Derren Brown Controls Shopping Mall Visitors
January 13th, 2011I wanted to believe that this wasn’t real; that it was just a stunt for television, with paid actors, etc. I know a bit about hypnosis, but I had pretty serious doubts about this one.
So, is this real, or not? Surely, it’s not, right?
I emailed Tony Rodriguez, a friend of mine who happens to be formally qualified to answer the question. What does formally qualified mean? Tony doesn’t mention his qualifications on his site, technofascismblog.com, so I don’t think it’s appropriate for me to say any more about it. Obviously, feel free to take my word that he’s formally qualified, or not.
Anyway, here’s how the emails went. I wrote:
Do you think it’s possible that this actually happened in the way it was presented?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOEKdaXIEHc
Or, did they hire a bunch of extras and just have them raise their arms on queue???
Tony wrote back:
Mass hypnosis. I think it works like this: he creates an air of excitement, people are told to anticipate something. This creates a highly emotional situation about nothing in particular. All people know at this time is that something important is going to happen so they better partially pay attention to what he’s saying. Unfortunately, since they are walking around, they can’t give their full attention to his voice. This is the key. So, people are processing his words in the background as they focus their conscious attention on walking around and shopping. As they do this, he proceeds to drop suggestive command phrases into his speech that are not part of the main narrative. The instinctual, subconscious mind is extremely stupid and only works in simple associations. So he proceeds to build the subconscious association: arm raise = good, arm raise = good, arm raise = good. After enough of this, he builds the excitement again and issues a strong verbal command: now! This shocks people into immediate action. The conscious mind doesn’t have time to think and react, it must let instincts take over. There is just no time. So the instinctual subconscious takes over and reacts based on the last association it learned with some strong emotional content: BAM, ARM GOES UP. Of course, to the people on the ground, once their conscious mind takes over, and they begin to think about what happened, they are surprised that they lifted their arm.
Do I believe this is possible? Not only do I believe this is legit, but I believe the people getting a PhD in marketing learn this from day one. It’s why the people are in the mall in the first place. It’s what impulse buying is based on.
Here’s yet another way of thinking about it, She Who Measures:
forget hypnosis… Neuro-linguistic Programming (NLP) all the way.
Quite a big underground scene using it to manipulate girls for sex.
It is quite easy to recognise once you know a bit about it. It’s used a lot in “group meditation” and youth leadership courses.
Pentecostals are actively using NLP techniques in NZ schools.
It isn’t inherently evil though. Just powerful against the uninitiated.
Ha. I love Derren Brown. There are so many amazing things that he’s done. If you’ve never encountered him before, keep going. You’ll be amazed.
Tony doesn’t mention some of the specific verbal messages in there: “right arm up,” “HANDily.” There are other things. Plus, he could have filled the mall with visual cues too.
The one I’ve always been most amazed by is this one:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEuKgEjwi6A
What I think is going on is that there’s some muscle in people’s eyes that only opens with true anger. I think that he’s found some way of controlling it and opening his voluntarily. …But I have no way of knowing.