Derren Brown Plays Russian Roulette Live (2003)

[Never_Enough]

It's old, I know, but it's pretty crazy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ed489soVIq8

[Never_Enough]

I don't think it was fake. I can post what makes me think it's real but I'm too lazy tbh.
Anyway, it's the dumbest, craziest and stupidest game ever.

[EminemBase]

Wow the coincidence... I LITERALLY was just about to post a Derren video in this section.

[EminemBase]

I don't think it was fake. I can post what makes me think it's real but I'm too lazy tbh.
Anyway, it's the dumbest, craziest and stupidest game ever.

It's not fake.

I've been doing magic half my life - Derren uses absolutely real techniques in magic to manipulate people's choices and actions... and... the only reason people would think this is fake is due to the obviously / seemingly insane risk involved...

But in reality - to a magician, it's just making somebody pick 1 out of 6. I can tell you as somebody who's done card magic for about a decade that I could make you pick a specific card aka 1 out of 52 every single time and it would look and feel entirely random and a free choice.

So when you consider this is a 1 in 6 choice... if Derren was doing this with cards, it wouldn't be very impressive; so this isn't actually a hard or risky thing for a magician to do, it just seems that way due to the fact it's with a gun and a bullet. But making somebody pick a 1 in 6 is very easy if you know how, Derren is just a genius showman and the way he builds immensely rich ideas and settings around implicitly simple basis is just amazing.

He's one of the few people I would call a genius. And the kind of incredible ingenuity, skill, charisma, cunning, ideas and creativity that goes in to what he does... it just actually makes you chuckle and think how ridiculous people like Jay is or Kanye is for thinking they're geniuses for what they do lmao, like, thinking what they do is truly complex or amazing... I know you can be a genius at anything but, just comparing the complexity and standard of performance... they're such average people in comparison.

For those who don't know who he is, I'd recommend the following routines:

Beating 9 World Class Chess Players Simultaneously

Instant Card Memory

Pound Coin in Each Hand

Smoke (Card Effect)

[EminemBase]

Yeah but he's crazy for being so confident that he could influence this guy to pick the right number. He can try to manipulate all he wants, it's still up to the guy to pick a number.

Not really though. He just makes it seem more that way than it ever is.

Like I said - using the card analogy... you would SWEAR that if a good card magician did a trick on you... you would absolutely swear the choice was free and random, every single time and it's the perfect illusion of you feeling and it looking like you're selecting it... when in reality, you're being forced all along and will only ever pick one card because the illusion of choice, really is that.

It just looks like you're choosing when you're not.

So just amplify that to a huge setting such as this and really all he's doing is making it look like a 1 in 6 choice is completely free and... he builds such a tension and story around it that you're distracted from what the real trick is... which is just making it look like somebody is making a free 1 out of 6 choice, but Derren disguises what would otherwise be a simple trick as a huge, seemingly docu-like real experiment. He's just a master at dressing things up as things that they're not.

He also said that he wouldn't have pulled the trigger had he not been certain that he knew which 'choice' the guy had went for. And when you've been doing magic for a number of years, you just build such an intuitive sense of when you've achieved a technique or not that he KNEW the guy had chosen what he wanted him to choose and was basically asking him, in subtle ways, through language, if he had chosen which one he wants him to choose. And choosing the right person to do it in this instance is very important too - he intentionally whittles down a lot of people to find the most suggestible man he can who will be the most easy to manipulate.

And a lot of the routines he does by the way are sometimes perfect proof that we're incredibly predictable in our thought patterns if put under scrutiny or pressure, he really does just highlight the massive illusion of free will in so many ways. Though sometimes he is often doing just a very very simple trick and presenting it as psychological influencing, when he isn't even doing that.

[Never_Enough]

In which way does he make the guy choose the number he wants?

[EminemBase]

So your saying if he did this trick 100 times he would survive every time because all 100 people would pick the same number?

Nope.

Hence why he has such a huge process of finding the right guy. Whilst Derren does use classic magical manipulation sometimes and dress it up as psychological; he does also influence people through language and suggestion (well, actually all magicians do, but he does it more purely as he is influencing mental decisions rather than selections or observations of physical objects)... which is why there's such a huge process to selecting that guy who he eventually picks.

His goal for this is to find THEE most suggestible guy possible and the reason for that is so that when this guy picks up on Derren's influence / signals and feels himself urging towards what Derren wants, he will not resist it - as he is a suggestible person who is easily influenced and likes to please, therefore he will not try to catch Derren out and Derren will be able to tell when he's gone with what he wants. A cocky, cynical and resistant person would be too rebellious and standoffish and combative to ever be a comfortable choice for something like this for example.

So, if Derren did it 100 times on this 'kind' of person that he chose through a very detailed selection process to determine how they think, how predictable they are, whether they're socially pressured or anti-social and alll these things he's always analyzing, then yes he would probably survive 100.

Just like I could perform the same baffling card trick on most people 1,000 times and never once be caught out... but give me a person who isn't paying attention, dislikes me from the get-go, wants me to fail and is destructive to the flow of the routine... I'd probably fail every time. And all magic has reliable elements of psychology to it, such as me knowing a person will always look down when I motion downwards on an off-beat in a sentence... you may not think people are this predictable or easy to control but in these circumstances, they are. As they are suggestible.

Magic puts people in a state of heightened suggestion to begin with, as people are entering a silent contract to be fooled and see something amazing happen... and because of that, people on some level give you the right to direct and control them, so if you so much as mildly imply somebody do something - they will, as they have already decided you are in control, are the director of this experience and that they have to follow your lead to see the results.

So take ALL of that, + the fact this guy is already a fan of Derren, + the fact that he's an empathetic, suggestible, nice man who obviously doesn't want to see Derren shoot his head off and you have one of THEE most heightened states of suggestion possible, in an already very easy-to-influence personality-type. Influencing somebody to pick a number you want them to pick, out of 6, in those conditions, with that psychology and atmosphere at work... is not all that impressive. But make the choice a bullet and a gun chamber... and it suddenly feels like a gigantic risk.

Dramatic brilliance.

[EminemBase]

On a related yet separate note though, check this out:



One of my favourite card tricks of his and in general. Near perfection.

[Solace]

I read this as "Danny Brown" and skimmed through the video like, "where the fuck is he?"

Lmfaoooo same

[EminemBase]

I read this as "Danny Brown" and skimmed through the video like, "where the fuck is he?"

Lmfaoooo same

@ the Bisvatar.

[Trimss]

I read this as "Danny Brown" and skimmed through the video like, "where the fuck is he?"

Lmfaoooo same

I didn't want to say it but.. Me too.

[Solace]

[Hansen]

That chess thing was sick as hell and so simple

[EminemBase]

That chess thing was sick as hell and so simple

Yep, and it's the kind of method that you just would never think of because it's so lateral and left-field, it exploits a very subtle rule that you don't pay attention to and it's got an ingenuity to it... I mean, what a brilliant fucking idea. Basically just moving the pieces for the players, against each other lmao. He's a superb performer.

[Never_Enough]

He did win one game though lol