Certainly the trope is common in fiction. See: The Mentalist (both the protagonist and antagonist share this ability) and several Agatha Christie novels with similar storylines.
This guy sounds like a real-life Red John; able to subtly re-wire people's thinking so that they actually want to do what he suggests.
I have only ever experienced this in the formulaic pattern of dark-arts sales tactics. Israeli companies selling cosmetic products from the Dead Sea are notorious for making a superficial connection with their potential customers and then exploiting that connection for a sale. But those tactics aren't hard to see through and resist. Quite scary to think that someone who has mastered those techniques could actually alter my preferences simply with the power of suggestion.
I think most people are completely unaware of how true this is. As students and tech geeks, we've all probably met someone whose talents seemed otherworldly -- mastery of Quantum math, able to punch out code like Notch, that sort of natural intellectual athleticism that seems like something they must have just been born with.
Well, in boardrooms and marketing departments, in politics, in places of power and sometimes just in random situations, there exist people for whom the ability to (at least seemingly) 'connect' with other people at a deep psychological level is similarly off the charts, in the vanishing 6-sigma rightward tail of the hump.
Of those few people, some percentage, say 1%, were additionally born without anything like a normal conscience. They are incapable of feeling guilt or the normal sort of empathy that makes one feel the suffering of another soul.
I believe that those are, for the most part, the people in charge of things.
The interesting combination for me is those with such "emotional intelligence" in that they can read people and figure out their motivations and feelings, but they don't have a significant empathic response, and they appear to feel little or no guilt in utilizing these perceptions for personal gain, regardless of the pain they inevitably cause to those who trusted them.
I was twice targeted by timeshare resort companies. It's really high-pressure, but it's endless fun to see them escalating salespeople, from the junior interns to the really experienced mindbenders. From praising you for your success, to criticizing you for not living up to what was expected from you at your point in life.
Great exercise.
It's scary to realise how powerful it can be. Once, one in of the guys had a girl who took two contract phones come back in utterly disbelief at what had happened about a half hour later: this was no ordinary buyers remorse.
The only way to avoid it is to not communicate with those people.
It helps with nearly everything you do in life. I find it amazing and scary.
Seems with the popularity of sites like chatroulette and cam4 more and more guys are either secretly or openingly experimenting with their curious sides.
*Why is this getting downvoted are hacker newers homophobic? The author notes how much the encounter excited him and how he thought about how it excited him throughout the years. I don't see this being an unreasonable question to ask.
EDIT: Actually, the reason for the downvotes is probably the fact that it has nothing to do with hacking.
What disturbs me in this story is the described hypnotism. The snake almost manipulated the guy who is clear as day about having not one bit of interest in the same sex. To make him strip is brain washing. Had the marine been attracted to the same sex, I would be less disturbed.
Now consider the following. Perhaps it is not me who is intolerant, but perhaps you lack perspective. Bear with me, I bore with you: Imagine that the story was of a sadistic straight rapist. The almost-victim must be completely uninterested in sex; if you cannot imagine such a level of purity, imagine a lesbian. Now imagine that someone comments on the survival story of this kind that she wrote using words like "wonderful". Is that a normal reaction? And then someone asks the almost-victim if the experience has made the victim less willing to have sex with men. Now you're coming from the same place I'm coming from. (cue people calling you a bigot)
FFS. No-one is saying that this guy meeting a serial killer was wonderful. They are saying that the writing is.
I found the article itself very interesting, actually. Morbid of course, it's a serial killer story. I didn't get the impression that the killer was idolized though, it was more a description of how far almost-superhuman charisma can go and what it must feel like to be on the receiving end of it.