Derren Brown

[LadyShea]

I had never heard of him, but SciFi has a show with him on it, Mind Control With Derren Brown, and I caught it tonight. A-fucking-mazing.

He really understands how the mind works, how to manipulate perceptions, and can cold read like a mo-fo. What he does seems like magic or ESP.

Really entertaining as well as enlightening. It was refreshing to see it being done with no claims of supernatural abilities, and be able to pick up on some of the language and movements he is using and know "that's some kind of subliminal persuasion"...yet still go "No WAY!".

I felt the same way seeing a stage hypnotist. I know it's all natural and explainable, but what our minds are capable of still blows me away.

Derren Brown

[viscousmemories]

Sounds fascinating. Thanks, I'll check it out.

[LadyShea]

You hadn't heard of him either? Apparently he's quite famous, especially in the UK. Dunno why I hadn't ever heard him referenced before.

[viscousmemories]

Nope, never hoid of him.

[Pendaric]

I've got his book and seen some of his stuff. There's quite a lot on You Tube.

He's impressive, but it isn't all hypnosis and persuasion - he admits as much in his book. He's a magician, and there is some sleight of hand and trickery for effect involved in some of what he does.

[LadyShea]

What impressed me on the show I saw wasn't anything that could involve sleight of hand.

1. On the Tube he talked to people, asked them what stop they were getting off at, kept talking. He'd wave his hand in front of their face all Jedi, say a few key words, then ask them their stop again. For a few seconds they couldn't remember, then he'd touch them on the head and it came back. All said it was weird, like it was on the tip of their tongue but they literally couldn't remember.

2. He cold read a psychiatrist. He told the shrink to come up with a word NOT associated with the word Brown would say. While he said the word he wrote down the response he thought the shrink would say as NOT associated on a cue card thing.

I don't remember the words Brown said, but I remember the shrinks answers:

The first prediction was orange the shrink said apple
The second was a complete miss
Then he had three or four exact hits that included "water ski"
Then he told the shrink to say any random word he wanted. He wrote down Buffalo and the shrink said Buffalo.

Even with the one miss and one slightly off hit, it was an impressive display of both cold reading and verbal persuasion.

3. He did some stuff with twins separated by a partition. He made them think he was "tuning them into each other" with his touches and taps and talking, but he seemed to be somehow hypnotically suggesting things and persuading the responses, so when they did things perfectly in sync it looked like psychic twin stuff.

For example he prepped one, then went around and pinched the other...at the same time of the pinch the first twin jumped as if she had also been pinched.

He had one write down a number between 1 and 1000 on a card, then put the second one under and talked to her while having her doodle on a card. Both cards said 86

He also did a few experiments with the ideomotor effect that were cool, though not as impressive to me as the above.

[Crumb]

This is kinda creepy.

[YOUTUBE]ylAHWVuPNus[/YOUTUBE]

[The Lone Ranger]

On replaying it, I could hear that the guy did seem to place more stress on "one" when asked to count from 1 - 6. But to bet your life that you could accurately pick up on that and that your subject wasn't trying to fake you out is damded impressive!


It's particularly gratifying that Brown doesn't make any claims to have paranormal abilities. A less honest person could make a fortune with his skills by exploiting the gullible.

Cheers,

Michael

[viscousmemories]

I've just watched the roulette video as well as "subliminal advertising", "paying with paper" and "Derren Brown beats 9 master chess players simultaneously". So cool.

[Petra]

He also did a programme on seances that was fascinating. I didn't catch all of his series, but what I did see was remarkable.

Derren Brown - Seance