There’s a part in “The Adventures in Huckleberry Finn” where Mark Twain writes in a couple of scam artists—the Duke and the Dauphin—who are very, very good at what they do. In one particularly colorful chapter, these two gentlemen, along with the help of Huck and Jim, put together a show called “The Royal Nonesuch,” which they advertise all over town as too raunchy for women and children. Guess what effect that has on the women and children of the town? You got it—they can’t wait to come see the show they were told they weren’t supposed to see. More people show up to watch the Duke and the Dauphin crawl around the stage naked, barking like a dog for five minutes than there would’ve been had they simply advertised a good, wholesome family show by the same name.

But that’s the way reverse psychology works—you tell someone what they can’t or shouldn’t do, and that’s exactly what they end up doing. For example, in San Francisco, BMW service on the web has been taken by storm by an interesting little blog entitled, fittingly, dontblogaboutthis.com. By telling readers to stay away, readers are, of course, going to flock to this website, and if they do they’ll be rewarded by all kinds of goodies, namely pictures and a short video of what appears to be a new BMW 6 Series coupe with a fancy paint job.

In Palo Alto, BMW oil change and service facilities are used to having their jaws drop when a car like this comes in, so when word spreads to the great automotive blue collar workers of the world that there’s a website out there showing “forbidden” pictures of a new BMW, they’re going to be hopping onto a computer the minute they get home from work.

It’s the same reason teenage girls date the young men that their parents think are worst for them, the same reason rated R movies gross the most money, and the same reason those con men in “Huck Finn” were able to scam a truckload of money out of an unsuspecting town. In this case, BMW is pulling over an innocent fast one, too, only at the end of this con is a reward, and a darn fine one at that.