have you watched derren browns "the experiment"

[Bram Kaandorp]

Oh and his characteristics were clearly made up in order to make the audience unsympathetic towards him and to elicit the negative choices.

Mind you though, Derren said (to the viewers) that the show was about mob mentality, so in that context, whether the "unsuspecting victim" was an actor or not is completely irrelevant.

What's relevant is whether the audience genuinely thought that what they chose was actually happening.

Or, more importantly, whether the audience was in on it or not.

 

[AdMan]

Mind you though, Derren said (to the viewers) that the show was about mob mentality, so in that context, whether the "unsuspecting victim" was an actor or not is completely irrelevant.

What's relevant is whether the audience genuinely thought that what they chose was actually happening.

Or, more importantly, whether the audience was in on it or not.

It doesn't really matter if the audience was in or not either. I think they weren't, but the results of their voting could have been faked as necessary to get whatever results DB wanted to get.

I'm still very unimpressed with this second show. Hopefully the third one will be better.

 

[Bram Kaandorp]

It doesn't really matter if the audience was in or not either. I think they weren't, but the results of their voting could have been faked as necessary to get whatever results DB wanted to get.

I'm still very unimpressed with this second show. Hopefully the third one will be better.

Hilited part is seconded.

 

[Rrose Selavy]

This is the act: Voodoo Doll

This is the actor: Magda Rodriguez

This video contains content from Channel 4, who has blocked it in your country on copyright grounds.
Sorry about that.

Maybe I'll watch that through a proxy later. Does he/she use her real name in the clip?
Any more evidence?
Does seem very slack to have used an IMDB listed actress assuming her CV was up there at the time . The reference to her "role" has I see since been removed.

I hasten to add I am not a fan of Brown. There was a time early on when like many others I thought, hey this guy is doing things no one else is doing. Then I read the Simon Singh critique and elsewhere and as he increasingly has disappointed, now I don't even bother to watch his stuff these days. Doesn't look like I'm missing much with his new series.

 

[citizenzen]

Doesn't look like I'm missing much with his new series.

I have only seen a few youtube videos of Brown as I live in the U.S. and don't get his shows on T.V. My favorite videos were relatively simple, where he gets a race track attendant to cash a losing ticket, or a shopkeeper to accept blank pieces of paper as cash. It seems to me that he is succumbing to pressure to ratchet up his act, which is unfortunate, because it weakens his credibility.

I watched the video of the voodoo doll segment, and conclude the woman is either a stooge or one of the most suggestible people on Earth. Perhaps that's Brown's real power ... to find the few people on Earth who'll actually fall for his mind control acts.

 

[Azrael 5]

This is the act: Voodoo Doll

This is the actor: Magda Rodriguez

I cant watch the clip, but so long as she wasnt hired then your claim is invalid.Not saying she wasnt I dont know,but just because her occupation is an actress doesnt follow she was acting.

 

[John Albert]

I cant watch the clip, but so long as she wasnt hired then your claim is invalid.Not saying she wasnt I dont know,but just because her occupation is an actress doesnt follow she was acting.

It all depends on how you define a "stooge." Do you really think she didn't receive any payment for her appearance on the show?

 

[eppursimuove]

My current working hypothesis about The Experiments 2; The Gameshow:

The man whose life was affected by the audience knew he had signed up to be in a god damned Derren Brown show! He knew something would be up in
this period of time, but maybe not exactly what.

What took place in the appartment with the reporter was probably scripted, quite obviously to make the audience dislike the guy in question, appealing to emotions like disgust.

I believe Derren was not completely honest when he stated the results of the votings that took place. For what we know the results may have
been anything. The important thing is to make the studio-audience - and the tv-audience - to believe these were the outcomes.

Confederates in the audience, just a few, to trigger Derren's desired reactions; cheering, applause, laughter and so on. If a few people start applauding or cheering, most other people present will follow.

I am not denying the effects of deindividuation, crowd psychology and so on. But self-admittedly Derren doesn't play with an open hand, and because he doesn't state this clearly enough most people will get false impressions. Frankly none of his woo-woo shows helps to educate people. Fool me once, shame on you Derren! - Fool med twice, shame on you Derren!
As far as I'm concerned Mr. Brown lost his credibility a long time ago.


Ps. You can watch any show you want, if you know where to look...

 

[Drs_Res]

Well, I think that "The System" was good, up until the very end.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9R5OWh7luL4

 

[eppursimuove]

Well, I think that "The System" was good, up until the very end.

I agree Derren has done some shows, that are not woo-woo. The System is my favourite Derren Brown show, and it is no woo-woo, it is simple mathematics and probability theory. I wish Derren would stick to shows with this approach.

The problem is, Derren promotes himself as a Skeptic, which he is - when it suits him to be so. He admits to trickery but it is not beneficial when he mixes psuedopsychology and sometimes even straight-out lies in order to make entertaining television (also known as shark jumping). Many people don't realise when Derren is tricking and deliberately deceiving - and when he goes this way, Derren is no better than the fake mediums and quacks that he so strongly condemns.

 

[BartiDdu]

For what it's worth, here's my take.

I am fascinated by DB. There are elements of what he does I don't like yet I still enjoy watching his shows - even the latest episode 'The Gameshow' - then coming here and elsewhere to read the arguments that follow!

I don't like that he calls this series 'The Experiments'. It gives a sense of credibility to those who treat his programmes as a genuine exploration of the topics covered, especially when headed by claims such as: " Tonight we'll find out if ['programming' such as conspiracy theorists claim happened in Robert Kennedy's assassination] is possible". We were never going to 'find out' anything of the sort!

I believe showmanship is more important to him than scepticism. In an article linked to in this thread (or the previous thread on this topic) he said he something along the lines he had decided in the early days performing in restaurants in Bristol his goal was not that people would go away saying they saw 'a man' do a fantastic trick but that they would go away saying they saw a fantastic man. I think this makes him well suited to what he is doing and makes it unsurprising, especially when he pretends to explain how something was done, that he doesn't mind leaving many people with false impressions.

I love the fact he is someone who splits the sceptic community even though I admit to finding myself following 'both sides' agreeing emphatically to both in turn! I think it is healthy for us all to have situations where there is not one obvious simple right answer. Living with uncertainty and in not being able to come to a definite conclusion is something I find tough but I think is good for me.

I also believe 'The System' was the best in terms of my enjoyment which I think was largely to do with its educational value in terms of helping people understand probabilities better (and he even got a dig at homoeopathy in there)!

I most disliked his explanation of the lottery trick for the same reason - spreading misinformation about probabilities with his 'explanation' of 'Wisdom of Crowds'.

The fact is there is still so much we don't know about how and why we behave as we do. We do not really know how susceptible we are to suggestibility and other psychological phenomena. We do know there are still WAY too many woo-believers out there leading to all kinds of nasty consequences such as cult suicides and suicide bombers. I don't think DB is helping the situation with much of his work.

I think the biggest reason for my fascination, though, is I think I fear my own personal susceptibility and DB has heightened that. However, it has also led me to spending time exploring and thinking about the issues, not least the contributions made to this thread and others and as I said earlier, that's got to be a good thing - so thanks all for that

BDd

 

[Tomtomkent]

I saw the GameShow episode "remote control" this week. Was interesting, with a strong message in the wake of the riots, but the sceptic in me kept pointing out "well, we can't KNOW that 60% voted that way, we just see people playing with their keypads and a guy telling us the result." As an experiment, it was rather flawed, as TV was good.

 

[Azrael 5]

It all depends on how you define a "stooge." Do you really think she didn't receive any payment for her appearance on the show?

Again was she paid(as most people are)a statutory fee or paid for her services as an actress?
What about Simon Pegg? He is an actor.Was he an instant stooge? If not why?

 

[John Albert]

I'm not saying he always uses stooges.

Also, I might be misusing or misinterpreting the word "stooge." The definition I'm using might not be the correct one as used in the industry:

Here's the kind of scenario I'm talking about with regard to "stooges."

A mentalist does a number of small shows for young audiences at a university, wherein he does some standard mentalist tricks with his own trademark stylistic flourish, for education and entertainment purposes.

During the course of these small-scale performances, he encounters certain individuals who are particularly willing to play along, quick to respond to verbal and gestural cues, etc. After the performance, he approaches these students and personally invites them to attend a live performance and taping of one of his TV shows.

At the show, he makes sure these special guests are seated in the front row, or in a certain seating arrangement together in a group.

When it comes time for a critical audience participation segment, he deliberately calls on one of these individuals whom he's already established to be particularly willing participants. If it's one of those cases where he chooses the participant "at random" by throwing a ball or frisbee into the audience, he merely directs the throw towards a pre-seated group of these specially-chosen guests.

Now, in this hypothetical scenario, can this particular use of audience "plants" technically be termed as employing "stooges"?

In the cases where he takes an audience member and "works on them" for a matter of days or weeks prior to the performance of the illusion, how are you sure he's not pulling an elaboration on the common mentalist technique of "play along" hypnosis?

 

[Azrael 5]

I'm not saying he always uses stooges.

Also, I might be misusing or misinterpreting the word "stooge." The definition I'm using might not be the correct one as used in the industry:




In the cases where he takes an audience member and "works on them" for a matter of days or weeks prior to the performance of the illusion, how are you sure he's not pulling an elaboration on the common mentalist technique of "play along" hypnosis?

Im not up on hypnosis so much,I gather it's mostly play along anyway?
As for your self quote,it's hypothetical,and the frisbee nonsense I've debunked already

 

[Tomtomkent]

It was a stooge. Curly to be precise.

 

[John Albert]

As for your self quote,it's hypothetical,and the frisbee nonsense I've debunked already

You haven't debunked anything. You merely offered an opinion that it's not likely. The entire studio audience could be plants, for all you know.

 

[Squeegee Beckenheim]

It was said earlier in the thread that it had been proven that Brown used camera trickery for the [edit]Lottery[/edit] trick. But has it? I know that a very good case has been made for it being a camera trick (so much so that he even mentioned it himself when providing the "real" explanation in the final programme), and it's the explanation I personally favour, but can we really say that it's an established fact?

Especially as, compelling though the evidence for camera trickery is, there is also one teeny bit of counter-evidence - that of the smooth apparently autonomous motion of one of the balls upwards on the left side of the screen. That doesn't seem to fit the split-screen hypothesis.

But if it has been unequivocally established somewhere that it was a camera trick, could someone tell me where?

 

[Bram Kaandorp]

It was said earlier in the thread that it had been proven that Brown used camera trickery for the Russian Roulette trick. But has it? I know that a very good case has been made for it being a camera trick (so much so that he even mentioned it himself when providing the "real" explanation in the final programme), and it's the explanation I personally favour, but can we really say that it's an established fact?

Especially as, compelling though the evidence for camera trickery is, there is also one teeny bit of counter-evidence - that of the smooth apparently autonomous motion of one of the balls upwards on the left side of the screen. That doesn't seem to fit the split-screen hypothesis.

But if it has been unequivocally established somewhere that it was a camera trick, could someone tell me where?

Surely you are referring the Lottery show. At least, that would make more sense.

 

[Squeegee Beckenheim]

Surely you are referring the Lottery show. At least, that would make more sense.

You're right, I am.