Derren Brown Plays Russian Roulette Live (2003)

[SliK]

He's such an idiot. Like when he "interrupts" the brains normal thought process and just yells "SLEEP" mid handshake and so the other person just falls asleep

This guy is a loser.

[EminemBase]

He's such an idiot. Like when he "interrupts" the brains normal thought process and just yells "SLEEP" mid handshake and so the other person just falls asleep

This guy is a loser.

The person doesn't fall asleep, they just do what he tells them to do. It's called suggestion.

I can tell you as somebody who studied and performed magic inside out for about 7 years straight that he's far from a loser; he's the most authentic, inventive and brilliant magician of the past 20 years.

Nobody falls asleep, they just follow his lead because they are suggestible people, and people do this all the time in basic magic tricks - if I or anybody performs a trick on someone, they will do whatever you tell them to do within reason, without questioning it, not because they're entranced or you have a special hold over them - but simply because they're agreeing to go along with the story and the experience in the hope of seeing / feeling or experiencing something thrilling.

Go ahead and perform a simple sleight of hand trick on somebody, and ask them to do ANYTHING mid trick such as "put your wallet on the floor" or something ridiculous... people do it because they assume it's part of what you're doing and they want to see what happens. It's not much more complicated than that.

[SliK]

No he gets them to sleep and he hypnotizes them which is total bullshit.

[EminemBase]

No he gets them to sleep and he hypnotizes them which is total bullshit.

He doesn't get them to sleep, they just follow his suggestion and ACT it themselves. Obviously he hasn't done anything to them, they've done it to themselves.

But it's not bullshit - and if you knew anything about him you'd know he doesn't believe he's really doing anything, not only that but he regularly unmasks and attacks spiritualists and charlatans.

Some people are so suggestible (not that rare actually) and want things to work, or are just easily influenced, which is what hypnosis is. Of course there's no 'trance' or anything he's truly doing, he's just finding people who want to do that to themselves and telling them to do it, which they will.

The point of him doing it is to show modern audiences how superstitious, suggestible and predictable many people still are. His aim is to unmask all of these things of their mystery whilst still fooling and entertaining you. Would you call THISshit or fraud? That's fucking incredible, and if you don't think so, I don't know what planet you're from. All magic is 'fraud' lmao, that's a really weird thing to say about a magician... that's like calling a movie director a fraud, as if it's not implicit and intentionally known to be fictional...

He's been touring around the country for a decade, and I've seen him live, and he did something on my friend who I was with... you think he's been setting up thousands of audiences / audience members, including my friend, for a decade? Despite the fact he throws frisbees and teddy bears in to the crowd and has other members (I threw one too) throw that object themselves :/

Lmao.

If you mean it's bullshit in that they're not really hypnotized... of course they're not. And he doesn't believe they are either, and very logically explains his views on all of it. But if you mean bullshit as in he's setting things or people up or lying about what he's lying about... you're dead wrong son.

You think millions of people can be life-and-death convinced to blindly believe in an all-knowing, all-seeing creator and thought officer that polices and judges their life... without a shred of evidence or logic... you think that Nazism and people buying in to utterly insane propaganda through very low-level, stupid and circular explanations can happen... but that somebody won't be influenced in to a behaviour or thinking they're a bit sleepy? Lmao.

It wouldn't work on people like you and I, and he says that - and people like you and I can never truly appreciate what it's like to be so suggestible. But those people do exist; and hypnosis is not hard, you'll find any bum down a local bar doing it; nothing magical is happening to the person, they just want to believe it and so they 'make believe' so they can feel like it's real in the same way people who want to talk to dead relatives believe the garbage that comes out of the mouths of fraudulent spiritualist mediums - they take ANYTHING that fits, make it fit to their loved one or situation and forget every other 100,000 misses the shitty conman/woman makes around the half-coincidence or broad fact.

The difference is Derren is not a fraud or claiming anything supernatural. He's a magician, a skeptic, a regular disprover and debunker of frauds and nonsense, a science enthusiast and incredibly inventive and original performer of modern magic. He uses hypnosis whilst at the same time debunking it as not real and for that purpose experimenting with it himself, as he's genuinely curious as to why people do this and wants to figure out why. He's not claiming he's actually hypnotizing anybody.

As somebody who's done it nearly half his life... I can tell you, I don't praise other magicians that easily - DB is the top of the fucking food chain in terms of all-round performance and originality. And he's no fraud. His methods are fantastic, and he's the best ever at taking very simple methods or effects and making them seem like something clinical.

He's referred to his own 'maniuplation' as "smug guesswork"; you take him far too seriously and clearly don't know much about him or who he really is, seems like you're classifying along with the very people he debunks and is the opposite of lmao... a magician is an open 'fraud', he claims no special powers or abilities. Everything he does is achieved by either classic magical trickery disguised as psychological manipulation, OR, simple psychological manipulation disguised as deep human control.

[CrashBand]

Do you like Penn & Teller? and did you watch Fool Us?

This was impressive.

[EminemBase]

Do you like Penn & Teller? and did you watch Fool Us?

This was impressive.

Sure, I like Penn and Teller... not big fans of them though, not because I dislike them, just never got in to them as much as others / happened to not check out a lot of their stuff.

I always was bored of Vegas magic though... the flashiness of it just makes it... feel cheaper and less than it could be I think. Like rappers just rapping about rims and chains.

Not that Penn and Teller are cheap, they're legends and worthy of their spots yo.

Just saying in general yo yo yo fam yo fam yo. Im fina peep that clip you linked this to now yo.

[CrashBand]

Not that Penn and Teller are cheap, they're legends and worthy of their spots yo.

Just saying in general yo yo yo fam yo fam yo. Im fina peep that clip you linked this to now yo.

Derren Brown said that pretty much his only magician friend is Teller.

The clip is a random magician fooling Penn and Teller, which is very fucking impressive. Teller wasn't up close though.

[SliK]

No he gets them to sleep and he hypnotizes them which is total bullshit.

He doesn't get them to sleep, they just follow his suggestion and ACT it themselves. Obviously he hasn't done anything to them, they've done it to themselves.

But it's not bullshit - and if you knew anything about him you'd know he doesn't believe he's really doing anything, not only that but he regularly unmasks and attacks spiritualists and charlatans.

Some people are so suggestible (not that rare actually) and want things to work, or are just easily influenced, which is what hypnosis is. Of course there's no 'trance' or anything he's truly doing, he's just finding people who want to do that to themselves and telling them to do it, which they will.

The point of him doing it is to show modern audiences how superstitious, suggestible and predictable many people still are. His aim is to unmask all of these things of their mystery whilst still fooling and entertaining you. Would you call THISshit or fraud? That's fucking incredible, and if you don't think so, I don't know what planet you're from. All magic is 'fraud' lmao, that's a really weird thing to say about a magician... that's like calling a movie director a fraud, as if it's not implicit and intentionally known to be fictional...

He's been touring around the country for a decade, and I've seen him live, and he did something on my friend who I was with... you think he's been setting up thousands of audiences / audience members, including my friend, for a decade? Despite the fact he throws frisbees and teddy bears in to the crowd and has other members (I threw one too) throw that object themselves :/

Lmao.

If you mean it's bullshit in that they're not really hypnotized... of course they're not. And he doesn't believe they are either, and very logically explains his views on all of it. But if you mean bullshit as in he's setting things or people up or lying about what he's lying about... you're dead wrong son.

You think millions of people can be life-and-death convinced to blindly believe in an all-knowing, all-seeing creator and thought officer that polices and judges their life... without a shred of evidence or logic... you think that Nazism and people buying in to utterly insane propaganda through very low-level, stupid and circular explanations can happen... but that somebody won't be influenced in to a behaviour or thinking they're a bit sleepy? Lmao.

It wouldn't work on people like you and I, and he says that - and people like you and I can never truly appreciate what it's like to be so suggestible. But those people do exist; and hypnosis is not hard, you'll find any bum down a local bar doing it; nothing magical is happening to the person, they just want to believe it and so they 'make believe' so they can feel like it's real in the same way people who want to talk to dead relatives believe the garbage that comes out of the mouths of fraudulent spiritualist mediums - they take ANYTHING that fits, make it fit to their loved one or situation and forget every other 100,000 misses the shitty conman/woman makes around the half-coincidence or broad fact.

The difference is Derren is not a fraud or claiming anything supernatural. He's a magician, a skeptic, a regular disprover and debunker of frauds and nonsense, a science enthusiast and incredibly inventive and original performer of modern magic. He uses hypnosis whilst at the same time debunking it as not real and for that purpose experimenting with it himself, as he's genuinely curious as to why people do this and wants to figure out why. He's not claiming he's actually hypnotizing anybody.

As somebody who's done it nearly half his life... I can tell you, I don't praise other magicians that easily - DB is the top of the fucking food chain in terms of all-round performance and originality. And he's no fraud. His methods are fantastic, and he's the best ever at taking very simple methods or effects and making them seem like something clinical.

He's referred to his own 'maniuplation' as "smug guesswork"; you take him far too seriously and clearly don't know much about him or who he really is, seems like you're classifying along with the very people he debunks and is the opposite of lmao... a magician is an open 'fraud', he claims no special powers or abilities. Everything he does is achieved by either classic magical trickery disguised as psychological manipulation, OR, simple psychological manipulation disguised as deep human control.

Then wtf is so great about him? If people are just going to do what they're told, why is he so amazing? Like, literally anyone could do it...

I just think "magic" in general is so stupid.

[EminemBase]

No he gets them to sleep and he hypnotizes them which is total bullshit.

He doesn't get them to sleep, they just follow his suggestion and ACT it themselves. Obviously he hasn't done anything to them, they've done it to themselves.

But it's not bullshit - and if you knew anything about him you'd know he doesn't believe he's really doing anything, not only that but he regularly unmasks and attacks spiritualists and charlatans.

Some people are so suggestible (not that rare actually) and want things to work, or are just easily influenced, which is what hypnosis is. Of course there's no 'trance' or anything he's truly doing, he's just finding people who want to do that to themselves and telling them to do it, which they will.

The point of him doing it is to show modern audiences how superstitious, suggestible and predictable many people still are. His aim is to unmask all of these things of their mystery whilst still fooling and entertaining you. Would you call THISshit or fraud? That's fucking incredible, and if you don't think so, I don't know what planet you're from. All magic is 'fraud' lmao, that's a really weird thing to say about a magician... that's like calling a movie director a fraud, as if it's not implicit and intentionally known to be fictional...

He's been touring around the country for a decade, and I've seen him live, and he did something on my friend who I was with... you think he's been setting up thousands of audiences / audience members, including my friend, for a decade? Despite the fact he throws frisbees and teddy bears in to the crowd and has other members (I threw one too) throw that object themselves :/

Lmao.

If you mean it's bullshit in that they're not really hypnotized... of course they're not. And he doesn't believe they are either, and very logically explains his views on all of it. But if you mean bullshit as in he's setting things or people up or lying about what he's lying about... you're dead wrong son.

You think millions of people can be life-and-death convinced to blindly believe in an all-knowing, all-seeing creator and thought officer that polices and judges their life... without a shred of evidence or logic... you think that Nazism and people buying in to utterly insane propaganda through very low-level, stupid and circular explanations can happen... but that somebody won't be influenced in to a behaviour or thinking they're a bit sleepy? Lmao.

It wouldn't work on people like you and I, and he says that - and people like you and I can never truly appreciate what it's like to be so suggestible. But those people do exist; and hypnosis is not hard, you'll find any bum down a local bar doing it; nothing magical is happening to the person, they just want to believe it and so they 'make believe' so they can feel like it's real in the same way people who want to talk to dead relatives believe the garbage that comes out of the mouths of fraudulent spiritualist mediums - they take ANYTHING that fits, make it fit to their loved one or situation and forget every other 100,000 misses the shitty conman/woman makes around the half-coincidence or broad fact.

The difference is Derren is not a fraud or claiming anything supernatural. He's a magician, a skeptic, a regular disprover and debunker of frauds and nonsense, a science enthusiast and incredibly inventive and original performer of modern magic. He uses hypnosis whilst at the same time debunking it as not real and for that purpose experimenting with it himself, as he's genuinely curious as to why people do this and wants to figure out why. He's not claiming he's actually hypnotizing anybody.

As somebody who's done it nearly half his life... I can tell you, I don't praise other magicians that easily - DB is the top of the fucking food chain in terms of all-round performance and originality. And he's no fraud. His methods are fantastic, and he's the best ever at taking very simple methods or effects and making them seem like something clinical.

He's referred to his own 'maniuplation' as "smug guesswork"; you take him far too seriously and clearly don't know much about him or who he really is, seems like you're classifying along with the very people he debunks and is the opposite of lmao... a magician is an open 'fraud', he claims no special powers or abilities. Everything he does is achieved by either classic magical trickery disguised as psychological manipulation, OR, simple psychological manipulation disguised as deep human control.

Then wtf is so great about him? If people are just going to do what they're told, why is he so amazing? Like, literally anyone could do it...

I just think "magic" in general is so stupid.

Well I don't think he's amazing for hypnosis, and i wouldn't consider hypnosis magic.

That's a very small part of what he does though, in no way am I calling him brilliant for hypnosis lmao, it's never impressed me - I find it dull and repetitive.

I am calling him a genius for things like this, and this, and this.

This is magic. What you're referring to, is not magic, and not why I or anybody who's done magic and thinks he's amazing finds him amazing. He utilizes hypnosis to show it works on modern audiences, then debunk it, experiment with it and explore that era...

The reason I am saying he's brilliant is for his actual magic, not hypnosis. For his performance, his persona, his blend of humour, charm and intellect - for making magic seem adult and almost clinical - so much so that people start questioning scientific aspects about what he's doing lmao, even when it often relies on an old-as-the-hills technique within classical magic... but he's such a brilliant storyteller and performer that he makes it seem like something else entirely.

One example of that would be here.

Watch those clips I've linked, forget his hypnosis bollax, watch some of his actual brilliance and tell me that's not engaging or impressive; also - that last one is a perfect and one of the best examples of what i mean and the kind of thing I call him brilliant for, not the shit you, and also I hate.

That last one has nothing to do with psychology, I mean he does sometimes actually utilize the kinds of games and concepts he says he's doing there and people really are predictable in that way in certain situations such as a one out of two choice - and the successive predictable patterns do when trying to 'catch someone out' aka refusing to ever change their mind, thinking they will be the unique person who never actually changes their mind, and everybody else must surely eventually cave.

BUT ANYWAY, he plays that down so much as a casual psychological manipulation but not in a way that seems false like he couldn't really be doing that... he makes everybody buy in to the assertions and that narrative and picture he's painting there, completely diverting from the much more simple technique - but that's what a great magician is - they make things baffling and create a rich narrative, and are funny and charismatic and do something amazing, over and over.

He makes it so pure, makes it seem like it's just 'off the cuff' with naturalistic dialogue on things he's been writing for months and laboured over. And seeing him live is another animal entirely. Derren Brown is absolutely brilliant. Fuck hypnosis, anybody can do that nonsense, it's entirely dependent on people who want it to work - but not everybody can do those things I showed you him doing, and perform them so beautifully.

He makes it seem like adult mind games... every other mainstream magician before him has had a major element of cheese. I can tell you myself that developing a persona is the hardest element... I am great at technique but suck ass at performing; the sheer level of engagement and entertainment... of challenging the audience to cocky mind-guess-games and making it seem like a big joke and catching poeple off-guard non-stop... he's an incredible performer, and magician. And constantly comes up with very creative and left-field methods and ways to reinvent old... great but uninspired tricks in to what seem like human control experiments.

An example would be when he played 9 chess players at the same time, telling them all he'd studied for a year... and then in reality - he was simply remembering each move (you don't have to respond right away in chess) from the first player... and playing THAT move on the next player. He had 8 players paired off in to pairs of 2's and then actually beat 1 out of 9, but the other 8 created a 4/4 situation as obviously 4 have to win, and 4 have to lose, and then he comes out on top beating 1 guy authentically therefore winning 5/9 @ apparently playing 9 world-class chess players at the same time. THAT'S the genius, the simplicity yet totally lateral nature of that method... to simply mirror their moves against each other. Rarely are methods so blatantly on the table and yet so unguessable.

He's an astute innovator. You my friend have either been selectively shown shitty little clips of him doing yawnworthy hypnosis or... not checked him out properly. Check out those clips, I'd be amazed if you did not find them impressive or were not entertained.