Blackmail and Threats

Blackmail works while keeping the secret seems more important than any demand.

The first concession rarely closes the matter. It confirms that the lever works. After it the price usually goes up.

So it is worth breaking the exclusive ownership of the information: go to someone you trust, a specialist, your management or the police, depending on the situation. Sometimes disclosing an unpleasant fact costs less than years of managed fear.

It does not follow that every threat should be ostentatiously ignored. You need to assess:

• whether the person is capable of carrying it out;
• what he gains and loses;
• whether there are previous actions;
• whether he has access to you;
• whether evidence can be preserved;
• who to warn;
• how to reduce your exposure.

Empty threats exist. The mistake is treating as empty every threat that looks disadvantageous to make. Enraged, dependent or desperate people do not always optimise consequences.

Keep the messages, do not meet alone, tell others where you are, and ask for help before the evidence disappears.

Responsibility for what the person threatening you does lies with him. Responsibility for your own safety means taking the signal seriously.

The lever rests on one untested assumption: that disclosure would destroy your life. The assumption is usually not tested, it is lived through at three in the morning. Yet the price of disclosure can be said out loud: who specifically will find out, what they will say, what will be different in a week, in a year. Often it turns out that the list is shorter than it looked, that half of those people have seen worse, and that an unpleasant conversation takes one evening against several years of managed fear.

Second, the arithmetic of concessions. The first payment buys not silence but confirmation that you can pay: it is now known that the mechanism works and how much exactly can be got out of you. From then on the price is set not by the secret but by that knowledge.