Let’s not sugarcoat anything. If you’re stepping into the arena of social engineering, you’re not trying to get free pizza or trick a bar into giving you a free beer. That kind of playground nonsense might get you clout on TikTok, but it won’t win you a seat at the table where real manipulation, intelligence extraction, and mental domination are being served. Social engineering isn’t just some flashy hacker term—it’s psychological warfare. And if you want to weaponize it, you need to study like your survival depends on it. Because one day, it might.
So here’s what I’ve done: I dug through the noise, ignored the self-help junk, and pulled together a list of social engineering videos that actually matter. Not entertainment. Not filler. Training. These aren’t ranked by quality, because they all hit differently. But the ones with a *? They’re must-watch, period.
1. Peoplehacking – ToorCon 2010 *
Speaker: Dan Tentler
Watch on Vimeo
This one is gospel. Dan Tentler gets in deep—this isn’t a surface-level script. We’re talking about NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming), Kinesics, Proxemics, and Cold Reading. You’ll walk away from this not just understanding people better—but knowing how to control them. Imagine walking into a room and knowing how to adjust your tone, posture, and gaze to disarm, disorient, or dominate. He doesn’t just explain the science, he teaches you how to weaponize it. This is the real hacker mindset—not code, but control.
2. The Future of Social Engineering – DeepSec 2010
This one’s for context. History is the playbook of the manipulative elite. This talk rewinds time to dissect the OG social engineers—how they operated and what we can learn from their attacks. We’re talking long cons, deep trust exploitation, and psychological profile mapping long before people were using that term on LinkedIn.
3. Allan Pease – Body Language Full Show *
You can fake words, but you can’t fake body language—not for long. Pease is a master of decoding and demonstrating the unconscious signals we all broadcast. Watch this and you’ll learn to spot hesitation, dominance, submission, fear, deceit, and arousal in seconds. Social engineering starts with surveillance, and this is surveillance of the human body.
4. Amy Cuddy – Power Posing and Body Language
Cuddy’s take is softer, sure—but don’t sleep on it. This is about internal engineering—programming your own mind. Power poses don’t just influence how people see you—they reshape how you see yourself. It’s the confidence pre-load hack. And if you’re walking into a room to pull off a con, manipulate authority, or extract data, you better feel like a god before you open your mouth.
Side note: There’s been critique that her results can’t be replicated. Who cares. The placebo effect in the hands of a manipulator is still a weapon.
5. Social Engineering for Fun and Profit – Chris Hadnagy
Look—this guy’s a polarizing figure. He’s packaged a lot of other people’s work and sold it as his brand. But whatever your opinion on the messenger, the message is useful. He knows the field, he teaches corporate SE, and he lays out how red teams destroy businesses from the inside. That’s intel you need—because if you can learn how pros exploit soft targets, you can build or break those same defenses.
6. Human Resources – Social Engineering in the 20th Century *
This film is long, slow, but absolutely essential. It explains how we’ve all been socially engineered since birth—by governments, schools, media, and corporations. If you think social engineering is a hacker trick, you’re missing the forest for the trees. The entire system you’re in? It’s a giant, elegant con. And this video tears it apart.
7. DEFCON 19 – Steal Everything, Kill Everyone, Cause Total Financial Ruin *
Jayson E. Street is the wild card. He’ll teach you how he literally walks into banks without credentials and walks out with access, data, and power. This is the live demonstration of SE in the wild—beginner-friendly, funny, but absolutely lethal in terms of insight. He doesn’t just talk the talk. He’s done it. And he’ll show you how.
8. NLP Full Course (56-Part Pirate Course)
This is the holy grail if you’re serious. NLP isn’t magic—it’s code for the human brain. Anchoring, pacing, mirroring, collapsing anchors, embedded commands—these are all methods of rewriting reality in someone else’s head without them knowing. The YouTube version is diluted, but the full course floats around on PirateBay. Use a VPN, search for the extended version, and treat this like you’re training to become a manipulative monk.
Bonus Mention: Michael Bernoff – NLP and Influence
A more motivational approach to NLP. Less technical, more on the emotional leverage and mental hijack side. Think of this as polishing the blade after you’ve learned how to forge it.
Why All of This Matters
Because in a world run by data and digital walls, humans are still the weakest link. Social engineering isn’t about trickery—it’s about precision. It’s not chaos, it’s architecture. When executed properly, it’s cleaner than malware, faster than brute force, and more devastating than ransomware.
Here’s the truth:
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The CIA has exploited it in interrogations and recruitment ops.
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Political campaigns deploy it at scale using behavioral targeting.
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Entire corporations collapse because someone clicked a fake email from the “CEO.”
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Kevin Mitnick stole secrets without a single line of code—just phone calls.
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Jayson E. Street accessed secure networks by dropping USBs in parking lots.
It’s real. It’s powerful. And you’re either wielding it or being ruled by those who do.
The Dark Web Connection
What does this have to do with the dark web? Everything.
Dark web marketplaces are filled with social engineer-for-hire services. People sell full profiles, spoofed caller IDs, deepfake audio clips, and even rented voices to impersonate bank officials. If you think phishing emails are the final form of SE, welcome to the dungeon.
There are forums on Tor where ex-Google engineers teach you how to reverse identity verification. There are whistleblower leaks on how government databases can be socially engineered by insiders. And then there are services that teach you how to build synthetic personas that bypass KYC protocols on exchanges.
Final Thought: Weaponize or Be Weaponized
If you’re reading this for research, then dig deep. Watch the videos. Take notes. Apply them not just in digital spaces but in real interactions. This isn’t about hacking phones—it’s about hacking people.
And let me leave you with this:
Every billionaire, every general, every spy… uses social engineering.
They just call it “negotiation,” “leadership,” or “diplomacy.”
But you? You’ll call it what it really is: power.
Now go get it.
URL Recommendation: If you’re writing this on a cybersecurity blog, consider adding your branding or watermark at the bottom like:
SOMCHIA.COM | Learn the Tools They Don’t Want You to Have
Let me know if you want this rewritten in another tone (corporate, professional, or humorous), or split into a multi-post series.