Enchantment or Social Engineering?

Guy Kawasaki at front of USS Nimitz

Guy Kawasaki was talking on Itconversation’s Tech Nation the other day about his new book enchantment.

The thing which got me going was something Guy said to Moria

The best way to thank someone once you done someone a favor is to say… No no, thank you and I know you would do the same for me some day

When I heard this I instantly shouted "Thats social engineering!"

Now to be fair you wouldn’t really expect anything different from the former chief evangelist at Apple.

The question is where is the line?

This has come up again recently when I mentioned the game at geek talk sexy part 2. It looks like we may have a couple of pickup artists who are willing to talk to the crowd about why they social engineer women, in a couple of months.

It is interesting that the persona which pickup artists use is something somewhat close to enchanting. A mystery with small subsets of timely information about themselves.