The 50th Law (with 50 Cent)

Create rivalries of desire.
Human desire is never an individual
phenomenon. We are social creatures and what we want almost always
reflects what other people want. This stems from our earliest years. We
saw the attention that our parents could give us (the object we first
coveted) as a zero-sum game. If our siblings received a lot of attention,
then there would be less for us. We had to compete with them and with
others to get attention and affection. When we saw our siblings or
friends receive something—a gift or a favor—it sparked a competitive
desire to have the same thing. If some object or person was not desired
by others, we tended to see it as something indifferent or distasteful—
there must be something wrong with it.

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This becomes a lifelong pattern. For some it is more overt. In
relationships they are interested only in men or women who are
already taken, who are clearly desired by a third party. Their desire is
to take away this loved object, to triumph over the other person, a
dynamic that most certainly has roots in their childhood. If other
people are making money through some new gimmick, they want not
only to participate but to corner the market. For others it is subtler.
They see people possessing something that seems exciting, and their
desire is not to take but to share and participate in the experience. In
either direction, when we see people or things desired by others, it
drives up their value.
You must learn how to exploit this. If you can somehow create the
impression that others desire you or your work, you will pull people
into your current without having to say a word or impose yourself.
They will come to you. You must strive to surround yourself with this
social aura, or at least create the illusion.
You can create this effect in several ways. You manage it so that
your object is seen or heard everywhere, even encouraging piracy if
necessary, as Chanel did. You don’t directly intervene. This will
inevitably spark some kind of viral pull. You can speed up this process
by feeding rumors or stories about the object through various media.
People will begin to talk and the word of mouth will spread the effect.
Even negative comments or controversy will do the trick, sometimes
even better than praise. It will give your object a provocative and
transgressive edge. Anyway, people are drawn toward the negative.
Your silence or lack of overt direction of the message will allow people
to run wild with their own stories and interpretations. You can also get
important people or tastemakers to talk about it and fan the flames.
What you are offering, they say, is new, revolutionary, something not
seen or heard of before. You are trafficking in the future, in trends. At a
certain point, enough people will feel the pull and will not want to be
left out, which will pull in others. The only problem in this game is that
in the world today you have much competition for these viral effects
and the public is incredibly fickle. You must be a master not only at
setting off these chain reactions but at renewing them or creating new
ones.
As an individual you must make it clear that people desire you, that
you have a past—not too much of a past to inspire mistrust but enough
to signal that others have found you desirable. You want to be indirect

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in this. You want them to hear stories of your past. You want them to
literally see the attention you receive from men or women, all of this
without your saying a word. Any bragging or explicit signaling of this
will neutralize the effect.
In any negotiating situation you must always strive to bring in a
third or fourth party to vie for your services, creating a rivalry of
desire. This will immediately enhance your value, not just in terms of a
bidding war but also in the fact that people will see that others covet
you.