The 50th Law (with 50 Cent)

Use induction.
We may think we live in a time of great freedom
compared with the past, but in fact we live in a world that is more
regulated than ever before. Our every move is followed digitally. There
are more laws than ever governing all aspects of human behavior.
Political correctness, which has always existed, can be more intense
because of how visible we have become on social media. Secretly most
of us feel bothered or crushed by all of these constraints on our
physical and mental movement. We yearn for what is transgressive and
beyond the limits that are set for us. We can easily be pulled toward
that repressed no or yes.
You want to associate your object with something ever so slightly
illicit, unconventional, or politically advanced. Chanel did this with her
overt androgynous appeal and flouting of gender roles. The fight
between generations is always ripe material for this. What you offer is
in bold contrast to the stodgy previous generation. John F. Kennedy
did this by setting himself off against the 1950s and the Eisenhower era
—a time of stultifying conformity. By contrast, voting for him meant
youth, vigor, and a lost masculinity. In essence he played to the secret
resentment of the father figure and the transgressive desire to get rid
of him. This desire is always tacitly out there among the young, and it
always has a taboo element attached.
One illicit desire that almost all people share is voyeurism. To peek
inside the private lives of others violates strict social taboos on privacy,
and yet everyone feels the pull to see what is going on behind people’s
doors. Theater and film depend upon these voyeuristic desires. They
put us inside people’s rooms, and we experience this almost as if we
were literally spying on people. You can incorporate this into your
work by giving the impression you are revealing secrets that should
really not be shared. Some will be outraged but everyone will be

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curious. These could be secrets about yourself and how you
accomplished what you did, or it could be about others, what happens
behind the closed doors of powerful people and the laws that they
operate by.
In any event, what you offer should be new, unfamiliar, and exotic,
or at least presented as such. The contrast to what is out there, so
numbingly conventional, will create a covetous pull.
Finally, dangle in front of people the prospect of grasping the
unattainable or the impossible. Life is full of all kinds of irritating
limits and difficulties. To become wealthy or successful requires great
effort. We are locked inside our own character (see chapter 4) and
cannot become someone else. We cannot recover our lost youth or the
health that went with it. Every day brings us closer to death, the
ultimate limit. Your object, however, offers the fantasy of a quick path
to wealth and success, of recovering lost youth, of becoming a new
person, and even of conquering death itself. People will grasp greedily
at such things because they are considered so impossible. By the law of
induction we can imagine all of these shortcuts and fantasies (just as
we can imagine a unicorn), which gives us the desire to reach them,
and imagining them is almost like experiencing them.
Remember: it is not possession but desire that secretly impels
people. To possess something inevitably brings about some
disappointment and sparks the desire for something new to pursue.
You are preying upon the human need for fantasies and the pleasures
of chasing after them. In this sense your efforts must be continually
renewed. Once people get what they want or possess you, your value
and their respect for you immediately begin to lower. Keep
withdrawing, surprising, and stimulating the chase. As long as you do,
you have the power.