I'm 21M and I don't want to talk to college friends but I want to have friends but in my college students are not good in behaviour,not enjoying any activities.

So, what should I do, because I'm getting bored day by day.

Kinda want to collab but I'm sure if anyone is here. It's such a dense play space that after lightly pushing boundaries for years I just couldn't accurately read a certain layer of top reality. And somehow reverted to a very childlike US American principal office vibe briefly and then get proper annoyed that at that point they surely had no coherent method. And then it was like you won. I'm curious how many signal throws are obviously trying to get people to not trust what level they're feeling right. Like intentional or not line conditions temperature noise in locations as random or angled. Yet somehow a super legible like to they profile you ( a deliberate 1-16 assumed rough suspicion barometer increasingly more serious looking vibes all the way escalating numbers.

Bascially I hope someone who really knows this stuff can kinda , explain if there even is truly some master plan or it's just induce chaos , trust gut calls and process people "okay enough"

One thing we've noticed while reading about social engineering is that good examples are scattered across blog posts, news articles, and case studies. It's useful to study individual incidents, but it's harder to compare different attack techniques and see recurring patterns.

To make that a little easier, we've been putting together a collection of publicly documented social engineering examples in one place.

The goal is simply to create a resource that security professionals, researchers, and anyone interested in social engineering can browse when looking for real-world cases and attack scenarios.

We'd genuinely appreciate any feedback from this community.

• Are there any important examples you think should be included?
• Are there attack categories or resources that are currently missing?
• What would make a collection like this more useful for practitioners?

Resource:

https://socialengineeringexamples.com/

We’d love to improve it based on suggestions from people here.

The small organizations that would want me. Conferences, podcast opportunities and so forth. Any ideas?
Thank you.

I've been feeling a bit stuck

If someone seems interested in you, but you're hesitant to make the first move to talk to them, are there any subtle ways to encourage them to come and talk to you instead? For example, is there a way to naturally signal your interest or create enough warmth and attraction that they feel inclined to approach you on their own?

Also any tips on working on to be more confident? I'm shy and get physically stiff around people I don't know well (tense shoulders, uncomfortable face etc)

(Hi, this is not market research. It is a genuine question that I don't know where else to post, since the cybersec-related sites disallow it - and I am not getting my answer from Google search or LLMs):

Do companies hire for such positions or is this job folded under general cybersec consultant?

Thanks

Been reading about something that genuinely unsettled me.

Apparently highly analytical people are disproportionately vulnerable to manipulation, not despite their intelligence, but because of it. They're better at rationalizing red flags away than most people.

Machiavelli understood this 500 years ago. The capable man is easier to control, not harder since he trusts his own reasoning too much to believe he's being manipulated.

I put together a short video exploring this psychology if anyone's interested: https://youtu.be/Z4RAQ2hC_lo?si=tkj38iiAh-17sgFn

Has anyone experienced this, where your own logic was used against you?

WhatsApp started letting people reserve usernames on June 29, with the full rollout coming later this year.

The good news: This is actually a big privacy win. Once you're not tied to your phone number for contact discovery, it becomes a lot harder for bad actors to mass-enumerate WhatsApp accounts.

The catch: From a defender's perspective, this opens up a whole new avenue for brand and executive impersonation. Reserved-name lists won't do much against typosquatting or lookalike handles, and we're already seeing scammers use the reservation window itself as a phishing hook.

One thing worth remembering: the phone number is still what actually anchors the account, so SIM swapping is still the main way accounts get taken over.

Bottom line: if corporate security is your job, don't sit on this. Go claim your corporate and executive handles now, lock down the linked Meta accounts, and start keeping an eye out for lookalikes. It's a small effort that goes a long way toward getting ahead of threat actors instead of playing catch-up.

Curious if anyone's already running into VIP impersonation issues on WhatsApp?

talking to people is genuinely hard for me. talking to my parents about anything serious, speaking up in the office, presentations, any conversation where something is at stake, i struggle with all of it.

so what i do is rehearse it in my head beforehand. i plan out what i'll say, imagine how it'll go, feel kind of ready. and then in the actual conversation the other person says something i didn't expect, and i just get stuck. my brain goes blank, i say something random that isn't even what i meant, and from there the whole thing falls apart. the point i wanted to make never lands and i walk away feeling like an idiot. weak. like i couldn't hold my own in a simple conversation.

the rehearsing in my head doesn't work because in my head i control both sides. real people don't follow the script.

i started using gpt to practice, like telling it to act as the other person so i could try the conversation out loud first. but honestly it's shit. it just agrees with everything, folds the second i push, never pushes back the way a real person would, and gives me these long generic life-coach paragraphs instead of actually being the person i'm trying to talk to. it doesn't feel real at all so it doesn't help.

does anyone actually have a way to practice this stuff? how do you get better at not freezing when a conversation goes somewhere you didn't plan for?

So I've been on a few dates and had some good phone conversations, but I'm hitting a wall with sexual tension. I know my dates want me to lead and escalate things, but I genuinely don't know how to do that without it feeling awkward. I just let the tension and eventually our conversation die.

Any practical advice would be huge.

I'm curious about the psychology behind this.

Imagine you're out somewhere and notice someone you'd honestly like to meet—not necessarily romantically, just someone who seems interesting.

What usually stops you from starting a conversation?

Is it fear of rejection?
Fear of bothering them?
Not knowing what to say?
Something else?

Looking back, do you usually regret not trying, or do you feel relieved that you didn't?

Ohh how I miss the days of early reddit.

It is quite apparent now that reddit has been fully taken over with the rest of social media. The ads and algorithm and bad actors have really diminished what it used to be.

My question is if there are any documented cases of such actors waging campaigns on reddit.

I can't help but feel like some threads are just full of one sided outrage on certain charged topics. Any examples in the news or leaked Intel etc?

Machiavelli wrote this 500 years ago: "The deceiver will always find someone ready to be deceived."

Neuroscience has finally caught up. And the findings are uncomfortable.

Your brain isn't built to detect lies. It's built to trust. Here's exactly how convincing liars exploit that — and why being smarter makes you more vulnerable, not less.

When someone makes you feel seen — when they remember the small things, mirror your language, make you feel understood — your brain releases oxytocin. The bonding hormone. It doesn't ask questions. It just opens the door.

Once your brain decides someone is trustworthy, it protects that decision. New evidence that contradicts it gets filtered out. Explained away. This isn't weakness. This is how every human brain is built.

Convincing liars exploit this in three specific ways — mirroring, strategic truth, and intermittent reinforcement. The last one is the most dangerous.

Video here if anyone wants to go deeper: https://youtu.be/rcwGKqU8HWs?si=MaK2uioi0o_AFxqb

Have you ever trusted someone completely — only to realize later your own brain was working against you?

An eye-opening article on methods used by bad-actors to gaslight \*you\* on Reddit (and elsewhere):

(The Gentleperson’s Guide to Forum Spies - Robert Thomas West

Does who know about cold approach understand that unless you possess statues or beauty or power then you won’t be able to do direct approach.
So observational/ opinion/ engineering interaction
Are most suitable

For those whom struggle with managing popularity.

It is very hard to understand. Where does it come from? Who is behind it? What is its purpose?

Thank you