellows I always chat with while we were waiting outside to go into the classroom. By the time I tried to start pretending I was having an emotional breakdown, I was so humored by it that it did not come out right and the people that I was talking to thought I was just being silly by exaggerating and hence just kidding, I was giggling too which did not help give this act the seriousness it needed in order to make seem real.

Application: Anybody who would pretend to have an emotional breakdown in a real life situation could have different goals like for example distracting people in an office or place of work while somebody else hacks into their system or steals important data in a USB or some other type of storage. They could also get access to some room that is in a secured perimeter.

There could be many more different scenarios about somebody pretending to have an emotional breakdown in order to catch the attention of the people or simply to manipulate somebody or a group of people emotionally, in order for them to feel sorry for her/him.  

Ethical reflection: Somebody could do this in order to accomplish something morally good, like for example to help somebody who is committing an act of civil disobedience. Somebody could also do this in order to raise awareness about mental illness and the issues we have in our society addressing such while accepting the people who suffer them.

Somebody could also perform this act to achieve goals which are morally wrong like for example they could do that in some public place  in order to distract people while their belonging are being stolen.