Hypnotism, Subliminal Messages & Derren Brown

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So, a question - for everyone, but mainly for UK people ... did anyone see Derren Brown's TV show last Friday? He said he was going to glue viewers to their chairs by showing them a one minute long clip, but that it would only work with about 50% of people. Afterwards he took calls from viewers (or so it seemed) who said they were stuck and couldn't get up. Then he showed us all another clip that was supposed to set us free.

Well ... I didn't get stuck (but I did feel slightly dizzy for a second). Apparently that means I am less suggestible (which is good, I suppose) or that I simply don't have much of an imagination (which is not so good, but I knew that anyway).

On another part of the show he posed as a beggar in a shopping centre. The surroundings had been tampered with to send subliminal messages to shoppers asking them to be generous. Apparently he collected £350 in one hour.

If this stuff is for real, then it's kind of scary how easy it is to mess with people's minds if you know what you're doing.

It's amazing what you can do even if you don't know what you're doing. I remember sitting in Psyche 101 in college and trying to make other students drop their pencils on the floor, just by concentrating on them. In terms of getting hits on any given day, it worked about 80 percent of the time. Girls were easier than guys. Usually took about a full minute to a minute and a half to get results. Could make it happen once, maybe twice in a single class hour. Pointless, but fascinating.

i used to love digging up deren brown videos.

his style (at least when i was interested in him) of neurolinguistic programming (nlp) is only supposed to work on about 35% of the general population. it's important to remember that he is an entertainer (and will tell you so, which is why he's so much cooler than other "magicians") and that you only get to see what he and his producers want you to.

i'm absolutely certain that he's sometimes completely full of it. some of his tricks work very very well though. i've had about a 20% success rate with a card trick inspired by him where i make a suit shape with my hands and accent a consonant a lot to get someone to pick the card i want.

the scary part isn't the people who attempt to use nlp to influence others. the scary part is that a lot of people use nlp without trying.

The way I see it is the clip wasn't anything at all just a stereotypically hypnotic image with siilarly styled music, everything around it was artfully designed to put the viewer in to a highly suggestible state of mind and in the minutes preceding the clip itself he was using full on hypnosis techniques rather than introducing the clip, you may have noticed the way the camera veeerrry slooowwly zoomed in to a close up on his eyes. He was hypnotizing us before the clip was ever shown. I didn't get stuck to my seat but I was very very relaxed and didn't want to move.

The parts in the department store and with the tramp were really cool in their own right but the fact he was using those as a way of making viewers more suggestible to the hypnosis is even cooler. Did you notice all the subliminal pics of people tied to chairs being flashed for a single frame?

Derren is top entertainment his book is a good read too.

I think it appeals to people's ego and need to fit in and be accepted/approved. I observed that he said that it would work on people who are well-balanced and creative and intelligent. People will want to see themselves in that category - if they don't stick, then the implication is that they are the unbalanced, uncreative, thick ones! Personally, I have no interest in being part of a group of people whom Derren Brown defines as well-balanced, creative and intelligent. So it didn't work on me, because I didn't have that motivation. Also, logically, I realised that in order to stand up, you have to move your head outside of the imaginary circle - you need to lean forward significantly to stand up. So I didn't keep my head in the circle that he asked us to keep our heads in.

hypnotism works on people who find it easy to concentrate and tune out everything else. I doubt it could work on me, I hardly ever go into hyperfocus nowdays.

but anyway, I'm a big fan of Derren Brown, the guy is awesome. I just wish he'd admit how he really predicted the lottery numbers because I don't believe in the explanation he already gave

I noticed two of them. Perhaps there were others that I did not consciously (or even unconsciously) perceive. The two I did see seemed pretty difficult to miss. I thought, "is that it, huh? Is that all there is to this trick?"

But I did have this weird feeling while staring at the swirling screen that I could get myself stuck if I just tried harder!

can people please tell me how to subliminally control people to give me more money when i busk playing the guitar in the city???? busking is tough work and we deserve a few dollars or cents!