Mindtricks & videogaming horror

Damnit, I must stop playing so many games and start watching more teevee if it's this weird these days: Derren Brown builds an arcade cabinet, flashes light into some poor bloke's eyes until he goes into a sleep trance, and takes him somewhere creepy...

His friends, the bastards, don't question any of it for a second, not even when he's being kidnapped by some bloke with a camera!

Face-clutching TV, that.

(Via the ever spot-on pixelkill)

Comments

[SharD]

I can't think of a scarier person in the world than Derren.. Though I'd love to learn the old trick where he shakes hands with someone and instantly puts them into a trance!

That'd be great at parties!

[FPSFan]

That was awesome, simply awesome. I was worried for a moment when he started raging on the girl; were those paintballs?

[Dark Jedi]

Wow, this was on TV like a month ago.

Or maybe im a time traveler o_0

[foobar]

Can't be real. This is ridiculous.

[zombiewoodpecker]

Stupidest thing I have ever seen. And people actually believe it.

[Dark_Jedi]

Oh, it is real,
You need to of seen the episode.
D.Brown made the guy see a shrink afterwards to make sure he's ok.

[13strong]

I don't see why so many people believe in Derren Brown's supposed "abilities". I'm not saying that they are definitely a hoax, but why do so many people believe these, let's face it, unbelievable things without any proof whatsoever?

This is one of the less convincing ones. First of all, no customers in the pub seem bothered; it just happens that the first guy to do it is in the "third of people" who the game would effect; the friends are completely unsurprised and unperturbed about the whole thing, at no point raising any fears or appearing concerned for their friend's health; it's all just too easy. The hypnotised guy, if an actor, was pretty convincing though - that's how I'd act if I woke up in Resident Evil.

[Unamed]

Quote: "it just happens that the first guy to do it is in the "third of people" who the game would effect"

It would make pretty boring TV if you had to watch every customer that played the game and was not affected. It's called editing, it's required for a 30 minute show!

[Dark_Jedi]

The thing is, before every show starts...Mr brown tells the audience that he uses a mix of Mind tricks, psychology and uh something else.
So the guy doesn't have "abilities" as such.

[Pixel Kill]

His friends were fairly compliant, but then Derren kept asking them in urgently positively language. "I need you to..." instead of "Could you please". Sometimes it's the little details that are the clever bit. :)

[zaphod]

The guys friends don't react because Derren plays them just as much as he plays the er... player. It's BECAUSE he's got the cameras with him that they go along so easily. Plus, the red blanket on the trolley speaks of medical emergency. It's all been preprogrammed into every one of us.

His friends may well have been worried, but just as soon as something weird happens, the authoritative man appears, and takes charge of the situation. Everything's alright now, hooray!

Oh, and if he'd been given a baseball bat instead of a gun I seriously doubt that the guy would have raged on anyone. Sorry Americans...

I've seen DB live and he's fantastic. :D

[Justin]

Who really cares if it is real or not? It's entertaining to watch. Think of it like a movie. Star Wars isn't real, but if it were, that would be cool. This may not be real or may be real, who really cares? Stop arguing about it.

[joachim guanzon]

what if they reenacted their version of DOOM3??? now that'll leave a mark on his sanity.

[Sean]

that was awsome, is there a website that features or shows more of these videogame horrors and mindtricks?

[Paul]

Doesn't anybody find it odd that a British hypnotist would find a British victim in Las Vegas?

[SharD]

Las Vegas? That looked like central London to me..

[13strong]

Yeah - where did you get Las Vegas from? They were all Londoners from what I could make out.

"Who really cares if it is real or not? It's entertaining to watch. Think of it like a movie. Star Wars isn't real, but if it were, that would be cool. This may not be real or may be real, who really cares? Stop arguing about it."

That just seems like a really stupid comment to me. No one is trying to convince me that Star Wars is real - I understand it as fiction, and in that sense I enjoy it as such (well, the original trilogy at least...). But watching Derren Brown I am supposed to be convinced that what they say is happening is ACTUALLY happening. That's where the entertainment comes from, that Brown can make people do these things. If I either don't believe it or know it to be a hoax, then that takes away my interest in it. Otherwise, it's just a bunch of people pretending to be hypnotised in various elaborate, or not so elaborate, situations. Doesn't sound like my idea of entertainment.

Oh, and by "abilities" I mean his ability to hypnotise people, read and project thoughts through subtle body language etc.

[zaphod]

"Doesn't anybody find it odd that a British hypnotist would find a British victim in Las Vegas?" Yeah, and a British-style pub with British actors and British traffice and everything. Sheesh, wouldn't it have been easier to do it in Britain? ;)

I recommend the dvd of DB, the commentary is particularly enlightening. Once you've seen a few of his things, you start to pick up some of the more obvious cues. In one sense, of course it's all a con - he's an illusionist. However, as any fule no, a great deal of stage magic is misdirection and psychology. It seems to me that DB just got a bit bored of the fiddly card palming side of things. He's written a couple of sekrit-for-magicians-only books that deal with this.

Derren Brown's website is (unsurprisingly) http://www.derrenbrown.co.uk/

There's a load of neato stuff on the website of the TV prog that he did..
http://www.channel4.com/entertainment/tv/microsites/M/mindcontrol/

[gthief]

the film is real in that they put the guy into a room full of actors he thought was a game. They don't give the whole truth though. A hyponotist tells me that you cant hypnotise a person from a screen. They have to be hypnotised beforehand and a key is put on the screen to re-hypnotise them. The friends were probably in on it, and they probably 'roughly' got the guys consent before they did it. Comeon, no producer would risk that kind of lawsuit.

[Zaphod]

There's a good interview with DB on http://www.badpsychics.co.uk/

"There's a lot of debate over what exactly hypnosis is. Some suggest it's a neurophysiologically distinct and special state, others that it's just about people 'playing along'. Both extremes, I think, are misleading. I think 'hypnosis' is a short-hand term for a lot of interesting behaviours, responses and experiences which are brought about by quite ordinary psychological factors such as suggestion, hype, response-expectancy, social-pressure and charisma."