Cooling the Mark Out
Erving Goffman wrote "On Cooling out the Mark" in 1952.
It was an application of Mauer's elaboration of con criminals method of ensuring that their victim did not raise too much of a fuss with the federal authorities, "cooling the mark out" to other adaptations to failure.
Goffman shows how to understand the more complicated social phenomena of reacting to failure by taking it to be similar in its strategic components to fraud.
All fraud criminals face the following problem: at one point, the sausage of lies explodes. The magic trick behind the phantom dreams reveals "a man behind the curtain."
How does the con criminal plan his escape?
Goffman writes:
"The con is said to be a good racket in the United States only because most Americans are willing, nay eager, to make easy money, and will engage in action that is less than legal in order to do so.The typical play has typical phases. The potential sucker is first spotted and one member of the working team (called the outside man, steerer, or roper) arranges to make social contact with him.
The confidence of the mark is won, and he is given an opportunity to invest his money in a gambling venture which he understands to have been fixed in his favor The venture, of course, is fixed, but not in his favor.
The mark is permitted to win some money and then persuaded to invest more. There is an "accident" or "mistake," and the mark loses his total investment.
The operators then depart in a ceremony that is called the blowoff or sting. They leave the mark but take his money.
The mark is expected to go on his way, a little wiser and a lot poorer.
Sometimes, however, a mark is not quite prepared to accept his loss as a gain in experience and to say and do nothing about his venture.
He may feel moved to complain to the police or to chase after the operators. In the terminology of the trade, the mark may squawk, beef, or come through.
From the operators' point of view, this kind of behavior is bad for business. It gives the members of the mob a bad reputation with such police as have not. yet been fixed and with marks who have not yet been taken.
In order to avoid this adverse publicity, an additional phase is sometimes added at the end of the play.
It is called cooling the mark out.
After the blowoff has occurred, one of the operators stays with the mark and makes an effort to keep the anger of the mark within manageable and sensible proportions. The operator stays behind his team‑mates in the capacity of what might be called a cooler and exercises upon the mark the art of consolation.
An attempt is made to define the situation for the mark in a way that makes it easy for him to accept the inevitable and quietly go home. The mark is given instruction in the philosophy of taking a loss."
Goffman discusses a number of techniques or ways to instruct the mark in the philosophy of taking a loss.
One technique is worth a review, in the context of selling a distributorship or franchise that has gone bad.
Many individuals buying a distributorship or franchise think somewhat naively that if the deal goes south, they can always salvage something by selling the piece of poo.
Goffman describes this as a form of bribery.
"As another cooling procedure, there is the possibility that the operator and the mark may enter into a tacit understanding according to which the mark agrees to act as if he were leaving of his own accord, and the operator agrees to preserve the illusion that this was the case.It is a form of bribery.
In this way the mark may fail in his own eyes but prevent others from discovering the failure.
The mark gives up his role but saves his face.
This, after all, is one of the reasons why persons who are fleeced by con men are often willing to remain silent about their adventure.
The same strategy is at work in the romantic custom of allowing a guilty officer to take his own life in a private way before it is taken from him publicly, and in the less romantic custom of allowing a person to resign for delicate reasons instead of firing him for indelicate ones."
Good observation: try to avoid bribing your future self by having your present self do killer due diligence.
